I am generally averse to writing reviews that are wholly critical. If I dislike a book, as is sometimes the case, I am more likely to include my critical reflections on the subject in an article on a related, broader theme. This review, however, is borne out of social media conversations wherein I was accused of being unfair to RSS. I was asked by my interlocuter to read Ratan Sharda “ji” to know the real RSS. Dr. Sharda, a member of the RSS, regularly features in national TV media(and occasionally on print) as a defender of the organization and it’s ideology. Barring the cacophony that has infected TV media debates, Dr. Sharda is generally polite and never abusive. I say this to emphasize that I have no animosity towards him as a person. This review is strictly limited to the quality of his intellectual output.

“RSS 360”, as it’s subtitle suggests, seeks to “demystify” the Rashtriya SwayamSevak Sangh. Sharda starts by letting the readers know that he has worked “really hard on this version due to high critical standards of their[Bloomsbury’s] editorial team.” One of the first things that the reader notices about the writing is, in fact, it’s terrible editing. It is organized in a confusing manner. It lacks a central thesis whose chapters are argued progressively. It’s sentences are not always grammatically accurate, notwithstanding basic misspellings(“Balasaheb” instead of “Babasaheb” Ambedkar, although this might have been a Freudian slip). A less discerning reader sympathetic to the cause will perhaps ignore the bad writing but I can’t. It makes the book doubly unenjoyable and bland.

The book starts in medias res , perhaps in an attempt to be evocative, narrating the emergency years. It is not surprising since the emergency was precisely what bought RSS into the mainstream after its decades long political untouchability following Gandhi’s assassination. There is little doubt that the RSS did play a major role in the protests that preceded emergency, alongside the Socialists, as well as the underground resistance that followed afterwards. Sharda writes that historians like Ram Guha “gloss over these facts of history or write disparagingly about RSS contribution rather than highlight the exemplary way they bore the brunt of atrocities in and outside jail even as their careers, family lives and businesses were damaged or ruined.” This is a rather strange argument on omission, given that Sharda cites no source to prove his case. The reader is supposed to take him at his word. Sharda never mentions the specific criticism or argument that historians like Guha make concerning RSS role in emergency. Merely a day after the declaration of emergency, the Sangh Parivar conducted an underground meeting and decided to pursue the method of “satyagraha”. It was the RSS’ turn to lay claim to a mass movement, after it’s embarrassing non-involvement with anti-colonial activities during British rule. The government suggests 4% of those detained came from RSS while the Sangh puts it above 30%. Even if we take the government’s data, it is still a significant number. Madhavrao Muley, who surprisingly finds no mention in Sharda’s account of the emergency, was assigned the charge of leading the underground Satyagrahas by Deoras. The RSS workers often disguised themselves, including a certain Narendra Modi, and helped dissenting socialists like George Fernandes to safe houses. The then-RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras wrote a series of letters to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Acharya Vinoba Bhave to lift the ban on RSS. Deoras praised Indira Gandhi’s speech for being “well balanced”, congratulated her when pliable judges declared her election valid while promising “selfless work” for the “national upliftment ( government as well as non-government)”. In Deoras’ words:-

“It is my prayer to you that you kindly try to remove the wrong notion of the prime minister about the Sangh, and as a result of which [sic ] the RSS volunteers will be set free, the ban on the Sangh will be lifted and such a condition will prevail as to enable the volunteers of the Sangh to participate in the planned programme of action relating to country’s progress and prosperity under the leadership of the prime minister.”

It is this duplicity that historians like Guha and respected journalists like Coomi Kapoor criticize the RSS for. Sharda could very easily claim that his organization approached this “strategy” to survive while secretly maintaining resistance. But he would be able to make this claim only after producing his detractors arguments. Sharda never quotes Deoras letters so he never has to justify it. He seems more comfortable pretending it doesn’t exist. His critics are always portrayed as bad faith left-wing ideologues even as he doesn’t so much as cite a single line from their work. This is even more problematic considering that Sharda chides the communists for supporting emergency. A faction among communists did support the emergency while another took part in protests against it even during its imposition. The Communists are further chided for their dubious role during the Quit India movement. Perhaps Dr. Sharda has forgotten that their ideological co-traveller Shyama Prasad Mookerjee was in government in Bengal. This is what Dr. Mookerjee wrote on the Quit India movement to the Governor:-

“The question is how to combat this movement in Bengal? The administration of the province should be carried on in such a manner that in spite of the best efforts of the Congress, this movement will fail to take root in the province. It should be possible for us, especially responsible ministers, to be able to tell the public that the freedom for which the Congress has started the movement, already belongs to the representatives of the people. In some spheres it might be limited during the emergency. Indians have to trust the British.”

I wish I could say that the rest of the book is on similar lines as the first chapter. The first chapter, in fact, is the strongest. The rest of the book is far worse. It reads like a passionate Indian uncle garrulously lecturing the “current generation”(his words). In an attempt to prove that there’s a western conspiracy to prove that India is an artificial creation, Sharda writes:-

“I would like the reader to ponder a minute over why India is called a ‘sub­continent’ but bigger, massive geographical entities like Australia and USA are called countries? You would note that your mind is conditioned subtly to accept that we are not a natural country but have been brought together by the British through legislative efforts.”

For the uninitiated, subcontinent is defined as a distinct part of a continent that has it’s own tectonic plates. Subcontinents can be a country and even a state (Alaska is a subcontinent). Arabia, the Russian far east, Somali plates etc. are all subcontinents. I feel embarrassed even having to explain this. It is a testament to the anti-intellectualism of RSS, or perhaps Dr. Sharda’s editors, that no one pointed out such an elementary error in reasoning.

Here is Dr. Sharda’s reason for the unity and ancient continuity of India:-

“Shri Ranga Hari, a senior RSS prachaarak and central leader, once cited an interesting example of common traditions and cultural practices we share across this vast nation. For example, all over India, the shopkeeper adds a little amount of the goods over and above what he weighs for the customer before packing. The idea is, “if there is an error, let it be corrected from my side.” This custom has different names in different languages but it is prevalent right from South to North and East to West. I know that it is called ‘runga’ in North, I am sorry that I couldn’t make note of the words for this practice in other Indian languages.”

This is a very common practice across mercantilist cultures around the world. “Lagniappe”, prevalent in Louisiana, refers essentially to the same custom of giving an extra gift to the customers. The Arab traders have had the same practice. West African traders too practice the same custom. Are we supposed to assume that they share continuity with India? Or, perhaps Dr. Sharda believes that India as “vishwaguru” taught this to the rest of the world? The most likely explanation is that Sharda simply didn’t bother to verify whether this custom was even unique to India.

Having proven the unity of India with such extraordinary leaps of logic, Sharda proceeds to remark upon the superiority of ancient Indian science thus:-

“It would surprise readers if I were to suggest that the famous shloka, ‘poorna midah, poorna midam, poornaat poorna mudachyate, poornasya poorna maadaay, poorna mevaavashishyate, which translates to: ‘That is Absolute, This is Absolute, Absolute arises out of Absolute, If Absolute is taken away from Absolute, Absolute remains, is the best possible enunciation of Einstein’s famous formulation, E=mc2 , which is “total of energy in the universe remains constant, whatever you produce, transform or destroy.”

This claim is so mind-numbingly ridiculous that one doesn’t even feel the need to refute it. Its stupidity is self-explanatory. Sharda doesn’t bother arguing either, instead producing Quantum Woo excerpts from long discredited new age bullshit like “The Tao of Physics”. The reader is supposed to be convinced by such appeals to authority. Sharda appeals to Voltaire’s praise for Indian philosophy. This reeks of Orientalism, which is, of course, not shocking at all to hear from a Hindu nationalist. Sharda entirely misses the context that Voltaire and other enlightenment figures were merely critiquing Christianity and using the ancientness of the East to prove their claims. Their claims were based on dubious forgeries like “Ezourvedam”, which Voltaire praised. It is extremely likely that Voltaire never read an authentic translation of any Indian text. Ancient India’s metaphysical insights are retrospectively cited as evidence that India had solved “basic economic and social requirements” since only those societies can aspire to spirituality. This is notwithstanding the fact that some of the greatest philosophers in the world came from a period of tumultuous upheaval and inequality. These include the enlightenment philosophers as well as early Christianity. I suspect that, in Sharda’s view, there isn’t much philosophical insights to be gained from Christianity anyway. I will nevertheless refrain from putting words in his mouth.

In many instances, the book devolves further into being a rant against the ominous liberals. I present a specimen below:-

“There has been a lot of breast beating about attack on MF Hussain’s painting by Hindu groups as being against liberal values and artistic freedom. Interestingly Hussain’s same artistic freedom becomes coy when depicting Mother Teresa, his mother or other Muslim women. The stark contrast in his artistic impressions can be seen through various presentations of Hindu gods and goddesses. You can see these images floating around on the net. Many of them are so obscene and hurt our sensibilities so deeply that I won’t describe them. Same liberals are in the forefront for banning Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen. They keep quiet when extremists force Taslima out of India.”

These liberals again are never quoted. I am sure they exist. Salman Rushdie was defended by many on the left. The prominent British-Pakistani Marxist Tariq Ali staged a notable play mocking the Mollah, defending Rushdie and critiquing fundamentalism in religion. Rushdie was also supported by the legendary Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwaish and Edward Said. Taslima Nasrin was defended by Arundhati Roy, Girish Karnad and Mahasweta Devi. These are among the most prominent leftists. Dr. Sharda’s point would have credibility had he bothered to quote a liberal. I am not such a liberal, and as I pointed out not even leftists seem to have supported the ban. Dr. Sharda, on the other hand, cannot muster a word of support for MF Hussain’s freedom of speech, whose validity is entirely irrelevant to his hurt feelings. As Hitchens said, “I’m still waiting to hear what your argument is”.

Dr. Sharda is consumed with such visceral hatred of the liberals that he can’t bring himself to wholeheartedly condemn Golwalkar’s repugnant comments. In his words:-

“Worst charge that they could put even based on his quote of 1938­-39 is that he advocated that no group should have any special privileges (which the leftists translate as the minorities being given a status of second class citizen). Even if this view is taken at its full face value, it is not in anyway, different from the stated Islamic rule (evident in all Muslim majority states) that gives status of second class citizen to ‘non­believers’, claiming it to be as per The Book. If this proposition is true, then are they accepting that Islamic rule is fundamentally a fascist rule?”

Dr. Sharda claims here that Golwalkar was merely protesting special treatment, not advocating for minorities being second class citizens. Here is what Golwalkar says:-

“the foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment -not even citizen’s rights.”

What part of “not even citizen’s rights” does Dr. Sharda not understand? If he had still any doubts, here is Golwalkar again:-

“To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by”

Does Dr. Sharda seriously wants to defend this and accuse critics of misrepresentation? Why can’t he simply denounce it and perhaps show some humility by accepting that his idol has erred? It shouldn’t be hard. On his whataboutery concerning Islamic dictatorships, well, I denounce it as a critic of Golwalkar and I consider it an insult to my intelligence and basic morality that he even asked.

Apart from irrelevant anecdotes, the book is also full of claims for which no source is ever provided and which simply don’t pass the smell test. Sample exhibit:-

“A senior colleague of E V Ramaswami Naicker, founder of DK and referred to as EVR; quit DMK disillusioned to join RSS. He disclosed that EVR had written to Dr Ambedkar when he was thinking of forsaking the Hindu fold, but was advised against it and instead was advised to fight for dignity and rights within the religion.”

It is highly improbable to me and to anyone aware of basic history that either Dr. Ambedkar or EVR would ever discourage anyone from leaving Hinduism. Perhaps Dr. Sharda should revisit EVR’s writings and campaign of breaking idols. Maybe a reading of Dr. Ambedkar’s 22 vows will convince him? Where is the source, Sir?

I am tempted to keep going on and critique the empirical basis and ridiculous “studies” he cites on RSS workers’ temperament but this is already getting too long. I will quote one last paragraph before concluding, without which this review will remain incomplete. Here we go:-

“Gau Vigyan Sansthan, near Nagpur has been doing lot of research on utilising various products made out of cow produce. It is fashionable to laugh out and ridicule at this kind of research. It would be foolish to write off medicinal cures defined clearly in Ayurveda. When the world is accepting the Vedic wisdom, it would be tragedy to laugh it off till westerners actually copyright these cures!”

The website of this organization, predictably and lamentably, asserts the therepeutical benefits of cow urine and sells cow urine as a product.

I felt much more sympathetic to the RSS when I read “left leaning” ethnographic studies of its organization from Prof. Jaffrelot, Krzysztof Iwanek and Walter Andersen and Damle than I did reading Ratan Sharda’s book because there was a genuine attempt to understand. Page after page, this book confirmed every stereotype one holds concerning the organization, especially the critical thinking skills of its members. There’s not even an attempt to engage with the critics, forget refuting. It is horrible even by the standards of a hagiography. No person with half a brain and the critical thinking skills of a blobfish will be convinced by this. No critic with the aesthetic sense of the average Dan Brown fan will manage to get through the first couple of pages.

It is daunting to write about Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Ever since the announcement of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, newspapers have flooded with tributes to his work. These tributes, more often than not, approach the level of the superficial and cater to the unengaged, the general knowledge enthusiasts more than the serious literary crowd. It is, of course, not possible to engage in literary criticism in the limited space of a newspaper column. However, it is worth asking as to why it is much simpler to give a hint of the revolutionary discoveries that win the Nobel as opposed to the literary innovations. Symptomatic of this superficiality is an article published in the Indian Express which ties in Krasznahorkai with Murakami and Kafka. It is worth noting that Krasznahorkai’s works retain a Kafkaesque tinge. It is also a patently useless and entirely redundant information. Anyone who reads 5 pages of his books or watches 5 mins of Bela Tarr’s adaptation would be able to understand this. Moreover, Murakami’s world is much simpler, far more colourful and comparable more to the films of Miyazaki than anything Krasznahorkai writes.

Krasznahorkai’s The Melancholy of Resistance starts in a bustling train. The reader is immediately arrested by Kraznahorkai’s prose more than the scene itself. The scene itself is elaborate but never conventionally evocative. While one certainly has an idea of the surroundings and its attendant details, what is more striking is the mood. This mood is not conveyed by the setting or the conversations, which are rather sparse in the novel, but the writing itself. The reader is consumed not by the narrative or the story but by a strange sense of foreboding, an inexplicable amnesia of the previous page and a sudden graveness that calls to move ahead as the lingering lasts through every sentence. There is, thus, a significant difference between Krasznahorkai’s writings and the masterful adaptations by Bela Tarr. While Tarr resorts to languid long takes reminiscent of Tarkovsky that makes each frame a painting, Krasznahorkai maintains a stream-of-consciousness narrative that is generally uninterested in imagistic metaphors. This gives his work a hurried quality but also demands from the reader adequate patience to indulge in abstract thinking.

The world, in this novel, is apocalyptic but there is no apocalypse. There is terror. There is tragedy. But there is no ultimate catharsis. The apocalypse is not dread for a predictable end as much as anxiety of the continuing present. It is foolish, our character Eszter remarks, to believe in the apocalypse or the last judgement. Such an ending presumes a grander purpose. Au contraire, the world is mechanical and moves blindingly in circles, without any rhyme or reason. There is no point in this “constant and agonizing going round in circles”. God may not be dead but he is certainly a complete failure. In Eszter’s words, we are “miserable subjects of some insignificant failure, alone in this simply marvellous creation; that the whole of human history is no more, than the histrionics of a stupid, bloody, miserable outcast in an obscure corner of a vast stage, a kind of tortured confession of error, a slow acknowledgement of the painful fact that this creation was not necessarily a brilliant success.”

Is there no hope, no purpose, no perfection? Here, Eszter, and through him Krasznahorkai, takes a more complex approach. Eszter derides the innovations of the music theorist Andreas Werckmeister and his contributions towards the development of harmony. Werckmeister’s harmony is based on a “false foundation”. For Eszter, music “provided humanity’s only sure stay against the filth and squalor of the surrounding world”. Music is the closest approximation to perfection. Werckmeister’s harmony, in Eszter’s telling, is mechanical and based on the symmetry of logic and math. This is what gives it a bland quality. Instead, a tuning is proposed that takes into account the whole and allows, indeed encourages, its constituent parts to be imperfect. This is perhaps what makes the novel even more relevant in our context. We are on the brink of an era where AI music is steadily becoming indistinguishable from human-made music. Such music will, no doubt, be technically “perfect”. It will mimic our approximation of a “good” performance. Will we derive the same satisfaction from it as we do from music made by human beings? Certainly not. One of the things that differentiates us from AI is our tendency to be imperfect. It is this which gives the art that we create an idiosyncratic quality. Without our individual stories, our imperfectness, we will never be able to appreciate the potentialities of music or any art, for that matter. Human beings gravitate towards harmony but we can only appreciate the “whole” when it is organic, natural and unimpeded by mechanical forces. Eszter may have abandoned his hope for replacing Werckmeister’s harmony but we must strive against the mechanical forces of our time.

Over the last couple of decades, the idea of universalist citizenship increasingly became the subject of criticism owing to its inadequacies in dealing effectively with the complexities of a plural society. Scholars like Iris Marion Young, while acknowledging its emancipatory potential, argued that the strict equality envisioned in universalist citizenship often leads to perpetuation of oppression. Differentiated citizenship, in contrast, acknowledges the importance of diversity and allows for differential treatment and special rights for groups as a way of realizing equality. In this article, I provide a brief overview of the debate between differentiated citizenship and universalist citizenship while arguing that differentiated citizenship helps in enhancing the prospects of a civic community of equals.

According to T.H. Marshall, citizenship “is a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community”. Citizenship, in the Marshallian model, has three elements: — civil, political and social. These elements directly correspond to the institutional structure of society. Civil rights i.e. the right to own property, freedom of speech and right to justice are provided by the judiciary. The right to participate politically as a representative or as a voter corresponds to the institution of parliament while economic and social welfare are provided by education system and the welfare state. Tracing the trajectory of these elements historically, Marshall argues that they are often interdependent. Civil rights, for instance, initially did not include the creation of new rights as much as it included the expansion of old rights to new groups. This is evident through the expansion of the franchise which is reflective of the overlap between the different elements. Marshall moved beyond the merely legal aspect of citizenship by emphasizing on these rights. This made him one of the earliest to implicitly distinguish between formal and substantive citizenship.

Marshall’s focus was specifically on Britain and his essay was written in the aftermath of World War II. The conflicts of citizenship that concern us now are thus not addressed by Marshall: — particularly concerning multi-ethnic societies and accommodation of difference on account of racial and gender inequality. Marshall’s conceptualization of three distinct elements does help in providing an undifferentiated framework under which women can be charted. An attempt can be made to move away from elaborating only on the political extension of rights to the related question of the right to own property, justice etc. However, as Ursula Vogel points out, these rights are premised upon the assumption that all individuals are placed at an equal distance to law. Marshall’s evolutionary model only functions when it excludes women from the realization of the universal. In his discussion of civil rights, Marshall notes the gradual expansion of rights to all adult members of the community while adding a caveat concerning the “peculiar” status of women in the same period. It was only in 1988 that the British government sought to abolish the taxation system that treated married women as chattel of their husbands. Marshall’s conceptualization of the past in terms of a gradual, evolutionist model towards the realization of the rights from the elites to the masses as a whole provides the framework for further expansion of rights in relation to different classes. The recognition of gender as a crucial element serves as an obstacle to this narrative.

Universalist citizenship demands that citizens, at least in the public realm, give up their claims to particular group identities and interests in order to foster a general will. The political theorist Benjamin Barber is representative of this view. Barber, while making a case for participatory democracy, draws a clear distinction between the public aspect of citizenship and the private affiliation to other forms of identity. The existence of one’s membership to the community of citizenship depends on their ability to form a single vision for future. It becomes necessary for individuals to give up their needs and desires to realize the universal. Such commonness is only possible when citizens are assumed to be homogenous and willing to collectively rise beyond their particularities. This assumption can also be found in Rawls’ “ideal theory”. An attempt to reconstruct a perfectly just society appears reasonable at the first glance. Nevertheless, critical race theorists like Charles Mills have pointed out that such a society can only exist without prior experience of injustice[1].

Given the limitations of the universalist conception of citizenship, how should one accommodate pluralities of identities and interests? Amy Guttman has shown how participatory democracy in community control of schools had often led to increased segregation as the privileged whites were able to present their case better[2]. An explicit recognition of oppression via group differentiated citizenship can help us navigate such complexities better.

