Written under the cloud of extremist attacks on the tolerant r(n)ationalists, just recently, and the loss of Saffron color yet again in Jharkhand, this is essentially an examination of the role of religiosity through ethical microscope.

 Marx is accredited for saying “Religion is the opiate of the masses" just as Aron is accredited with the quote “Marxism is the opiate of the intellectuals."  Religion is seen here as ritual and the embodying metaphysics is viewed as philosophy, which is eulogized.

In India there are two schools of thought. The first is a soul-based view where the heart-soul-mind trilogy acts in unison on ethical matters. The second is a mind-based view where only the heart (willingness) and the mind (ability) matter, thus negating the soul.  The soul is negated not because it does not exist (Hindus believe that soul exists. Even many westerners believe it does but Julien Musolino wrote a book, "The Soul Fallacy: What Science Shows We Gain From Letting Go of Our Soul Beliefs" and vehemently denies the existence of soul), but because it can neither be given a meaning, nor can it be subjected to a method of analysis nor can its effect and dimensions be measured. The three Ms of investigative scientific research lay great stress on meaning, method and measurement and in the case of the soul, it is impossible.

The religion is that which is equated to ritual handed down through ages having little meaning, whereas its position on metaphysics is that it is equated to a high order of philosophy. The question is how can rational choice be made in the face of this ethical dilemma? The answer lies in taking decisions within the ambit of bounded (walk or run with leaping strides) rationality, involving false religious dogmas converting into fundamental tenets, into the equation of ethics.

The basic philosophical position from which the view of ethics emerges is four folds:

(1) Humankind lives within a civil society, influences it and is in turn influenced by it. Hence ethics must be seen with respect to the person, the context and the culture.

(2) Humankind is the beginning and the end of all analysis. Humankind is the subject and the object of all inquiry. Hence ethical conduct liberates man from the fetish of false consciousness.

(3) The human intellect about ethics must be based on innate human logic and the basic goodness of humankind, rather than on metaphysical constructs.

(4) It is not enough to act ethically but also seen to have acted as such, since ethical conduct invariably and ultimately leads to a character which speaks of excellence.

Ethics is based on a set of beliefs about the form and content of objective social reality.  The mental acceptance or accent towards a proposition can be seen in terms of three scales viz., surmising, opinion, and conviction. A reasonable belief is one, which is in accordance with evidence. An unreasonable belief is one, which is in accordance with surmising. An opinion is a view not entirely supported by evidence. If knowledge were to be based on belief, the proposition believed, must in fact, be true, and the believer must have conclusive evidence of it, as explained by David Hume in his “A Treatise of Human Nature,” is that " ...the mind consists of perceptions, or the mental objects which are present to it, and which divide into two categories: impressions and ideas."

 Fundamentalism is universal and based on the intellect as well as the collective consciousness of a civil society. It is not specific to any religion. However, it has been seen that poverty and illiteracy are proportionately related to fundamentalism.

One may well ask, what has ethics to do with fundamentalism? The answer is simple. Ethics is the means by which authority is sustained and perpetuated. When authority is sustained by means other than ethical, then it has to be either a psychological threat or an appeal adheres to metaphysical principles. Both of these are the instruments by which fundamentalism sustains itself and perpetuates the position of its leadership. Treating fundamentalism within a discourse on ethics is thus necessary and justified. At an elementary level, fundamentalism can be viewed as a strict adherence to traditional orthodoxy wherein the person is ruled by the heart rather than by the head in making decisions.

This is definitely not ascribing any motives to soul-based philosophers especially when they need not exist as referred above quoting Julien Musolino. What is attempted below is taking an idea far to establish a point. That is all. There is no intention to paint all the persons of a social category with the same brush. History has given numerous instances when a leadership that promotes fundamentalism or give shelter to it, in the name of religious fanaticism finally signs its own death warrant. Of course, the cynic may quote Keynes out of context and say that in the long run we are all dead, anyway!  But that is not the point being made here. What is being attempted is to put across a view that whenever a leadership feels threatened and is incapable of standing up to its convictions ethically, it tries to justify its own position and invariably takes a fundamentalist recourse.

