Evil and the Philosophy of Retribution

Modern Commentaries on the Bhagavad-Gita

Sanjay Palshikar

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138660168
• eBook ISBN: 9781317342076
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History

What is 'evil'? What are the ways of overcoming this destructive and morally recalcitrant phenomenon? To what extent is the use of punitive violence tenable? Evil and the Philosophy of Retribution compares the responses of three modern Indian commentators on the Bhagavad-Gita — Aurobindo Ghose, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi. The book reveals that some of the central themes in the Bhagavad-Gita were transformed by these intellectuals into categories of modern socio-political thought by reclaiming them from pre-modern debates on ritual and renunciation.

Based on canonical texts, this work presents a fascinating account of how the relationship between 'good', 'evil' and retribution is construed against the backdrop of militant nationalism and the development of modern Hinduism. Amid competing constructions of Indian tradition as well as contemporary concerns, it traces the emerging representations of modern Hindu self-consciousness under colonialism, and its very understanding of evil surrounding a textual ethos.

Replete with Sanskrit, English, Marathi, and Gujarati sources, this will especially interest scholars of modern Indian history, philosophy, political science, history of religion, and those interested in the Bhagavad-Gita.

I

The Return of the Gita and the Rise of Hinduism

‘Hinduism’, it has been provocatively said, ‘is an imaginary category emerging from the minds of observers who felt an epistemological (and political) need to unify a diversity’ (Smith 1987: 34).¹ When the term is applied in historical research, it ‘causes us to search for, arrange, and interpret data about the religions of the Hindus in such manner that they fit into the perceived pattern of a coherent religious system’ (Stietencron 1991: 13). Frykenberg says that ‘there has never been such a thing as a single “Hinduism” or any single “Hindu community” for all of India’, nor for any region of India (1991: 29). Hinduism as a pan-Indian system would mean that: it is comparable to the other religions of the world; it is distinct enough to be easily distinguishable from other religions; it has an internal coherence of doctrines and practices; its creed or belief system could be spelt out in terms of a list of tenets that all Hindus subscribe to; and it has, like other religions, an internal elite and sacred texts that control and regulate the conduct of its members and settle internal disputes (Oddie 2010: 46). For most part of its historical existence Hinduism, it is argued, has not exhibited any of these features. It has been a group of interrelated religions within a definite geographical area sharing several beliefs and practices (Stietencron 1991: 20). Taking a more radical position, Friedhelm Hardy calls Hinduism ‘merely an arbitrary and external concoction of a variety of elements’ (2007: 29). What the Europeans, and especially the British, did was that ‘they imposed a single conceptual category on a heterogeneous collection of sects, doctrines and customs that the Hindus did not recognise as having anything essential in common’ (Lorenzen 2006: 4). In thus imposing unity on the variety of religious practices found on the subcontinent, the Europeans were transforming the unfamiliar to the familiar by perceiving Indian religions on the model of Christianity. The disciplining of the Indian religions by reducing them to doctrines to be found in some authoritative texts was a crucial part of the colonial rule in India (King 1999: 101–7).²

The role played in this by the colonial administration’s classificatory exercise is well known. The Census in 1891 and again in 1921 presented the administrators with the almost insuperable problem of defining the category ‘Hindu’ and they resolved it by means other than conceptual: whoever did not belong to any of the other faiths was counted as Hindu. And yet over time the term ‘Hinduism’ gained currency, along with the perception, however unclear and unsupported, that there was indeed something objectively corresponding to the term. The long and complex process by which this came about had, among others, several factors contributing to it. The Brahmana sections who played a key role as translators, interpreters and consultants to the colonial administrators found the idea of an all-India religion with them at the top of its hierarchy very congenial. There was Christian missionary propaganda both in India and abroad, against a set of beliefs and practices, which had to be given a name. This propaganda, sooner or later, was bound to provoke a defensive reaction from the elite sections of those whom this religious identity was ascribed. When the reaction did come, the identification itself was not disputed. And once the identification gained currency, the term came handy in the power struggles within the Indian society and within the ‘Hindu’ sections (Oddie 2010: 44–50). To this list of factors one could add the European Orientalists’ work. Drawing upon Robert E. Frykenberg (1991: 29–49), one can see the Indian nationalist leaders acquiring their Brahmanical understanding of what ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ meant from the English translations of the Sanskrit texts by the Western scholars.