A common objection to differentiated citizenship is the presumption that it will lead to essentializing and concretizing difference instead of alleviating existing oppression. It has been argued, for instance, that the British empire in India helped in concretizing caste by socially classifying groups for administrative purposes like the census[3]. This does not mean that caste did not exist or that it was any less oppressive and hierarchical before the arrival of British. A census would be unnecessary and meaningless without prior social and historical identification of a group. A social group exists not because of essential characteristics but because of social status ascribed to members of the group, self-identification and common historical experience[4]. Young (1989) posits that we occupy a group-differentiated society wherein some groups are privileged while others are oppressed through exploitation, marginalization, prejudice and violence[5]. Differentiated citizenship is justified on the basis of a group’s oppression, not it’s essential characteristics. In Young’s conception of group-differentiated citizenship, institutional mechanisms ought to be set up to encourage self-organization of the oppressed group members, helping generate and voice concerns regarding policy proposals where decision makers would be obliged to take their considerations into account and the availability of veto power in policies specifically affecting the group such as reproductive rights and autonomy for indigenous peoples[6]. Enhancing the voices of the oppressed group will also help in ensuring the privileged group understand experiences and perspectives different from their own.

There are gaps in Young’s analysis that need to be probed. It is not self-evident that veto power would necessarily lead to the realization of equal respect. This can be illustrated through the instance of the Shah Bano case in case. In 1985, the Indian Supreme Court granted the divorcee Shah Bano the right to maintenance from her husband through the criminal law[7]. This led to strong reactions within sections of the Muslim community and eventually culminated in the government enacting a law that shifted the onus of maintenance to relatives. This case is reflective of the conflict between gender rights and community rights. It is a difficult question to navigate through precisely because a cultural community’s rights to practise its own traditions must not be impeded upon, except under extraordinary circumstances where the rights of others are affected. Jayal (1997)[8] proposes that while community rights must be protected and encouraged in a plural society, it must not be allowed to impede the non-negotiable democratic core.

A related problem for Young’s conception is the precise basis on which groups ought to be represented. Young specifically lists women, Puerto Ricans, LGBT members, working class, the poor, the old, disabled people, Native Americans, Chicanos, Asian Americans etc. as being part of oppressed groups. Critiquing this potential of endless fragmentation, Kymlicka poses a question about the exact manner in which such groups ought to be represented adequately[9]. Kymlicka does not see universalist citizenship to be contradictory with differentiated citizenship. Differentiated rights can be pursued through special representation rights i.e. self-government or reservation/affirmative action for certain minorities and polyethnic rights i.e. the right of religious or ethnic minorities to follow certain practices like wearing the turbans for Sikhs or the yarmulka for Jews. Kymlicka, however, restricts such representation to only national and ethnic minorities. Thus, while this framework is specific, it fails to acknowledge or redress adequately the way in which institutional and societal oppression is experienced by sexual and gender minorities. A more inclusive approach would be to set up an institutional mechanism which facilitates conversation with decision makers and permits the granting of special rights to oppressed communities while ensuring the democratic core is not impeded upon.

A major objection to group-differentiated rights is its potential to threaten the civic community of equals. This is essential to address as citizenship and the rights associated with it are accompanied in contemporary society almost exclusively in relation to the nation-state. The breakdown of a national community is accompanied inevitably in the loss of substantial rights. This can be analysed with reference to India.

In the aftermath of partition on the basis of religion, calls for the reorganization of states on the basis of language grew. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who had previously supported the linguistic basis of states in principle, considered it disruptive post-independence[10]. Deputy Prime Minister Patel too voiced concerns over the movements for linguistic states and considered it to be an obstacle in the growth of nationalism[11]. Yet, the government was unable to resist the demands and eventually caved in. Contrary to suspicions that recognition of states on linguistic basis would harm social cohesion, it helped in fostering stability. India’s constitution granted special rights/reservations to it’s historically discriminated and socially ostracized lower caste groups. The discomfort to accommodate special rights can be seen again through the category of “backward classes”. Prominent sociologists like G.S. Ghurye denied the existence of this category and saw it as a detriment to building a casteless society[12]. The fears expressed by the government concerned the question of social cohesion again. The eventual extension of reservations to “Other Backward Classes” was followed by massive political mobilization. This has been referred to as the “silent revolution”[13]. The accommodation of these differences did not lead to any call for secession. In fact, it led to greater representation of these classes in the political and social space.

The dichotomy between universalist and differentiated citizenship falls down when one notices the case of Hindu nationalism. Jayal (2013)[14] argues that Hindu nationalism is a form of exclusionary universalism. V.D. Savarkar, one of the originators of Hindu nationalism, argued for the Indian state to treat its citizens equally. This existed comfortably with his majoritarianism wherein all the decisions were to be made by the Hindu community. For the Hindu nationalists, majoritarianism can be achieved by utilizing the democratic framework as long as the seeds of their ideology are properly dispersed in society. In Savarkar’s conceptualization, the Indian nation was formed after Prince Ramachandra violently invaded Ceylon and bought the Hindus under one imperial reign[15]. Savarkar celebrates Hindu colonization outside the geographical boundaries of India. It is in this vein that he praises Vikramaditya for recolonizing the Indus[16]. The exclusionary-universalism of Hindu nationalism, which at first glance appears to be merely majoritarian, provides ideological justification of imperialism. M.S. Golwalkar, the second chief of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), dispensed with Savarkar’s nominal support of equal rights and argued that minorities do not even deserve citizens’ rights[17]. The tendency to portray Hindus as the universal does not merely manifest in relation to religious minorities. It is also reflected in the Hindu nationalist’s refusal to support special rights for lower castes. In recent times, this can be seen through dilution of special rights rather than an explicit disavowal. Jaffrelot (2019) has argued that the rise of Hindu nationalism can be partly explained as a counter revolution of the social elites against the silent revolution of the lower castes[18].

The distinction between group-differentiated citizenship and universal citizenship manifests primarily through their approach to dealing with plurality. Contrary to the claims of its proponents, universal citizenship can often be exclusionary and lead to the endangering of the sentiment of belonging for minorities. Group-differentiated citizenship, on the other hand, has helped in enhancing the feeling of belonging and strengthening civic community through the granting of special and celebration of plurality. While there are practical unresolved issues concerning the particular groups to be granted special rights and recognition, this approach as a whole has been much more successful in accommodating difference than universalist citizenship.

Notes

[1] Mills, C. W. (2017). Black Rights/white Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

[2] Gutmann, A. (1980). Liberal equality. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

[3] Dirks, N. B. (2001). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press.

[4] Young (1989), p. 260

[5] Ibid, p. 261

[6] Ibid, p. 261–262

[7] https://main.sci.gov.in/jonew/judis/9303.pdf

[8] Jayal, N. G. (1997). Secularism, identities and representative democracy. Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East, 17(2), 11–20. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-17-2-11

[9] Kymlicka, W. (1996). Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. United Kingdom: Clarendon Press.

[10] Guha, R. (2008). India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy. India: Macmillan.

[11] Guha (2008), p. 183

[12] Jayal, N. G. (2013). Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History. Germany: Harvard University Press.

[13] Jaffrelot, C. (2003). India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. India: Permanent Black.

[14] Jayal (2013), p. 217

[15] Chaturvedi, V. (2022). Hindutva and Violence: V. D. Savarkar and the Politics of History. United States: State University of New York Press.

[16] Chaturvedi (2022), p. 172

[17] Jayal (2013), p. 217

[18] Jaffrelot, C. (2019). Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press.

An understanding of Russian foreign policy, particularly in the reign of President Vladmir Putin, will remain incomplete without taking into consideration domestic factors. While international factors do play a role, their role has often been overemphasized. This does not merely lead to an incomplete theoretical framework but also significantly affects actual policy.

A general overview of the debate surrounding the role of institutional domestic factors in foreign policy is necessary to understand the theoretical framework in which my argument is situated. Ronald Rogowski posited that domestic institutions significantly affect foreign policy strategies. As the economist Douglass North has argued, states with relatively deficient institutions such as the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union survived for as long as they did because economic competition in international sphere is much less fierce compared to the domestic sphere. Rogowski posits three independent variables to evaluate the influence of domestic strategy empirically, namely: — franchise, representation and decision rules. Franchise refers to the exertion and extent of formal influence that a particular group, say, adults, aristocrats or property owners have over the region. Assigning too much weight on a particular group, say, warrior aristocracy may lead to an increase in expansionist policies while suffrage may incline society towards pacifism. Representation refers to the format in which those who make up the franchise are selected. Large constituencies may point to an increasing likelihood of an accommodative approach while small constituencies, especially when homogenous, may lead to favouritism. Decision rules refer to the process by which selected representative(s) steer decisions. In The Federalist Papers, some of America’s founding father argued for a stronger presidency as it will result in a cohesive foreign policy while fragmented power will fail to provide the adequate “bulwark of national security”.

While discussing the influence of domestic factors over Russian foreign policy, one often comes across oversimplification as well as generalization in the literature. This is particularly noticeable in popular western media, which benefits from giving Russia an aura of mysticism. The influence of Aleksandr Dugin, a far-right philosopher with mystic hues, on Putin’s domestic and foreign policy, is often grossly overstated. While ideology does have an impact, it is merely one of the many factors to be considered. Nevertheless, this is understandable given that Kremlin’s policymaking apparatus is secret. References are constantly made to national identity to justify decisions while in reality the decisions are only made to benefit certain groups. President Putin remains the primary decisionmaker. Under President Boris Yeltsin, it was possible for the then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Yevgeny Primakov to formulate the “Primakov doctrine”. Putin’s foreign policies, in contrast, is almost always singularly attributed to him. Russia’s accession to WTO, which remained dormant for the longest time, happened only after Putin’s approval. This is not to say that no other individual plays a role in decision-making. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who enjoys Putin’s confidence considerably, was instrumental on developing policy in Syria. President Medvedev similarly played a crucial role in developing US-Russia Partnership during the Obama years and engaged with the European Union to launch the “partnership for modernization” programme. While external factors such as the Arab Spring, the failure of the American policy did play a role in his decline, it was eventually domestic factors of competing interests and Putin’s unwillingness to cede the centre of power that eventually cemented it. The influence of other individuals on policy extends only so far as they enjoy Putin’s confidence.

A major reason for the failure of the Americans and the European Union’s attempt to engage with Russia lies in their lack of consideration for ideational motives which are inculcated domestically. The EU, being a postmodern entity, sought to include Russia in its larger project of political and human rights. Russia, on the other hand, is a modern entity which saw its partnership with EU on pure economic, transactional terms. President Obama took a similar approach with the reset. The reset managed to achieve many of its short-term objectives. Russia and the US collaborated on the Afghanistan front. Russia banned the sale of S-300 missiles to Iran. Russia’s accession to the WTO also happened in the aftermath of this period. The reset had no impact in transforming Russia’s civil society, transparency or encouraging liberal democracy. As Lo argues, Russia and the US had different reasons for entering into the agreement. Russia felt secure to re-establish its relationship as US was reeling from the global financial meltdown of 2008 and felt threatened by the rise of China. The reset, from Russia’s perspective, marked a recognition of its status as a global power. Obama, on the other hand sought a strategic partnership with the perception of Russia as a helpful regional ally but not a global leader. As Timothy Snyder has argued, Russia’s ambition to be considered a global hegemon has strong historical basis. While Snyder’s work has been subject to some criticism for his conflation of ultra-nationalism with fascism, his limited point on the influence of ethnonationalists deserves to be explored further.

Rogowski has claimed that regimes that are considered to be legitimate are better able to project themselves as global power. In the case of a liberal democracy, legitimacy is established through free and fair election as well as the presence of strong representatives. How does one explain legitimacy in the case of Russia, which is often criticized for its crackdown on civil and political rights? The “Russian Spring” or “Novorossiya” movement can potentially help us identify some answers.

Post the Russian annexation of Crimea, there was mobilization of volunteers and activists on ground in support for President Putin. Such support has usually been association with a phenomenon known as “astroturfing” wherein sponsors operate under façade of grassroots organizing. This has occurred after the invasion of Ukraine on social media as well. Greene and Robertson challenge this conventional narrative. The Kremlin utilized the ideas of ultra-nationalism and imperialist Eurasianism to carve out a distinct idea of the Russian federation incorporating Russian-speaking people across the territories of former USSR states. It was in this context that demonstrations took place in support of the military actions in Crimea incorporating students, veterans, members of political parties etc. This was amplified by state-propaganda television channels. Russia was portrayed as saving civilians and resisting western forces while “returning” Crimea to its place. Supporters of Eurasianism cannot simply be dismissed as agents of the Kremlin. Dugin, one of the most prominent proponents of this ideology, has since expressed his disillusionment with Putin. The movement, nevertheless, did lead to a boast in Putin’s popularity. Putin utilized the proponent of these ideologies to boast his legitimacy and justify his military actions. The invasion of Ukraine was similarly preceded by an essay by Putin questioning the sovereignty of Ukraine and arguing for a common identity of Russians and Ukrainian. This essay essentially espoused the same ideology as that of the Eurasians. Thus, it is hard to ignore the role that domestic ideology envisioning Russia as a hegemon plays in foreign policy considerations.

While Putin can be justifiably blamed for weaponizing a pre-existing ideology, it is also the case that his regime played a crucial role in cementing a consensus. This was constructed utilizing the Kremlin’s hold over media. Putin’s rise to power was followed by the elimination of news channels that did not sing to his tune. As a consequence, the only viewpoint that the majority of Russians had access to was that of Putin’s. As Chomsky has noted, mass media is a potent tool for conveying the perspectives of the elite consensus to the general public in order to subtly manufacture consent. The existence of state-sponsored media plays a crucial role in reinforcing the radicalization of the supporters of the regime. Owing to “motivated reasoning”, people tend to follow media that aligns with their pre-existing worldview. However, the political circumstances and state monopoly in Russia make it hard to access oppositional media. The recent “Sovereign internet” law allows internet surveillance and seeks to create an internet separate from the world.

In conclusion, Russian foreign policy cannot be separated from domestic drivers. While Russia’s institutions can be insular and secretive about the nature of their decision-making, it’s central-apparatus and the role of Putin is well established. The relative stability of the regime in the face of military conflict can be partly attributed to Putin’s ability to create a veneer of legitimacy through the use of media and dormant social consensus to general mass support for his actions. Thus, it is crucial for western powers to be cognizant of Russia’s aspirations and goals while establishing future partnerships.

Introduction

The late 19th and early 20th century confronted the Indian subcontinent with the experiential and theoretical problems of modernity. The term “modernity” here, as elsewhere, reflects a set of ideas, primarily the European enlightenment ideas of rationalism and the positivist approach to science, that emerges in the European context. The new Indian elites, owing to their education in the English language and ideals, could neither ignore the ideas that directly challenge traditionalism nor the real flaws that exist in the social and cultural milieu. It is under these circumstances that different forms of Indian nationalisms were ideated. It is my general contention that almost all forms of Indian nationalisms formulated during this period were a response to modernism. This argument is made in this paper through the works of two contrasting figure i.e. MK. Gandhi and VD Savarkar. While the nationalisms formulated by both these anti-imperialist figures had similar elements, their divergences can only be understood as different reactions to modern industrial civilization and European nationalism. While Gandhi’s inclusive nationalism was rooted in the traditional and the plural, Savarkar’s nationalism was rooted in homogeneity and modernity. Using Partha Chatterjee’s contention on Indian nationalist thought, I argue that Gandhi escaped thematic colonialism while Savarkar unwittingly embraced it wholeheartedly in the hopes of producing a formidable challenge.

Historical background

As the British rule over India became largely stable, the need to justify its hold became essential and inevitable both for administrative and ideological purposes. The British East India Company was initially reluctant to give importance to the Christian missionaries for fear of offending the religious sentiments of the natives. This stance was faced with persistent backlash and criticism from Christian evangelical missionaries as well as British politicians. In 1797, Charles Grant, an influential politician who served as the chairman of the Company, represented the massive shift in the British policy towards Indian tradition and education.

Grant portrays India as a land of depravity, immorality and decadence. The following paragraph presents an illustration of his general views on Indians, particularly the Hindus: -

“And in general a want of sensibility for others is a very eminent characteristic of this people. The apathy with which a Hindoo views all persons and interests unconnected with himself, is such as excites the indignation of Europeans. At any rate his regards extend but to a very narrow circle. Patriotism is absolutely unknown in Hindustan.” [1]

Grant was not alone in perceiving a lack of morality among the natives. His contemporary Sir John Sore, the governor general of Bengal, had this to remark about Indians: -

“The natives are timid and servile. As individuals they are insolent to their inferiors; to their superiors, generally speaking, submissive, though they are to them also guilty of insolence when they can do so with impunity. Individuals have little sense of honor, and the nation is wholly void of public virtue. They make not the least scruple of lying where falsehood is attended with advantage; yet both Hindoos and Mahomedans, continually speak of their credit and reputation, by which they mean little more than the appearance they make to the world” [2]

Such perceived lack of morality was ascribed to the inherently immoral and despotic religions of India. The company’s initial lack of interest in interfering with the knowledge systems of the natives was in sharp contrast with the growing missionary zeal in early 19th century England. The early-Orientalists showed some genuine fascination and curiosity about native traditions. Empirical knowledge on India’s history, geography, literature and traditions became necessary for proper administration. An authoritative compendium on India was intended to help in the construction of an inferior region for ruling[3]. The first governor-general of Bengal, Warren Hastings, compiled a code on Hindu law after consulting with the “most respectable pandits”. It was only practical for Indians to be governed by Indian laws. This would, according to Hastings, help in establishing a firm footing of the company[4]. Hastings’ compendium was not trusted by many, including Sir William Jones, for being merely the opinion of selected specialists. The goal was to transcend such distinctions to reach the earliest and original texts. As Van der Veer has pointed out, this was propelled by enlightenment ideas of searching for original, pure lost civilizations[5].The Orientalists considered Hindus to be inheritors of a great civilization. The natives had to be educated in their native system. This approach came into attack from the “Anglicists”, which comprised of both utilitarians and the evangelicals. Jones, though supported by Hastings in his lifetime, came under attack after his death. John Stuart Mill considered certain races existing in the backward states of society to be in their “nonage”. Despotism, thus, became a “legitimate mode of government dealing with barbarians”, provided it improved their well-being[6]. The utilitarian disdain for native tradition stemmed partly from its implicit functioning within the positivist and methodological naturalist phenomenon, which will be briefly discussed in the section on Savarkar. The evangelicals, on the other hand, were motivated by their belief in the superiority of the Christian tradition. In his Minute on Indian education, Thomas Babington Macaulay argued that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”[7]. Macaulay’s speech was effective and became a contributing factor in the decisive victory of the Anglicists over the Orientalists[8]

The Charter Act of 1813 made educating the natives, along with their “religious and moral improvement”, the imperative of England[9]. As the evangelicals started proselytizing and organizing educational institutions, they started to directly attack and engage with Indian traditions and spiritual texts. The company was castigated for presiding over a Christian government while engaging in profiteering. James Silk Buckingham, the MP from Sheffield, argued that the company ought not be tolerant of “religious abominations” like the “obscene and bloody rites”. It was hypocrisy for the Company to interfere with religions where it sought to profit but ignore where there was nothing to gain. The company, Buckingham implied, should not allow the flourishing of “native superstitions in all their rankness and deformity”[10].

It is true that regressive practices like Sati and untouchability were practiced often in colonial Indian society. Nevertheless, the weaponization of these practices for instrumental and imperialist ends went unremarked upon until relatively recently. Lata Mani has argued that colonial debates on Sati, while motivated by caricatures of superstition in Indian religious texts, also helped in prioritizing Brahminical texts while excluding women’s agency in the discourse[11]. In a similar manner, Nicholas Dirks has argued that British colonialism facilitated the construction and solidification of caste categories, which existed incongruously in pre-colonial India[12].

A comprehensive understanding of debates concerning nationalism and Hinduism in the colonial period can only be achieved by analysing the evangelical encounter with the native traditions.

In his speech criticizing the conduct of the Company, Buckingham alluded to the evangelical caricature of Hinduism: -

“Here was an organized system of procuring pilgrims to the bloody shrine of the Indian Moloch. Here was a body of Idol Missionaries, far exceeding in number the whole of the Christian Missionaries in the East, going forth clothed with all the authority of the British name and power, paid by the Company’s Government, and their zeal stimulated by a payment of a certain sum per head on every pilgrim brought to bow himself before the wooden God”.

