Sacred Commons
(from Vocabulary of Commons, article 71)
Anita Cheria and Hrangthan Chhungi
The sacred commons
The use, misuse and abuse of religion and spirituality
In the secular world, religion belongs in the private sphere, away from governance and science. However, religion reaches from behind the walls to privatise the commons and even lay claims on the best of them. While religion was inextricably intertwined in the life and environment of the community in its earlier days—with language, science, dance, drama and governance, conquest and legitimacy all tied to it—there has been considerable movement to a secular, non–religious (non–faith based) approach in the ‘age of reason’. However, the resilience of religion (helped in no small measure by some missteps in science and secular society) ensures the continuance of superstition which has even led to the ‘science of creationism’ being taught and large parts of the world being ruled according to religious dictates either formally or in practice. The intrusion into secular life is pronounced in many ways, not least of which are the conquest of the commons. Being ‘faith–based’, religion is one of only two institutions of modern society still beyond questioning, the other being ‘national security’. Both religion and national security have appropriated to themselves a large part of the commons demanding the best, unquestioning acceptance and leaving behind collateral damage for lesser mortals to clean up.
There are two types of commons we are basically going to deal with in this chapter. At first, we will look at religion and religious institutions as commons, a space for all without exception. The second is the interaction of religion and religious institutions with the common space for all citizens within a certain locality—public places such as a playground for children, parks, outdoor spaces for common people to come together for social gatherings and meetings. As the concept of religious institutions can be different from country to country, it is therefore necessary to limit our study within the Indian context as we explore the religious institutions as ‘commons’ and the relationship of religion and the commons.
What Arun Shourie says about Hinduism is applicable for all religions, wherever they are dominant: The purposes of the Hindu tradition as well as its consequences are very much of this world... The ideological superstructure of ancient India represents one of the most highly articulated, one of the best worked out hegemonic systems.1 At the same time, religion enjoins us to treat everything as sacred—either because it is god or created by god as this couplet does. It is meant to be recited by every devout Hindu every morning:
samudravasane devi parvata sthanamandale
vishhnupatni namastubhyam paadasparsham kshamasvame
(Oh! Mother Earth, who has the ocean as clothes and mountains and forests on her body,
who is the wife of Lord Vishnu, I bow to you. Please forgive me for touching you with my feet).
Religion as commons
All religions of the world have their roots in a particular locality, in a particular ecosystem for a particular community and is administered by the powerful in that community. They have a series of ‘initiation rites’ that are exclusivist in nature. These initiation rites are not only for the priesthood, who anyway occupy a privileged position, but for other powerful people and sections within the adherents. Not only do they keep out adherents of other religions—each claiming to be universal—but also the less powerful within their own communities, such as women and children. Sexual minorities such as gays and lesbians if at all tolerated are kept firmly at the fringes. Despite practicing exclusivity, all religions claim to be ‘universal’. This dichotomy is normative and most within a particular religion cannot see it. Yet this peculiarity of religion qualifies it as a constructed common, with its exclusivity and the claim by the powerful to be ‘universal’ for forced inclusion. Islam defines the community (Ummah) as only Moslems Dar al Islam (themselves) and Dar al Harb (the rest of the world). This is the case for virtually all religions though they claim to be ‘universal’ and that their god is the ‘god of all creation’.
As the wise elder Ram Dayal Munda wryly notes
All the organised religions—Christianity, Islam and Hinduism—have persistently hijacked the indigenous communities. At the heart of these religions lies an instinctual intolerance towards the ‘other’. That is the driving force for proselytisation. These religions are not sustainable. This world too will not survive for long if dog-eats-dog dogmatism continues.
Before the secular era, the slogan ‘One god, one country, one language, one flag and one people’ was touted as the norm. There was a state religion. The monarch was the direct descendent of god or the living god (the Pharaohs of Egypt, the King of Nepal was considered to be an avatar of Vishnu), the chief priest or the first devotee. The monarch of England is the head of the Anglican Church. The King of Saudi Arabia is ‘The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques’ to emphasise that their authority stems from god rather than secular authority. Even atheistic religions such as Buddhism have the Dalai Lama as the ‘living Buddha’, and venerated as an incarnation. The people were also the chosen people and god gave the land to them.