While the factors that contributed to the emergence of modern Hinduism were disparate, equally diverse and contingent were the materials out of which the indigenous elites constructed the Hindu identity. Of course, saying this is not analytically adequate. Terms such as ‘construction’, ‘invention’, ‘manufacturing’, though in circulation for a few decades now, are still in need of explanation and even today we come across scholars (de Roover and Claerhout 2010: 164) who complain about the lack of clarity from which discussions of Hinduism suffer because of the use of these terms.

In his Social Construction of What?, Ian Hacking has suggested that we ask not what the definition of ‘social construction’ is but what the point is of calling something a social construct (1999: 5–7). And the point almost always is to assert that X is not natural or inevitable, certainly not in its present form. The point is to be critical of things as they are. Thus, both the assertion and the vehement denial of say, Hinduism being a construct, are inherently political matters. That is to say, whether it is the irksomeness of the suggestion of Hinduism’s contingency or the exhilaration at being able to open its suppressed possibilities, in both cases there are things at stake. And in political affairs, usually it is the existing power relations that generate stakes. In pointing out the contingent nature of an idea one is opening a way for a change in the practices partly constituted by that idea. This may not always have liberating consequences. The realisation that the currently dominant model of religion and religiosity is not fixed and unchangeable can be liberating for someone who is already feeling suffocated by it. But if you tell a member of a radical Islamic outfit or a militant Hindutva organisation that the singularity, eternality and the self-evident superiority that they are assuming in their strongly held doctrines have no objective correlates, they are more likely to be enraged than show curiosity about the processes by which they came under the thrall of these ideas. Here every prospect of liberation is accompanied by the possibility of hardening of attitudes. But that’s a risk inherent in all intellectual strategies critical of strongly held beliefs. The ancientness of Hinduism is one such belief. Its cosmic responsibility to vanquish evil is another. Going into the past representations of ‘evil’ and their transformation under modern conditions is important not because of the ever-present danger of communalism alone, and the three modern commentaries discussed in this work have not been chosen for only that reason. Demonising adversaries is quite common. The question is about the very nature of Hinduism, its conception of ‘evil’, its preferred response to ‘evil’. These are the issues around which Hinduism has been sought to be organised as a religion.

When members of two organised religions confront each other, stereotypes circulate freely, spuriously explaining the divide and recommending aggression. These stereotypes can be traced back to past representations. The image of the Muslim rulers from ‘medieval’ India as addicted to drinking and beef-eating and indulging in cow-killing and vandalism is well-known and well-circulated. But it is based on a hasty reading of ‘evidence’. For example, the 14th-century temple inscription that Cynthia Talbott (1995) discusses, or the 16th-century Telugu text that Philip Wagoner (1993) presents, does not speak of ‘Muslims’. Instead, it is the Yavanas and Turushkas being talked about in these and other similar texts. Treating this as a small detail, and ignoring it, modern communal polarisation has been read back into the writings of the earlier period and a long narration of the dark medieval period has been constructed. Colonial historians handsomely contributed to this enterprise by speaking of the Muslim tyranny over the Hindus. Henry Miers Elliot and John Dowson, in their mid-19th-century multi-volume History of India as told by its own Historians, inferred that the ‘Muhammadan’ rule must have reduced ‘the common people’ to ‘wretchedness and despondency’. From the material at hand, the editors continued, we get ‘glimpses’ of intolerance, desecration, forced conversions and marriages, murders and massacres, and of ‘the sensuality and drunkenness of the tyrants’ (Eaton 2008: 94).

