Re: Budhism - Why India should be Secular

["Mr. Henry Thiagaraj" <hremi@vsnl.com>]

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prabhu.guptara@ubs.com wrote:

> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Please help make the Manifesto better, or accept it, and propagate it!
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> dear Sanjay
>
> Please do not be patronising to 140 million of our fellow-Indians.
> There are
> people from all communities who "need to see themselves as part of the
> same
> secular solution".
>
> At present, as is evidenced by some of the contributors to our debate,
> it is
> mostly us Hindus who need to come to a conclusion about the value of
> secularism
> (I do not see a single Muslim in our debate, or for that matter anywhere
> else,
> decrying secularism).
>

Dear Friends:
Greetings of the Season! The attached file contains an article from Gail
Omveldt, an outstanding scholar on  Babasaheb Amedkar and Dalit issues. Some
of you may be interested.
With Best Wishes
Henry Thiagaraj

Buddhism And Brahmanism

In his "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Ancient India," Dr. Ambedka r
states that "the history of India is nothing but a mortal conflict betw een
Buddhism and Brahmanism." This is in part his counter to the Marxist view
of history as nothing but a history of class struggles; it is also  a
statement about what he saw as the essential feature of Indian civilisa
tion. As Ambedkar saw it, the crucial conflict was not between Brahmans
and nonBrahmans, nor between Aryans and nonAryans (a theory which he righ
tly rejected), nor was it a conflict between the Vedas and the rest of In
dian tradition. Rather it was between two world-views, both generated wi
thin India itself. This was the basic theme of my "Open Letter to Bangar u
Laxman." The problem with the "Hindutva" position has not been that it
seeks to value and to emphasize the greatness of ancient Indian culture,
but rather that it chooses exactly the wrong aspects to value.
I should first dispose of the "Aryan theory," since some have mistaken my
position on this. Whether as presented by Max Mul ler and the Europeans, or
by Lokmanya Tilak, or by Jotirao Phule, it fail s both empirically and as a
satisfying explanation of Indian history. As it is usually taken, the
"Aryan theory" is all of a piece: in seeing the basic conflict as between
Aryans and nonAryans, it sees the Aryans as in vaders who destroyed the
Indus civilisation and established the caste sys tem with the conquered
indigenous inhabitants turned into slaves and shud ras. The historical
evidence shows that while Indo-European speakers did come from outside,
they came in various groups and waves; there is no ar cheological evidence
that they destroyed the Indus civilisation, though t here is a good deal of
evidence from the Rig Veda that the Vedic peoples  looked on others as
dark-skinned inferiors, scorned them and treated them as enemies; and the
idea that the upper castes are descended from Aryans and the lower castes
from the conquered natives is simply unscientific:  India is a land of
fairly compete racial intermixing. The social fact re mains, though, that
many people believe, if not in the "Aryan theory" as  such, that they
themselves are the lineal and social descendents of Aryan s - and this is
the most damaging aspect.
This also means the Vedas are important not so much in themselves as what
they were made to be in the later development of B rahmanism. For their
times, they were a grand work of literature and spe culation. But,
Brahmanism as it later developed during the first millenn ium BC, in
conflict with the shramana traditions and especially with Budd hism, took
them as something more than this: reinterpreting their basic t hemes, and
using the very later "Purush sukta" as a justification, it bui lt on them a
justification for their own religious and social superiority and for
varnashrama dharma. It is this, and it is the forbidding knowle dge of the
Vedas to shudras and women, that was the major negative step.  It is no
wonder that the Vedas evoked both a mystique, and later a scorn for them
among large sections of the masses.
In the first millennium BC, however, at the time of the developing
agricultural-urban civilisation, the rise of surplus, of  cities and trade,
the emergence of a truly dynamic and open society, a ma jor ideological
conflict broke out between the two trends of Buddhism and the developing
Brahmanism. This conflict was at a philosophical as well as a social and
political level. At a social level it was expressed as  a basic conflict
between a world view emphasising "Being" and one emphasi zing "Becoming."
This was not, as one commentator has it, the difference between "Fullness"
and "Void." The Buddhist stress on impermanence, or  becoming, was not a
belief in nothingness; existence was real, but it was transitory. Even the
later philosopher Nagarjuna, who brought in the co ncept of sunyata, was
only arguing against the notion that somehow there  were ultimate forces or
things which had a permanent reality of their own or swabhava. He was not