When the Hindu pundit shuns the lower castes, he is in fact strengthening the lower caste political lobbies unwittingly. Take the argument thus. A cynic may well argue that all the Hindu kings of the past were Rajputs and yet the Brahmins are the higher order. This may be because the kings could neither read nor write and the Brahmins who wrote the texts made their own self occupy the highest rung of the ladder of the society. Now this Brahmin if he is afraid of being swamped by a literate populace and the rise of the non-Hindu communities would then resort to orthodox practices, culminating in to Fundamentalism, to retain his position and secure his bread and butter.

The Christian priests who have taken vows of celibacy preach about the evils of birth control and annulment of marriages. This, in a Freudian sense, one could say that it is simply a throw back on his past insecurity born out of a deprived biological need. As quoted recently by Reuters - Sexual abuse of minors was rife among superiors of the Legionaries of Christ Catholic religious order, with at least 60 boys abused by its founder Father Marcial Maciel, a report by the group showed. Marciel, who died in 2008, was perhaps the Roman Catholic Church's most notorious pedophile, even abusing children he had fathered secretly with at least two women while living a double life and being feted by the Vatican and Church conservatives. ( https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1YQ02Y?__twitter_impression=true ). The priest has to rule by fear and pictures of Hell are painted vividly enough to make anyone believe that he has had the firsthand knowledge of it!

The Muslim clergy are perhaps the most virulent amongst the oligarchic orthodoxy. Those mullahs will be quick to take out fatwa against Salman Rushdie or Taslima Nasreen only because their own position is threatened by the exposure of a social reality, wherein inequity and oppression are condoned by the orthodoxy in the name of God or some such metaphysical construct. They exhibit their close mindedness by even disowning the Sufi mystics like Avicenna, Alfarabi, and the rest. Avicenna's theology on metaphysical issues (ilāhiyyāt) was criticized by some Islamic scholars, like Al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn al-Qayyim. Al- Farabi followed Aristotle and Plato philosophy to define his theology on which Al-Ghazali noted that the Greek philosophers "must be taxed with unbelief, as must their partisans among the Muslim philosophers, such as Ibn Sina and al-Farabi and their likes." He added that "None, however, of the Muslim philosophers engaged so much in transmitting Aristotle's lore as did the two men just mentioned. The sum of what we regard as the authentic philosophy of Aristotle, as transmitted by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, can be reduced to three parts: a part which must be branded as unbelief; a part which must be stigmatized as innovation; and a part which need not be repudiated at all. (Wikipedia source).

 Even the noted feminist and Islamic scholar Riffat Hussan is not tolerated by certain elements within the clergy although she has sound historical evidence to back up her statements. Hassan's theology is an example of Progressive Islam. She says the Qur'an is the "Magna Carta of human rights", prescribing human rights and equality for all, while the inequality of women in many Muslim societies today is due to cultural effects. And this is not a new phenomenon. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan were perhaps not accepted by the Muslim orthodoxy because of their strong leaning towards the Sufi doctrine.

 Tarek Fatah was imprisoned twice by military regimes. In 1977, he was charged with sedition by the General Zia-ul Haq regime and barred from journalism in Pakistan. He left Pakistan and settled in Saudi Arabia, before emigrating to Canada in 1987.

When these fundamentalists are threatened and feel that their dogma are in grave danger, they see to it that the religion which stands to counter them in their beliefs, extinguishes within a century by application of Sharia law. Islamic law, called Sharia, regulates the complete spectrum of life, including penal code, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as marriage, sexual conduct, or dress. This law is a combination of the Koran and the Sunna (the perfect words and actions of Mohammed) (https://www.cspii.org/blog/sharia-law-europe/) They then resort to attack non-believers and once their population reaches the sizable proportion, their tentacles spread horrendously and genocide and ethnic cleansing takes place as happened with Kashmiri pundits. (Source: https://www.israel wire.com/2019/11/12/islam-demographic-expert-warns-that-once-muslims-hit-16-of-the-population-of-your-country-there-is-no-way-to-stop-it-from-becoming-an-islamic-nation.html).