The privileging of religion has some unintended consequences. The building of the religion had to be the one with most prominence in the village. The church steeple is one example. The temple roof is another. No other building was to be higher than it. In the temporal world, this translates into privileging in architecture within society. In the vaastu sastra—the science of house building—of India, this discrimination is seen clearly. This is what Varahamihira’s Brihat Samhita (53:12,13) has to say2
The width of the houses of Brahmanas and other four classes ranges from 32 cubits to 16 cubits, each being reduced by four cubits; i.e Brahmanas have five houses with 32 cubits and below; Ksatriyas have four with 28 cubits, 24, 20 and 16 cubits for their width; Vaishyas three with 24, 20 and 16 cubits; and Sudras two with 20 and 16 cubits. The lowest class of men (like Chandala and Svapaka) will have houses with much smaller dimensions than these. The length of the houses for the four classes should exceed the breadth by a tenth, sixth and fourth respectively.
He goes on to state that (53:40)3
The houses of Brahamanas and other classes should be located in the northern, eastern, southern and western parts respectively of villages and towns.
The authority is drawn from the sacred since (53:1)4
the science of house building has come down from Brahma (the creator) through an unbroken succession of sages.
And therefore (53:15)5
It is inauspicious for all people to have houses which either exceed or fall short of the fixed measurements.
The best had to be given to god—meaning the priests—and the sacrifices took a heavy toll on society. The priests could decide what god wanted, and the rest had to comply. The priesthood—early gatekeepers of esoteric knowledge—could decide what was knowledge. The privileging of some knowledge over others has led to the dualities of formal acceptance and legitimising of one form of knowledge and the disparaging of another such as religion–cult, language–dialect, scripture–myth. Each of these are dependent on power relations, and not a reflection on inherent value. Terming mythology as scripture is to keep them beyond the pale of rational enquiry. The language is then declared to be ‘holy’ and others were forbidden to even learn it (Sanskrit and Latin). This injunction practically excluded others from access to the commons—which religious institutions laid claim to since ‘all nature is created by god’.
Being patriarchal, they extended control over the body of the women and extended more control over the women’s sexuality. The ‘temple prostitutes’ (devdasis in India) come from the forcible commoning of the sexuality of women from powerless communities. While a liberal religion would allow a woman to retain her religion after marriage, the children are forced to belong to the religion of the father. Priesthood is practically forbidden. Charismatic individuals are accommodated as saints or prophetesses.
However, this is not always the case. In many indigenous communities the god is their ancestor. Even when god is their creator, they quarrel and abuse god. Prayer is a regular conversation since they believe that their ancestors are always with them. In some communities in Bastar, central India, the communities can and do depose their gods. They pray to their god and, if there is no response for a while, they finally give the god an ultimatum: either you deliver or you will be deposed. If they still do not get a favourable outcome, they depose their god oftentimes temporarily, and sometimes permanently.
Race and caste: exclusion using religion
Faith based systems such as religion and patriotism often lend legitimacy to what would otherwise not be acceptable. Untouchability, degrading of women, large scale killing in ‘holy wars’, teaching plainly unscientific matter to little children are all made possible through the selective use of ‘scriptures’ and invoking god. The claim to being ‘of god’ allows religious institutions to perpetuate inequitable social relations, most famously articulated by the Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II when he declared that ‘the church is not a democracy’. Being ‘faith–based’ conveniently puts it out of purview of reason. There are many privileges for religious institutions that keep them beyond the pale of secular law, virtually exempting them from responsible use of the commons.
The use of religion to privatise the commons is perhaps best seen in the caste and race systems. Those outside the ‘chosen’ were declared to be less than human, and denied the right of possession. In the case of caste, inclusion for exclusion is very evident. The latest concerted attempts at forcible inclusion of the Dalits into Hinduism started in the mid–1800s. In the attempt to talk for all during the Indian independence movement, there was an attempt to bring the ‘outcaste’ into the Hindu fold. So they were called ‘panchama’ meaning ‘fifth caste,’ though the Manusmriti 10:4, the Laws of Manu, is quite specific that ‘there is no fifth’.