describing sunyata as a void.
Buddhist insistence on becoming and the lack of an  essential being had
social implications as well. For the developing theo ry of Brahmanism,,
essence became extended to the social world, with the  dividing up of
society into parts: the Brahman, Ksatriya, Vaishya and Sud ra had the
characteristics of their varna as part of their essential bein g. Manu, for
instance, writes that the Brahman "may, however, make a sud ra do the work
of a slave, whether he is bought or not bought; for the Se lf-existent one
created him to be the slave of the priest. Even if he is set free by his
master, a servant [sudra] is not set free from slavery;  for since that is
innate in him, who can take it from him?" (The Laws of  Manu, Penguin, p.
196). Even in the Bhagavad Gita, this notion of the es sential nature and
dharma of the different castes is stressed, for Krishn a tells Arjuna both
at the beginning and the end, that it is better to do one's own duty,
however badly performed, than another's duty well done.  Here the idea of
svadharma is a statement for the duty of the ksatriya t o fight; it implied
then that of the sudra to serve.
In contrast to this, identified human beings in ter ms of what they do.
This is stated in the Sutta-Nipata, "What is a Brahm an" (Book 3, Sutta 9),
the Buddha is asked by Vasettha, a Brahman, to set tle a debate between him
and a friend about whether it is "birth" or "lif e" that makes a Brahman.
The Buddha replies that whereas grass and trees, insects, snakes, fish and
birds have diverse species - he uses the term  jati -- among humans this is
not so. "Men alone show not that nature sta mps them as different jatis.
They differ not in hair, head, ears or eyes , in mouth or nostrils, not in
eyebrows, lips, throat, shoulders, belly,  buttocks, back or chest." He
then goes on to say that one who lives by k eeping cows is a farmer or
kassako; on who lives by handicrafts is a trad esman or sippiko; one who
lives by selling merchandise is a vanijjo, one  who lives by services done
for hire is a pessiko or wage-worker; one who  lives by taking things not
his is a robber; one who lives by warfare is a yodhajivao or soldier; one
who lives by sacrificial rites is a yajako or priest; one who rules is a
monarch or raja.
Interestingly, the Buddha does not here use the comm on terms for the four
varnas, including sudra or ksatriya; rather it is t erms that today still
survive as roots for functional occupations. All t he evidence shows that
the caste system, or varnashrama dharma, hardly ex isted in its realized
form in the time of the Buddha; it was rather a pro ject of many Brahmans
who developed it through the centuries, supported b y philosophical
developments and religious teachings and above all, by th e power of kings.
The sutta quoted above shows another important feature of the times: that
"Brahmanism" was not to be identified with all Brahma ns, that many of them
in fact resisted it, and many joined as followers a nd supporters of the
Buddha. Just as there is no "essence" which determi nes the moral choices
and actions of the different castes, so many born B rahmans rejected the
theory of birth, essence and caste and became suppor ters of different
philosophies - and so the anti-caste movement today has to be wary of
identifying "Brahmanism" with born Brahmans. Buddhism and Brahmanism - II
"Governance," the great theme of today, was also a preoccupation of Indi an
thinkers two to three millennium earlier. The views that evolved duri ng
the first millennium BC of the duties of kings and of the nature of th e
state are another crucial difference between Brahmanism and Buddhism, o ne
that has as tremendous significance today as the issue of caste.
In the Brahmanical literature, the state is viewed  as divinely created.
The king is brought into being by the gods to maint ain law and order, and
he is charged in particular with protecting varnas hrama dharma. This theme
runs through all the sastras and puranas. In  Manu, we have at the
beginning of his chapter on kings an injunction to r emember the divinity
of kings, "Even a boy king should not be treated wit h disrespect, with the
thought, `He is just a human being'; for this is a great deity standing
there in the form of a man. Fire burns just one ma n who approaches it
wrongly, but the fire of a king burns the whole famil y, with its livestock
and its heap of possessions85" He goes on to str ess punishment, the danda,
as the main feature of kingship: "The Rod is t he king and the man, he is
the inflictor and he is the chastiser, traditi onally regarded as the
guarantor for the duty of the four stags of life.  The Rod alone chastises
all the subjects, the Rod protects them, the Rod stays away while they
sleep; wise men know that justice is the Rod85. T he whole world is
mastered by punishment, for an unpolluted man is hard t o find. Through
fear of punishment, everything that moves allows itself  to be used85The
king was created as the protector of the classes and the stages of life,
that are appoint each to its own particular duty, in pro per order"
(Penguin edition, 128-130).
