Are You A 'Fundamentalist'?

I feel rather uneasy at the glib manner in which some people, especially those who are within the portals of the Academy, throw the label 'Fundamentalism' at anyone whose views they may happen to disapprove of, when they should know better, with the greater benefits and resources of historical scholarship at their disposal, that there are not too many human beings on this planet, with the possible exception of a handful of hermits trapped inside a Himalayan cave, who do not have any strongly-held convictions.

In other words, if what you mean by 'Fundamentalism' is a loyalty, of varying and variable intensity and strength, to certain basic beliefs, values, or commitments, most human beings are 'Fundamentalists' anyway. Many contemporary biologists are neo-Darwinian 'Fundamentalists', while some American political theorists are neo-conservative 'Fundamentalists'. This, however, does not mean that these are necessarily life-and-death issues for these people : I take it that if a neo-Darwinist were forced at gunpoint to renounce her commitment to neo-Darwinism, she would, especially in the interests of 'the survival of the fittest' if not the survival of her own theory, do so without too much agonising over her 'authenticity'. Nothing of earth-shaking significance is either gained or lost by her pretending that she has ceased to be a neo-Darwinist for a few minutes.

'Fundamentalism', therefore, cannot be readily equated with 'holding basic commitments' for all sorts of people ranging from half-starved sadhus, calculating City bankers, academics belonging to their distinctive 'schools', to the proverbial proletariat toiling for a better day have lived with and continue to struggle with such commitments.

Neither can 'Fundamentalism', to carry on, be equated in a straightforward manner with narrow-mindedness, a perfect example of which is my own concerning the nature of the human family. I hold that the family is a penitentiary institution that was devised by men to punish children and to dominate women, and while I know only too well that this is an extremely narrow-minded view in that there are billions of families on this planet which will not live up to this description (or may be they will?), there are also plenty of equally (if not more?) narrow-minded people who hold the opposite view, that is the view that the family is a sacrosanct oasis of transcendental peace in this desert-like world which has nothing to do with the starkness of domestic violence. Indeed, on this definition of 'Fundamentalism' as 'being narrow-minded', one shudders to think (and count) how many 'Fundamentalists' lie hiding behind the walls of the universities of Oxbridge, Chicago, Delhi, Chennai, Yale, and Stanford.

So far, then, we have severed 'Fundamentalism' from any straightforward equation with 'espousal of basic beliefs' and 'narrow-mindedness'. Nor is 'Fundamentalism' always a question of forcing your own views upon people. Indeed, if this were to accepted as a definition of 'Fundamentalism', the greatest 'Fundamentalists' in history will turn out to be parents and school-teachers who earn their social status and salaries by telling little impressionable creatures entrusted to their care what the 'right' thing to do is, and punishing them without compunction when they beg to disagree.

Who, then, is a 'Fundamentalist'? Here is what we sometimes call a 'working definition' : A 'Fundamentalist' is a person who believes that every word of a sacred text is true in the most literal sense, and that this text prescribes a uniform socio-religious framework and identity which is to be accepted by everyone in the community centred around it. This 'Fundamentalism' is therefore a form of idolatry, the idolatry of the text which is given a semi-divine status and which is believed to lift up human beings at one stroke from all the anxieties, ambiguities, and ambivalences that are necessarily associated with historical existence. Consequently, a group of 'Fundamentalists' has to construct an organised system of threats and punishments which will police the boundaries of possible meanings that individuals may draw out of the text, carefully ensuring that in this process, where it is allowed at all, nobody transgresses those boundaries laid down unambiguously. That is, the words of the sacred text must be venerated as hallowed things, frozen for all eternity, and their purity must be maintained against the ravages of time, if necessary through violent means.

Though historically speaking, both Christianity and Islam have been prone to chronic bursts of 'Fundamentalisms', the reasons for these periodic outbursts have been very context-specific. Not a scholar of Islam myself, but a student of Christianity, the latter has, I believe, sufficient internal resources for combating from the within this malaise. Two examples shall suffice in this connection.

(A) Consider first this lament :

"'Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher.

Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless.'
What do human beings gain from all their labor

at which they toil under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,

but the earth remains forever."

At first glance, it sounds suspiciously like the morose complaints of a retarded half-drunk Existentialist : as a matter of fact, however, it comes from the Old Testament which is suffused with images of homelessness, exile, and tribulation endured by the Jewish people, and also replete with stern warnings of God's wrath on those who forget that whatever stability they might have secured has come to them not through their self-striving alone but as a divine gift to be cherished and nurtured.

(B) "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."

This verse from 1 Corinthians in the New Testament is, in fact, one of the many texts that can be used against the view that each and every word in the Bible, down to the precise semicolon and fullstop, is the word of God. Rather, the text of the Bible is the mediating vehicle for the divine revelation and is not to be exhaustively equated with or viewed as comprehensively encapsulating the latter.