[Reader-list] Religious belief :private or personal? Response to Aditi and Shuddhabrata

[ARNAB CHATTERJEE]

Dear Aditi, Shuddhabrata, SARAI readers and writers,
                                  This submission
might be titled Conversation 2 and has as its theme
the question of belief - in particular ‘religious
belief’–should it be called private or personal. This
question was pursued by Shuddha a month or two ago in
response to one of my questions posed on his
designation of religious belief as private; my
response has been pending since then. But there arose
an opportunity when I made a short dig at Aditi Saraf
( the presenter who preceded me on Dec. 7 at the
SARAI-CSDS workshop in Delhi) and who in the context
of animal welfare and allied subjects mentioned
something called ‘private belief.’ At the end of my
brief extempore, she had asked a question as to what
did I think of the history of religions, secularism
etc by which, I think, she tended to mean the
emergence of  church/state distinction and religion
for the first time acquiring a privative comportment. 
Amidst an array of questions, this question was lost
and I had not answered it and it was pointed out to me
when we had walked out of the auditorium. Sorry !  But
because I and Shuddha have had been pursuing this
question for quite some time( where my  constant
belief has been that religious belief is/ ought to be 
 personal rather than private.), my answer could not
have been different. But my dream of a more organized
answer is not going to be true—that’s clear; forgive
this hasty bricolage . 

Now, if seen from the vantage point of the present (
that is a down top approach) –in a sense crude
genealogically—religion or to hold a religious belief
–as per a strong tradition is or should be a private
affair ( Aditi is an un-true genealogist); anybody
negating the same will be accused of politicizing
religion and may be dubbed a fundamentalist. Here, we
may recall Shuddha’s argument as well  which is
interesting and contemporary in more then one sense. 
He seems to have argued, unlike Aditi’s historicist
interpretation, that religious belief as private
is/ought to be  more of a political strategy. This may
help protect the believers of a particular religious
group from an  other  invasion; further it might also
help a community of believers not to explain their
belief ( or “their reasons to be different”) to those
who don’t share their particular life world. The
second, for its similarity,  may be seen to have been
resembling the position of Partha Chatterjee in his
‘Secularism and Toleration’. 

Now, my answer first to Aditi’s invading historicism :
  my first argument for Aditi is, why is she starting
from the secularist disjunction in human history; why
isn’t she pushing her history of religion a bit
further back till that history is lost in myths held
by forgotten communities. Simply put I don’t think
there could be a history of religions except
particular forms of  specific religions like
Christianity or Islam or Hinduism etc. ( But notice
for instance the nineteenth century debate instanced
in David Strauss’s path breaking LIFE OF JESUS as to
how the life of Jesus  ought not be considered
historical but mythical). But forget these debates,
the simple point is, the history of religions pushed
back and back is lost in magic, cult, rituals,
sacrifices, and endless orgies. Given by the studies
of Durkheim et.al then religion has a mythical,
COMMUNAL origin ( I cannot help the conclusion of an
impossible historicist approach but  suggest those
endless religious anthropological studies in defense
of at least a historical anthropological position
here; Walter Benjamin’s exposition of the cultic basis
of capitalism in this context could be re-read vis-vis
Hamacher thus in an interesting manner ). I shall ask
Aditi to consider why is she  and a lot others are
insisting on us to adopt a schema arising out of a 
particular  historically evolved break ( religion as
private) and not religion as communal which is prior
to that break.  Just recall here that in  thinkers 
who defend the latter approach, there myth and
community are the two basic registers. Private
religion is a specifically modern approach with its
own already critiqued politics. The ball evidently is,
in Aditi’s court.
  Shuddhabrata Sengupta is too aware of these dangers 
and had sensed too quickly that I was laying a trap
for him ( he calls these ‘minefields’, and keeping in
mind  ( I guess) my questions, he had used another
memorable term long ago ‘multiheaded hydra’; Shuddha
justly  is a good navigator).
Jokes apart-now his political turn I have already
celebrated above. Here comes the objection. I’ll
remind Shuddha of the critique of  the private in the
hands of the anti liberals and the feminists. It is
hard to wrench away private from this polluted
rigorous contaminations or else even private property
may also become a holy word; in particular
discourses—it is. The genesis of the critique in a
badly simple language is two pronged: one,  the
private is a violation of that which has been common;
two, the feminist critique which has demystified
privacy as another umbrella to mask oppression and
avoid even internal questions of the right and the
good. I take these objections very seriously and my
attempts throughout these years ( even during my SARAI
tenure) has been to point out  how the liberals
collapsed personal with the  private at some point of
time and then, my attempt has been  to break it away
from the devastating capsule and send personal back to
its common-communal non-origin or myth whatever.
Therefore when I say religious belief is ‘personal’ it
rememorates this pre private common (non)origin and
given even empirical history of the last fifty years 
and its trajectory, I think no body will disagree as
to the impossibility –even the ruthless dangers of
trying to suppress the communal identity of religions
in favour of a secular division.  Allow me to  claim
that my usage is able to accommodate this experience. 
Secondly, take the feminist critique of privacy. If
private group rights are granted to religious groups/
communities( they do exist in some form), the feminist
critique  becomes absolutely invincible. The internal
exploitation of gendered individuals ( or with other
agencies)  within  a particular communal group will be
protected in the name of same self autonomy. Any
question of the right and the good, even if raised
internally, will be assumed to have been reflexive of
an external interrogation by a non group. (Shahbanu
and what not; Shuddha knows this history too well.)
The host of debates around ‘the right to exit’ of an
individual group member has been dancing around this
perplexity for quite a long time. Even voluntary
conversion to another religion may be interpreted and
admonished from this angle. Conversion to another
religion then, in these terms, would amount to a
violation of  a group’s privacy and then the
reconversion by radical Hindu or Islamic activists 
may be seen as attempts towards restoring violated
group sanity: giving back the  good name. It would be
like the woman who was running naked outside on the
streets to flee from brutality, is forced to dress 
and sent  back to the bedroom. Return of the heretic,
madwoman in the attic. 
           Shuddha’s private, I’m afraid, against his
own will, energizes the stronger side. But religious
belief as a personal one, as argued long ago ( please
put on search: Arnab Chatterjee ‘Towards a theory of
the personal’ on Google or at Reader’s List), is
different from the private and not opposed to the
public—even the questions of the right and the good. (
Comunicative ethics might be of some help here.) It
will depend again on the person to sacrifice privacy
and invite publicity when s/he deems so; conversion
will be a matter of personal decision.
    Now, it might justifiably be asked,  when come in
regimented religious groups women in the form of
persons have been asserting ‘the personal’ being
faithful to their common origin but as well looking
towards a new commonality ? The question is well
placed and my answer is, only when we start using the
word belief in its right form and shun the private/
public binary in favour of the personal, then only we
shall go for that debunking we are all looking for.
And this cause will be helped only if well meaning
individuals like Aditi or Shuddhabrata  start using it
instead of that long polluted criminal word ‘private’.
I hope, in their responses subsequent to this post, 
they will do so, yess! 

Thank you,
Yours in discourse and debt
Arnab  



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