What the editors wanted to establish was clear: the ‘earlier rulers’ were barbarians: the British rule was incomparably better. Introducing the first English translation of the Gita in 1785, Warren Hastings had similarly noted with satisfaction that the natives had at last started trusting the new rulers who, in comparison with the earlier intolerant rulers, were more cultivated and benevolent (Marshall 1970: 189). Unmindful of these unconcealed motives of the British administrators, some Indian intellectuals copied their moves and communalised the past. In the Sources of Vijayanagar History (1986), selected and edited by S. Krishnaswami Ayyangar, and first published from Madras in 1919, words such as ‘Yavanas’ and ‘Mlecchas’ were freely rendered as ‘Muhammadan’. That the texts being presented gave a thoroughly negative depiction of the so-called Muhammadans goes without saying. The editors of a 14th-century inscription from the Andhra region similarly had no difficulty speaking of the inhuman tyranny of the Muslim rulers, though the text they were translating did not speak of Muslims (Chattopadhyaya 1998: 81–82).

Medieval literature often uses mythological imagery. Political adversaries are called demons, their defeat reminiscent of the slaying of a fierce daitya, and the king who vanquishes them, the very epitome of valour and virtue. That this ruler also happens to be the worthy recipient of the blessings of some deity is a crucial element that completes the picture.

Yavanas and Turushkas were called demons when they attacked the inscription writer’s patrons but, in the absence of any conflict of interest, they could also be praised as the very emanation of some ‘Hindu’ god (Wagoner 1993: 110). Temple destruction, itself symbolic of political rather than religious aggression, was thought fit to be described as demonic, no matter who did it. Describing the raid by the Gauḍa (Bengal) soldiers on the Viṣṇu Parihāsakeśava temple in the capital of the 8th-century Kashmiri ruler Lalitāditya, Kalhaḍa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī calls the raiding soldiers ‘rākṣasa’ (Davis 2008: 59). And if we look at the 18th-century Bengali text, Mahārāshṭa Purāṇa (Dimock and Gupta 1965), then we have an example of the Maratha raiders into mid-18th century Bengal being called cow-killers, Brahmin-killers and rapists. The text says that Goddess Parvati became angry with those pāpamati people for their evil deeds (pāpa karma).

The literary strategies of demonisation were thus freely available and were used by writers depending on specific political context. A simple and dangerously effective way of misreading these portrayals is to see them as factual accounts of the conduct of the rulers of a religious community furthering their theocratic goals through reprehensible means. Epigraphic evidence can then be made to yield a facile equation: Muslims were called Yavanas (or Turushkas); Yavanas were described as Demons, so the Muslim rulers must have been demonic. Their victims belonged to another religion, a religion known for its wisdom and tolerance. It was these qualities, noble and praiseworthy as they are, that allowed hostile outsiders to trample its followers. Now they must revive themselves and their religion by infusing militancy in their character and unifying their religion. By the end of the 19th century this view had started asserting itself with increasing virulence.

Jnanananda in Bankimchandra Chatterji’s Anandamath says: We are the worshippers of Vishnu, the same Vishnu who killed powerful demons; let us, in the name of that Hari, raze the city of Muslim foreigners and purify Mother Earth’ (J. Sharma 2009: 158). This trope of demon-slaying is also used by Savarkar. In one of the poems he wrote in the early 20th century, Shivaji re-enacts the mythological killing of Hiranyakashipu by Nrisimha when he rips open Afzal Khan’s stomach. These poems were written at a time when the process of launching Hindu identity, long under way, had reached its particularly aggressive phase. Alluding to timeless paurāṇic stories was obviously a very useful device during that phase. By retrospectively appropriating them for Hinduism, the timelessness of Hinduism could be established. Such attempts continue even today but, following the work by historians in the closing decades of the 20th century, there is some scepticism now about the pre-colonial existence of Hinduism. That work was provoked by some disturbing communal instances, such as the anti-Sikh riots, demolition of the Babri mosque, and by the upswing in the electoral fortunes of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Its relevance for our understanding of the long-term trends in Indian history, however, goes beyond those tense and anxious decades.