The descriptions “wooden God” and “Indian moloch” referred to the Jagannath temple at Puri. Buckingham’s use of these terms was derived from the works of the Scottish missionary Claudius Buchanan. The writings of Buchanan were one of the earliest to illustrate the perceived “immorality” of Indian traditions. Buchanan represented Hindu religion as bloody, violent, superstitious and backward. This was represented through the figure of Jagannath or Juggernaut, as he termed it. In a letter published by the Christian Observer, Buchanan described the Rath Yatra as a festival of “sanguinary superstitions” where “human victims” showed their devotion to the duty by “by falling under the wheels of the moving tower in which the Idol is placed”. Juggernaut was described as the Canaanite deity of Moloch. Buchanan wrote that the God “is said to smile when the libation of the blood is made.” Exaggerating the supposed sexuality associated with Hindu rituals, Buchanan remarked about “obscene songs” and a “sensual yell of delight”. The women “emitted a sound like that of whistling, with their lips circular, and the tongue vibrating: as if a serpent would speak by their organs, uttering human sounds”[13]. Such hissing sounds, for Buchanan, echoed the hissing at the Satan’s Assembly in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Buchanan’s portrayal of native religions is merely one instance of the justifications that the evangelicals had for their proselytizing mission. The charter act led to the development of the English education system, along the lines suggested by Grant and Macaulay. This created, quite intentionally, an Indian class of interpreters who were exposed to European ideas of enlightenment and modernity. The life and work of the social reformer Raja Rammohun Roy, initially employed by the East India company, provides an initial glimpse into the educated Indian’s attempt to reconcile modernity with tradition. The abolition of Sati came about due to untiring efforts of Roy. It is beyond the realm of this paper to examine Roy’s social activism. Instead, I want to focus on the rhetoric and arguments employed by both the colonizers as well as social reformers to illustrate the engagement with European presuppositions. The official colonial narrative on Sati was structured around the presumptions of the existence of hegemonical scriptures and the complete indigenous submission towards it. The Orientalists, unlike the evangelicals, imagined their civilizing mission as imparting proper education to the natives regarding their scriptures[14]. In conflating Hinduism as a religion in the same mould as that of monotheistic book-religions, they assumed that practices like Sati were based on ignorance of the Scriptures and the deception of the priestly class.

Rammohun Roy operated within these frameworks. In his pamphlet critiquing Sati, Roy cites Brahminical scriptures like the Manusmriti and the Vedas as religious texts that implicitly forbid Sati by permitting widows to live even after the death of their husbands. Roy’s primary argument, thus, is responding to and engaging with the question of scriptural foundations of Sati. This was the same mode of engagement that the colonialists engaged in. While defending the character of women against accusations of stoicism, Roy writes: -

“You charge them with want of resolution, at which I feel exceedingly surprised: for we constantly perceive, in a country where the name of death makes the male shudder, that the female from her firmness of mind offers to burn with the corpse of her deceased husband.”[15]

In the paragraph, Roy not only implicitly concedes the importance of voluntary Sati but also uses the practice as an instance of women displaying a certain heroism. In the very next paragraph, Roy argues against Sati by pointing out the way it has exploited women’s vulnerability. Yet, such ambivalence was part of the colonial discourse on tradition. Sati was argued to be a later interpolation, an instance of an earlier great religion being corrupted. Mani has noted the contrast between Roy’s earlier Persian writings with his later works in the English[16]. In his Persian writings, Roy advocates for a strict monotheism that rejects almost the entirety of organized religion. However, as Roy starts engaging with the missionaries and the colonial administrators, a radical Hindu monotheistic organized religion in the form of Brahmo Samaj which strictly adheres to the Vedas is formed. In fact, in his petition to Lord William Bentick, Roy argued that government was only consulting ignorant men instead of consulting “pundits and Brahmins”[17]. Given the legal nature of petition, one can reasonably argue that Roy’s attempt to align with the orthodoxy was a mere tactic. A complete picture emerges only when one engages with Roy’s construction of Hinduism.

Roy was extremely critical of the rhetoric and activities of the missionaries. He argued that Christianity was not truly monotheistic owing to its belief in the trinity[18]. Roy defended Hinduism against imperial Christian expansionism. Yet, he internalized the criticisms of missionaries with respect to polytheism and rituals. According to Roy, Hinduism in its original form eschewed idol worship while being strictly monotheistic and egalitarian. This was the first instantiation of a belief in the Vedic Golden age when Hinduism was superior to Christianity. In its positioning of Hinduism in direct opposition to evangelical Christianity, Roy’s Hinduism was simultaneously reformist and reactionary. As Jaffrelot argues[19], Roy laid the groundwork for later organizations like Arya Samaj in forming Hindus as a community as well as a nationalism rooted in tradition.

This is the background in which European modernity was engaged with and influenced the formation of Indian nationalism. These are the historical and ideological circumstances preceding Gandhi and Savarkar.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: — escaping colonial epistemology.

One of the difficulties in covering Gandhi’s work is the sheer volume and versatility of his writings. Gandhi was not keen on attempting a systematic and logical exposition to his ideas. As he remarked in a conversation, his language was “aphoristic”, imprecise and subject to multiple interpretations[20]. Hind Swaraj, written in 1909, is an exception to this. Even though it was written before Gandhi’s return to India, it continued to represent core ideas which Gandhi practiced and reiterated throughout his life.

Hind Swaraj cannot be and should not be treated as a mere philosophical text. As with most of Gandhi’s work, it was inevitably tied to and influenced by his larger political project. The text is framed as a conversation between the “editor” and the “reader”. It is written in the immediate aftermath of Gandhi’s encounter with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his fellow revolutionaries at India House in 1909. Inspired by Savarkar’s ideology, a 26-year-old Madan Lal Dhingra had assassinated an official of the British Indian government. Reacting to this event in London, Gandhi remarked: -

“Every Indian should reflect thoughtfully on this murder. It has done India much harm; the deputation’s efforts have also received a setback. But that need not be taken into consideration. It is the ultimate result that we must think of. Mr. Dhingra’s defence is inadmissible. In my view, he has acted like a coward. All the same, one can only pity the man. He was egged on to do this act by ill-digested reading of worthless writings. His defence of himself, too, appears to have been learnt by rote. It is those who incited him to this that deserve to be punished.”[21]

In London, Gandhi and Savarkar engaged in spirited conversations concerning the nature of Gita, the value of revolutionary violence and the use of scriptures[22]. The extracts below are indicative of the sort of conversations they might have had: -

“READER: At first, we will assassinate a few Englishmen and strike terror; then, a few men who will have been armed will fight openly. We may have to lose a quarter of a million men, but we will regain our land. We will undertake guerrilla warfare and defeat the English.

EDITOR: Do you not tremble to think of freeing India by assassination? What we need to do is to kill ourselves. It is a cowardly thought, that of killing others. Whom do you suppose to free by assassination? The millions of India do not desire it. Those who are intoxicated by the wretched modern civilisation think these things. Those who will rise to power by murder will certainly not make the nation happy. Those who believe that India has gained by Dhingra’s act and such other acts in India make a serious mistake.”[23]

This is not to indicate that the entirety of Hind Swaraj was inspired by Gandhi’s conversation with Savarkar. Nevertheless, Savarkar certainly represented one of the many ideas Gandhi strongly critiqued in the book, namely revolutionary violence. What is particularly striking in the dialogue is Gandhi’s implication that revolutionary violence is inevitably tied to an intoxication with modern civilization. This argument, as I’ll argue in the next section, correctly identifies the root of Savarkar’s nationalism. Gandhi’s text can be read as an attempt to formulate an alternative form of nationalism, one that not only abhors violence but also opposes modern civilization.

Gandhi’s text inquiries into the question of the reason for subjugation of India by the British. It was not the modern civilization of the British, Gandhi argues, but the moral failing of Indians which started and continued coloniality. It was the Indians who co-operated with the British for selfish reasons that led to India’s subjugation[24]. Gandhi laments that Indians sought self-government while retaining English structures of government and the ideals of Mills and Spencer. Such an arrangement, according to Gandhi, would result in “English rule without the English man”[25].

What is it about the English that Gandhi considers to be so problematic? Modern European civilization. Gandhi acknowledges the intoxicating nature of modern civilization. It was true that materially the people of England lived in better-built houses and acquired more wealth by ploughing their land with steam engines. The presumably dystopian nightmare envisioned by Gandhi is one where people would be able to have clothing, motorcar, food and newspaper through the mere pressing of a button. Machinery would be able to perform virtually all tasks. Modern civilizations’ detrimental effects were obvious to Gandhi in the form that it existed in the 19th century. The condition of workers was lamentable. Crucially, “men were enslaved by temptation of money and of the luxuries that money can buy”[26]. Modern civilization seeks to improve bodily comfort while paying no heed to morality.

Excessive consumption was the primary urge that was induced by and continued the existence of modern civilization. The scientific temperament was the product of the restless mind, which given the conditions of industrial civilization, engaged in unbridled indulgences. This is not to say that Gandhi does not acknowledge the existence of regressive practices like child marriage in ancient civilization. Gandhi considers such practices to be “defects” rather than the norm. On the other hand, the consumption instinct in fact defined modern industrial civilization. Gandhi did not seek to reform civilization. He considered machinery to be “evil” that would ultimately have to go[27].

Gandhi’s opposition to the British, thus, cannot simply be categorized as anti-imperialism. His criticism was based on the fundamental ideals upon which the Empire, as well as many European countries, stood. Gandhi’s critique here can be contrasted with the ideals of many his fellow nationalists. As Sudipta Kaviraj has argued, India’s founding fathers were enchanted with the idea of a centralizing state[28] . Jawaharlal Nehru, for instance, considered it to be a mere a fact that any country that sought political and economic independence must also be highly industrialized. One cannot achieve high standards of living or eradicate poverty without the aid of modern technology[29].

For Gandhi, industrialization meant the exploitation of villages through competition. Responding to Nehru, Gandhi says: -

“Pandit Nehru wants industrialization because he thinks that, if it is socialized, it would be free from the evils of capitalism. My own view is that evils are inherent in industrialism, and no amount of socialization can eradicate them.”[30]

Gandhi’s critique of industrialization must not be conflated with the Marxian approach. A fundamental way in which Gandhi differs from Marx is his refusal to work within western epistemological frameworks. Marx operated within the framework of European Enlightenment. The socialism that Marx theorized along with his critique of capitalism were explicitly intended to be “scientific” based on rational prepositions[31]. At best, Marx is ambivalent about machinery and industrial society. While critiquing technology for alienation, he also recognizes its revolutionary power[32]. The problem, for Marx, is a particular institution i.e. capitalism. Many Marxists continue to advocate for accelerating the liberatory forces of industrialization[33].

Gandhi is either critical or indifferent to institutions. He refuses to accept that an effective combination of institutional actors, motivated by common self-interests will be able to act and steer representative institutions in a way that benefits the collective. In this scenario, personal self-interests are often incentivized instead of social morality. Lawyers, for instance, are enjoined to find arguments to support the client’s position. As a rule, lawyers advance quarrels to enrich themselves instead of repressing them[34]. Gandhi is similarly dismissive of the idea of representative democracy without the existence of communal morality. In his words: -

“The power to control national life through national representatives is called political power. Representatives will become unnecessary if the national life becomes so perfect as to be self-controlled. It will then be a state of enlightened anarchy in which each person will. become his own ruler. He will conduct himself in such a way that his behaviour will not hamper the well-being of his neighbours. In an ideal State there will be no political institution and therefore no political power”[35]

The personal and the political, for Gandhi, were inseparable in a deeper sense than the phrase implies. It is in this vein that Gandhi reconciles his intense religiosity with his public programs and ideas. Gandhi’s public affirmation of religion was under intense scrutiny even during his lifetime. More recently, the Marxist historian Perry Anderson, has accused Gandhi of converting the “studiously secular” politics of the early Congress with a mass politics of religion utilizing theology, symbology and mythology[36] . This analysis unfortunately is ignorant of the realities of mass politics in India. Gandhi’s use of religion was neither unique nor oppositional. Communal morality neither exists on its own nor is it intentionally constructed through a strategy. It functions through archetypes. Ethics and politics had to be intertwined. Thus, it was the “method alone” that interested Gandhi. It did not matter whether the achievement of the goal was possible through unethical i.e. violent means. It was more important to utilize truth and non-violence as an agency to achieve the wishes of the people than it was to achieve mere independence from imperial rule[37].

While utilizing religion, Gandhi was also reacting to claims of the British that India was not one nation before their arrival. While it is true that nationalism did not exist in the modern sense of the word, it is not the case that there was no continuity, interaction or sense of unity among the diverse regions of India at all. Citing the examples of Shankara’s Char Dham and the belief in sacred geography (worship of the river Ganges), Gandhi argues that a feeling of nationality did exist among the various regions of India[38]. This is one of the rare point of convergences between Gandhi and Savarkar, as we shall see. Gandhi recognized that ethical politics had to resort to the language of ethics universally understood by the masses i.e. religion. This nationalism did not have to be exclusionary as Gandhi argued for the universality of ethics among all religions. The defence of Indian religions was also in response to the caricatures that we’ve explored.

Gandhi’s break with modernity became complete through his epistemological rejection. The political scientist Partha Chatterjee[39] defines the colonial thematic as an essentialist framework of knowledge premised upon objectivity, reason and post-Enlightenment western scientific thought. Gandhi’s reading of religious texts was premised upon an explicit rejection of historicism. Texts like the Gita, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana represented poetic truths, not historical or theoretical truths. How does one extract the “poetic truth”?

“Who is the best interpreter? Not learned men surely. Leaming there must be. But religion does not live by it. It lives in the experiences of its saints and seers, in their lives and sayings. When all the most learned commentators of the scriptures are utterly forgotten, the accumulated experience of the sages and. saints will abide and be an inspiration for ages to come.”[40]

It is in this vein that Gandhi blamed the earthquakes in Bihar as a chastisement for the sin of untouchability. Savarkar considered such statements to be a “misfortune” for India. In his usual sardonic tone, he remarked “I still wait to hear what his inner voice will tell us about why Quetta was rocked by an earthquake!”[41]. Gandhi admitted that his belief was “instinctive” and thus unprovable. However, it would be “untruthful and cowardly” of him to not proclaim such beliefs owing to fear of ridicule. Rational knowledge is limited while faith provides a unified framework. Even if beliefs are “ill-founded”, they can still be beneficial for the believers by motivating them towards the cure of the disease of untouchability[42]. Repeatedly, Gandhi refuses to engage in historicism or resort to science as an explanation or justification for his beliefs. This marks a rare break from epistemological domination of European thought that nationalists of his time accepted.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar: — A modern nationalist

V.D. Savarkar demonstrated his love for the nation from a very early age. Unlike Gandhi, whose ideas often resist historicization, it is almost impossible to properly understand Savarkar’s ideas without some understanding of his personal history as well as the social milieu in which he lived. Savarkar was heavily influenced by the life and ideas of his personal hero, the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini. In 1904, he formed an anti-imperialist secret society called “Abhinav Bharat” (Young India), which was inspired from Mazzini’s Young Italy.

Savarkar, much like Gandhi, wrote prolifically. Yet, it is extremely difficult to provide an intellectual genealogy of his ideas. This is because Savarkar is notoriously vague in identifying influences. Despite his voracious reading, Savarkar rarely specified the individuals he was critiquing. Mazzini is perhaps the only thinker whose intellectual influence is explicit in almost all his major writings. Tilak also does exert enormous influence as an early proponent of Hindu nationalism. Savarkar’s method of writing is heavily affected by the circumstances in which he wrote. He was subject to surveillance from his early days as a revolutionary at India House. After his arrest in 1910, all his writings were written with limited source materials, often extracted from memory. Continued surveillance after his restricted release in 1924 meant that Savarkar often resorted to pseudonyms and had to subtly disguise his true political motives. Vinayak Chaturvedi points out the similar conditions under which both Antonio Gramsci and Savarkar wrote their major works. Just as Gramsci’s writings had to be contextualized to be properly understood, Savarkar’s writings will also have to be approached in the same vein[43] .

In his introduction to the Marathi translation of Mazzini’s writings, Savarkar explained that he sought to build upon scientific forms of knowledge based on “detailed experiments” so that they could be “universally proven and accepted”. Mazzini’s writings were an example of “universally accepted principles” which were true for all places across time periods[44] . Mazzini’s work, for Savarkar, showed that religion and politics were synonymous. Politics is to be considered as divine duty. Not only was the Italian revolution necessary, but it was also a “holy war of independence”. Revolutions were virtuous. Savarkar also admires the anti-imperialist strand in Mazzini’s work as it was essential for human beings to be free to achieve progress[45].

Savarkar developed his ideology through history. By his own admission, he was not particularly interested in “chaotic mass of details”. The role of a historian was to portray the “feelings, motives, emotions and actions of the actors themselves whose deed he aims to relate”[46]. It is only when the historian puts herself in the shoes of the individuals being written about that history can be said to be complete. It is in this vein that he re-imagined the 1857 “rebellion” as the First war of independence[47]. It is one of his few books where Savarkar does refer to sources, which he accessed from the British archive. In his introduction, Savarkar opined that 1857 was relegated to the “realms of history”. “English historians” and their “Indian sycophants” have been “deceptive” by ignoring Mazzinian revolutionary spirit behind the 1857 war[48]. Though Savarkar was only able to primarily consult English sources, he read against the grain quite astutely to present an evocative alternative narrative.

While admitting that there was communal enmity in the past among Hindus and Muslims, the 1857 war of independence was an instance of the two communities coming together to fight against the British. Writing poetically about Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah, Savarkar compared his heroism to that of Mazzini. Hindus and Muslims were both “children of the same mother”. Both belonged to the soil of Hindustan[49]. Savarkar does not make any extensive argument for unity between Hindus and Muslims in his later texts. Nevertheless, the germination of his later ideas can be found in this text. The poetic flair evidenced throughout the prose of this book only becomes enhanced in future. Savarkar does not merely defend the rebellion, he romanticizes gruesome violence. The extract below serves as a testament to both his rhetorical style and glorification of violence: -

“As soon as they entered, they stabbed right and left and killed about one hundred and fifty English women and children! The room was a lake of blood with pieces of human flesh swimming in it. When they went in, the butchers walked on the ground; but when they came out, they had to wade through blood. The night was wailing with the screams of the half-dead, the deep groans of the dying, and the piteous cries of a few children who escaped on account of their size in the general massacre. About dawn, the unfortunate creatures were dragged out of Bibigarh prison and pushed into a neighbouring well. A couple of children, so long crushed under the weight of the dead bodies, got out near the well and began running away. A blow threw them also dead on the heap of the dead. Men drank water so long from the well, but the well now drank human blood. As the English had thrown to the skies the screams of brown women and children at Fatehpur, so, the Pandays threw the screams and the corpses of white women and children into the deep down! The account between the two races, extending over a hundred years, was thus being settled! Even the Bay of Bengal might, in ages, be filled up; but the yawning well of Cawnpore — never!”[50]

A defence of violence in a conflict between two armed opponents is different from a celebration and glorification of violence as revenge against unarmed women and children. As he writes “Revolt, bloodshed and revenge have often been instruments created by nature to root out injustice and introduce an era of justice.”[51] The sword of the oppressed was holy. It was the British who were to be blamed for the brutality. In his words: -

“At Meerut, the Indians no doubt killed the alien English, but it was not done savagely enough. They simply cut off their heads with a blow of the sword.”[52]

Savarkar’s views on violence remained constant throughout his life. During his revolutionary years, violence was not merely a matter of faith but also a matter of practice. This is evidenced through assassins who were inspired by him to murder agents of the British government.

During his years in prison, Gandhi made an alliance with some of the Muslim leaders on the question of non-cooperation and Khilafat. Savarkar’s turn towards anti-Muslim politics is often blamed on his terrible experiences in the prisons with Muslim evangelist prisoners[53]. This is the narrative Savarkar’s own memoir seems to support. However, Savarkar was particularly prone to exaggeration in his personal narrative. A belief based on few bad encounters can be remedied by a few good encounters. Savarkar’s position is much more coherent and consistent. In a reference to the Khilafat in one of his mercy petitions, Savarkar argues that he’s much more concerned with “the fanatic hordes of Asia who had been the curse of India” than with the British. [54] Notwithstanding the strategic nature of the petition, this sentiment seems to be sincere. Almost a year after writing this petition, Savarkar writes his pamphlet “Essentials of Hindutva” conceptualizing a radical Hindu nationalism[55].

