Interesting, if long-winded, essay that makes a number of points that
were also touched upon in the recent thread. Sent to me by an
ex-silklister who presumably continues to follow the list via the archives.
Udhay
This might liven up Silk a little more at this time.
http://www.passtheroti.com/?p=487
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The following is a guest contribution from Vijay Prashad. He is the
author of eleven books, including Karma of Brown Folk (2000), and most
recently The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
(2007).
Dear Friend,
Like you, I was raised in a mixed family. My parents' families came to
Bengal from Punjab, and from Burma. One side leans towards Hinduism;
the other to Sikhism. The city, the metro, provided its own cultural
mooring, and in secular India, I found myself interested in all
religions and deeply schooled in none. Id meant fellowship with my
Muslim neighbors and friends; a Navjot meant a crash course in Parsi
life; Nanak's birthday meant a visit to Gurudwara Sant Kutiya in the
center of town; Christmas, which is Bara Din in Calcutta, meant a
brightly lit Park Street and a visit to St. Paul's Cathedral; and, of
course, Diwali and Holi represented the high-points of our festival
culture. Religion was colorful, and friendly. It didn't represent
either the harshest of personal morality nor the resentments or
distrust of others.
I learnt a few prayers and songs, but this learning was not
systematic. Some of my friends were better schooled than I in their
various traditions. Our diversity was not simply across religion, but
also a diversity of the density of our engagement with religion:
agnostics or religious illiterates were as welcome as those who were
committed to their faith. The festival that I most liked was Saraswati
Puja, the day when we wore yellow and put all our schoolbooks at the
feet of the goddess. The respite from study was welcome, as you can
imagine.
My morality came from elsewhere than religion, from recognition of the
pain in the world. Religious teachers whom I encountered sometimes
talked about this suffering, but they didn't seem to have more than
charity to offer to those who suffered. It struck me that while
religious festivals were beautiful, religions themselves were not
adequate as a solution to modern crises. But religion, as I came to
understand while reading Gandhi many years later, can play a role in
the cleansing of public morality. In 1940, Gandhi wrote, "I still hold
the view that I cannot conceive politics as divorced from religion.
Indeed, religion should pervade everyone one of our actions. Here
religion does not mean sectarianism. It means a belief in ordered
moral government of the universe. It is not less real because it is
unseen. This religion transcends Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc.
It does not supersede them. It harmonizes them and gives them reality"
(Harijan, February 10, 1940). In other words, politics should not be
simply about power struggles, but it must be suffused with moral
concerns. It is not enough to win; one must strive to create, what
Gandhi called, Truth in the world.
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<snip>
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((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