The ongoing subsuming process is to deny the Dalits their special identity, and include them into the Hindu fold, though Hindu scriptures themselves admit to only four castes, and assert that the Dalits are ‘outcastes’. This inclusion into the identity is to exclude them in every other realm possible—social, economic, cultural... The idea that Dalits should follow Hindu rules or take the Hindu identity is as absurd as Christianity claiming that pagans are also Christians, Islam claiming infidels are Moslem, or Jews claiming that gentiles are Jewish and then imposing their rules of exclusion on the unfortunates.
The success of Brahminism is in indoctrinating many Dalits to believe that they are Hindus. The Dalits are kept out of the commons by invoking religious rules of purity and pollution. Their labour is collectivised using the ‘common’ religion, the ‘we are one’ construct, and once the temple is built they are excluded using the scriptures of the same ‘common’ religion, but using the ‘graded access’ construct. This is repeated on a daily basis regarding their offerings and free ritual services. The ritual services include the compulsory beating the drums for festivals, marriages and funerals. But when it comes to them getting the benefits they are no longer part of the ‘community’. They are excluded, and quite deliberately at that. Inter–dining, intermarriage and even common burial or cremation are taboo.
Though excluded, the dominant castes claim the exclusive right to speak on behalf of the excluded even in matters exclusively in their domain—sexuality and labour for instance. This is legitimised using religion, custom and tradition, all supposedly immutable. Translated into the lived experience, it means that Dalits cannot be on temple committees or trusts, cannot get the fruit of the vast temple lands (the privatised commons)—though they must provide the labour, cannot enter the temple though they must construct it and must acquiesce to the religiously appointed castes to decide on their behalf.
And speak on their behalf they do. The resources of the village— the fruits from the land, the fish of the ponds and rivers—are often auctioned off. Drawing on custom and tradition, the Dalits are made ineligible to participate in the auction. When the Dalit and indigenous children go to school, their names are changed to make them more Hindu. Their gods are always subsumed as minor deities.
Religion displacing the nation
Even supposedly ‘secular’ states often have a reference religion. The European countries stress their Christian roots and, when feeling guilty about their anti–Semitism, their Judeo–Christian roots. In India, Hinduism is considered the religion of all those who do not profess Islam or Christianity. There is considerable ambiguity over what exactly qualifies a Hindu as such, since Hinduism is defined in India as ‘a way of life’ (much like Islam is defined in Muslim countries, or football in the soccer mad countries) as any self–respecting religion would be. However, ‘Hindu’ is also defined as a ‘civilisation’, a geographical marker (resident of Hindustan) and language (Hindi/Sanskrit). Each of these is used interchangeably, depending on the advantage of context. In its hegemonic avatar, it is a mask for supremacists and termed as ‘Vedic’ or ‘Brahminic’. For this reason, the ‘idea of India’ is very different from the ‘idea of Hindustan’ propagated by the fundamentalists. They then claim that all Indians (including Muslims and Christians) are Hindus (the geographic construct) and then progress to claiming that only they can talk for Hindus (the religious construct) and want the Indian constitution to be ‘Hindu’—based on the Manusmriti—effectively gutting it.
This blurring is encouraged, just as the vocabulary of Hinduism is used by Hindutva, the vocabulary of Christianity by Christendom, the vocabulary of Islam by Jihadis and the vocabulary of human rights by imperialists and war criminals (most recently by US and UK for the illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan). The Pantheon becomes ‘All Saints Church’ and all religions in India become ‘Hindu’. First the ambiguity is used to stuff meaning. Hindu as a geographic indicator or a civilisation is slowly turned into a specific religion (but a ‘unique’ one), with socio–linguistic implications and consequences for the political economy of the excluded.