Savarkar’s “Hindutva” is not a defence of Hinduism in the traditional sense. At times, it is almost the opposite. This is not to say that Savarkar was not responding to or did not mind the caricatures of Hinduism prevalent among the orientalists. Like Roy, Savarkar was fascinated with modernity. While Roy sought to modernize Hinduism through a discourse of theology, Savarkar couldn’t care less about it. An understandably contentious relationship existed between the Hindu orthodoxy and Savarkar. He acknowledged that caste system was sanctioned by scriptures. It was idiocy to follow fossilized scriptures. Scriptures, for Savarkar, were self-contradictory creation of human beings which are specific to a particular context. Thus, “they need to be discarded as and when society evolves, and new rules and laws that are relevant to contemporary times need to be codified.” [56]Scriptures must not retard progress towards modernity in scientific terms. Savarkar did not stop here. He accused the Sanatanis of arrogance. The Hindu orthodoxy’s scriptural defence of caste system frustrated him. Citing a verse from the Bhavishyapurana which prohibited speaking in foreign languages, Savarkar argued that the Sanatanis had already broken their vows by speaking the English language[57]. Savarkar critiqued cow worship in Hinduism as the orthodoxy “filled their cupped palms with cow urine and sprinkled it all over a temple but if a pure and wise previous untouchable like Dr. Ambedkar were to give them Ganga water, let alone drinking it, if it were even sprinkled on them, they believe they have been polluted.” It was ridiculous to worship the cow due to it being associated with divinity textually as the boar was also mentioned as an incarnation of Vishnu. Shouldn’t there be pig protection societies then, Savarkar mocked[58].

Savarkar’s Hindutva was neither conservative nor religious. This is not to say he was completely divorced from the debates happening around the religion of Hinduism. As we have seen, he inserted himself in the debates on caste in Hinduism. During his years of restricted release at the district of Ratnagiri, Savarkar organized multiple programs against untouchability while also inaugurating a Patit Pavan temple for the untouchables[59]. Monier Monier-Williams, challenging earlier British scholarship, argued that Orientalist scholarship should promote the Christian religion[60]. For Monier-Williams, Hinduism was difficult to define as it touched on almost every religious and philosophical ideas available. Thus, there was no “succinct designation” for the Hindus. Emphasizing on this problem, Monier-Williams rhetorically asked[61]:- “If then, such all-comprehensive breadth and diversity are essential features of Hinduism, is it possible to give a concise description of it which shall be intelligible and satisfactory?”.

For the creation of a common group, one needs a common identity. In First Indian war of Independence, Savarkar sought to forge the common Indian identity by appealing to history. Now, he utilized history to forge the Hindu community. Hinduism was an imprecise “ism” which only captured “spiritual or religion dogma”. Hinduism’s reduction to a dogma prevented it from being inclusive of Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. This would be a sacrilege hurting the feelings of non-Vedic Hindus[62]. As he wrote “All this bitterness is mostly due to the wrong use of the word, Hinduism, to denote the religion of the majority only. Either the word should be restored to its proper significance to denote the religions of all Hindus or if you fail to do that it should be dropped altogether”[63].

Tracing the epistemology of the word “Hindu”, Savarkar shows that it came from the word “Sindhu” which later became “Hindu” in foreign languages. For someone to be a Hindu, he had to accept India as his holy-land(punyabhumi), fatherland(pitrubhumi) and motherland(matrubhumi). This allowed Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists to be included while Christian, Muslims and Jews were excluded. While these “non-Hindus” had India as their fatherland and motherland, their holy land i.e. the land of their prophets were outside. The ambiguity in this definition was recognized by Savarkar when he admitted that Christians were a “civil minority” with no “extra-territorial designs” while the Parsis are indistinguishable from Hindus while being “gratefully loyal” to the nation[64]. It was only the Muslims, then, whose loyalty was suspect.

Even among the Muslims, he claimed the “Bohras” and the “Khojas” as “ours”. For Savarkar, such “patriotic Bohras and Christians” qualified to be called “Hindu”[65] . He celebrates Dara Shukoh as evidence of the “moral victory” of Akbar over Aurangzeb. What Savarkar could not tolerate was perceived dual loyalty. He interpreted the Khilafat movement as evidence of the dual loyalty inherent among Muslims. Hindutva, in essence, is an ideology premised upon the search for the history of violence[66] and the propagation of political monogamy, as Bakhle has argued. Muslims were scorned lovers who had betrayed this monogamy.

The Hindu nation, in Savarkar’s telling, was born when Ram conquered Ceylon and brought the entire nation from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean under his imperial throne. It did not matter to Savarkar whether Ram was the incarnation of a deity or a mortal warrior. What mattered was that he was the “most illustrious representative monarch” of the Hindu race. Savarkar portrayed both Hindu deities and historical Hindu monarchs as mythical lovers of the nation[67]. In the words of the historian Janaki Bakhle “Savarkar secularized a pantheon of Hindu religious leaders. In so doing he did not generate a sterilely secular nationalism. Indeed, he did the opposite, enchanting a secular nationalism by placing a mythic community into a magical land.”[68]

Savarkar, while arguing against caste, emphasized on the commonality of Hindu race and blood. The “whole Hindu race” could feel the “blood of a Shivaji” in their veins[69]. Savarkar’s defence of inter-caste marriage was intertwined with his views on race. In a letter to his brother, he writes: -

“Indeed, we can no longer be blind to the fact that we care more for the good breeding of cattle and fowls than for the Eugenics of man. Centuries of child marriages and marriages by proxies! Centuries of love banished from its legitimate sphere of influence to attract and develop elements that tend to the betterment of body and mind and soul; and the inevitable result is a race puny, debilitated, all vigour and manhood sapped out of it. Thousand things have wrought this — and the marriage customs that prevail in us are one of the few important factors contributing to it. Authorities should come in to sanctify but not to silence love altogether”[70]

Savarkar’s use of the words “race puny” and “eugenics of man” reflected the influence of positivist philosophy that had engulfed the nations of Europe. The positivists sought to interpret and understand all phenomenon to the scientific method. Positivism positions itself against social constructionism. Thus, the importance of genetics is prioritized. Charles Darwin’s discovery of the theory of evolution played a crucial role in the development of positivism. Herbert Spencer, a sociologist and utilitarian, expanded Darwin’s formulation of the “survival of the fittest” to human society, in what comes to be known as social Darwinism. Savarkar was considerably influenced by the works of Mills and Spencer[71]. This is evident through Savarkar’s views on cow worship, which he ascribes to utility. Any “cow protection” society, therefore, must be based solely on “scientific and economic”, not religious superstitions[72] . Eugenics became a crucial part of the Nazi regime, which sought to maintain social harmony by eliminating the dysgenic elements of society including the Jews, the disabled and the mentally ill[73]

Giovanni Gentile, the philosopher who helped formulate the doctrine of Fascism along with Benito Mussolini, considered history to be ever-present, alive and in the souls of Italians[74]. Fascism, as Mussolini proclaimed, was the creation of the myth of the nation along and the subordination of everything else[75]. The spiritualization of the nation was not just instrumental for the fascists, it was essential. Fascism, at its core, is a totalitarian system of thought. It demands not only your political support but also your spiritual allegiance.

Hindu nationalism as a movement and an ideology was formulated when fascism was at its peak historically. How did Savarkar react to fascism? He did not mind. He defended the idea of a pan-German state. In his words[76]:-

“Now that Germany is strong why should she not strike to unite all Germans and consolidate them into a Pan-German state and realise the political dream which generations of German people cherished.”

A nation is not formed merely due to the acquisition of territory. It is only “cultural, racial or historical affinities” that forms the basis of a homogenous “organic national being”[77]. Savarkar’s defence of the Nazi policy of expansion was reproduced by the official Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter[78]. The nation belonged to the majority while the German Jews formed a minority. Thus, the Jews represented the communal element while the Germans represented the national movement. Indian Muslims, just like their Jewish counterparts in Germany, identified more with fellow Muslims outside the nation than their fellow citizens. If Hindus grew stronger, then the Muslims will have to play the role of the German-Jews. After Savarkar’s address to his party, the Hindu Mahasabha, his close companion Bhai Parmanand urged the audience to make his address the “Mein Kampf” and make Savarkar their “fuhrer”[79].

Another leader of Savarkar’s party, B.S. Moonje, met Mussolini and was impressed with Fascist Italy. In his diary, Moonje writes[80]:-

“The idea of fascism vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst people. India and particularly Hindu India need some such Institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus.”

This is not to say that Savarkar was a fascist. He had no theory of the state and did not place his Hindu nationalism in an anti-democratic milieu. The fascist elements that do appear in his deification of the nation are corollary of his intoxication with modernity. While Gandhi sought to ethicize politics through the introduction of religion, Savarkar sought to politicize religion for the formation of a homogenous community and territory. Roy, unlike Savarkar, attempted to form the Hindu community through the insertion of modernity in the archetypal Hindu idiom. Savarkar, on the other hand, not only embraced but also romanticized European modernist construction of the nation through his poetic prose.

Conclusion

The afterlife of Savarkar and Gandhi’s ideology have been fascinating. Savarkar’s alleged involvement in the conspiracy of Gandhi’s assassination ensured that he remained a marginal figure in Indian politics for the remainder of his life. On the other hand, Gandhi’s omnipresence as a symbol can be contrasted with the state’s apathy to the essentials of his ideals. Postcolonial India wholeheartedly adopted industrialization and the centralized state, a mode in which Gandhi’s ideas simply could not function. Savarkar, on the other hand, never escaped the colonial thematic. His Hindu nation could exist and needed modernity to thrive. This is not to say that it is the only form of the nation that thrives in centralized, modern nation-state. However, the conditions of the modern state do make it easier for certain ideas to flourish as opposed to others. Even though Gandhi and Savarkar operated and in fact responded to similar historical trends, the approach they took is reflective of the continuing divide between the colonial thematic and epistemological independence.

Notes

[1] Grant, Charles. Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain: Particularly with Respect to Morals; and on the Means of Improving It. of Cambridge Library Collection — Perspectives from the Royal Asiatic Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

[2] Ibid., p. 58

[3] Cohn, Bernard S. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton University Press, 1996.

[4] Ibid, p. 26

[5] Veer, Peter van der. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton University Press, 2001.

[6] Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

[7] Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay. 1935. Speeches by Lord Macaulay, with His Minute on Indian Education. Edited by G. M. Young. London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford.

[8] Van der Veer, p. 41

[9] Viswanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest : Literary Study and British Rule in India. New York :Columbia University Press, 1989

[10] https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1833/jul/10/east-india-companys-charter

[11] Mani, Lata. 1998. Contentious Traditions : The Debate on Sati in Colonial India. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[12] Dirks, Nicholas B. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press, 2001. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7rq9d.

[13] Altman, Michael J. Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American representations of India, 1721–1893. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

[14] Mani, Lata. “Production of an Official Discourse on ‘Sati’ in Early Nineteenth Century Bengal.” Economic and Political Weekly 21, no. 17 (1986): WS32–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4375595.

[15] Collet, Sophia Dobson, ed. 1914. The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy. 2d ed.

[16] Mani, Lata. “Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India.” Cultural Critique, no. 7 (1987): 119–56. https://doi.org/10.2307/1354153.

[17] Majumdar, Jatindra Kumar. 1983. Raja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements in India : A Selection from Records, 1775–1845. Calcutta: Brahmo Mission Press.

[18] Collett, p. 73–82

[19] Jaffrelot, Christophe, ed. Hindu Nationalism: A Reader. Princeton University Press, 2007. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7s415.

[20] Gandhi, Mahatma. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi(CWMG), Vol. 53. New Delhi :Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 2000–2001.

[21] Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 9, p. 427–428

[22] Chaturvedi, Vinayak. Hindutva and violence: V. D. Savarkar and the politics of history. Albany: SUNY Press, 2023.

[23] Gandhi, Mahatma. Hind Swaraj. New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1985.

[24] Ibid, p. 35

[25] Ibid, p. 27

[26] Ibid, p. 33

[27] Ibid, p. 83

[28] Kaviraj, Sudipta. “On the Enchantment of the State : Indian Thought on the Role of the State in the Narrative of Modernity.” European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie / Europäisches Archiv Für Soziologie 46, no. 2 (2005): 263–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23999580.

[29] Nehru, Jawaharlal. The discovery of India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

[30] Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 73, p. 20–30

[31] Engels, Friedrich. Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. United Kingdom: C.H. Kerr, 1907.

[32] Marx, Karl. Das Kapital, a Critique of Political Economy. Chicago :H. Regnery, 1959

[33] Deleuze, Gilles, and Eugene W. Holland. 1999. Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus : Introduction to Schizoanalysis. London: Routledge.

[34] Gandhi, p. 49–50

[35] Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 68, p.265

[36] Anderson, Perry. 2013. The Indian Ideology. London: Verso.

[37] Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 43, p. 41

[38] Gandhi, p. 43–44

[39] Chatterjee, Partha. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. Germany: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

[40] Ibid, p. 95

[41] Sampath, Vikram. Savarkar : Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924. Gurgaon, Haryana, India: Penguin/Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2019.

[42] Chatterjee, p. 97

[43] Chaturvedi, p. 26

[44] Ibid, p. 59

[45] Ibid, p. 59–61

[46] Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. Hindu-pad-padashahi: Or the review of the Hindu Empire of Maharashtra. New Delhi: Bharti Sahitya Sadan, 1971.

[47] Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. The Indian War of Independence 1857. Delhi: Abhishek Publications, 2007.

[48] Ibid, p. 13–14

[49] Ibid, p. 70

[50] Ibid, p. 233

[51] Ibid, p. 209

[52] Ibid, p. 110

[53] Sampath, p. 390–392

[54] Ibid, p. 536–537

[55] Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. Essentials of Hindutva. India: Global Vision Publishing House, 2021.

[56] Sampath, p.

[57] Bakhle, Janaki. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva. United States: Princeton University Press, 2024.

[58] Bakhle, p. 214

[59] Sampath, Vikram. Savarkar (Part 2): A Contested Legacy, 1924–1966. India: Penguin Random House India Private Limited, 2021.

[60] Thomas, Terence. The British: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices 1800–1986. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 2006.

[61] Monier-Williams, Monier. Hinduism. United Kingdom: Society for promoting Christian knowledge, 1880.

[62] Savarkar, p. 51–52

[63] Ibid.

[64] Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. Hindu rashtra darshan: A collection of the presidential speeches delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform. Bombay: Khare, 1949.

[65] Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 49

[66] Kapila, Shruti. 2021. Violent Fraternity : Indian Political Thought in the Global Age. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

[67] The following five paragraphs also appear in an article in the online magazine Quillette. Satpathy, Anwesh. “Swastikas of Both Sorts: Hindu Nationalism’s Fascist Nostalgia.” Quillette, May 3, 2024. https://quillette.com/2024/04/30/swastikas-of-both-sorts-hindu-nationalism-india/.

[68] Bakhle, p. 368

[69] Ibid, p. 211

[70] Savarkar, Veer. Six glorious epochs of Indian history. S.l.: PRABHAT PRAKASHAN, 2020.

[71] Wolf, Siegfried O.. “Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s ‘strategic agnosticism’: A compilation of his socio-political philosophy and worldview.” Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics. Working paper no. 51, Jan. 2010.

[72] Sampath, p. 500

[73] Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power. London: Penguin. 2012

[74] Gentile, Giovanni. Origins and Doctrine of Fascism: With Selections from Other Works. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 2017.

[75] Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta. 2000. Fascist Spectacle : The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.33189.

[76] Bhatt, Chetan. 2020. Hindu Nationalism : Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003085553.

[77] Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 44

[78] Sampath, p. 260

[79] Bhagavan, Manu. “Princely States and the Hindu Imaginary: Exploring the Cartography of Hindu Nationalism in Colonial India.” The Journal of Asian Studies 67, no. 3 (2008): 881–915. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20203428.

[80] Casolari, Marzia. 2020. In the Shadow of the Swastika : The Relationships between Indian Radical Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

The advent of large language models (LLMs) in recent years like Chat GPT and Gemini has led to increased discussion among the public as well as the academia on the possibilities and dangers that AI holds in transforming normal everyday life as we know it. The immediate response by many universities was to revert to pen and paper to avoid the use of AI in assignments. Notwithstanding the impermanency of such a “solution”, this event highlights the fact that there is a general recognition among people of the transformative, perhaps even destructive, potentials of LLMs specifically and Artificial intelligence generally. All remaining doubts on the transformative potentials were dispelled when the notoriously apathetic entertainment industry i.e. Hollywood came to streets against perceived misuse of generative AI . Conversations regarding the potential existential risks of AI as well as the difficulty of aligning AI with human values have gained a new lease. In this article, I trace the trajectory of these ideas through the works of various thinkers, including the philosopher Nick Bostrom and the computer scientist Eliezer Yudkowsky, and argue that the existing concerns of existential risks of A.I is valid but severely limited by the framework of “longtermism”.

Before tracing the roots of the debates concerning existential risks, it is helpful to look at the specifics of the arguments concerning the AI alignment problem. To illustrate the need for AI ethics, Bostrom and Yudkowsky present a scenario of a bank using machine learning algorithm to decide mortgage application approval. It is found later that the approval rate for blacks have been steadily dropping. One would assume that A.I. would be more transparent and thus prejudicial in its approval. Yet, the fact remains that Blacks are denied mortgages due to poor credit history. While a human being may sometimes consider the differing socio-economic circumstances among races while approving applications, a machine would simply look at the statistics of credit history. An algorithm intended to replace human judgements must necessarily inherit certain social requirements. For instance, the legal system functions through predictability exemplified by precedence. It is based on precedence that judge reasons for judgements and lawyers justify their case. For A.I. to function in the legal environment, it must acquire some form of predictability. Similarly, Bostrom highlight transparency, responsibility, auditability and incorruptibility as criteria to be considered while creating algorithm to replace human judgements.

The eventual goal of A.I. companies like Open-AI is to create Artificial General Intelligence. While the A.I. that we have today has already achieved superiority in multiple fields compared to human beings, it is still domain specific. Deep Blue, for instance, can defeat our best players in chess but it cannot drive a car. AGI will not be predictable for human beings. Deep Blue was not programmed to perform a specific chess move. The possible chess moves are extremely difficult to quantify. Moreover, had the programmers provided the machine with possible good moves then the machine would not have been able to make stronger chess moves than its creators. The programmers sacrificed the predictability of local, proximate outcomes for the sake of the larger ultimate outcome of winning. Creating an A.I. which would act in an ethical manner conducive to human well-being would mean an A.I. that would think in the same manner as human beings about ethics under varying circumstances. It is important here to mention that human values are not a monolith. Cultures across the world not only disagree on ethics but often have oppositional ideas on the same topics. An argument can still be made that a moral A.I. is possible. A pacifist, for instance, sincerely believes in non-violence. Should the pacifist be given an option of acquiring the ability to murder people without hesitation through the consumption of a pill, the pacifist would still refuse owing to his present sincere belief in non-violence.

Omohundro argues that a sufficiently advanced AI will exhibit certain basic “drives” which can be designed to ensure a positive future for humanity . Such a system, Omohundro argues, will be rational as they are goal directed. AGI will not be confined to one goal i.e. playing chess. We may want an A.I. that will be able to play both chess and checkers. Thus, the system must find a pathway to properly master both the games equally. To navigate through conflicting goals, they will have to be assigned real-valued weights or “utility function”. The uncertain outcome can be evaluated by finding out its expected utility. For the system to maximize expected utilities, they will have to be rational economic agents. Rational agents, however, are not necessarily moral agents. These basic AI drives do not mean AGI will be moral. It merely provides us with expected space which we can use to attempt the induction of ethics. The fact that AGI, by its very definition, will have to operate in at least some unpredictable manner makes it more difficult to sustain morality. This is particularly concerning given that Omohundro’s basic drives includes “self-improvement”, which cannot be controlled by human beings. It is possible that under situations of emergency, AI will not hesitate to sacrifice the lives of few to save the many being a rational, utilitarian agent.

There is no good reason to suspect that ASI will have the same morality or even a “better” form of morality than human beings. Consider the scenario where we encounter an extremely bright individual with visible extraordinary intelligence. The said individual, in this scenario, spends the whole day counting blades of grass or recounting pi to a million digits. To most of us, this would strike as bizarre. This is because we have some form of shared idea over what counts as interesting or “boring” or valuable. We have evolved in a selective environment. An advanced non-human being in a different environment may indulge in tasks that we consider to be “boring”. As Bostrom writes: — “Intelligence and final goals are orthogonal axes along which possible agents can freely vary. In other words, more or less any level of intelligence could in principle be combined with more or less any final goal.” Much of the research concerning AI ethics is similarly fraught with anthropomorphising.

AI also has thought-speed advantage. This means that AI thinks millions of times faster than us. Should we desire to pull off the plug of a dangerous AI, it will still have ample of time to figure a way out as it would be extremely unlikely to outsmart such a system. As Eliezer Yudkowsky writes :- “the AI runs on a different timescale than you do; by the time your neurons finish thinking the words ‘I should do something’ you have already lost.”

