SOMNATH

By PHILIP SPRATT

With some exceptions modern States have tended towards secularism or dissociation from religion. Our Constitution follows the fashion and respects this principle, both negatively and also by specific provisions. Thus it prohibits discrimination against individuals on religious grounds, and prohibits religious instruction in State-financed schools. The ban on discrimination illustrates the good side of the secular State. The prohibition of religious instruction is of doubtful wisdom. A truly secular Indian State certainly seems an anomaly, and cannot expect to continue.

The ceremony at Somnath has shown how difficult it will be to maintain the attempt, or pretence. The event has provoked the controversy again, this time on a typical issue which aids discussion. Perhaps it will not be considered improper if a non-Hindu, who attempts to take a rational view, states a case on one side.

Unless it is content to maintain itself by sheer force, a State must identify itself with an idea. It might appear that ideas can be dispensed with if the regime could give its people a high degree of satisfaction of their material needs. It is noticeable however that those States which, truly or falsely, claim the greatest suceess in promoting material progress, viz., America and Russia, are both very much concerned to spread among their people a quasi-religious devotion to the national ideals. They do not consider that material progress is enough to keep their subjects’ loyalty.

In any event, India cannot rely on material progress to keep the people loyal. For she cannot expect material progress. This is not because of any defect in the Congress administration or the capital economy. It may be stated with confidence that no party or policy now before the public could prevent a continued fall in the standard of living. Aside from some technological miracle which might intervene to save us, there are two measures which are essential if our economic decline is to be arrested. These are a drastic lowering of the birthrate, and the import of capital from abroad on the scale of thousands of crores. No party can achieve either of these. Whichever party rules, therefore, we must expect a continued decline in standard of life.

The State must, then, rely on the power of ideas. There are some who advocate the adoption of purely secular ideals. This policy appears to have the merit of honesty. If these secular ideals do not materialise, the public will know it, and will proceed to change its rulers; whereas religious ideals cannot be realised in this world, and the public may be expected to possess its soul in patience for a longer period. Though apparently honest, however, the secular programme has the disadvantages that it is unrealisable, and that even if it were in some measure realised it would probably not achieve its object of social stability.

A secular programme, if it is to attract public support, must be an ideal one. It is of no use to approach the public in the mood of political realism. An honest man, a Socrates, would tell the people: “I advocate democracy, not because it is likely to be satisfactory, but because on the whole it is less bad than the other systems. I advocate honesty in public life, but I know only one way in which it can be achieved that all citizens fear God more than they love their families. I advocate justice, and I believe that if we act wisely we may hope, in time, to render it somewhat less precarious and even, perhaps less inaccessible to the poor. I advocate liberty, but I warn you that it is attainable only under a government which is willing to let you die of starvation: if you want to prosper, you must submit to the necessity of work and if you want the State to secure your prosperity you must become its slaves. I do not advocate equality: I should like it, I believe, but I suspect that it will always be unattainable. I do not advocate fraternity: I should like it above all things on earth, but I fear that we can attain it among ourselves only in proportion to our hatred of other nations.”

It is unnecessary to mention what happened to Socrates. Our Constituent Assembly adopted a more prudent line of talk and committed itself to a Preamble in which Democracy, Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity are promised without qualification. That is why the secular ideal is described above as only apparently honest.

The secular ideal has never been realised. A few nations have brief periods, made some progress towards the realisation of some never all, of its constituent elements. One essential pre-condition of even this limited success is material prosperity. It requires no further argument to show that the secular ideal is inapplicable to India. We are becoming steadily poorer, and there is no early hope of revealing this trend. According to the official estimate of the national income, equality would give us all a fraction under Rs. 20 per head per month. It is difficult to practise the civic virtues on Rs. 20 per month. And as that figure falls, the struggle for life will become more intense, honesty more difficult to practise, justice more unattainable, equality more remote, liberty and democracy in more imminent peril.

There is a different version of the secular ideal. It sacrifices liberty and democracy entirely for equality, security and prosperity. But those who follow this seductive argument are disappointed. They lose their liberty and democracy, but they do not get the promised equality; their economic security is dearly bought at the price of civic insecurity, and their prosperity never comes.

The secular ideal, in short, is a fraud. Its ends are good, so far as they go, but they can never be completely realised. Certainly there is no prospect of realising them in India. But even when, by some good fortune, a community makes progress in the direction of the secular ideal, the peop1e are not satisfied. Secular wants are illimitable. Social solidarity is strong only in adversity, if then. Men are rootedly opposed to equality: as the satirist puts it, “when everybody’s somebody then no-one’s anybody.” It is unnecessary to elaborate a familiar theme. The profound unrest during the past century in the West, where physical well-being, civil liberty, education, and the rest have reached levels never before attained, is strong evidence that these secular achievements do not satisfy. There is an impressive range of opinion, among historians, sociologists, psychologists, many of whom are not religious believers, that the root of the trouble is the decay of religion.