The symbols of the Indian state are explicitly Hindu and exclusivist— the lotus, tiger, peacock, saffron on the flag, the temple in the official logo of some states—these ‘national’ symbols clearly define the nation as a ‘Hindu’ nation. Hindi–Hindu–Hindustan was a rallying cry, after the attempt to impose Sanskrit failed. Interestingly, those from the dominant castes use ‘jai hind’ meaning victory to Hindustan. The Dalits use ‘jai Bharath’ instead, echoing the secular Indian constitution with says ‘India, that is Bharath...’ harking back to the ancient tradition of Bharathvarsh, meaning land of Bharath. Leaders of other castes are considered ‘national’ leaders, any demand by anyone to recognise the contribution of Ambedkar or Mahatma Phule are considered casteist. The contribution of the indigenous people some of which predate the 481‘first war of Indian Independence’, by over half a century—whether Birsa Munda or the Great Andamanese—have been erased from official history. The ‘gate–keeping’ on what is the nation and who are its ‘citizens’, as opposed to the ‘tenants’, is quite clear in the effects.
The caste system is among the most horrendous socio–religious systems, rivalling racism in its extent, intensity and impact. If a Dalit tries some social or economic mobility, then it is termed adharmic, quoting Krishna’s words to Arjun in the Gita 3:35 to enforce the unjust caste rule
Better do your own caste duty poorly, than another’s well.
This injunction is not to protect the livelihoods of the weak but for protecting one’s caste position. Krishna’s words are a paraphrase of Manusmriti 10:97. To quote the full verse:
One’s own duty, (even) without any good qualities, is better than someone else’s well done; for a man who makes his living by someone else’s duty immediately falls from (his own) caste.
The consequences of falling from the caste are graphically explained later (12:71,72):
The priest who has slipped from his duty becomes a ‘comet mouthed ghost’ who eats vomit; a ruler becomes a ‘false–stinking ghost’ who eats impure things and corpses.
A commoner who has slipped from his own duty becomes a ghost ‘who sees by an eye in his anus’, eating pus; a servant becomes a ‘moth– eater’ (ghost).
The caste system intrudes into the very basic Indian constitutional fundamental right of religious freedom. In 1950, the President of India issued the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 specifying the castes to be recognised as the Scheduled Castes by exercising the authority conferred on him under the article 341(1) of the Constitution of India. It makes religious discrimination very clear in the third paragraph:
‘notwithstanding anything contained in para 2, no person who professes a religion different from Hinduism shall be deemed to be a member of the Scheduled Castes.’
Amendments in 1956 and 1990 provided for the inclusion of Sikhs and Buddhists respectively within the Scheduled Caste (SC) category to avail the benefits of affirmative action for centuries old discrimination to a share in the national pie. The Presidential Constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order 1950 paragraph 3 precludes SC converts to Islam and Christianity from eligibility for benefits of affirmative action. The denial of SC status to Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims constitutes a violation of Articles 14 (equality before the law); 15 (prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion); and 25 (freedom to profess and practice any religion) of the Constitution of India.
Constitutionally India is a secular state wherein every citizen has the freedom to uphold or proclaim any religion as their own. In theory, this constitutional religious freedom has given citizens a space to freely express their faith without necessarily compromising their right. The exercise of this Freedom of Religion is the foundation to consider the nation state as ‘commons’. Most individuals are located in one religious institution or the other. This constitutional right therefore gives a platform for the religious institutions to form their own communities. India, being a birth place of many religions, has many religious institutions. The larger the number of the community members in a religious institution, the stronger the voice of the institution. The prohibition of conversion through sharp disincentives is to claim their numbers as Hindu for majority formation. This formulation enables the oppressors to talk on behalf of the oppressed and to claim that India is 80% Hindu.
As each religious institution has their own personal laws for administrative purposes, the influence and control it commands over the members becomes so strong and even unquestionable at times. This often leads to particular religious institutions having absolute power and authority over the community of adherents (adherents often for the only reason of accident of birth) even in a secular state like India.
