The secularization "thesis basically held that modernization and wealth diminished the hold of pre-scientific, religious beliefs on a society. Not in India."
This was always one of *the* biggest errors in the thinking about India's political economy.
My background is absolutely identical to yours (I suspect we might be about the same age, and we perhaps came to the US about the same time too.) But, I was always worried that India's religion problems would haunt the country for a long time. A problem right from birth doesn't go away easily, does it?
The secular framework that was the aspiration for Nehru's Congress, the rationalist Communist and Tamil Dravidian parties, was truly merely an ideal. It was disconnected from the ground-level reality, in which people were passionate about religion. Passion in favor of theirs, and passion against others.
At this point, I am less keen on the causes, and far more interested in what some of the short-term predictions might be for India's "liberal democracy." How much will Hindu authoritarianism strengthen in the coming years? For how long will minorities lie low before they decide that enough is enough? Will this result in radicalization of youth? Or, will Reagan's comment about "one generation away" work in the other direction too--as in Hindu authoritarianism only a generation away from losing?
Massive inequality bred magical thinking and conspiracy theories which bred a shift from belief in the state and religion to belief in a cult leader. There is also the unintended consequence, in the US at least, of home-grown anarchy. We already see that the base is leading Trump and the GOP. When they tire of scapegoats, the base will turn on their de facto leaders as they exult in their collective power. Then what?
I would argue that it is not levels of religiosity which has increased in India, but politicisation and centralisation of it. The religious beliefs of Hindus have been quite varied to be by default employed for political purposes, but what Ram Mandir movement sought to do was to unite Hindus in the name of historical humiliation by Muslim rulers against Hindus. The religiousity angle did help but it was mainly the communal angle that drives it rather than religiousity par se. Historically Hindutva ideology itself was conceptualised by atheist Savarkar, for whom religion was relevant in identity terms. The Hindutva movement is primarily driven by communalism where religion is more relevant in terms of identity rather than beliefs. An example would be right wing Hindus having an issue with cracker ban during Diwali, even though crackers have no religious significance, but it gives them an excuse of being cornered while Muslim and Christian festivals are not called out according to them.
Here we go again; the trite old, unsubstantiated 'majoritarian anti-Muslim Modi' trope. It is funny how the man is not adept at economic miracles, and yet the chief object of the opposition's animadversions is not his economic incompetence, but some vaguely and erroneously discerned chauvinist prejudice innate to him. One might have expected him to feel emboldened at his victory in 2019, sustained vitriol notwithstanding, and commence a purge of minorities, had he truly been that bigoted. Instead, amongst his earliest actions was scholarship schemes to minorities. How is that consonant with alarms of a hobgoblinized threat of anti-Muslim extremism on part of Hindus, that he is said to represent?
The secularization "thesis basically held that modernization and wealth diminished the hold of pre-scientific, religious beliefs on a society. Not in India."
This was always one of *the* biggest errors in the thinking about India's political economy.
My background is absolutely identical to yours (I suspect we might be about the same age, and we perhaps came to the US about the same time too.) But, I was always worried that India's religion problems would haunt the country for a long time. A problem right from birth doesn't go away easily, does it?
The secular framework that was the aspiration for Nehru's Congress, the rationalist Communist and Tamil Dravidian parties, was truly merely an ideal. It was disconnected from the ground-level reality, in which people were passionate about religion. Passion in favor of theirs, and passion against others.
At this point, I am less keen on the causes, and far more interested in what some of the short-term predictions might be for India's "liberal democracy." How much will Hindu authoritarianism strengthen in the coming years? For how long will minorities lie low before they decide that enough is enough? Will this result in radicalization of youth? Or, will Reagan's comment about "one generation away" work in the other direction too--as in Hindu authoritarianism only a generation away from losing?
Massive inequality bred magical thinking and conspiracy theories which bred a shift from belief in the state and religion to belief in a cult leader. There is also the unintended consequence, in the US at least, of home-grown anarchy. We already see that the base is leading Trump and the GOP. When they tire of scapegoats, the base will turn on their de facto leaders as they exult in their collective power. Then what?
I would argue that it is not levels of religiosity which has increased in India, but politicisation and centralisation of it. The religious beliefs of Hindus have been quite varied to be by default employed for political purposes, but what Ram Mandir movement sought to do was to unite Hindus in the name of historical humiliation by Muslim rulers against Hindus. The religiousity angle did help but it was mainly the communal angle that drives it rather than religiousity par se. Historically Hindutva ideology itself was conceptualised by atheist Savarkar, for whom religion was relevant in identity terms. The Hindutva movement is primarily driven by communalism where religion is more relevant in terms of identity rather than beliefs. An example would be right wing Hindus having an issue with cracker ban during Diwali, even though crackers have no religious significance, but it gives them an excuse of being cornered while Muslim and Christian festivals are not called out according to them.
Here we go again; the trite old, unsubstantiated 'majoritarian anti-Muslim Modi' trope. It is funny how the man is not adept at economic miracles, and yet the chief object of the opposition's animadversions is not his economic incompetence, but some vaguely and erroneously discerned chauvinist prejudice innate to him. One might have expected him to feel emboldened at his victory in 2019, sustained vitriol notwithstanding, and commence a purge of minorities, had he truly been that bigoted. Instead, amongst his earliest actions was scholarship schemes to minorities. How is that consonant with alarms of a hobgoblinized threat of anti-Muslim extremism on part of Hindus, that he is said to represent?