The Gita’s rise to prominence is an important part of the story of the emergence of Hinduism in its modern form. It was composed between 200 bce and 200–300 ce after ‘centuries of Buddhist domination’, and probably directed to a Brahmana and Kshatriya audience which was trying to revive Brahminism (Larson 1975: 659–60).³ Between its composition and the modern times, the Gita appears to have been only one of the several sacred texts, if not exactly languishing in obscurity. As D. D. Kosambi observed long ago, several sant-poets of the common people across centuries — Kabir, Tukarama, Jayadeva, and Chaitanya — ‘did very well without the Gītā’. Nor does the Sikh canon, he said, owe ‘anything substantial directly to the Gītā’ (Kosambi 1961: 201). But things changed with the complex relationship between colonialism and Indian nationalism. When it was translated into English for the first time in 1785 by an official of the East India Company, the political significance it was to acquire later for Indian nationalism could not have been anticipated. Neither the translator Charles Wilkins, nor Warren Hastings, who was then the Governor General of India, and who recommended its publication by the Company, seem to have had any premonition of the prominence that the text was going to burst into partly because of the translation. The Court of Directors of the Company ordered its publication ‘under the patronage of this Court’, sanctioning a sum of not more than £ 200. What considerations weighed on them to give such a generous grant is not clear. But we have the letter addressed to the Chairman of the Company by Warren Hastings and the translator’s Preface. Wilkins obviously thought the text to be important in spite of its ‘many’ ‘obscure passages’ and ‘the confusion of sentiments’. He said he had tried his best to ‘remove the veil of mystery’ around the text, but he was conscious that he may not have succeeded fully where even the learned Brahmanas of the present times had failed (Marshall 1970: 194).

The Gita, as Wilkins understood it, was opposed to ‘idolatrous sacrifices, and the worship of images’, and it undermined the Vedas without frontally challenging their tenets. Its main purpose was to establish ‘the doctrine of the unity of the Godhead’(ibid.: 193). These features of the text seem to have recommended themselves to Wilkins. As for Hastings, his interest in the Gita came out of wider considerations. Roughly a decade ago (1775) he had commissioned a translation of A Code of Gentoo Laws. That decision was related to the Company getting involved in adjudicating cases of civil disputes in Bengal. Obviously, his reasons for encouraging Wilkins to translate the Gita must have been beyond those of practical application. But what could they have been? He did speak respectfully of a number of things: the ancientness of the Hindu civilisation, the metaphysics of the Gita, the ‘one-pointed devotion’ that it preached, and the single-minded contemplation of the Deity he witnessed at Banares. But the main point of his letter to the Directors of the Company lay elsewhere. Noting with satisfaction that the natives had gradually started trusting the new rulers who, in comparison with the earlier intolerant ones were more cultivated and benevolent, Hastings speaks of receiving knowledge from them. ‘Every accumulation of knowledge … is useful to the state’, Hastings says, and proceeds to explain how

it is the gain of humanity; … it attracts and conciliates distant affections; it lessens the weight of the chain by which the natives are held in subjection; and it imprints on the hearts of our own countrymen the sense and obligation of benevolence (Marshall 1970: 189).

Hastings was very clear that the Company’s dominion was ‘founded on the right of conquest’, and at no point in the letter was he apologetic about it. But he could not share his countrymen’s prejudice that the Indians were barely more than savages. Translations of the great Indian works, such as the one he was recommending through his letter, would result in genuine appreciation in England of the real character of the Company’s subjects, and it is these works which would survive beyond the dominion (ibid.: 189). These parts of Hastings’s letter to the Company Directors perhaps best express his liberalism, so admiringly mentioned by Wilkins in his letter to Hastings dedicating him the Gita translation (ibid.: 192). Wilkins spared no linguistic efforts in expressing his unbounded gratitude to Hastings. In the Preface to the translation he promised his readers that while he was conscious of the limitations of the work being presented, should Hastings (‘the same genius, whose approbation first kindled emulation in … [this Translator’s] breast’) approve of the translation, he may undertake the study of Hindu theolog...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. The Return of the Gita and the Rise of Hinduism
• 2. Demons and Demonisation
• 3. Sri Aurobindo: The Bow of the Kshatriya
• 4. Lokamanya Tilak: Hatvāpi sa … na hanti
• 5. Gandhi: The Penance of Self-effacement
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• Index