The constraints and conditions put against Dalit and some tribal/Adivasi communities in their freedom to choose their own religion is one such instance where the deeply ingrained Hindu–as–the–norm becomes explicit. This condition against Dalit and tribal communities is against the fundamental right of religious freedom but since it has come from the Hindu Caste System it has very strong roots in the socio–religious context of India. It is a clear instance of religion proscribing a vast section of the people from being part of the constructed commons that is India and benefit from its progress. The cost of such exclusion by religion from the commons is high, even in the presence of a formal constitution based on justice: tribals have a poverty rate of 81.4%, Dalits 65.8% versus 33.% for ‘general’.6
Spirituality as protector of commons
Religion did play a major role in regulating the use of the commons. In the case of the indigenous communities, it still does. Faith gave many struggles to protect the commons strength to sustain, the Niyamgiri struggle being just one. Religion encoded significant amounts of law and science that enabled the sustainable use of the commons. The spiritual articulation hides fundamentally sound science and practice. Rather ironically, indigenous spirituality—dismissed as ‘unscientific’— has a better record in protecting the commons than science.
The indigenous spirituality has a continuum of the animate and inanimate. The commons need to be protected and preserved not only for the humans but also for the plants and animals, birds and yes, even the rocks and the streams. Their ‘nation’ had many communities, including animal communities. Though quaint, ‘brother lion’ and ‘sister river’, does resonate in a harmonious rhythm. It is not uncommon for indigenous people to leave water in a pool for wildlife during the worst droughts— where others would take their fill and fence the source citing scarcity.
Common usage such as Bhoomidevi (earth goddess) and Kadalamma (sea mother) ensure that the earth and all therein are treated with respect and gluttony of all kinds is avoided. Forests are protected designating them ‘sacred groves’ or other ‘superstitious’ but ecofriendly beliefs, and by restricting access to themselves and outsiders. These are dismissed as superstition. When the tribals want to protect biodiversity, it is because they are primitive and do not understand the economic importance of commercial mono–culture plantations. When the dominant want to do so, the terms are different.
Gods major and minor
Sequential appropriation is the norm even in the religious sphere, where the tribal gods are subsumed into the Hindu pantheon, often as a minor deity, and the tribals are slowly forbidden to worship the god directly, since only a Brahmin can do so. The expropriation at ‘Sita devi’ temple in Kerala, and the transformation of the tribal god Neelamahadev into Lord Jaganath of Puri are prominent examples of this kind. The Shabra, even today, intrinsically mistrust outsiders—more so those with proclaimed good intentions. In brief, it is because outsiders from Puri came and stole their god Neelamahadev, by befriending them, marrying the daughter of their chief and then deceiving her. This god was later installed in the famous temple at Puri, Odisha, as Lord Jaganath. This is admitted by the Hindus, who commemorate this in myth, and also by depicting the tale of this treachery in the temple museum even today. To add insult to injury, the Shabra are now forbidden to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the temple to worship their own god.
Once their god is under the control of others, the people and the commons soon follow in a ‘bloodless coup’. Once the gods are lost, it is a symbolic defeat of far reaching consequences. Their identity is controlled by others, and they lose their resource base—the commons—in quick succession. The community that controlled its gods is now controlled by those who control their gods.
For the unfortunate tribals and indigenous people this means that their gods are taken away. When the tribal god becomes a minor deity in the Hindu pantheon, along comes the Brahmin to educate the tribal on how to worship god. This begins a slow process of alienation of the tribal from their gods. The tribal god comes under the ‘protection’ of the Brahmin. He now interprets the will of god and the right way to worship. The tribal, who till then worshiped the god freely, are told of the ‘right’ way to worship.
The god then has to be housed in a building. Then the god can be approached only by the Brahmin. The tribals are now told that the god must be worshipped only in Sanskrit. This obviously only the Brahmin can do, for the tribal seldom know the language.
