For some time now, and certainly since 2014, India has been experiencing a fundamental churn in its vision of itself. While much attention has been devoted to the Hindutva movement, a far broader cultural-civilisational revival — coinciding with the opening of the Indian economy, post-1990 — has mostly remained under the radar.
Two recent surveys on the extent (World Values Survey, 2021) and nature (Pew Research Center, 2021) of religiosity contain three significant findings: One, India is an outlier among nations — the most significant exception to the global trend, since 2007, of declining religiosity; two, within India, the continued salience of a broad-based dharmic identity (for at least 84 per cent of its citizens — Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains); three, Indians across every religious group (including Muslims and Christians), caste, education level, age, and region, were near-unanimous in what they believed were the top national problems. These were, in order of decreasing importance, unemployment, corruption, crime, violence against women, and communal violence.
We believe the coincidence of these two observed phenomena — an unusually strong revival of religiosity in a rapidly modernising India and the across-the-board agreement over specific governance concerns — 75 years into our Independence, is a robust finding. They mirror, as we suggest below, the governance concerns that had provoked the earlier, 18th century dharmic-civilisational revival during the Bengal Renaissance which, in turn, informed the struggle for independence. If properly leveraged, this convergence promises both, a much-needed, broad-based dharmic-ethical revival and an end to the reactionary forces in our culture and polity currently fueled under the banner of Hindutva. Moreover, the implications of this broader civilisational revival for the country’s governance could, potentially, be momentous.
Heartened by these possibilities we (along with Bhakti Patil of Trayas Foundation) have recently contributed an essay on Hinduism to a volume on Truth and Governance: Religious and Secular Views, compiled by Ethikon Institute and published by the Brookings Institution. In it, we explored what a dharmic approach to governance might imply and to what extent, since Independence, India had or had not followed such a course. Our argument is summarised below, with a view to generating discussion on a matter of profound national importance.
We believe the civilisational essence of the Hindu tradition is captured in its understanding of Truth and the related notion of dharma, that guide human action at three levels: Metaphysical, individual and societal. The quality of governance must, accordingly, be judged by its ability to sustain conditions conducive to the observance of dharma at all levels. Inevitably, on this criterion, governance quality in India has fluctuated in India with the ebb and flow of Hindu civilisation.
We identify five main sociocultural forces and political developments (Five Rs) that have shaped the observance of dharma in modern Indian society and within its institutions. One, a First Revival was the Bengal Renaissance of the late 18th century that later inspired the Independence Movement from the mid-19th to early 20th century. Two, as Nirad Chaudhari famously lamented, a Rejection of the dharmic way of life that almost immediately followed Indian independence, with the embrace of Nehruvian “secularism”, socialism, and Soviet-style industrialisation. Three, a Reaction in the shape of the Hindutva movement that evolved over two distinct phases — pre- and post-Independence, culminating in the 2014 and 2019 general election results. Four, a Second Revival that, too, has occurred in two phases — an early political phase that saw the emergence of the Swatantra Party opposed to secularism-socialism and the Licence Raj, and a second phase that began with the partial liberalisation of the Indian economy in the 1990s. Finally, and most importantly, a fifth R: The Resilience we attribute to the underlying, highly decentralised nature and workings of the dharmic tradition that has shaped morality and ethics in India.
The principal sources of the modern Hindu outlook on truth and governance are found in the First Revival, sparked by the writings of Raja Rammohun Roy, and carried forward by leaders such as Tagore, Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Gandhi, Radhakrishnan and Rajagopalachari. They shared three common beliefs. First, Hindu society had suffered through a long period of cultural-moral debasement (casteism and untouchability; restrictions on women and widows; superstitions and fatalism). Second, the ability of Hindu society to govern itself would require broad-based social and moral regeneration. Third, a revival of the Vedic dharmic philosophical and ethical roots of Hindu society was essential to such reform.
Central to the Hindu view of Truth is that it is more than mere factually correct or valid statements. Truth encompasses all of knowledge, and the search for it is, in fact, the goal of life. More importantly, and perhaps unique to the Hindu worldview, the Vedas deny that knowledge of Brahman — an all-encompassing, expansive reality — is exclusive to any authority, person, or method. Indeed, they affirm the opposite: All ways of knowing are equally valid, in that they all are capable of capturing a valid but limited aspect of the Truth. Hence, the need to respect different perspectives and views and to sustain a democratic and decentralised polity.
For Hindus, therefore, the imperative of democracy stems from the fundamental philosophical moorings that must govern society. But it also provides the context for an individual’s own pursuit of Truth, which additionally needs to be guided by ahimsa (absence of violence) and karma (self-actualisation through action). In so doing, the individual is required to follow her or his svadharma (own dharma), which in turn reflects her or his svabhava (own nature). And it is through the individual pursuit of svadharma that the ultimate objective of lokasangraha, or universal welfare, is realised.
The complex and many-sided Hindu view of Truth means that the legitimacy of government cannot be founded on truth claims. It rests, instead, on a government’s ability to enable and empower individuals, and their different constituencies, among the governed to follow their own dharma. Since doing so assumes a minimum level of material well-being, the Mahabharata and the Arthashastra stress that securing the welfare of subjects is a ruler’s first responsibility. Policies must permit the various economic sectors — agriculture, industry, and trading — to function as smoothly and harmoniously as possible to enable the creation of wealth. In turn, this implies maintenance of law and order, preservation of individual property rights, as well as trust (enforcement of contracts).
Crucially, the Hindu perspective does not admit of any monopoly on Truth or dharma — least of all, any claim to such a monopoly by the government. It was this perspective — the polycentric nature of Truth and dharma — that informed the First Revival but was ignored during the Rejection. Although the robustness of Indian democracy was never jeopardised — except for the aberration of the Emergency — Nehru’s “secular-socialist” state drew intellectual inspiration, not from Hindu dharma, but from Western thought (especially English Fabians). Unsurprisingly, what followed was central planning, top-heavy industrialisation, suppression of the private sector, criminalisation of politics, and the exclusion of dharmic literature from the basic education curriculum for state schools.
It was only a matter of time that the above rejection of a dharmic view of life would provoke a reaction — in the form of Hindutva, as a political-cultural reaction to post-Independence secularism. It manifested itself with a change of government in 2014 and was reaffirmed in 2019. Predictably, however, the reaction has tended to be superficial (focused on beef-eating and cow slaughter) and extreme (lynchings). At the same time, the abysmal state of our party politics has severely weakened our ability to overcome these reactionary forces. Our hope, though, rests on the continuing resilience of the underlying tradition.
If upheld, it promises a return to a governance that is rooted in Hindu civilisational values but yet preserves the best aspects that have come from the West, such as separation of state and religion. Such a balance would strive to restore, within a modern 21st century polity, economy, and society, an order that promotes the attainment of dharma for all of India’s citizens.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 8, 2022 under the title ‘Hinduism and governance’. Nimai Mehta is with Department of Mathematics and Statistics, American University, Washington DC. Karti Sandilya is a retired Indian Foreign Service Officer