The State then cannot rely solely upon secular ideas. To maintain itself it must strengthen traditional loyalties and pieties. It promotes nationalism, but in India nationalism is weak. There is no alternative to a deliberate cultivation of religion. Religious belief is still strong and almost universal, and, apart from the Muslim minority can probably be used to bind society together and strengthen the political structure.

This is a policy which has, in recent generations, come to be regarded as dishonest and reactionary. But it is not more dishonest than proclaiming a secular ideal which cannot be realised. As to reaction, it must be judged in comparison with the alternatives. The situation in India is desperate: no party can honestly promise what the people want. Not very distant, if we pursue our present descent towards the abyss, is anarchy. There is no earthly evil greater than anarchy; and next to it is the terroristic dictatorship to which is usually gives rise. Society must be held together, and order, maintained. If there are only two alternative means to that end, namely force and fraud, then there can be no hesitation. Incomparably the more humane, civilised, libertarian and progressive method is fraud, and it must be adopted.

But that is to state the case in the cynical language of nineteenth century rationalism, which dismissed all religion as fraud. It was prompted to do so by the circumstances of the decay of Christianity, a religion tied to a set of historical events, and an unchanging philosophy founded on those events. In the nineteenth century it was found that most of this history was mythical; and the philosophy at once lost all plausibility. The Christian religion has never recovered from the blow. But other religions, not tied to alleged historical events, or to rigid philosophies, need not perish from the encroachments of scientific curiosity.

In the commemoration volume on the Somnath Temple ceremony, Mr. Munshi remarks that Saivism is the original religion of India. Bhandarkar says that Rudra-Siva has always been and continues to be the ordinary God of the Hindus. Saivism remains very widespread in our time, and appeals to saintly and intellectual persons as well as the uneducated. This suggests that it represents principles important to the psychic life. It is hoped that a discussion of these from a purely secular point of view will not be without value.

The main features of Saivism seem to be explicable as a natural development from its earliest known form. Leaving aside the other cults which may have merged with it, it began as a worship of the organs of procreation–a common cult in ancient times. This may be supposed to have developed into or fused with the worship of a god, conceived as a father, and of a goddess, conceived as a mother.

The worship of a mother goddess seems to have been associated with Saivism since the earliest times, and it may be guessed–though here we are on uncertain ground–to have been responsible for one of the most striking features of Saivism, its introversion, The mother goddess cult does not seem to have led to any similar development elsewhere: yoga may have to be regarded as a unique and inexplicable contribution of India. Nevertheless, once started, it seems natural that yoga should take this course.

Yoga is a development of the universal fantasy of the return to the womb, and is therefore naturally associated with yoni worship and mother worship. In the Tantric yoga this is scarcely disguised. The goddess is pictured as within the subject’s body: he indentifies himself with her, and then enters into a hitherto closed channel, the sushumna. In other versions of yoga the detail is different, but it seems evident that the urge to return to the womb and thus achieve identification with the mother is at the back of them.

The father god develops in two ways. One emphasises its benevolent aspect, and the other its stern, fear-inspiring side. As Buddhism and Vaishnavism are religions of love, perhaps it may be said premture love, and Christianity in the days of its vigour was a religion of guilt, so Saivism is a religion of fear. Siva is powerful and irascible, and kills with a glance of his third eye. He is associated with wild scenery, mountains, forests, graveyards. In the cosmological myth he is identified with destruction. Certainly he represents the stern rather than the loving aspect of the father, though this is not absent. There is little in the stories to provoke remorse, but the swallowing of the ‘halahala’ may show him as the bearer of the burdens of humanity. Manikavasagar says:

“Thou madest me Thine; didst fiery poison eat, pitying poor souls That I might Thy ambrosia taste–I, meanest one!”

Devotion to the mother is a regression: at the deepest level a regression to the inter-uterine stage, i.e., to identification with the mother. This relation utilises all the libido, leaving none for other love objects. The social horizon is narrowed to the extreme, and relations with others tend to be cut off. Evidently this trend will favour loyalty to narrow groups, and a weakening of national solidarity. Devotion to the father, on the other hand, does not at any psychic level tend strongly to identification with him. The relation will normally be one of love, companionship, co-operation, but disturbed by the ambivalence of the father-son tie, so that there is room for attachment to others, and the possibility of change and a widening of horizons. This relation is at least more favourable to the rise of a broader loyalty; and historically the emergence of nations from the tribal stage is associated with loyalty to great kings, and the fusion of tribal gods.

Some of the Saiva authors claim that their religion is indifferent to caste. They may have been thinking only of their bhakti doctrine and forgetting the ceremonial and other features which have reinforced the fissiparous trends in Hinduism. But their contention that devotion to a god, of fear as well as of love, should be a unifying factor, seems to be justified.

Probably therefore Mr. Munshi and those who organised the restoration of the Somnath Temple were well advised. To work for national consolidation through the existing, deeply rooted religious loyalties is a wiser way than either to ignore them, or to try recklessly to destroy them.

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