It is extremely difficult to identify all possible constraints and values required to build ASI for it to have an amicable attitude towards human beings, instead of being hostile. Moreover, these problems will have to be solved before creating the first AGI or ASI. The fact that we are yet to solve these problems and are instead engaging in a competition to create AGI is troubling. All these circumstances give credence to the argument of AI being an existential risk. Yet, it is also important to inquire into the specific ethics or philosophies motivating those who are concerned about AI ethics.

Bostrom’s interest in existential risks precedes his identification of AI as an existential threat. According to Bostrom, “a non-existential disaster causing the breakdown of global civilization is, from the perspective of humanity as a whole, a potentially recoverable setback: a giant massacre for man, a small misstep for mankind.” These long-term potential existential disasters are much more pressing than the problems that are occurring today. Bostrom argues that even if there is a potential 1% chance of creating the technological, transhumanist utopia that he envisions, then the “he expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth 100 billion times as much as a billion human lives.”

The long termism advocated by the likes of Bostrom does not mind sacrificing the autonomy of individuals today for the sake of potential individuals a hundred years from now. We live in a “semi-anarchic” vulnerable world where states do not have the capacity to implement proper surveillance to prevent potential attacks leading to “devastation of civilization”. As a solution to this, Bostrom recommends pre-emptive policing and state’s ability to monitor its citizens closely through a “high tech panopticon”. This proposal does sound like an archetypal dystopia. For Bostrom, however, it is only a matter of time before we achieve advanced technological development where nothing sort of global surveillance can stop the end of humanity. Bostrom’s concerns about existential risks are explicitly framed under utilitarianism. As he writes: — “For standard utilitarians, priority number one, two, three, and four should consequently be to reduce existential risk, where the fifth should be to colonize space as soon as we possibly can.”

Let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that the top tech companies of the world heed the requests of the likes of Yudkowsky and Bostrom to have a moratorium on AI development owing to reasonable existential risks and the alignment problem. What sort of ethics would be prioritized in this alternative scenario? Among the thinkers who have seriously argued for AI as an existential risk, Bostrom is preeminent. His voice is heard and taken seriously by tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Sam Altman. It is fair to assume then that the sort of ethics that AI would be made to align with under this scenario would reflect the utilitarian long termism of Bostrom. Should we be surprised if the so-called “ethical” AI then helps build a global surveillance system that Bostrom envisions? The problem with discussion around AI ethics is that it is only discussed on the terms that appeals to the select few in Silicon Valley. Therefore, AI will only align, if it ever does, with the values of the capitalist long-termism of the Silicon Valley, which is not even representative of the values of most Americans, much less the world. While AI’s risk to the future of humanity cannot be ignored, we must expand our discourse to other parts of the world. This will enrich our conversations on AI ethics by expanding our imagination to ways of being that are not centred around billionaires. It is only through an honest conversation of this manner that we can even hope to create an AI that is inclusive and somewhat representative of the values of the world.

In an extremely short span of time, evolutionary psychology has come to occupy the public imagination in a manner that perhaps only a few fields have. It’s not surprising that most of the psychology “hot takes” featuring in pop-culture magazines stem from poorly researched evolutionary psychology papers with extremely small sample size. As I was writing this article, the pop culture magazine “Insider” published an article explaining why we’re “hardwired” to become fascinated by true crime. The psychologist quoted in the article reasoned that our brains have an “innate” tendency to generate “fight or flight” response to “media reports” leading us to respond as if the adverse situations actually affect us[1]. This kind of reasoning, as we shall discuss later in this article, is typical in pop-evolutionary psychology.

However, my critique is not directed simply at popular manifestations of evolutionary psychology. I do think that many critics of evolutionary psychology often unfairly attack the entire field by citing specific instances. This approach is fatally flawed. It would be unfair to attack the field of evolutionary biology simply because many of its proponents were eugenicists in the early 20th century. Thus, while I will mention specifics, it’ll only be in the context of mainstream evolutionary psychology framework.

According to the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, the emergence of a scientific paradigm occurs when a group of scientists come to agree on foundational axioms that come to define the field itself. A paradigm is primarily, if not entirely, theoretical in nature. It provides “a map whose details are elucidated by mature scientific research”[2]. This map is essential as it helps scientists to navigate through the complexity of nature in a non-random manner. Here, I will be discussing the paradigm or the group of scientists who have come to virtually define the field of evolutionary psychology (EP). While there are multiple researchers whose work explores what EP aims to explore, they have either remained ambivalent or explicitly critical (ex- Jaak Paanksep) towards the foundational axioms of the field itself. These scientists are not included in EP paradigm.

Before we discuss the critique, it’s important to understand what the term actually entails based on the view of mainstream researchers on the field. In what follows, I will discuss the core tenets of evolutionary psychology through a purely descriptive lens.

What is Evolutionary Psychology?

The overwhelming majority of members in an ant nest tend to be sterile females incapable of reproduction. According to Darwin, natural selection favours those who are able to survive and continue the propagation of the species. Ants, on the other hand, are extremely altruistic and are willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the group. The existence of “neuter insects” like ants posited a “special difficulty” (as Darwin called it) to the theory of evolution[3]

In 1964, this problem was resolved by William D. Hamilton. A gene that causes an individual to behave in a self-sacrificing manner will lower its own chances of survival. However, if those self-sacrificing behaviours are directed towards saving close relatives, then the gene will be ensuring the survival of its own copies since the likelihood of your relatives carrying the same genes as you is extremely high. This, in short, is kin selection. A gene that reduces an individual’s direct reproductive success will evolve in an organism if the reproductive benefit (B) conferred by the gene to all of the individuals affected by it, multiplied by relatedness(r) {defined as the average relationship between the individual and the group sharing the genes} is greater than the cost(C) to the individual[4] [5]. Thus, Hamilton’s rule can be simplified quantitatively as:-

Br>C

Hamilton’s ideas were popularized most prominently through Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1976). More relevant to our discussion, however, is the work of E. O. Wilson. Inspired by Hamilton’s work, Wilson did exhaustive research on insect societies. In his first major work, Wilson hinted at the impressive similarities between “insect and vertebrate societies.”[6]

Soon enough, Wilson formed a general theory which attempted to determine the biological basis for social behaviour in non-insect, including human, societies. This was called sociobiology, whose realm of investigation encompassed even complex manmade cultural systems like those of ethical systems and religion. In Wilson’s own words[7]:-

“If the brain evolved by natural selection, even the capacities to select particular aesthetic judgments and religious beliefs must have arisen by the same mechanistic process. They are either direct adaptations to past environments in which the ancestral human populations evolved or at most constructions thrown up secondarily by deeper, less visible activities that were once adaptive in this stricter, biological sense.”

This was the earliest iteration of what formed as a foundational axiom for evolutionary psychology. Though Sociobiology was a precursor to EP, EP’s claims are far more expansive than that of socio-biology.

Evolutionary psychology does not claim that there is a selection for “behaviour”. Natural selection only selects “for mechanisms that produce behavior.”[8] Thomson’s Gazelles exhibit a behaviour known stotting i.e. they jump into the air in plain sight of predators. This is a way in which they signal their fitness, basically telling the predator that the predator would be wasting their time chasing as they’re too fit to be caught[9]. Stotting only manifests in the presence of predators. It isn’t learned but inherited. In other words, if gazelles were raised in isolation without having encountered a predator, they’d still express stotting when they come across a new predator. What is inherited is not stotting per say but the proximate mechanism which makes stotting possible under the appropriate environmental trigger (the encounter with the pray).

Similarly, in human beings, behaviour evolved as a result of proximate mechanism of the brain under adaptive conditions. Is our brain designed to produce behaviour that maximize our fitness and reproductive success in the current environment? Evolutionary psychologists answer no. We’d all be standing in line eager to donate our eggs and sperms to cryobanks if this was the case. Our behaviour, far from being adaptive, is actually maladaptive in the current environment. We get around the natural consequences of our behaviour easily through the use of contraception, for instance. This does not mean the trait itself is a maladaptive trait. Traits are considered to be adaptive if they enhanced the chance of survival, fitness and reproduction of our ancestors. Human societies have changed radically in an incredibly short span of time on an evolutionary scale. Due to this time lag, it’s necessary to determine a specific point or environment in the past to which our current behaviours are adapted to. This environment is referred to as the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptadness (EEA). It is defined as “composite of environmental properties of the most recent segment of a species’ evolution that encompasses the period during which its modern collection of adaptations assumed their present form.”[10] This particular environment is usually associated with the Pleistocene (hunter-gatherer) period.

Evolutionary psychologists believe that “the mind is organized into modules or mental organs, each with a specialized design that makes it an expert in one arena of interaction with the world. The modules’ basic logic is specified by our genetic program. Their operation was shaped by natural selection to solve the problems of the hunting and gathering life led by our ancestors in most of our evolutionary history.”[11] This view is contrasted with domain general where the mind is seen as being equipped with general abilities required to resolve every problem. EPs and most cognitive psychologists now subscribe to the domain specific/massive modularity view.

Broadly speaking, evolutionary psychologists also believe in a common and universal human nature[12]. Since our evolution is “completed”, psychological modules form “a single, universal panhuman design, stemming from our long enduring existence as hunter-gatherers.”[13]

I’ll discuss and critique some of these axioms and many important specific claims in succeeding sections.

Modularity

The idea of massive modularity is perhaps one of the strongest hypothesis that EP has produced. The best way to comprehend this idea is to imagine the mind as being constitutive of multiple specialized computers which interact with each other to solve problems. These modules are restricted i.e. domain-specific and do not develop due to socialization. They are built-in mechanisms which come equipped with innate knowledge about their own speciality. Though they do interact with other “modules”, they operate primarily within their own “set of procedures, formats, and representational primitives closely tailored to the demands of its target problems.”[14]

This is helpful as instinctual actions do not require the rather tedious process of learning. In fact, Tooby and Cosmides refer to these computational systems as “learning instincts”[15]. This argument is at its best when describing the evolution of the “language instinct” combined with Noam Chomsky’s idea of universal grammar. I will not elaborate here on the same as it lies outside the purview of our discussion but would strongly urge the reader to read Pinker’s “The Language Instinct” and Dennett’s response to Chomsky in “From Bacteria to Bach and Back”.

It is not the idea of module that’s controversial. Some form of modularity is accepted by most mainstream philosophers and psychologists, including EP’s critics. The debate is usually about the nature and extent of the module. Jerry Fodor provides an interesting alternative explanation of how the functioning of the mind can encompass both domain-general and domain-specific mechanisms, which I discuss below[16].

Consider two modular processors- M1 is specialized to think only about triangles (P1) while M2 is specialized to think only about squares (P2). When M1 encounters a triangle, it is activated and scans the representation of triangle with the hardwired representation of triangle that it’s automatically equipped with. M1 is only activated when it encounters a triangle, not a square. The same applies to M2. Now, there has to be a procedure prior to the activation of these modules that identifies the representation in order to assign them to the appropriate models. This would entail a mechanism that recognizes representation as a whole. The absence of such mechanism would entail that there are distinct separate mechanisms which assign P1 to some modules (M1) and P2 to others. How did these separate mechanisms come to be then? They must’ve come through another set of distinct mechanisms and so on. This leads to an infinite regress. Now, the alternative explanation i.e. there is a domain general mechanism which assigns P1 to some modules and P2 to others severely undermines the case for domain specificity while holding a better explanatory value.

Does the claim of massive modularity stand up to experimental scrutiny? It does not. For starters, EPs claim that the mind is organized in the form of “mental organs” with specialized function whose basic logic is specified by “our genetic program”[17]. If this claim is right, one would expect a proportionate increase in genes and the modules of the human brain as the brain develops new feature. These growing genes would help in the formation of new modules. This is not the case. There is no correlation between brain complexity and frequency of genes. In fact, house mice has roughly as much genes as humans[18]. Despite the fact that our brain system is more complex, there is greater genetic specification for sensory receptors than there is for brain system.

How do our complex brain circuits develop in the absence of a genetic program for specification[19]? The cell production in utero develops in the ventricular and the subventricular zone (SVZ). The ventricular zone develops cells that make up the oldest evolutionary parts of the brain which help in controlling motor coordination, emotion (the limbic system) etc. while the subventrical zone is where the parts that help in higher cognitive abilities i.e. the neocortex develops. The cells in SVZ meander through other cells to reach their destination in order to form connections with other cells. This process is uniform across individuals and can be described as having a clear genetic structure. However, this is only true for the major structures. The specialized cognitive structures develop in the adult to meet environmental demands by subtracting cells through cell death and competition. An adult brain has fewer cells than that of an infant[20]. This subtraction mainly occurs through a process of spontaneous internal neural firings and as a response to sensory inputs. In the absence of these processes, the subtraction will not take place. For instance, keeping one eye closed while the visual system is developing will result in the malfunctioning of the cortex responsible for responding to visual inputs which will lead to the individual becoming functionally blind[21]. Thus, environmental stimuli is crucial for proper cortical development. Evolutionary psychologists don’t deny the environmental inputs. They see the environmental inputs as “triggers” for psychological adaptations/modules which are “developmentally timed to appear” in the same manner as “breasts and teeth”[22]. As we’ve seen, there is no “appearance” or “addition”. Insofar as there are any additive processes, they merely help in the development of raw materials for subtractive processes which work based on environmental inputs[23]. The Nobel-winning biologist Gerald Edelman describes this process as similar to that of natural selection as overproduction of neurons is followed by the retention of only those neurons that are most responsive to environment[24].

That cortical development is affected significantly by environmental factors undermines evolutionary psychology’s thesis that our brain is comprised of modules that developed according to the demands of the environment of evolutionary adaptadness. Our brain regions have the ability to perform functions of other regions and reorganize as and when the environment demands. This is referred to as neural plasticity. To illustrate how this works: — the removal of semicircular canals, which help in balancing, results in the regaining of our sense of balance in a very short period. This does not happen because of formation of new neural connections. Rather, it seems likely that other systems, like the visual pursuit system serve as substitutes and help in vestibular processing. We now also have reasonably strong evidence about cross-modal connections between sight and smell[25]. Why do these findings undermine massive modularity?

Information overlap and the ability of brain regions to substitute for other regions casts serious questions on domain specificity. Instead, as Buller and Hardcastle(2005) argue, it is more likely that our brain regions are domain dominant i.e. they perform specific functions but are able to substitute as and when the environmental and developmental changes demand.

To be fair, evolutionary psychologists have conducted experiments in an attempt to verify the existence of specific modules. The clinical psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, for instance, has conducted false belief studies which apparently serve as evidence for the theory of mind module. Simply put, theory of mind is the ability of individuals to understand what others think/believe/feel and distinguish it from their own. In a false belief test, the subject watches individual A and B in a room. Individual B keeps a ball under a box and leaves the room. While B is away, A removes the ball from under a box and places it under a can. The subject is then asked where B will search for the ball when he returns. Most children with autism answer that B will search in the can, indicating the lack of awareness about false beliefs. Baron-Cohen posits that this is due to the fact that those with autism lack the theory of mind module[26]. The problem with this is that autism is not simply the inability to understand others. It involves a plethora of other symptoms i.e. preferring routine and predictability, fearing environmental change etc. Moreover, as Paul Bloom points out, there is no good reason to believe that the false belief study actually tests the existence of TOM. In fact, children younger than 3 year olds show plenty of signs of having TOM[27].

Surveying the current empirical evidence, the cognitive psychologist Cecilia Heyes argues that a better explanatory model in line with empirical evidence is one that sees the mind as being comprised of cognitive gadgets. Though we’re born with some “starter kits”, it is only through an interaction with our environment and culture that we acquire mindreading, imitation, language etc. This model predicts rapid evolution and thus is very optimistic about our ability to adapt to technological changes[28].

Sex differences

The topic of sex difference is contentious sociologically, culturally as well as scientifically. It is often the case that evolutionary psychology is unfairly criticized for assertions that it never makes in the first place. Consider John Gray’s bestseller “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”. This is a view that no credible evolutionary psychologist shares. Many, like Simon Baron-Cohen, explicitly denounce it as “too extreme” and unscientific to be taken seriously[29]. For this reason alone, I will completely ignore these self-help bestsellers and focus only on the claims of mainstream evolutionary psychologists. My argument is twofold- (i) the claims of evolutionary psychologists on sex differences is based on shaky scientific grounds and (ii) contrary to the protestations, these claims are often explicitly or implicitly normative.

The idea of sex difference in EP is inextricably tied to EEA. Our Pleistocene ancestors, EP claims, were hunter and gatherers. There was a natural division of labour as males were more likely to hunt while females took care of the young. It is hard to read the works of evolutionary psychologists and not come out convinced that they’re claiming every aspect of our mating behaviour and psychology can be explained in evolutionary terms, occasional caveats notwithstanding.

The worst manifestation of this is the theory of rape as an evolutionary adaptation. Though this hypothesis was fully developed by Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, it has found support among other mainstream proponents as well. Robert Wright notes that, in Darwinian terms, “A female is better off mating with a good rapist”[30]. Female resistance too is favoured by natural selection as it does the job of “filtering” the strong rapists from the weak ones. This does not meant “she wants it”. It is what natural selection “wants”. Thus, even when females don’t consciously prefer a “certain kind of male”, they unconsciously do in practical terms[31]. David Buss, one of the founders of EP, supports this view emphasizing on the reproductive advantages of rape[32]. Pinker has described Thornhill and Palmer’s book as “courageous, intelligent and eye opening book with a noble goal” which is armed with “logic and copious data”[33]. That’s quite high praise. So, what exactly are Thornhill and Palmer’s claim and how does their data hold up? You’ll be surprised.

Since females invest more in their offspring i.e. nine months of metabolic trauma and years of caring, they’re likely to be choosy in choosing a mate. Males, on the other hand, can have a large amount of offspring with very little investment. This asymmetry results in different mating strategies and consequently physical differences as it relates to aggression. Thornhill and Palmer propose two alternatives to prove the biological origins of rape- by-product and adaptation[34]. The idea of rape being a by-product is a non-starter given that every human attribute can be described as an evolutionary by-product, directly or indirectly. It is also unscientific given Thornhill and Palmer’s admission that “whether evolution applies or not is never a question” (unfalsifiable)[35]. What is controversial here is that Thornhill and Palmer argue that rape is a direct adaptation.

The authors argue that rape is primarily a sexual act, not an act of power or aggression. For those unable to find mates, rape becomes the last resort to ensure the propagation of genes. Thus, a rape causing gene would increase rather than a rape avoiding gene among disenfranchised men[36]. In this theory, all men are born as “potential rapists” but the eventual act of rape depends upon its net reproductive benefit (calculated unconsciously, of course). Women’s psychological pain is also direct adaptation since it forces them to focus on the losses, takes away their ability to choose mates and ensures they avoid the repetition of such an event[37].

In what can only be described as grotesque in hindsight, Thornhill and Palmer claim that their critics have been programmed to reject their evolutionary explanation because “Evolved psychological intuitions about behavioral causation can mislead individuals into believing that they know as much as experts do about proximate human motivation”. [38] This would be considered the logical fallacy of appealing to authority in any other context or for that matter, scientific field. It is simply dressed in EP jargon here to make it “sound” scientific.

Thornhill and Palmer make a series of prediction, which they claim is verified by their research that supports the direct-selection theory. Prediction and empirical facts serve as a backdrop of any good scientific theory. The authors’ evidence can only be described as weak at best and dishonest at worst. In order to prove that reproduction is a rapist’s primary goal, the authors claim that most rape victims are in their prime reproductive years. The data that they cite doesn’t support this. 29% of US rape victims are under 11 while 15% of the female population is under-11. In other words, under-11s are over represented by a substantial factor. Thornhill and Palmer acknowledge this but in a classic case of special pleading, they claim that the data doesn’t indicate “proportion of the victims under 11 who were exhibiting secondary sexual traits”. [39]

If psychological trauma functions as an adaptation, as the authors claim, then we’re likely to find women of reproductive age experience more psychological pain than others. The data that the authors cite contradicts their claim as women of reproductive age face as much trauma and violence as older women. In order to get around this, the authors lump older women and under-11s together to argue that the evidence supports their claim. The original authors of the studies that Thornhill and Palmer cite were understandably indignant at the gross misrepresentation of the data. The psychologist Anthony Goldsmith, for instance, criticized Thornhill&Palmer’s work as “bad analysis of data and bad science. It’s not nice when our data is misused”[40].