The dastardly murder of Safdar Hashmi of the Jana Natya Manch by Congress Party workers on 1^st January 1989 while he was staging a street play during municipal elections in Ghaziabad is yet another example of the intolerance of legitimate dissent. On 1 January 1989, the JANAM troupe began a performance of the street play Halla Bol (Raise Your Voice!), during the Ghaziabad municipal elections in Sahibabad's Jhandapur village (near Delhi). During the performance, the troupe was attacked by political hoodlums of the Indian National Congress. Hashmi was fatally injured and died the following day. On 4 January 1989, two days after his death, his wife Moloyshree Hashmi went to the same spot again with the JANAM troupe, and defiantly completed the play. Fourteen years after the incident, a Ghaziabad court convicted ten people, including Congress Party member Mukesh Sharma, for the murder. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safdar_Hashmi).

Ancient Islam was benevolent, East European and Byzantine Islam was erudite while Sufi Islam was all loving. It was later with the barbaric Mongols, the Afghans and the Moguls that brutality and fundamentalism set in.

 We have variations of fundamentalism among the Klu Klux Klan, using terrorism against politically active blacks in US,  Jehovah’s Witnesses, which establishes all doctrines based on Bible,  the Peoples War Group, merging into Communist Party of India (Maoist),  The Awami League, for liberating East Pakistan from West, Jamiat Ulema-e- Hind opposing CAA, Al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden, fighting against Russians in Soviet- Afghan war,  Taliban, waging civil war in Afghanistan,  the Ranbir Sena, a caste based militia in Bihar,  the Neo Nazis, reviving Nazi ideology,  and the Fascists.

However, one thing that they all share in common is the appeal to sentiment and a response to a social-economic environment which supposedly speaks of disparity. For instance, the Naxalite Movement in the 1960s and 1970s was the germination ground for a rise in social consciousness across the country. Their call to violence was ill timed and ill-managed causing more distress. How can anyone overlook the fact that the Naxalite movement was speared initially by socially conscious intellectuals? And, the CPM strangle hold of West Bengal was due to its successful land reforms. Later degenerations of the Naxalite movement can be attributed to left wing fundamentalism and then rise of Mamta Banerjee led TMC and the ouster of Tata Nano Project from Singur which could have paved the way for huge employment generation and economic aggrandizement of West Bengal. Her Fundamentalism snatched away bread and butter of thousands of unemployed youths.

The eternal dichotomy between good and evil remains the mainstay and men are being constantly pulled between two polarities of God and demon where the leadership is required to exhibit some form of Chanakyaniti to come out as a winner in this war.

......

References:

(1) Aron, Raymond (1957): The Opium of the Intellectuals, London, Secker and Warburg

(2) Emile (1950): The Rules of Sociological Method, Chicago, Chicago Press.

(3) Ghosh, Aurobindo Sri (1970) Reprint, The Life Divine, Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

(4) Hammond,Peter Dr. (2013) Slavery, Terrorism and Islam. The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat, Frontline Fellowship Publishing at Smashword.

(5) Musolino, Julien (2015) The Soul Fallacy: What Science Shows We Gain from Letting Go of Our Soul Beliefs, Prometheus Books,Gillian MacKenzie, Gillian MacKenzie Agency. (Jan.) New York

(6)Niebaur H R (1970): Radical Monotheism and Western Culture, New York, Harper and Row.

(7) Swami (1981): The God and the Way: Vedantic Approach to Lifes Problems, Madras, Rama Krishna Math.

(8) Vivekananda, Swami (1991) Vedanta: The Voice of Freedom(ed) Swami Chetananda, Calcutta, Advait Ashram.

(9) Woodroofe, Sir John (1972): Shakti and Shakta. Madras, Ganesh and Company.

(10) Woodroofe, Sir John (1973): The Garland of Letters, Madras, Ganesh and Company.