[Reader-list] Fundamentalism

[Rakesh]

            Saturday, May 07, 2005
            
           

     
       
     
            Columns
           

           

      
      
     
      by words
     

     
      Making of a fundamentalist
     

     
      This is how a professor of psychiatry recently deconstructed the phenomenon
     

     
      Rakesh Shukla
     

     
      If Jesus and Mohammed had been born in Alaska they would have visualised heaven as hot and hell as cold, they lived in a hot place and visualised heaven as cold and hell as hot!" These are the words of Dr Salman Akhtar, professor of psychiatry at Harvard and a leading psychoanalyst, speaking on 'The Lure of Fundamentalism' in India recently. The brother of Javed Akhtar, he is a poet in his own right. 

      The stresses of engaging with life with its shades of grey as a rational adult were sharply contrasted to the attractive black-and-white world offered by fundamentalism. Terming it as a literal, narrow, self-congratulatory variety of thinking with 'a little spice of victimhood' thrown in, Akhtar pointed out across-the-spectrum appeal of the phenomenon. The dogmatism that posits "My Book", "My Religion", "My solution" as the only 'right' one in opposition to all the other 'wrong' ones was brought out very well. Comparing fundamentalism to intra-venous morphine he showed how its allurements encompass Hindu, Jewish, Islamic, Christian and even a certain trajectory of Left politics. Several insights into the interface of fundamentalism with everyday living emerged from the presentation. 

      Today living involves dealing with factual uncertainties and conceptual complexities. Life abounds with unpredictables which assail the comfort of certainties. There is no absolute truth. The same act can look totally different to the various protagonists who may not even recognise each other's version. There are but partial truths depending on your angle of vision. 

      Except for extremes like cold-blooded murder, one has to engage with moral ambiguities rather than the simple 'good-bad' binary. Personal responsibility for one's behaviour is another burden. Acceptance of the hybrid impurity of the world rather than pristine purity and the finality of death are other crosses we bear. Fundamentalism in one stroke solves these 'burdens' of living. Instead of complexity and uncertainty, there is simplicity and certainty. Ambiguities are replaced with comforting moral clarities like "Muslims are bad, Hindus are good". Instead of hybrid variety of nature is offered a world of purity: Pure Aryans, Pure Muslims, Pure Brahmins. The burden of personal responsibility also gets lifted. Fundamentalist leaders offer absolution: "Kill the dirty Jews. We take responsibility." Acceptance of total mortality is replaced by heaven and eternal life. 

      A threat, real or manufactured, to the factors which help bear these burdens for an individual like safety, a sense of belonging, opportunities for sexual pleasure and generativity sets the stage for action. 'Hindus are being persecuted in their own country'; 'Dirty Jews violate our pure Aryan girls' are examples. The arrival of leaders who re-live past glories making you feel noble and strong is the final act. The simultaneous invocation of past-trauma as if it happened now leads to intensification of emotion and justified anger against 'them'. Enmeshing with childhood trauma of hurt and humiliation group regression occurs with loss of criticality and prejudice, transforming into malignant prejudice, which ultimately coalesces into violence against the 'Enemy Other' community.
      
      
     
       
     

 

       
     
      URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=69876
     

 
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