Then it is slowly made clear that only the Brahmin can recite the prayers, and the attempt by anyone else to learn Sanskrit or the prayers will result in their punishment. The ritually prescribed punishment for the offence is pouring molten lead into the mouth and ears. Together with this comes the recreation of history of tribal origins that often has to do with incest or other such unclean, socially taboo, relationships. The struggle to retain their identity is an intrinsic part of this battle against absorption, since the expropriation of their gods results in the destruction of their distinct identity also. The saga of the imposition of Vaishnavism in Manipur in the latter half of the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth, grafting of the Brahmins from Uttar Pradesh and Odisha, the reaction of the people and its consequences—when the people were declared ‘polluted’ by the Brahmins, Sanskrit began to be imposed, and the people had to pay the Brahmins to get back the goods the Brahmins stole from them—is detailed by R K Saha.7
This process was done by the Christian Church in appropriating the land of the tribals and the fishers in numerous places. The appropriation is captured by an insightful African saying about the missionaries ‘when you came, you had the bible and we had the land; now we have the bible and you have the land’. In the Coromandel Coast, the church has taken away many functions of the traditional leadership and split communities. Whenever the community got to be strong and opposed over–exploitation of the seas by mechanised fishing (including trawlers) the church used religion and rituals to split the community. In Marianad a greenfield fishing village set up to be a model in Tiruvananthapuram, Kerala, church bells were rung to call people to prayer at exactly the same time as the community meetings so that the interests of the trawler owners—on whose money the Church was dependent— was not curtailed by united community effort. This destruction of the formal women’s association, together with the control of the women over their money, was accomplished in under a decade (1977–1985) by the parish priest: by introducing religious nuns, destroying the unity the women and spliting the women’s association.
Competing claims to commons
The ethereal ‘spiritual’ commons have a great sustaining power for the human race. It is the spiritual commons of the Jews that gave them the strength (‘next year in Jerusalem’) to remain a community despite multiple exiles, the latest being almost 1900 years without a ‘physical commons’ of a territorial nation state.
Though the competing ‘spiritual commons’ could in theory co–exist, the reality is that they are so fully rooted in the material world that conflict is all but certain. The competing, conflicting and conflict ridden claim to the same plot of land, venerated as the sanctum sanctorum of King Solomon’s temple by the Jews and as the Al Aqsa masjid by the Moslems is one example.
Competing claims need not always be over land. The Jews were given limited access to the Qumran scrolls by the Christians who claimed the same spiritual space and were more powerful at the time. It took almost half a century for the Jews to establish the first claim to their heritage as rightful owners. Similar is the case of the Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya, with both Buddhists and Hindus claiming what is essentially a Buddhist site, since it is the place where the Buddha got enlightenment. At its extreme, the religious identity can be used for ethnic cleansing when it is rooted in notions of purity and pollution.
The legality of competing claims of citizens to the public spaces is short–circuited by encroachment in the name of religion. In many cities in India, there are many small temples, churches, mosques and other shrines built on the corner of the street or on even on the footpath and in public parks. These are built after the road has been made to capture the space. When encroachment is done for a ‘religious’ purpose, then their chances of eviction are virtually nil. If encroachment is done ‘secularly’ then they have a higher chance of eviction. Uncritically religious pious citizens offer prayers in these shrines without even knowing how quickly the temples are established and how they have occupied public space.
With the increasing disposable income, pilgrim tourism has become a lucrative avenue for income for operators. Formerly syncretic shrines have been declared to be ‘common’ heritage. What was ‘common’ heritage has been invaded and monopolised by the dominant. The demolition and then court sanctioned privatisation of Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh is one such example. It is a repeat of the theft of the Shabra gods and monopolising them in the Jaganath temple at Puri. There are parallels in the ‘joint management’ of the Buddha temple in Gaya by both Brahmins and Buddhists with the deciding vote being the Hindu district collector as a legal requirement.
Worshipping place Vs Community space
Occupation of the community space by the religious institutions for the worshipping place is considered as a non–issue by the society. The community is taken for granted by the religious institution.In the prehistoric stage, the community considered the entire environment sacred. At times this was formalised, and at others this was simply accepted as implicit. As formalisation progressed, community institutions were formed. In this formalisation, even when religious institutions were formed, they were not of an exclusivist nature. The religious festival was also the fair—where culture, commerce, recreation and religion, where fun, family, friends and the sacred came together in time and space.
Religious complexes were equally community centres and commercial hubs. The children could play there and the community centres were cultural spaces too. As formalisation gained traction, everything else was excluded—so much so that piety now means to be devoid of happiness. In these formal religious institutions, children have no space but as honorary adults—dressed in their best clothes and in solemn demeanour, making every encounter with the sacred a funereal experience. It is often forgotten that the religious institution is built on the commons. Religious institutions use and abuse power by intruding into the community commons.