The more "liberal" Arthashastra also is preoccupied with the maintenance of
power, with family members, neighboring rulers,  the collectively
functioning oligarchies or gana sanghas, and the tribals all seen as
threats. And everywhere in Brahmanical literature, the role of an ideal
king included the duty of protecting the varna system, so th at Rama was
forced to kill the shudra Shambuk for attempting tapascharya, and even the
great Shivaji had to be depicted by Ramdas as particularly  the "protector
of cows and Brahmans."
For Buddhism, in contrast, the king as a chakravart in ruler, is the social
parallel to the Buddha himself. The king himself has to be moral - in the
Tamil epic, Silappadikaram, written under the i nfluence of Buddhism and
Jainism, the city of Madurai is destroyed by fir e and the king himself
commits suicide for the sin of injustice. Failure to be moral can justify
popular rebellion: in a Jataka story, "The Gobl in's Gift," a king and his
priest steal and hide the state treasury to de ceive the Bodhisattva, and
when this is revealed, the people kill him and place the Bodhisattva on the
throne.
In a Buddhist origin story recounted in the Anganna Suta the king also
comes into existence to prevent the crimes due to the rise of private
property and to maintain law and order, but the story ha s no hint of gods
or divine action in it. Rather the king is chosen by t he people themselves
and so is called the "maha-sammata" or "great agreem ent." Further, it is
always stressed that order in society is maintained through popular
welfare. As the Kutadanata sutta has it, "Now there is  one method to adopt
to put a thorough end to this disorder. Whosoever th ere be in the king's
realm who devote themselves to keeping cattle and th e farm, to them let
his majesty the king give food and seed-corn. Whosoe ver there be in the
king's realm who devote themselves to trade, to them  let his majesty the
king give capital. Whosever there be in the king's r ealm who devote
themselves to government service, to them let his majesty the king give
wages and food. Then those men, following each his own bu siness, will no
longer harass the realm; the king's revenue will go up; t he country will
be quiet and at peace; and the populace, pleased with one another and
happy, dancing their children in their arms, will dwell with open doors"
(I, 176).
Not punishment, but the provision of capital, the pr ovision of fair wages,
supplying seeds for the farmers - the prerequisite s for a productive
economy - were stressed. Further, in another sutra re cited by Ambedkar in
his last essay, "The Buddha and Karl Marx, the failu re of a ruler to
provide wealthy to the destitute is what leads to the do wnfall of the
kingdom. The effort, after this, to prevent theft by punis hment leads only
to more and more violence, and to the final degradation  of society. The
story grapples with the dilemmas of welfare, but the cle ar message is that
the prevention of poverty is a major duty of a state t hat wants to
maintain order.
The model of relationship between the state and the  economy contrasts also
with the Brahmanical one, at least with that prese nted in the
Arthashastra. This has no concern with welfare or the probl ems of the
relief of poverty, but Kautilya presents us with an activist s tate,
running factories, mines and brothels, facing prices, maintaining a huge
bureaucracy engaged in economic intervention and management. Almos t a
precursor of the "brahmanic socialism" of the post-independence perio d!
With this traders are seen as inherently wicked and thievish themselv es,
needing supervision. The image of the "dirty bania" begins here. In
contrast, the Buddhist literature treats merchants and farmers, property
holders and producers of all sizes, with great respect. The state does  not
attempt to replace their activities but engaging in production itself , but
to set the conditions for production by providing capital, protecti on and
removal of poverty. Almost a precursor, again, of an Amartya Sen- type
social liberalism!
Ironically, the Buddhist model of kingship probably  worked against it in
the long run. After Ashoka, few rulers were fervent Buddhists; most for a
long time patronized Buddhism but were usually per sonally attached to
Brahmanic rituals and beliefs. This is not too surpr ising, since
Brahmanism asked much less of them than the moral rectitude  and provision
of popular welfare required of a chakravartin ruler, and tr eated them as
semi-divine, ready to ratify their ksatriya status as long  as they upheld
the varnashrama dharma.
Ashoka was a ruler who genuinely tried to follow the Buddhist model and
treat popular welfare as his responsibility; it is hi s insignia that
independent India has adopted as its own. Unfortunately, the reality seems
to be otherwise, and if kings and priests - or politic ians and bureaucrats
- treat the state treasury as their own and conspire to hide it, there is
too little sign of popular resistance. India needs to return to the
Buddhist ideal of governance, to recreate a sense of pu blic order and
community.

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