Date: Sat, 16 Dec 1995 01:33:24 -0800
From: jcb46-AT-columbia.edu (Jeffrey)
Subject: Zarathustra and Gandhi


A little diversion from our current discussion.....

I'm presently working on a paper for a seminar called Cultural Identity,
Politics, and Moral Psychology in modern India.  I've chosen to focus my
energies on a contemporary Indian critic/philosopher, Ashis Nandy.  Nandy
is seriously involved in the debate over secularism and religious tolerance
in modern India.  According to Nandy, it is not coincidental that during
the years since independence, as India's elite have consistently legislated
the secularization of the public and political spheres in an effort to
"manage" the diversity of India's religious faiths, "religious violence"
has actually increased to (in the early ninety's) about one and a half
riots per day.  This is stunning to say the least.  Nandy does not believe
that this violence comes from the diversity of religions in India, but
rather from the modes of secularism itself.  Traditional religions, argues
Nandy, have within themselves the means to deal with other faiths
peacefully; they have tolerance already built into them.
        "Secularism" is, for Nandy, through and through a Western idea.
Secularism cannot understand the "a-rationality" of traditional
religion-as-faith; it views such religions as a threat to its authority.
Secularism must turn a religion-as-faith into a religion-as-ideology.
Basically, in embracing "secularism" India (the state) has bought into the
whole modern-Western world-view:  rationality, ideology, and science as a
goals of the state itself. Nandy's critique of modernism within its Indian
context is quite devistating. However, he doesn't say what should be done
about the inevitible modernization of India.  He can only point to the
past, to M. Gandhi for an exapmle of an anti-modern and naturally tolerant
Indian possibility.
        OK Nietzsche:  While Nietzsche was certianly not a champion of
religion, he was, in my estimation, staunchly anti-modern.  To what extent
is Nandy's critique of Western influence in India parallel with Nietzsche's
critique of his own modern age?  I mean, Nietzsche's entire argument with
Christianity had to do with its ideological rationality--that is, religion
as more rational, and thus, superior to every-day life.  Nandy's
traditional religion is of the day-to-day sort, a religion-as-life.  This
to me sounds very Nietzschean (and perhaps Heideggerian).  For, part of my
Nietzsche is his deep, deep irony: That one with the proper "aesthetic
attitude" may take on a faith because/despite-the-fact-that she knows its
"mere appearance".  We will all become children again and embrace anew the
"lies" of our parents.  The truth is in neither the denial of faith nor in
its adoption. Thus, whereas religion-as-ideology would be totalizing and,
well, dogmatically ideological, religion-as-life would be a fluid faith
that in its tolerance of other religions sustains a (ironic) play among of
them all--indeed, of belief itself.
        For Nandy the apotheosis of the anti-modern, tolerant Indian is
Gandhi.  I won't go into the details (I haven't yet myself), but could
Gandhi be a modern Indian Zarathustra?  Gandhi said that he was a
Christian, a Hindu, and a Muslim, and yet he was devotedly religious.  I
find a very pleasant, present emptiness (that is a fullness) in this
stance.  I mean, can we Western dialectically-inclined rationalists even
begin to understand what this faith would be?  It seems to be between
everything and nothing--between total faith and absolute splintered faith.
(Well, the jargon may be confusing my point...)
        Would a non-reductionist poly-religiousity, then, always be ironic?

        It's always been a little difficult for me to bring Nietzsche's
ideas down to earth, to apply his amorality to issues in the practical
sphere.  He doesn't tell you what to do; he just tells you how to do it,
what sort of attitude is most healthy.
        I'm intent on including Nietzsche into a discussion of Nandy and
modernism partly out of protest against the overbearingly analytic nature
of this seminar (Continental is a bad word here), but mostly because I find
many similarities between Nandy and Nietzsche.

This is my first post to this group; I hope it isn't too long or boring.
Of course, I'd love some comments.


jeffrey broesche




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