A sacred invasionMizoram being one of three Christian majority states in India, Nagaland and Meghalaya being the others, Christian religious institutions—primarily the Church—have a great say and influence in the society. The Church is the most powerful institution.
Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram is the centre of all development activities of the Mizoram government. About half of Mizoram’s population is concentrated in Aizawl. The fast growing population in Aizawl has its own implications at various levels in the state.
To accommodate the fast growing congregation members in Aizawl, the Church therefore needs to expand in terms of space.
To meet this pressure, community land—the commons—was acquired to build churches. With the whole community being members of one particular church or the other nobody would dare raise an objection against building a church as it is the holy place for the Christian community. The Mizoram Presbyterian Church can be taken as an example to understand the growth. In 2000 the number of Presbyterian churches in Mizoram was 624. It is 714 in 2009.
This uncritical acceptance of expansion of building churches in public spaces resulted in the loss of public living and activities space. In most cases, the loss is a school premises, the community playground or the best space in the locality. This loss of public space often results in a heavy cost for the children and youth. The children and youth now do not have a space to play or spend their leisure time in the locality. The society and the Church do not understand this vacuum created in the life of the children and the youth. Though in some places the community may build a community hall for indoor games, it often comes with sophisticated rules and regulations—including dress codes and restricted usage—where many common people cannot even enter.
Where there is no common space for children and youth, frustration, stress, tensions find a way into their life. Many become entangled in less than healthy environments resulting in the rise of misused cyberspace and computer games. Some would even indulge in drugs, alcohol and un–protected sex due to peer group pressure. A steep rise in HIV/AIDS infection in Mizoram is a great concern.
All these social problems in Mizoram may not be because of the uncritical approach of the Church to the social space. However, it is necessary to have a critical re–look to preserve common living space for the society at large.
Religion for mobility
Being a constructed common, religions give scope for solidarity and liberation from ossified social structures. While the traditional religions gave opportunity to enjoy the fruits of the commons only by birth, the new religions give more emphasis on ‘merit’ and ‘following the way’, at least till such time as they develop their own vested interests. Christianity, as also Islam and Buddhism, provide social mobility from the rigid Hindu structure in India. Sikhism was created explicitly for the purpose. In the USA it is Islam that fulfils that role, especially among the blacks and helps them ‘take back the streets’ from the predominantly Christian drug runners (whom the law enforcement officials, themselves Christians, are unable or unwilling to control). For the rebellious Whites (the Beatles) it is Hinduism, and for some Buddhism.
Dr Ambedkar urged the Dalits to embrace Buddhism for their liberation. The Dalit movement has mass conversions on 14 October every year. This is an attempt to create their own commons, which is outside the domain of the Hindu orthodoxy, where they would be equals not ‘untouchables’. This conversion is for a very practical reason—it liberates them from the shackles imposed on the excluded by the dominant religion, and permits them to take part in the common wealth. Dalits who were denied the use of the village pond are able to access it after becoming Buddhists primarily due to the unshackling of the mind.
Religion also provides comfort and solace for geographic mobility. If religious institutions truly are a commons for all the believers, then moving from one place to another would be a clinch if the same religious community existed elsewhere. So the key social reproductive constructs— birth, death, marriage—could be ‘within the fold’. But different communities have different practices and different places to conduct them. For this reason, even those who call themselves ‘Christians’ have separate graveyards and Churches depending on their sect. Similarly for Hindus who have different graveyards and cremation grounds that are virtually segregated caste–wise. One exception is in Mizoram where the graveyard is common for all, in part because of the strong Young Mizo Association who are considered to be the guardians of Mizo cultural and traditional practices of commons.
The sacred in progress
In some villages all women must have bath on Saturdays. The logic is convoluted. Saturday is considered to be ruled by the ‘malevolent’ planet Saturn, who is also worshiped as a god. We know that Saturn does not own or rule any day, nor does any planet. The theory of mass attraction is used to justify astrology. The reality is that Saturn—the largest malefic planet in astrology—has as much influence on individual human life as a car parked about 200 meters away. However, that does not prevent a whole ‘science’ being built around it.