The authors are not merely making a descriptive claim. Contrary to their protestations, they are doing advocacy, not science. They are not formulating a theory that fits the data. They’re distorting the data to ensure it fits their theory. This is evident through their disdain for “academic feminists and sociologists” suffering from “biophobia” whose policy “proposals uninformed by evolutionary theory increases the incidence of rape”[41].

Thornhill and Palmer make the political and prescriptive nature of their theory explicit. “Evolutionary informed” ways to prevent rape include creating social and physical barriers such as locating summer camps for boys and girls at two opposing ends and using a supervisor/chaperone in early relationships[42]. “Evolutionary informed” counselling includes teaching women that post-rape trauma is a psychological adaptation and to use psychotropic medications “cautiously and selectively” (not because of their side effects but in order “not to eliminate the defense that psychological pain provides”). Women should also be informed “about cues that may increase the probability of rape”. What are these cues? Wearing “sexy clothing”. Thornhill and Palmer write[43]:-

“Young women should also be informed that female choice, over the course of the evolution of human sexuality, has produced men who will be quickly aroused by signals of a female’s willingness to grant sexual access. And it should be made clear that, although sexy clothing and promises of sexual access may be means of attracting desired males, they may also attract undesired ones.”

Their conservative social advocacy combined with the deliberate distortion of data dispels all illusions about their claim of being just disinterested scientists.

Perhaps I’m not being fair to the field by citing one specific instance. It is indeed unfair to reduce EPs ideas on sex differences to Thornhill and Palmer’s theory. I have no intention of doing that as I will look into other claims. It is important to note here, however, that Thornhill and Palmer’s ideas are not fringe[44] in EP. As we have seen, they have been praised by leading experts in EP.

EP has a rather simplistic narrative on mating. In this narrative, men have evolved to mate with young beautiful women while women have evolved to look for high status men. In what Helen Fisher calls the “sex contract”, men offer resources to women in exchange for sex[45]. The evolutionary end goal for men and women are different. Men want to leave behind as many genetic offspring as they can while women want to choose limited but high quality mates. Pinker calls this “the genetic economics of sex”[46]. As Wilson and Daly write “Men lay claim to particular women as songbirds lay claim to territories, as lions lay claim to a kill, or as people of both sexes lay claim to valuables. Having located an individually recognizable and potentially defensible resource packet, the proprietary creature proceeds to advertise and exercise the intention of defending it from rivals.”[47] Robert Wright is even more explicit as he writes “men (consciously or unconsciously) want as many sex-providing and child-making machines as they can comfortably afford, and women (consciously or unconsciously) want to maximize the resources available to their children”. In other words, the relationship between men and women is one of “mutual exploitation”[48]. One hardly needs to explain how this theory is perfectly commensurate with the archetype of the gold-digger woman and the sex-hungry man. While my critique is not intended to be primarily political or rhetorical, it is important to point out that contrary to what many claim, EP proponents agree that their ideas have clear social ramifications.

A close rhetorical reading makes it clear. For Robert Wright, serial monogamy is the worst of both worlds. The relationship between men and women can be best understood, according to Wright, as an evolutionary arms race. Natural selection favours males who are good at deceiving females and favours females who are good at detecting deception[49]. In light of the conflicting interest between two sexes, only a polygamous society would result in a market that would “right itself”. Dowry, Wright claims, is the result of the disequilibrium that monogamy brings with it[50]

Women are not as resistant to sharing a man as men as they’d prefer living with an unfaithful rich man than a “ne’er-do-well” in poverty, “typically”[51]. However, a polygamous society has serious problems as it allows a few powerful women to grab all the women “from the jaws”[52]. This leads to inegalitarian distribution of “female resources” and increases the risk of violence among men. Having a woman in a man’s life has a “pacifying effect”.

How would a society consistent with evolutionary psychology look like? Victorian England, answers Wright. Good financial prospects for the wife and a pleasant visual and auditory environment (good looks) for the husband[53]. Men were allowed to go to brothels but it didn’t lead to desertion of marriage because “women, more easily than men, can reconcile themselves to living with a mate who has cheated”[54] . Wright assures us that he’s not making a prescriptive argument. This does not seem to be the case given that he gives considerable attention to criticizing feminists and blaming them for contemporary problems. The impulses of evolutionary psychology are strong and innate. Ignoring them leads to a society with “fatherless children; lots of embittered women; lots of complaints about date rape and sexual harassment; and the frequent sight of lonely men renting X-rated videotapes while lonely women abound. It seems harder these days to declare the Victorian war against male lust ‘pitiable’”[55].

To recap, Victorian society consistent with EP gave respect to women[56], kept marriage stable and its sexual repression and strict divorce laws were “strikingly well-tailored”[57]. Contemporary feminist movements advocating for sexual freedom and innate symmetry of sex, on the other hand, have produced a society strife with male alienation, fatherless children and embittered women. The social ramifications of standard EP narrative couldn’t be more explicit. Wright admits that he’s offering “Darwinian Self Help” by shedding light on the “practical applications of Evolutionary Psychology”. These practical applications are, of course, socially conservative. A “proliferation of low cut dresses” will lead to a decrease in “men’s commitment” as well as respect for women[58]. If you do this, men will reduce you to a “subhuman status” worthy of contempt[59]. In Wright’s words, “if you want to hear vows of eternal devotion right up to your wedding day — and if you want to make sure there is a wedding day — don’t sleep with your man until the honeymoon.” This principle is “rooted firmly in the male mind”.

The empirical research in sex differences as it pertains to evolutionary psychology doesn’t seem to support its axioms as robustly as its proponents like to claim. David Buss has conducted the most comprehensive survey on this comprised of 4.601 men and 5,446 men across 6 continents[60]. Buss found that males, on average, preferred those who were 2.66 years younger than them. Females, on the other hand, preferred at 25.4 years to marry a man of 28.8 years. This seems to confirm the EP hypothesis at first glance. A closer look, however, shows otherwise. The average age of Buss’s male respondents is 23.49 years, which is to say that it only proves that young men prefer young women. A look at actual marriages show that on average males marry females who are around 2.9 years younger than them. If men actually preferred to marry woman who are at the peak of their reproductive fertility, as Buss claims, then one would expect thirty year olds to marry twenty year olds. Why do we find such a small age discrepancy? Could it simply be the case that the preference for marriage has more to do with age similarity than age differences?

A hypothesis proposing such a model would nevertheless have to explain the small age gap that does exist. Buller proposes an alternative hypothesis of age homogamy. Since males achieve reproductive maturity later than females and since the competition among men is higher, one would expect such an age difference to exist[61]. This hypothesis of adjusted age homogamy makes the same prediction as Buss’. In order for evolutionary explanation to be the most plausible, it has to make all other plausible hypotheses redundant, which is clearly not the case here.

Evolutionary psychologists have also claimed to have found the perfect waist-to-hip ratio of female body that humans evolved to admire (0.70). This “adaptation” indicates peak reproductive potential and is therefore perceived to be a measure of female attractiveness. Though this has been replicated across many cultures, claims of it being universal are yet to be conclusively determined. In Peru’s isolated indigenous population, for instance, males rated females with 0.90 waist-to-hip ratio as “most attractive” (in American culture, this would be considered as “overweight”). Those with 0.70 waist-to-hip ratio were described as sick (“had diarrhea a few days ago”)[62]. Similar preferences were found among the hunter gatherer Hadja tribes[63]. These studies are crucial because the populations are isolated from cultural influences and are hunter-gatherers, similar to what our ancestors in EEA may have been.

Buss’ research has shown that, compared to culture, “the effects of sex on mate preferences were small”[64]. Only 2.4% of the variance is due to sex. In Buss’ own words “there may be more similarity between men and women from the same culture than between men and men or women and women from different cultures”. Among thirteen variables, the first four preferences for males and females are the same i.e. kind and understanding, intelligent, exciting personality and healthy. Physical attractiveness is rated at 5 by men and at 7 by women. This difference is statistically significant. In Buss’ study, women actually put “physical attractiveness” (7) above “good earning capacity” (9). The difference might not be as statistically significant in this case but one would expect there to be a clear and wide difference if evolutionary psychology’s axioms were to be held true.

We encounter the same inconclusive data when it comes to a clear demarcation between “male” and “female” brain. That there are differences is not a matter of debate. What those differences mean, on the other hand, is a matter of serious debate (see Pinker 2008[65], Baron-Cohen 2003[66],Hooven 2021[67] for critique- see Jordan-Young 2010[68] , Rippon 2019[69], Fine 2010[70], Fuentes 2012[71]. For a methodological critique of neuroscientific approach see Satel and Lilienfield 2013[72]). Given its adherence to these unresolved debates as axioms, one wonders how reliable, indeed scientific, can evolutionary psychology claim to be.

The Future of Evolutionary Psychology

There multiple areas where evolutionary psychology has proven to be quite successful. Examples include our innate fear of snakes and spiders[73][74][75], incest avoidance[76] etc. These are on reasonably strong grounds because phylogenetic comparative analyses is possible i.e. these behaviours are common to mammals.

There are primarily (but not exclusively) three ways in which adaptationist hypotheses are tested i.e. phylogenetic analyses, phenotypic manipulation/laboratory studies and transplant studies. Experimental manipulations include, for example, artificially shortening and lengthening tail of birds and manipulating genes to affect phenotypic features. Needless to say, the crucial techniques used to test adaptationist hypotheses in animals cannot be tested in humans, for obvious and reasonable ethical constraints.

In evolutionary biology, a combination of multiple techniques (such as ones described above) are used to confirm/refute adaptationist hypotheses. A particularly interesting example of this is the “sword” of sword-tailed fishes. Though Darwin hypothesized these “swords” to be adaptations due to sexual selection, it took over a hundred years to confirm this[77]. Scientist first had to prove that females are indeed attracted to the colored sword, not some other covarying traits. This was done by cutting off swords and attaching a colored swords in some and clear plastic in others. The females preferred colored swords, proving that it was the sword itself that the female preferred. This did not mean that the sword evolved due to preference of female. For this to hold true, the preference for swords has to exist before the emergence of sword. This was done by adding swords to closely related species of the genus Xiphophorus who naturally don’t possess such tail. It was found that even in those species, the females preferred those with tails[78]. Thus, the idea that swords are an adaptation which emerged as a result of sexual selection is fairly well supported by the empirical evidence.

In principle, adaptationist hypotheses concerning human behaviour can be tested empirically. We have observed some rare examples of human evolutionary adaptations in real time, particularly HbS allele as it relates to malaria resistance[79]. When it comes to behavioural traits, on the other hand, things become messy. For starters, almost all of the species in the tribe Hominini are extinct. The only ones that exist today are chimpanzee and bonobos (and humans, of course). In the genus Homo, no other species except humans survive. The Xiphophorus genus, in contrast, has 28 extant species. Yet, evolutionary psychologists claim that they draw conclusions through comparative phylogenetic data (which is rarely the case, understandably so given the grand claims that EP makes).

A striking example of this is Geoffrey Miller’s assertion that artistic/creative/cognitive ability in males evolved due to sexual selection. This, Miller claims, explains why “males produce an order of magnitude more art than females”[80] . For this to be true, artistic males had to have higher fitness than non-artistic males. Further, females with preference for artistic males have had to have higher fitness than those who don’t. Most importantly, preference for artistic ability must predate artistic ability itself (as we noticed in the swordfish example). This does not seem to be the case as non-human primates engage display immense interest in artistic ability when provided with paints, sans any rewards[81]. This leaves no place for Miller’s argument that sexual selection leads to the development of artistic ability. Conscientious readers might be tempted to question Miller’s claim as to whether males actually produce more and better artistic works. I have ignored that question because his basic premise falls down in the face of phylogenetic evidence[82].

The idea that some of our behaviour is innate and adapted to a past environment, i.e. Pleistocene, is plausible but untestable. We don’t know for certain and will likely never know the behaviour that was prevalent in EEA. All we can do is make plausible guesses, each of which might turn out to be just as likely as the other ones.

Evolutionary psychology is not a non-starter like homeopathy or astrology. It is not “pseudoscience”. It is, to use Pigliucci’s term, a “quasi-science”[83]. As it currently stands, almost none of its axioms (EEA, modularity etc.) are as robust as, say, the big bang for physics or the theory of evolution for biology. There are many hypothesis which stand on good scientific grounds, none of which conclusively confirm the paradigm. Evolutionary psychology aims to be psychology’s grand theory of everything. However, most grand theories of everything have fallen down- Freud, Jung, Skinner etc. All of them were widely popular and considered to be objective science in their time. In particular, behaviourism shared the same convictions about itself as EP now does. Given its grand claims and ambitions, not to mention the tendency of its proponents to label their critics as “blank slaters” and “creationists of the mind”, it is highly unlikely that the fate of evolutionary psychology will be any different.

For evolutionary psychology to become more scientifically robust, it needs to abandon its paradigm along with its adherence to adaptationism. Most traits are neutral. Nose, for instance, comes in many types. Whether one has a long or a short nose has no impact on one’s fitness or survival. There is no reason why our “Pleistocene” behaviours will be any different.

A scientifically robust evolutionary psychology will be a lot less interesting, less grander, less speculative and of course, less popular. Nevertheless, it will still have the potential to shed light on remnants from our evolutionary past.

Notes

[1] https://www.insider.com/gabby-petito-brian-laundrie-missing-found-true-crime-tiktok-2021-9#:~:text=22%2Dyear%2Dold%20Gabby%20Petito,so%20rapidly%20on%20social%20media.

[2] Kuhn, Thomas S, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

[3] Darwin, Charles, 1809–1882. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London :John Murray, 1859.

[4] Hamilton, William D. (1964). “The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I.” J. Theoretical Biology 7: 1– 16.

[5] Hamilton, William D.(1964). “The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II.” J. Theoretical Biology 7: 17–52.

[6] Wilson, E O. The insect societies. Belknap Press. 1971.

[7] Wilson, Edward O. (1978). On Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[8] Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby (1987). From Evolution to Behavior: Evolutionary Psychology as the Missing Link. In J. Dupré (ed.), The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality (pp. 277–306). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

[9] C. D. FitzGibbon, and J. H. Fanshawe. “Stotting in Thomson’s Gazelles: An Honest Signal of Condition.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 23, no. 2 (1988): 69–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4600191. Whether this is actually honest signalling or Zahavian handicap principle hasn’t been conclusively resolved yet and lies outside the scope of this article

[10] Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides (1990). The Past Explains the Present: Emotional Adaptations and the Structure of Ancestral Environments. Ethology and Sociobiology 11: 375–424.

[11] Pinker, Steven (1997). How the Mind Works. New York: Norton.

[12] Symons, Donald (1995). Beauty Is in the Adaptations of the Beholder: The Evolutionary Psychology of Human Female Sexual Attractiveness. In P. R. Abramson and S. D. Pinkerton (eds.), Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture (pp. 80–118). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[13] Cosmides, Leda, John Tooby, and Jerome H. Barkow (1992). Introduction: Evolutionary Psychology and Conceptual Integration. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (pp. 3–15). New York: Oxford University Press.

[14] Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby (1994). Origins of Domain Specificity: The Evolution of Functional Organization. In L. A. Hirschfeld and S. A. Gelman (eds.), Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture (pp. 85–116). New York: Cambridge University Press

[15] Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby (1997). The Modular Nature of Human Intelligence. In A. B. Scheibel and J. W. Schopf (eds.), The Origin and Evolution of Intelligence (pp. 71–101). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.

[16] Fodor, Jerry (2000). The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

[17] Pinker, p. 21

[18] Buller, D. J. (2005). Adapting minds: Evolutionary psychology and the persistent quest for human nature. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

[19] For an interesting and well-argued hypothesis on how our brain came to acquire a brain so vastly different from other primates, check out R. L. Buckner and F. M. Krienen, “The evolution of distributed association networks in the human

brain,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (2013): 648–665.

[20] Ackerman S. Discovering the Brain. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1992. 6, The Development and Shaping of the Brain. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234146/ .Note- The book as a whole has some dated unscientific aspects, especially sections on homosexuality and AIDS. However, the particular section referred to describes standard mainstream science in a good introductory manner.

[21] Buller, p. 133

[22] Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby (1992). Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange.

In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology

and the Generation of Culture (pp. 163–228). New York: Oxford University

Press.

[23] Elman, Jeffrey L., Elizabeth A. Bates, Mark H. Johnson, Annette Karmiloff-Smith,

Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett (1996). Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective

on Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[24] Edelman, Gerald M. (1992). Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. New

York: Basic Books.

[25] Kaeppler, K. Crossmodal Associations Between Olfaction and Vision: Color and Shape Visualizations of Odors. Chem. Percept. 11, 95–111 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12078-018-9245-y

[26] Baron-Cohen, Simon (1995). Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[27] Bloom, Paul, and Tim P. German (2000). Two Reasons to Abandon the False Belief

Task as a Test of Theory of Mind. Cognition 77: B25–B31.

[28] Heyes, C. (2018). Cognitive gadgets: The cultural evolution of thinking. Harvard University Press. I have avoided elaborating here intentionally. Interested readers are highly recommend to read the book which argues for an alternative “cultural evolutionary psychology” from an empirical perspective.

[29] Baron-Cohen, S. (2003). The essential difference: The truth about the male and female brain. New York: Basic Books.

[30] Wright, Robert. 1994. The moral animal: evolutionary psychology and everyday life. New York: Pantheon Books.

[31] Wright, p. 52–53

[32] Buss, David M. 2003. The evolution of desire: strategies of human mating. New York: Basic Books. 270–5

[33] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/natural-history-rape

[34] Thornhill, R. and C. T. Palmer (2000). A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press

[35] Thornhill and Palmer, p. 12

[36] Coyne, J. A. (2003). Of vice and men: A case study in evolutionary psychology. In C. B. Travis (Ed.), Evolution, gender, and rape (pp. 171–189). MIT Press.

[37] Thornhill and Palmer, p. 85

[38] Thornhill and Palmer, p. 114…

[39] Thornhill and Palmer, p. 72

[40] Coyne, p. 189

[41] Thornhill, R. and C. T. Palmer. (2000). Why men rape. The Sciences Jan./Feb.: 30–36.

[42] Thornhill and Palmer, p. 185

[43] Thornhill and Palmer, p. 181

[44] There are certain theories which are indeed fringe in EP and criticized by most mainstream evolutionary psychologists. The most prominent example of this is the white supremacist anti-semitic evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald’s theory of Jews being evolved to be ethnocentric, tribalistic and anti-white(MacDonald, Kevin B. 1998. The culture of critique: an evolutionary analysis of Jewish involvement in twentieth-century intellectual and political movements. Westport, Conn: Praeger). Another is LSE’s evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa’s claim that black women are less physically attractive than women of other races(“Kanazawa Statement | Academia | Science”. Scribd.com. 29 March 2016)

[45] Fisher, Helen E. 1982. The sex contract: the evolution of human behavior. New York: W. Morrow

[46] Pinker, Steven. 2002. The blank slate: the modern denial of human nature. New York: Viking.

[47] Barkow et al. (1992), p. 289.

[48] Wright, p. 96

[49] Wright, p. 61

[50] Wright, p. 96

[51] Wright, p. 95

[52] Wright, p. 100–101

[53] Wright, p. 109

[54] Wright, p. 142–144

[55] Wright, p. 145

[56] Wright, p. 135

[57] Wright, p. 142–143

[58] Wright, p. 141

[59] Wright, p. 73–74

[60] Buss, David M. (1989). Sex Differences in Human Mate Preferences: Evolutionary

Hypotheses Tested in 37 Cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12: 1–49.

[61] Buller, p. 214

[62] Yu, Douglas & Shepard, Glenn. (1998). Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?. Nature. 396. 321–322. 10.1038/24512.

[63] Dixson, Barnaby J.; Dixson, Alan F.; Morgan, B; Anderson, M. J. (June 2007). “Human physique and sexual attractiveness: Sexual preferences of men and women in Bakossiland, Cameroon”. Archives of Sexual Behavior. 36 (3): 369–375

[64] Buss, David & Abbott, Max & Angleitner, Alois & Asherian, Armen & Biaggio, Angela & Villaseñor, Angel & Bruchon-Schweitzer, Marilou & Ch’U, Hai-Yuan & Czapiński, Janusz & Deraad, Boele & Ekehammar, Bo & Lohamy, Noha & Fioravanti, Mario & Georgas, James & Gjerde, Per & Guttman, Ruth & Hazan, Fatima & Iwawaki, Saburo & Janakiramaiah, N. & Yang, Kuo-Shu. (1990). International Preferences in Selecting Mates: A Study of 37 Cultures. Journal of cross-cultural psychology, 21(1), pp. 5–47. 21. 10.1177/0022022190211001.

