Once I was preparing for my PhD program to check Indian philosophy, I figured I ought to get extra acquainted with the classics, so I sat all the way down to learn by the Upaniṣads of their entirety. I used to be making my manner by a passage about what a person ought to ask his spouse to do if they need a great and discovered son. I noticed it advance by progressively higher outcomes, a son who is aware of one Veda, two Vedas, three. After which it culminated on this passage:
‘I desire a discovered and well-known son, a fascinating orator aiding at councils, who will grasp all of the Vedas and life out his full life span’—if that is his want, he ought to get her to cook dinner that rice with meat and the 2 of them ought to eat it blended with ghee. The couple thus turns into able to begetting such a son. The meat could also be that of a younger or a completely grown bull. (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 6.4.18, Olivelle translation)
I used to be startled. One of many first stuff you would sometimes study in “Hinduism 101” is that “Hindus” are supposedly forbidden from consuming beef, that that is without doubt one of the key necessities of their “faith”. And that definitely match my very own expertise with the Indian facet of my household, who take into account themselves Hindu and don’t eat beef. I had vaguely heard of D.N. Jha’s The Myth of the Holy Cow, and its argued that the prohibition on consuming beef was not as historical as we predict it’s. However I hadn’t anticipated to come across the very reverse – an instruction to eat cows proper there within the Brḥadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad.
The different factor you sometimes study in “Hinduism 101” is that the Vedas are “the sacred texts of Hinduism”, and the Upaniṣads (the Vedānta, the “finish of the Vedas”) probably the most sacred of all. However right here, proper within the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad – the oldest and longest Upaniṣad, first in all of the collections – is an instruction that if you would like the purpose, clearly extremely valued within the textual content, of getting a discovered son, then it’s best to eat the meat of a bull. There’s no qualification connected right here, no trace that this can be a transgression of regular guidelines, nothing elsewhere within the textual content to say that these are particular circumstances and usually you shouldn’t eat meat and even beef. It positive seems like in these “sacred texts of Hinduism”, consuming beef is simply regular, and in vital circumstances inspired. I had anticipated that Jha’s argument on the parable would have gone over obscure historic sources in painstaking element to indicate that perhaps there had been some cow consuming someplace in previous Indian societies. I didn’t count on that it could be one thing this apparent, one thing that stares you within the face even if you’re not searching for it.
All of this got here again to me as I learn Milan Singh’s Substack post on Narendra Modi’s India. Singh reminds us that the RSS – a militant Hindu fraternal group with shut ties to Modi’s BJP get together – has been making an attempt to ban the slaughter of cows, “that are thought of to be sacred in Hinduism.” The RSS and associated organizations have rarely taken the law as a restraint on their actions; Singh cites a Human Rights Watch report that identifies 44 individuals killed in India on suspicion that they have been slaughtering cattle, 36 of whom have been Muslims. What these slaughtered individuals have been doing, it seems, is one thing required to satisfy the injunctions of the Upaniṣads.
The RSS, the BJP, and quite a lot of different organizations share a pro-Hindu, anti-Muslim ideology that they discuss with as Hindutva, actually “Hindu-ness”. To characterize the Hindutva ideology extra descriptively in English, there are a few fairly correct nouns one can connect to the adjective “Hindu”: one can name it Hindu militancy or Hindu nationalism. The time period that’s by no means correct to explain them, although, is Hindu fundamentalism.
The time period “fundamentalist” was first used as a self-description by Protestant Christians who believed the Bible to be infallible, a supply of final reality. If we’re going to make use of the time period “fundamentalist” in a severe manner – not only a throwaway pejorative to imply “any tradition more theologically conservative than mine”) – then it must have that core characteristic of scriptural infallibility. By that definition, there are lots of fundamentalist Muslims, who take the Qur’an as being completely and sometimes actually proper; in his assertion of the primacy of scripture over philosophy and remark, al-Ghazālī seems like a good example. Catholics, alternatively, are nearly by no means fundamentalist, since they place no less than as a lot authority on the pope and the church because the textual content.
Militant Hindus, in flip, are extraordinarily removed from fundamentalism. Most of them in all probability aren’t even conscious that the Upaniṣads’ endorsement of beef-eating exists. Protestant fundamentalists may also be comparatively unaware of what’s within the Bible, however their conservative politics is one that’s tied to what’s within the Bible as learn by different individuals who learn the Bible. With Hindu nationalists I’ve by no means seen any motive to suppose they’re even making an attempt.
Hindu nationalism isn’t about scripture and fundamentalism, that’s clear to me. What is it about? Nicely, at any time when I attempt to clarify Indian politics the very first thing that often involves thoughts is an previous joke concerning the Troubles in Eire:
A person is strolling alongside the streets of Belfast late at evening and is abruptly surrounded by a gang of younger toughs. Their chief yells at him, “You! Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?” Not eager to get into hassle, the person tries to sidestep the query and gently says “No, no, I’m an atheist.” The chief retorts “Yeah yeah yeah, however are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?”
The “sectarian” violence in Eire was by no means actually concerning the Bible or the Church, about something that folks believed in. It was about “who’s your gang?” When the riots begin, which individuals will defend you and which is able to assault you? Within the examine I’ve accomplished of Indian politics, that all the time appears to be what the “Hindu vs. Muslim” divide is de facto about: who’s on which facet of the struggle, a struggle that in some respects is not actually about something besides the struggle itself, the recollections either side has of violence accomplished to it and the response in type. Makes an attempt to ban cow slaughter or destroy mosques, I believe, are actually about this struggle: about asserting the dominance of 1 social group over one other, establishing that group because the winner within the struggle. Now that additionally it is so clearly divided into two hostile factions that not often converse to 1 one other, I fear that america right this moment could be headed in an identical route.
Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.
