The Question of 'Inclusivity'

Notions such as 'toleration', 'inclusivity', and 'egalitarianism' are very dear to my heart. But, and this is an extremely vital But. But I believe that this side of the grave (and who knows what awaits us on the other?), they shall remain regulative ideals in the sense that no social system can become perfect embodiments of these. That is, what seems to be tolerant enough from one side of the wall can be experienced as highly intolerant and biogted from the other; thereby only augmenting the mutual lack of comprehension across the divide.

To 'see what I mean', here are some snatches of a conversation that I had with a school-friend when I was in India in 2003. After talking to him for a few minutes about the 'old times', I realised that he had (unfortunately!) developed RSS-sympathies. (If I were the Education Minister of India, I would introduce a compulsory course in all Indian colleges. It would be called 'A History of European Anti-Semitism : 200 BC to 1945 AD'.)

With a gleam in his eyes, he said : 'Ah, I see. So you have now become a scholar of religions, eh? Have you studied the Hindu texts in the original Sanskrit? Have you spent a year meditating in the Himalayas? Or are you simply parrotting the views of the Western scholars? And what about Islam, then? Don't you think that Hinduism is more tolerant than Islam?'

That notion, that Hinduism is more tolerant than Islam, is so widely-heard and so unthinkingly-repeated throughout the length and the breadth of India that the only thing that prevents me from branding it a 'typical Hindu fallacy' is the fear that I shall be thrown out from the Academy on the unforgivable charge of being a neo-Orientalist.

So, then, here is the question once again : Is Hinduism more tolerant than Islam?

Let's focus on the word 'tolerance', and consider two types of it, 'theological tolerance' (TT) and 'sociological tolerance' (ST).

As for TT, Islam does not, I readily admit, have a good track-record. Islam has an urge to move out into the world making (and, sometimes, compelling) other human beings into becoming 'Muslims', that is, submissive creatures obedient to the will of Allah. In this regard, Hinduism, in many of its (non-RSS!) forms, can be said to be very theologically tolerant : so long as you don't violate the Indian Penal Code (and also, of course, the wishes of the omnipotent Indian Family!), you can believe, practise, and do whatever you feel like and still call yourself a 'Hindu'.

However. However, what about ST? Here I can only state that so powerful was my distaste, during my teenage years, for the Hindu caste-system that till this very day it is with a great sense of uneasiness that I write 'Hinduism' as my 'religion' when filling up official forms. Indeed, I remain convinced that casteism is the one immortal blemish on the face of Hinduism, so that when it comes to the question of ST, Islam has, for me at least, a refreshing breadth of egalitarianism that is missing from many traditional forms of Hinduism. (I am not blind, of course, to the socio-empirical fact that many Indian Muslims have incorporated some Islamized version of Hindu casteism into their social systems. However, this is not a practice that is inbuilt into the Qu'ran.)

Finally, let me return to the question of TT : what makes us think that Islam is anti-TT? First, what is Islam? Here is a concise one-line answer : There is one ultimate reality, 'God', referred to by the name Allah, and the only way to reach Allah is by living in accordance to the Qu'ran.

Is this claim in itself anti-TT? Perhaps, it is; but then consider some other parallel claims.

(1) There is one political institution, referred to by the term 'Indian secularism', and the only way to be a secularist is by living in accordance to the Indian Constitution.

(2) There is one world, referred to the by the term 'reality', and the only way to be a realist is by living in accordance to the findings of the physical, the mathematical, and the biological sciences.

(3) There is one social structure, referred to by the term 'Communist society', and the only way to be a Communist is by living in accordance to the laws of historical materialism.

(4) There is one economic system, referred to by the term 'globalisation', and the only way to be globalised is by living in accordance to the laws of the international(ised) market.

(5) There is one norm of orthopraxy for all Indians, referred to by the term 'Hinduism', and the only way to be an Indian is by taking pride in the Hindu past of India.

I shall leave you to draw whatever conclusions you may wish to from the above. Just one line of commentary from my side. I have not 'proved' that Islam is not anti-TT; but I have tried to show that we should first be careful to ensure that we are not hiding some form of (quasi-)anti-TT within ourselves when we throw stones at the glass houses of other people.