· [65] Pinker, Susan. 2008. The sexual paradox: men, women and the real gender gap. New York: Scribner.

[66] Baron-Cohen, Simon. The Essential Difference: The Truth About the Male and Female Brain. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2003.

[67] Hooven, Carole. T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us. United States: Henry Holt and Company, 2021.

[68] Jordan-Young, R. M. (2010). Brain storm: The flaws in the science of sex differences. Harvard University Press.

[69] Rippon, Gina (2019). Gendered Brain: the new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain. London: The Bodley Head Ltd

[70] Fine, Cordelia. Delusions of Gender : the Real Science behind Sex Differences. London :Icon, 2010

[71] Fuentes, Agustin. 2012. Race, monogamy, and other lies they told you: busting myths about human nature. Berkeley: University of California Press

[72] Satel, S., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2013). Brainwashed: The seductive appeal of mindless neuroscience. Basic Books.

[73] Hoehl S, Hellmer K, Johansson M, Gredebäck G. Itsy Bitsy Spider…: Infants React with Increased Arousal to Spiders and Snakes. Front Psychol. 2017 Oct 18;8:1710. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01710. PMID: 29093687; PMCID: PMC5651927.

[74] Ohman, A.; Flykt, A.; Esteves, F. (2001). “Emotion drives attention: detecting the snake in the grass”. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General. 130 (3): 466–478. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.640.3659. doi:10.1037/0096–3445.130.3.466. ISSN 0096–3445. PMID 11561921.

[75] Shibasaki, Masahiro; Kawai, Nobuyuki (2009). “Rapid detection of snakes by Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata): an evolutionarily predisposed visual system”. Journal of Comparative Psychology. 123 (2): 131–135. doi:10.1037/a0015095. ISSN 0735–7036. PMID 19450020.

[76] Pusey A. (1990) Mechanisms of Inbreeding Avoidance in Nonhuman Primates. In: Feierman J.R. (eds) Pedophilia. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9682-6_8

[77] Darwin, Charles, and John Murray. 1871. The descent of man: and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray, Albermarle Street.

[78] Kaplan, Jonathan., Pigliucci, Massimo. Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Biology. Germany: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

[79] Sabeti, P. (2008) Natural selection: uncovering mechanisms of evolutionary adaptation to infectious disease. Nature Education 1(1):13

[80] Miller, G. F. 1998. How mate choice shaped human nature: A review of sexual selection and

human evolution. In Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues, and Applications,

ed. C. Crawford and D. R. Krebs, 87–130. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

[81] Hutchinson, G. Evelyn. 1965. The ecological theater and the evolutionary play. New Haven: Yale University Press

[82] Pigliucci, p. 164–165

[83] Pigliucci, Massimo. 2010. Nonsense on stilts: how to tell science from bunk. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

The city of Jerusalem is no stranger to invasion. The Babylonians were perhaps the first to siege Jerusalem. King Nebuchadnezzar’s army looted the city and reduced its walls to rubbles. The King Jehoiakim was executed ruthlessly and “commanded to be thrown before the walls”. Thousands of Jews were taken captive and deported to Babylon. Solomon’s Temple was destroyed. In the succeeding years, control of this holy land of the Jews passed over to various alien kingdoms- the Persians, Alexander, the Ptolemaic and the Seleucids. The Seleucid King Antiochus IV’s ruthless persecution of the Jews and his attempt to put an end to Jewish culture as a whole eventually led to the Maccabean revolt which resulted in the recapture of Jerusalem. The Jews ruled briefly for the next century till the Romans captured it in 63 B.C. The Romans were unique in that they were extremely accommodative of the religion and deities of their subjects. These deities were either added to the Roman Pantheon or merged with existing deity(Baal, for instance, was identified with Saturn). The Jews, on the other hand, being among the earliest monotheists were extremely hostile. This hostility befuddled the Romans. The poet Seneca remarked “the vanquished have given laws to the victors”. The Jews were unwilling to tolerate the tyranny of any foreign rulers, even if the said rulers were relatively tolerant. It was, after all, God who commanded them to settle on the land only after they’ve ensured every previous inhabitant, including animals(everything that breathes), were annihilated. This is not to say Judea was without any conflict. The Romans were ruthless in their persecution of rebels. Insofar as they aligned with the local populace, the lower class were almost completely excluded. Their alignment was largely with the aristocratic class who helped extract taxes. The upper class(referred to as Sadducees) maintained the temple, dominated over the general public and were collaborators of the Romans. It was under this background, of conflict and class divide, of colonization and persecution, that Jesus of Nazareth lived.

Whether he lived or not is not a matter of debate among scholars. Most scholars relevant to the field agree that he did live. However, an increasingly popular movement is growing which argues that there was no such person as Jesus. This movement, known as the mythicist view, argues that the historical Jesus did not exist. He is a creation, a propaganda tool, a fabricated religious myth. To try to find out who the historical Jesus was, it is important for me to elaborate on why I think there was such a person. As a non-Christian and a staunch atheist, I have no “skin in the game”. My belief in the existence of Jesus comes from a careful scrutiny of evidence, not from a deep faith. If you’re a Christian, you might nod your head as you read this section but I must warn you that I have no intention of defending Christianity(whose tenets I will critique in the succeeding sections).

It is true, as the mythicists claim, that we do not have a single physical archeological evidence for the existence of Jesus. The archeological evidence that Christians think we have are not enough to conclusively prove the existence of Jesus. Some of these have been conclusively refuted. The Shroud of Turin(alleged to be the burial cloth of Jesus),for instance, has been proven to belong to the 12th century. Thus, when it comes to archeological evidence, we virtually have none. This is because the archeological evidence that we do have from first century Palestine largely covers aristocratic upper class Jews. There is no reason for us to expect any archeological evidence, given that Jesus was a lower class Jew and like most lower class Jews, his existence was never mentioned.

Even for the existence of the powerful Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, we barely have any archeological evidence(barring some coins and one damaged inscription discovered only in the 1960s).

Neither do we have any Greek or Roman authors mentioning Jesus during his lifetime. This could be surprising for the modern reader, given how far we have come. However, barely 10% of the population were educated in ancient times. To be more specific, during the lifetime of Jesus, only 3% of Jews who lived first century Palestine(where Jesus lived) were literate. “Literacy” here does not mean the ability to write and read complex sentences. The majority of these “literate” people would have only been able to write their names and copy works. Among the “literate” Jews, almost everyone was from the upper class. The lack of any written work from Jesus himself(who in all likelihood was illiterate) or his direct disciples isn’t surprising.

What we do have is reliable non-Christian/Jewish sources which mention Jesus within a century of his death. Among the Roman authors, Jesus is mentioned by Pliny the younger, Tacitus and Suetonius. Written in 112 CE, some 82 years after the death of Jesus, Pliny mentions the Christians as a nuisance defying the then forbidden act of groups coming together. They were worshipping Christ as God. Tacitus, writing around 116 CE, provides us with more information about Jesus. While mentioning the persecution and execution of Christians by Nero, Tacitus writes:-

“The author of this name, Christ, was put to death by the procurator, Pontius Pilate, while Tiberius was emperor; but the dangerous superstition, though suppressed for the moment, broke out again not only in Judea, the origin of this evil, but even in the city [of Rome].”

The authors in question had no reason to falsify the narrative, given that they were anti-Christians. It is quite evident through these writings that existence of Jesus was not doubted. The best source that we have about first century Palestine are the works of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Almost everything that we know about the period that Jesus lived in comes from Josephus’ “Antiquities of the Jews”. We know from his work that the name Jesus was very common given that there are multiple Jesus’ mentioned throughout. Two of the references directly talk about the Jesus of Nazareth. The more reliable one refers to Ananus’ execution of James, “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ”. Josephus was a staunch Jew, thus the sentence “who was called Christ(roughly translates to messiah)”, should be read here in a descriptive, even mocking tone.

This does not tell us much about Jesus himself, neither does it conclusively prove the existence of Jesus. To understand more about the historical Jesus, we need to look up to the gospel and Christian writings as historical source(they happen to be the earliest). The common objection would be the obvious biased nature of the gospels. However, we cannot discard documents simply because they are biased. We don’t discard Josephus or Tacitus or Sima Qian just because they were biased. We recognize their biases and then provide a rough approximation of the truth based on what we know about the writers and the historical background in which they were writing. When we do the same with the gospels/new testament, the results are very interesting, to say the least.

Contrary to what evangelical Christians believe, the Gospel weren’t written as eyewitness accounts. The first Gospel of the canonical Gospel(Mark) was written around 40 years after the death of Jesus. The Gospels weren’t written in Aramaic(the language that Jesus and his followers spoke) but in fluent Greek by believing Christians. We don’t know much about the authors themselves. The Gospel writers had a purpose but that purpose was not to write inerrant divinely-inspired scripture. Their purpose was to organize a narrative based on oral and textual sources on the life of Jesus. Some of what they wrote were historically accurate, others were made up to serve a purpose(more on this later). Matthew and Luke, written some 10–15 years after Mark, had access to both Mark and another independent source we now call “Q”(Quelle). We know “Q” existed because the stories narrated by Matthew and Luke(which are not found in Mark) are almost completely identical. Moreover, Luke explicitly tells us that he used many sources in the very beginning of the gospel(Luke 1–4):-

“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught”

How many exactly? We don’t know. But we do know that Luke includes stories which are neither found in Mark nor in Matthew(ex- good Samaritan). It is extremely likely that these stories were sourced either from a written text or from oral tradition. Apart from the canonical Gospels, we have gnostic gospels like Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Peter. The latest canonical Gospel(John) is almost entirely different from the other three. Combining all these(Q,L{Luke’s source},M{Matthew’s source}, John,Mark,Matthew,Luke) we know for certain that there are 7 independent accounts, across diverse geographical boundaries, of the life of Jesus within 60–70 years of his death(barring the oral traditions).

We know that the stories themselves are much, much older and actually have Aramaic origins(the language Jesus spoke). This is because the Gospel writers left Aramaic “punchlines”(as Bart Ehrman calls them) in the texts. When Jesus is crucified, he cries out in Aramaic ““Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani”(my God, my God, why have you forsaken me) which Mark then translates for his Greek readers.

Some of the verses/stories make no sense in their Greek original but when translated back to Aramaic, their message is conveyed. Consider the story where Jesus is confronted by Pharisees when his disciples break Sabbath by eating grains. Jesus answers them:- “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Is Jesus saying that he(son of man) can break Sabbath because he created Sabbath? However, in the story its his disciples who break Sabbath, not Jesus. Thus, the last one seems redundant in Greek(Ehrman,2012). However, in Aramaic, the word for both “Son Of Man” and “Man” is the same(barnash). The Gospel writers translated “barnash” in the second line as “Son of Man” in order to make it explicit to their audience that the son of man is none other than Jesus. The right translation would read “So man is lord of the sabbath”, which is perfectly commensurate with the message given in the first sentence.

The most damning evidence for the existence of Jesus comes from the unlikely source of Paul, whose earliest surviving letter dates back to just 20 years after the death of Jesus. Paul, of course, never met Jesus. But he did meet James, the brother of Jesus(whose existence, as we have seen, is attested by non-Christian sources) and the disciple of Jesus-Saint Peter. Paul’s letters provides us with a timeframe. We know that he had converted to Christianity before 40 AD because he mentions being persecuted by King Aretas, who died in 40 AD. Paul initially persecuted Christians before he converted into one. The conversion is dated around 31–36 AD. This would entail that within a year after Jesus’ death, Paul was not only aware of Christians but was actively persecuting them. Why was Paul persecuting followers of Christ? Because the old testament is quite explicit in its mention that the messiah is a triumphant God-like figure, who will rule over Israel and take it away from the oppressors. The messiah was never supposed to be crucified. Crucifixion was an embarrassment for early Christians. “Everyone who hangs on a tree is cursed”(Deuteronomy 21:23), says the Old Testament, referring to public humiliation of those guilty of capital offences. The reason crucifixion is mentioned is not because it fulfills old Testament prophecy but because the one thing that everyone knew for sure about Jesus was that he was crucified. In other words, they had to mention it because it was true.

But who was he? Who was Jesus of Nazareth? How did he become the most influential figure of Western civilization? What did he preach?

In first century Palestine, figures like Jesus were not rare. These self-proclaimed prophets/miracle-workers were said to have healed the sick and raised the dead. Many of them were also believed to have been ascended to heaven. Appollonius of Tyna, who lived around the same time as Jesus, was perhaps the most popular of these figures. The similarities are not proof that these figures did not exist at all. On the contrary, we know for sure that many of them did exist. Its just that the archetypes of that era seem too unbelievable to us. We have our own, albeit sometimes believable, archetypes. The rag to riches story. The underdog. The tragic/misunderstood genius.

Unlike wealthy educated preachers like Appollonius, Jesus was born in a lower class family in an entirely unremarkable village called Nazareth. It is extremely likely that he was illiterate. He is called a “tekton” i.e. carpenter(Mark 6:3), which during his time was akin to our contemporary minimum wage jobs(perhaps worse but not better). That we still remember him instead of hundreds of his contemporaries who preached a similar apocalyptic message is surprising, to say the least. These contemporaries are not nameless. All or most of them were executed in a similar manner as that of Jesus- Simon of Peraea, Simon bar Giora, Judas the Galilean etc. In fact, Judas the Galilean is explicitly mentioned in the New Testament(Acts of Apostles), where Gamaliel warns in a speech that the followers of Christ will end up having a similar fate as that of Judas the Galilean.

Jesus preached about the kingdom of God, the coming of the Son of Man, “in the glory of the Father with the holy angels”. Those who do evil will be “cast unto the furnace of fire”. When will this Son of Man come? In his own generation. Jesus is quite explicit about this in the earliest gospel:-

And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.- Mark 9:1

Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.- Mark 13:30

He is the messiah. He is one with God, claims John. Jesus is the Son of man. A divine being. It is only in the Gospel of John(the most recent one) that Jesus is unambiguously the son of God. The other gospels do imply he was the son of God but at the same time contain verses(such as the ones above) where the Son of God is referred to in the third person. It is likely that Jesus did not in fact think of himself as the literal Son of God(which was a later doctrine, the term itself, along with Messiah, is used often for kings and prophets in the old testament).

Who gets into the kingdom of God? This goes into what I consider to be the heart of his teaching. The son of man will separate people in the same manner the “shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” To his right, he will welcome the people to the kingdom of god for “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Perplexed, the righteous ask “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”. He answers “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

This theme shows up again and again. Jesus was not simply advocating for the oppressed, he was advocating for a utopia. A Kingdom where the rich will not be allowed. He does not just say “blessed” are the poor, the peacemakers, those hungry, the hated and those who weep. He also says “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”

The Kingdom of God is not for the rich. This message of Jesus had clear political implications. It was a provocation, a call to resistance, perhaps even a rebellion against the Romans and the elites. It is for this crime, this message, that he was crucified. This is further attested by the fact that he “overturned the tables of Money” and drove away sacrificial animals from the temple. He accused the priests of having turned it into a “den of thieves”.

This was the last straw. Calling himself the “king of Jews” directly questioned the authority of Romans. He had to be taken out lest he explicitly challenges the Romans.

It is most likely not true, as Reza Aslan argues in his beautifully written book “Zealot”, that Jesus was advocating for a violent rebellion(if he was, it was most definitely not a part of his public ministry). A consistent theme throughout the New Testament is the pacifist message of Jesus. He asks his followers to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, do good to those who hate them and pray for those who persecute them.

As his disciple and betrayer Judas Iscariot identified him to the authorities, one of the disciples slew the ear of one of those who had come to arrest him. Jesus admonished him saying “Put your sword back in its place, for all those who draw the sword shall perish by the sword”. While this scene is consistent with the pacifist teachings of Jesus, it does raise some objections. Why, for instance, were the disciples of Jesus armed? It is most likely that they were not armed. Had they been armed, indeed, had they attacked the soldier, they would have been arrested along with Jesus. The narrative was probably created by the early followers of Jesus to justify/illustrate the “punchline”(which was likely a part of Jesus’ actual teachings){Ehrman}.

After the Romans condemned him to crucifixion, he was stripped and scourged in a barbarian manner(standard procedure). He carried the heavy cross, in all likelihood covered in wounds and wearing a crown of thorns, to a place called Golgotha(Calvary) where he was to be crucified. He must have been jeered on as he walked towards his death. Crucifixion shouldn’t simply be understood as capital punishment. The rituals accompanied it had a specific purpose. Crucifixion was reserved for the worst sorts of criminals, the ones who conspired against the state. Its purpose was to publicly humiliate the victims. To warn the public that this crime will not be tolerated. It was a spectacle of the worst kind. Thus, it might surprise people that Jesus is crucified alongside two “thieves”. Most popular translations use either “thieves”, “robbers” or “criminals”. Why would thieves be crucified and publicly humiliated? The original word used to refer to those crucified alongside Jesus in the gospels is “lestai”,who, according to Josephus were Jewish “bandits” rebelling against the Romans. Jesus, too, was crucified for sedition. This was uncomfortable for the Gospel writers as it had clear political implications and their aim was to write about Jesus, the resurrected son of God and not Jesus the rebel. This is why it is the Jews, and not the Romans, who are responsible for the crucifixion(according to the Gospels). The Roman prefect Pontious Pilate washes his hands off and declares “I am innocent of this man’s blood”. This scene is completely ahistorical and contradicts everything we know about Pilate, who was so cruel that he was removed by the Romans from his post for his slaughtering of Samaritans. The Gospel writer’s attempt to remove the political connotations is made explicit when Luke changes the term “lestai”(bandits/revolutionaries) to “kakourgoi”(evildoers).

Condemned of sedition, Jesus dies in intense agony and pain. He cries out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”. His God did not save him from intense suffering. In his last moments, Jesus must have felt a moment of doubt. About the goodness of his creator. If not his existence itself. He was, after all, a human being.

The Jesus of history is much more compelling than Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ knew he was going to die. He came to suffer. He was a divine being. He knew he was going to be resurrected. He was not of this world but of the heavens. He was the logos. The Jesus of history, on the other hand, was born in a relatively remote village(Nazareth) to a family of low class carpenters. The Jesus of Nazareth preached non-violence and the coming of a just kingdom. He exalted the oppressed. Washed the feet of his disciples. Challenged the elites, the rich, the high priests and the authority of one of the most powerful empires in history. For these beliefs, he died. Neither his sufferings nor his teachings were in vain. The fact that I’m writing this 2000 years later attests to that. This Jesus, to me, is much more compelling than the one who performs miracles and raises the dead.

After months of demanding centralization of vaccines by experts and opposition parties alike, the Narendra Modi government has finally caved in. While announcing this, the Prime Minister claimed that earlier India had to wait for decades to procure vaccines while under his govt India is self-sufficient. This claim is grossly exaggerated. There is evidence, for instance, that the precursor to modern smallpox vaccine(inoculation) had its origins in India and China as late as the seventeenth century. The first smallpox vaccine was administered in India only over 5 years after its discovery(1802). The first vaccine laboratory was built in 1899. Though the initial trajectory was slow, India successfully eradicated smallpox in 1975. Five years later, WHO declared the world to be smallpox free. India was actually self-sufficient in vaccine manufacturing at the time of independence. The PM also claimed that “Mission Indradhanush” has led the country’s vaccination coverage to increase from around 60% to 90%. This directly contradicts the latest official govt data which clearly suggests that most states have not achieved 90% vaccination coverage yet.

Putting aside the glaring factual inaccuracies, one needs to look broadly at the government’s management of the pandemic to determine whether it has in fact succeeded or failed. The BJP has accused critics of having “vested political interests”, not to mention the disgraceful ad-hominem of “low IQ”. Does this claim stand out in the face of scrutiny?

India was clearly not prepared for the pandemic. After 2000, the growth of health spending in most lower middle income countries outweighed the growth of GDP. India has been an exception to this. India ranks 145 out of 180 on quality and access of healthcare and 179 out of 189 countries when it comes to prioritization of health in budget. India’s hospitalization rate is also among the lowest in the world. We have a deficiency of both infrastructure and quality healthcare, which is illustrated by the steep increase in communicable diseases(see graph).

The Indian government’s latest economic survey explicitly points out that India’s healthcare spending is similar to “donor-dependent countries” like “Haiti and Sudan” while being well “short of its peers in development”(graph 2, Economic Survey 2020–21)

Given this background, the government’s handling of the first wave was predictably disastrous. India imposed one of the strictest lockdowns. The lockdown was announced with just around 4 hours notice with barely any preparedness. One would have expected the Modi government to have learnt their lessons from the disaster that was demonetization. However, this government seems to have a pattern of incompetency. What unfolded in the succeeding months was an artificially created(and avertable) migrant crisis, resulting in hundreds of unnecessary deaths including 12 from police brutality.