Once we consider the cultural packing, the implications of this become clear. Wrapping it up in a religious (Saturn is considered a god) and cultural package ensures obedience. It enables the overworked women to have bath at least once a week. On that day, by custom, the men have to leave the pond for the use of the women at least for some dedicated time since it is a religious requirement. It gives the women some much needed privacy. So while the application of astrology—or even astronomy—is plainly unscientific in this case, the social ends to which it is put lends some legitimacy to its use. It is not perhaps the right solution, but the best possible in that location in time and space.
With the progress of knowledge, some of the knowledge that was formerly wrapped around different forms of social reproduction, can be unpacked. This unpacking needs to be done with sensitivity, and not throw out the entire corpus of knowledge.
Shamanism and astrology must be acknowledged as repositories of knowledge that can hold some truths, just as a two dimensional representation of reality (such as a map) can be useful for travel at slower speeds. Three dimensional maps are needed only for air travel, and space travel needs time to be factored in as well. To always factor in four dimensional thinking is a needless complication. It is this insistence on and existence of complexity that makes people yearn for the ‘simple utopias of the unremembered past’.
To understand this form of socialisation of knowledge is not to accept or even condone its usage. That every system, even a false one, will have parts that are true needs to be acknowledged. The revivalists use these embedded truths to sell a larger lie or an escapist ideology as opiates for those who cannot handle the complexities of life and seek solace in simplistic, reductionist paradigms. They use advances in knowledge to reinforce their prejudices. The scientists err by dismissing it altogether. The medical elements can be drawn out from shamanism and astrology. By total rejection, they leave the field clear to revivalists to point to the partial truths and claim the full truth to perpetuate their exclusive hold on the commons.
When the leisure space was dominated by a few people, these people—the ‘elders’, the ‘wise’ who then became the ‘priests’—had the monopoly over the construction of mindscape: over knowledge, language, science, drama, poetry, literature... Most of these were closely linked to the places of worship, because the ‘community centres’ became the market, the town hall and yes, the temple or church. The natural fallout was that they were literally attached to religion, and therefore above question. Now–a–days, no one believes in Thor or Isis or the ‘historical reality’ of Juno’s exploits. Yet Vikings, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans took their religions and gods very seriously. Conquests were done in their name. Sacred groves were preserved for their sake. Knowledge flowed from the ‘revelation’ of god or its messenger. Now that is no longer so. Many of these are now out of the realm of religion. Rational inquiry is possible. The opening of more and more fields to rational inquiry is the true separation of the religious and the secular. It is then that astronomy—where everything is open for questioning—can grow and separate out from astrology—a mixture of science and faith.
Religion and spirituality did play a major role in sustaining the commons. However, faith–based systems are no longer sufficient to ensure compliance. Faith based systems claim to be ‘universally’ applicable and unchanging from ‘time immemorial’. The combination makes it difficult to take to scale, especially in a rapidly globalising village and an interconnected world, where the codified local ‘best practices’ are not applicable nor adaptable in another area in toto. It was needed when the literacy and comprehension levels of the people were low. When blind belief was required, and when archetypes had to be invoked, then perhaps it was required. However, given the potential for misuse, and the global experience with authority, faith–based systems are poor substitutes for open, democratic governance. The knowledge embedded in them needs to be secularised—from alchemy to chemistry and from astrology to astronomy—so that they can meet the needs of the contemporary world. Practices cannot remain ossified in the distant past. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not the solution. The respect and reverence for nature needs to be carried forward. The sacred needs to be separated from religion and superstition.
Endnotes
1 Arun Shourie, Hinduism: Essence and Consequence; A study of the Upanishads, the Brahma–Sutras and the Gita (p1,2)
2 Varahamihira’s Brihat Samhita 53:12,13. Translated by M Ramakrishna Bhat, p454. Motilal Banarasidass 1986.
3 Ibid 53:40, p476.
4 Ibid 53:01, p450.
5 Ibid 53:15, p455.
6 Country Profile India; Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) At a Glance; July 2010 p5. http://www.ophi.org.uk/wp–content/uploads/Country–Brief–India.pdf
7 An Ethnic Movement in Manipur Valley. Tribal Movements in India, K S Singh [ed.] Manohar; 1991; pp 97—113.