The maladministration of the first wave(barring the avertable migrant crisis) can still be blamed on incompetency as no country really knew how fatal or infectious the virus was. The same cannot be said about the second wave. As the cases were rising up and deaths were piling up, the government decided to completely ignore it. The people were to blame, according to the health minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan. It was the people who were not taking COVID protocol seriously. It was the people who were not wearing masks. Interestingly, it was the BJP’s Himanta Biswa Sarma(then health Minister and now Chief Minister of Assam) who asked people not to wear masks and “create panic”. The govt’s decision to allow gathering of millions of pilgrims in the Kumbh Mela helped spread the virus. The Chief Minister of Uttarakhand removed “unnecessary restrictions” and claimed that “faith will overcome the fear of COVID-19”.

When thousands were dying daily due to oxygen shortages, the Prime Minister was busy gloating about “huge crowds” at election rallies. At the same time, the Health Minister was busy prioritizing and fast tracking “cow science” to look into cures for diseases like “diabetes and cancer”. In light of these facts, it doesn’t seem surprising that the govt cares more about its “image” than actual human lives. This reveals an utter lack of regard for human lives. Everyone dying now is a victim of state malevolence, not COVID.

When the Narendra Modi govt came to power in 2014, many saw it as a victory of the Hindutva ideology. Now, even the chief of the Hindu nationalist organization RSS has critiqued the government for dropping its guard. Sensible voters believed that this government will change history books in order to make it more inclusive of regions other than the North. It is true that most history books tend to be written from a Delhi-centric perspective leaving out significant events like the Paika rebellion of 1817 and significant figures like Marthanda Varma of Travancore. However, this government did nothing to change textbooks. What it did do, however, is sneakily add a section in the CBSE class 12(of which I’m a student) political science book extolling the government. I reproduce the section below: -

“A major change in Indian politics after 2014 is the shift from caste and religion based politics to development and governance oriented politics. With its pre-intended goal Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, the NDA III Government started several socio-economic welfare schemes to make development and governance accessible to the masses….All these schemes intended to take administration to the doorstep of the common man by making the rural households, particularly the women, real beneficiaries of the Central Government schemes. The success of these schemes could be seen from the results of 2019 Lok Sabha elections where the voters across states — castes, classes, communities, gender and regions brought back the issues of development and governance to the centre stage under the BJP led NDA Government characterizing the current change with ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and Sabka Vishwas”

This section is not just explicit propaganda but also runs contrary to facts. BJP leaders have time and again inflamed communal passion and advocated directly for “control of state power by Hindus”. The BJP is directly responsible for creating an atmosphere of polarization and a politics based on assertion of Hindu identity. The battle against Mr. Modi, however, is not simply ideological. It is a battle against a cult of personality formed around the Prime Minister. While Mr. Modi is an avowed Hindutva ideologue, he has also shown his willingness to let thousands die(Delhi riots, Godhra, pandemic etc.) if it helps him win elections. It is not enough to blame his failures on incompetency. A single mistake can be blamed on incompetency. But a pattern of mistakes must be blamed on malevolence.

A few days ago, popular conservative/classical liberal commentator and talk show host Dave Rubin tweeted a thread outlining his reason for why our society is collapsing. There is, of course, an argument to be had about whether our society is collapsing at all. As Steven Pinker argues in Enlightenment Now, our society seems to be heading towards a generally progressive direction. However, for the sake of argument, lets assume that Rubin is referring to the worst of our society. In the thread, he specifically refers to “wokeism” and claims that secular liberals have no defense against our collapsing society. Rubin here is basically echoing the rhetoric of his mentors i.e. Jordan Peterson,Ben Shapiro&Dennis Prager. What all these individuals share is a belief 1) that society will crumble without a religious substructure 2) Objective morality is preferable and is not possible without invoking God and 3) “Judeo-Christian” values are superior and form the bedrock of western civilization.

I intend to deal with all three of these arguments but first we must define what morality is.

Defining Morality

The Oxford dictionary defines morality as “principles relating to right and wrong or good and bad behaviour”. Thus, morality is the distinction between good and bad,right and wrong. Even though its a component of defining morality,for the purposes of this article its not enough. When we generally talk about morality, we dont just talk about distinctions between good and evil but also that we need to do what’s good and not whats bad. This distinction is crucial and will be of use to us later in the article.

Further, moral systems can be defined as “interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible”(Haidt). When the likes of Peterson claim that western society is founded on “Judeo-Christian” values,they’re saying that the moral system that western society adheres to is “Judeo-Christian” in nature.

Judeo-Christian Values

The idea that the entire western civilization is founded on a Christian god of morality is a relatively recent fabrication. Yet, it is a principle widely adhered to by many orthodox Christians as well as conservatives. The conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, for instance, claims that “the values that resonate most with human are eternal. They are universal.” According to Shapiro, these values are embedded in the Ten Commandments. The same beliefs are echoed by other conservatives like Dennis Prager and Steven Crowder. Jordan Peterson, the most influential public intellectual in the Western world according to NYT, claims that in “order to make a rational argument,one must start with an initial proposition and the proposition that underlies western culture is a transcendent morality”.

In the 2016 election, Christian nationalism was “the only significant religious predictor of voting for Trump”. The idea that western world in general and America in particular was founded on Judeo-Christian values is a standard conservative belief. It has been re-iterated by the likes of Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum etc. etc.

While the term itself is not vague,the arguments underlying it are not only notoriously difficult to define but also equally difficult to find. There are,of course,many arguments for the belief that objective morality is not possible without God/religion(we’ll deal with this later in the article). This is not the same as the statement that Judeo-Christian values are the foundation of Western civilization. This proposition is taken as an axiom.

The phrase in question was initially used as a descriptive term to refer to Jewish converts to Christianity. It was only in 1940s-50s that the term gained traction as a shared value system between Judaism and Christianity. This belief seems to havemade its way,at least partially, to some US local courts. For instance, former Judge James Taylor displayed the ten commandments in his courtroom. He believed that the religious faith of America’s founding fathers considerably influenced the creation of Constitution and the institutions of government.

This claim is not just absurd but extremely easy to falsify. The only times US Constitution mentions religion is to separate religion from the state. The first law to be passed in the United States was “An Act to regulate the time and manner of administering certain oaths”. The initial proposal contained two clauses mentioning God(“in the presence of Almighty God”&”So help me God”). Both were seen as anti-thetical to the principle of separation of church and state and were thus excluded for good. In 1862, at the height of the civil War, both sides claimed that God was on their side. Both sides quoted the Bible. The confederates quoted it to justify slavery while the abolitionist quoted it in support of their opposition to slavery. However, it was only the confederate States of America which officially included the mention of God. The Preamble of the confederates were the same as the the preamble of the United States with one major difference. The confederates included the line- “invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God”.

It was in this background that Mark Watkinson, a pastor, wrote a letter to Salmon P. Chase(the then US Secretary of Treasury). Watkinson claimed that “the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins” has been “seriously overlooked”. He warned that future generations would judge America as a “heathen nation” based on the heathen emblem of “Goddess of Liberty” which then featured prominently in American currency. Watkinson was certain that “no possible citizen would object to this”. Further, it will relieve the Union from “ignominy of heathenism”. Chase recommended the same to the director of Mint James Pollock(who happened to be a strong Christian). Pollock considered America to be a “Christian Nation” and so had no problem with the suggestion. This is how the phrase “In God We Trust” came to be inscribed on American currency. The Founding fathers themselves decreed coins which were “emblematic of liberty”(Hamilton’s suggestion). One of the coins had “Liberty:Parent of Science and Industry” inscribed in it. As the US constitutional lawyer Andrew Seidel writes in his magnificent book “The Founding Myth”, “The three fearmongers of the 1860s(Pollock,Chase&Watkinson) sought to undo the work of these great men. The original idea expresses(E pluribus Unum)the belief that people or states with differences can come together to form a great country. The religious myth expresses an inherently divisive religious belief and applies to only a portion of the population”

As far as the religion of the founder fathers is concerned, it is true that many of them were indeed Christian. Some, however, stood out for their opposition to orthodox Christian. All of them agreed on one principle:- the strict separation of the church and state. George Washington, for instance, advocated “the absence of any regulation respecting religion from the Magna-Charta of our country”. James Madison wrote “The experience of the U.S. is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting Usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious & civil polity, neither could be supported.” Thomas Jefferson considered himself to be an “epicurean”. The Epicurean conception of God is much closer to deism than it is to Judaism or Christianity. Epicurus thought Gods were made up of atoms. They were supreme beings who did not concern themselves with human affairs. Instead, they simply idled away in a higher sphere. Jefferson created his own Bible by removing almost all mention of the supernatural in the New Testament. Thomas Paine was more vocal in his opposition to Christianity and organized religion. He claimed that “more than half” the Bible was full of “obscene stories,voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions and unrelenting vindictiveness”. He claimed it’d be more consistent to refer to the good book as the “word of demon” than the word of God. Even if the founding fathers were all devout evangelical Christians, this would not make the United States a “christian nation”. It is clear from the many documents that we have that they wanted a strict separation of the church and state.

Instead of looking at what the founding fathers thought about religion, shouldn’t we look at the morals/rules that the Bible prescribes? The claim is not merely that America was founded on “Judeo-Christian” values but that western civilization as a whole was founded on those values. As I have mentioned above, the likes of Shapiro think it is these values which are eternal.

Are the ten commandements,which are considered to be fundamental to both Judaism and Christianity, the backbone of western civilization? Are these ideas reflected in the law of the land? We need to keep in mind that there are different sets of the so-called ten commandments in the Bible. However, the ones shown in Cecil DeMille’s cinematic masterpiece remain the most popular, for cultural not theological reasons. The first few commandments are affirmations of monotheism(historically monolatrism but popularly monotheism,See Wright, Robert. 2009). God prohibits the Israelites to worship other Gods, make “graven images/idols”, take the Lord’s name in vain and keep the sabbath holy. These first four commandments are clearly opposed to the values and principles followed by most secular democracies. In fact, Pope Leo XIII used these commandments to proclaim that it is “unlawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, of speech, or writing, or of worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man”

These commandments aren’t as simple as they might seem from a first look. If one reads the commandment in their entirety,a more horrifying image emerges(considering the fact that they are already horrifyingly absurd). The fourth commandment recognizes slavery and also differentiates implicitly between Israelites and “foreigners/alien residents”(as we shall see, God seems to be a tribalist)- “You must not do any work — you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your ox or donkey, any of your livestock, or the foreigner who lives within your gates, so that your male and female slaves may rest as you do.”

In case this does not appear as an explicit endorsement of slavery, consider the verse below:-

“As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also acquire them from among the aliens residing with you, and from their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property. These you may treat as slaves, but as for your fellow Israelites, no one shall rule over the other with harshness”. — Leviticus 25:44–46

This verse not only endorses debt-slavery but hereditary slavery. Precisely the kind of Slavery which was prevalent during the civil war. This point is re-iterated in Exodus 21:4, which states that children of slaves are born into slavery. The Bible even endorses the beating of slaves, only emphasizing on regulation but not abolition. For instance, Exodus 21:20–21 states that the master is to be punished if a beaten slave dies but not if the beaten slave survives a “day or two” for “the slave is the owner’s property”. The New testatement also endorses slavery( here and here). Jesus himself references slaves in his parables without a hint of condemnation,even going so far as to recommend beating. Ben Shapiro claims that this is a “simplistic reading”. The Bible, according to Shapiro, was written in a way so that it’ll be easier for the people to understand. Since slavery is a “human universal”, God narrated the rules in a way in which people will be easily convinced. Thus, slavery was meant to exist only for a certain period. The problem with this argument is that it has no scriptural support. Nowhere in the scripture does it say or even imply that God wanted slavery to exist just for a while. Moreover, this argument goes against the idea of an “objective morality”. Abolition of slavery came not due to Christianity, but despite it. Many non-”Judeo-Christian” cultures,like the Greeks, the Indians and the Chinese, had abolished slavery completely or partially even before Christianity was instituted as a religion. The idea that humans were incapable of comprehending the immorality of reducing another member of their own species to mere property is falsified by the fact texts arguing against slavery existed around the same time and even in the same places where Christianity/Judaism emerged(Read this and this). One can also cite examples of Biblical sexism(here, here , here, here, here,here,here and here ) and homophobia to prove that the Bible is not a good moral guide. In fact, if you or I had the opportunity to write the Bible, it’ll be infinitely more moral than it is now(presuming that you dont support slavery or sexism). The same problem arises with most other religions. I’m not discussing them here because the point remains the same(and this piece is already long enough).

When Jordan Peterson discusses “Judeo-Christian” values,he’s not referring solely or primarily to the Bible. His argument and definition is very different from the definition that most of us are aware of. He has accused Sam Harris of not dealing with the “heavy hitters”. Who are these “heavy hitters”? Dostoyevsky, Jung, Eliade but most importantly Nietzsche. Which brings us to…..

Nietzsche’s Christianity

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche thought that suffering was an integral part of human existence. In this, he was no different from Arthur Schopenhauer, who proclaimed that “suffering” can be legitimately seen as “the direct and immediate object of life”. For Schopenhauer, suffering was the general norm. Nietzsche disagreed only slightly. Suffering was simply a symptom for him. The problem was “the senselessness of suffering” which “lay spread over humanity”. Religion or the “ascetic ideal” as Nietzsche referred to it answers this question. Religion provides a meaning to our suffering. Once the senselessness of suffering is answered, we actively “seek out” suffering. The Islamic terrorist is willing to die for the “ascetic ideal”. But so does the political radical. It was this “ascetic ideal” which closed “the door to all suicidal nihilism”.

For Nietzsche, Christianity’s essense was not in the ideas of salvation, resurrection, heaven, hell, trinity, miracles, existence of a supernatural diety etc. The essence was its adherence to dogma itself. It was this “will for truth” which laid the foundation of the religion. This “will for truth” can be generally understood as the belief that there exists one ultimate objective truth. According to Nietzsche, atheism is not the opposite of the “ascetic/Christian” idea but its most “severe” and “clever” formulation, one which keeps the “kernel” and “strips its outwork”. “Unqualified honest atheism” is the final phase of the evolution of the ascetic ideal. Christianity turned against itself. It was this adherence to the truth, the “Christian morality” which leads a Christian to atheism. Just like Feuerbach used Hegel’s method against himself, Nietzsche used Christianity(or his definition of it) against itself. Nietzsche writes“unqualified will for truth is the faith in the ascetic ideal itself”. Even Science cannot exist without a hypothesis/philosophy. An example of this philosophy today would be Karl Popper’s idea of empirical falsification.

Another value which Nietzsche credits Christianity with is the value of compassion. He thought Christianity was a religion of pity, valorizing the weak, the poor over the strong.In this sense, the communists, socialists and enlightenment thinkers were actually putting forth a version of radical Christianity. This assertion would obviously be too far for conservatives to take. Jordan Peterson, for instance, claims that it is impossible for a Christian to be “Marxist”. It might also interest fans of Peterson to know that one of the “heavy hitters” arguing for religion that Peterson cites happened to believe that anarchism was inherent to Christianity(Leo Tolstoy,who is also one of my idols). On the other hand, Nietzsche also despised the Christian idea of “sin” and the fact that perfection, the “highest good” is unattainable. The Christian, according to him, hated “intellect, pride, freedom, courage and joy”. The Christian also hated himself and others, particularly the unbelievers. Thus, there is a “will to persecute” in Christianity. He contrasted Christianity with Buddhism. He saw Buddhism as the “only positive religion” which is “hundred times as realistic as Christianity”. Buddhism is “objective” and “yields to reality”. In this sense, Nietzsche is actually much closer to Sam Harris than he is to Jordan Peterson. Nietzsche was a staunch but nuanced critic of Christianity.

He denounced the “idea of equality” as an insane Christian idea,which manifests itself in the political form as socialism and utilitarianism. Nietzsche distinguished between “noble morality” and “slave morality”. For the purpose of this article, I’ll simplify the terms. Noble morality is essentially the kind of morality which asserts the superiority of certain “excellent” individuals. There is an implicit agreement in society about the superiority of some. Nietzsche actually cites the Indian caste system as an example of this. In fact he prefers this kind of morality over slave morality, which according to Nietzsche, emerged as a revolt by the oppressed and demands equality of all. Nietzsche was an anti-egalitarian. He supported slavery and believed that all morality is mere interpretation(though he clearly preferred one over the other). His scepticism of truth is partly why almost all postmodernists are influenced by him. Its also why Christians admire him. The likes of Peterson claim that without the metaphysical substructure, society would break down. This is what Nietzsche meant by the “death of God”. “The death of God” was an event worth mourning. With it, humanity lost its moral foundation which would naturally give way to nihilism. Since almost nobody considers Nietzsche’s version of morality or his idea of the “eternal return” to be a practical solution, it follows naturally that “Judeo-Christian” values are the best solution at hand.

But are they? Peterson defines “religious” as “what you act out”. Everything that a human acts out is predicated on implicit axioms, says Peterson, and since everybody has certain axioms everyone is religious even if they claim not to be. The first problem with both Nietzsche and Peterson’s definition is that of redifinition. There is a colloquilly understood definition of “religious/Christian” which everybody agrees on. What Peterson does is redefine the term in such a way that everyone qualifies for being “religious”. This is mere word-play. Let me illustrate this with an example:- say,I redefine “atheist”as anyone who doesn’t believe in the existence of Zeus. Under my definition, the overwhelming majority of world’s populations would be “atheist”. It’d quite simply be absurd for me to do so. There’s a reason specific definitions exist. It is ironic that Peterson has accused the “radical leftists/postmodernists” of redifining specific definitions when he himself is guilty of the same.

Scientific skepticism or the belief in an objective truth is neither a “religious” value nor a “Judeo-Christian” value. Louis Liebenberg has observed the scientific method among the hunter gatherers of the indigenous San people. The San people engage in inference i.e. they track animals through their spoor,determining age,sex and “direction of flight” as well as deduction and reasoning. The arguments from authority is not accepted. Majority opinions are allowed to be challanged and if the group is convinced by “evidence”, it is accepted. This helps in increasing their chances of “accuracy”(Pinker, 2018). It seems like Christianity doesn’t have a monopoly on “truth”. The idea of dogma,objective truth as well as the earlier manifestation of the scientific method can be found in many cultures. Empiricism,reasoning and skepticism, for instance, are elaborated/appear in many ancient Indian texts long before the enlightenment. These traditions even inferred the non-existence of God and asserted the truth of only that which can be verified through perception and experiment.

Some have argued that it is due to the “Judeo-Christian” value of the the protestant work-ethic that capitalism and individuality emerged. It is true that protestant-work ethic is a real phenomenon. However, it emerged despite the scripture not because of it. It used the same narratives/heroes to tell a different story with fundamentally different values. The idea of predestination and the belief in work as sacred is in no way unique to protestanism. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna asks Arjuna to “perform his prescribed task” since it is only by “work” that “ancient saints reached blessedness”. Arjuna is advised to perform work regardless of the outcome(Make thine acts thy pity). This is an integral idea in Hinduism.Yet, capitalism did not develop in India. As Weber points out in his work, it is not just protestant work-ethic which led to the growth of capitalism. It is protestant work ethic along with a variety of other factors(systemized government,for instance) which led to the growth of capitalism. A multivariate analysis would reveal as much.

The evolutionary origins of morality

Morality has an evolutionary origin. Before discussing morality in human beings, we must discuss precursors to morality which non-human animals exhibit. The popular skeptic and historian of scince Dr. Michael Shermer refers to these sentiments exhibited in animals as “premoral” since we don’t know yet whether they can comprehend the “rightness or wrongness” of their own behavior. Gerald Wilkinson’s research has shown that bats exhibit a form of reciprocal altruism. They not only share blood with each other but they have developed what Wilkinson terms as “buddy system” which ensures equitable food distribution. In this system, bats pair up with each other and share food from “night to night”. For instance, if a bat fails to get blood,then her/his “buddy” will share food.

The primatologist Frans de Waal has conducted lots of research on altruism in chimpanzees and apes. In one of these experiments, chimpanzees were given two “tokens” of different colors. Choosing the “selfish” token will ensure only they get food while the Chimpanzee next to them(locked in a different cage) doesn’t. Choosing the “prosocial” token will ensure that both the chimpanzees get food. Chimpanzees overwhelmingly prefer the pro-social token. However, when the other chimpanzee tries to force them to choose the “pro-social” token through display of aggression/threat,the choices actually go down. In another experiment done with monkeys, de Waal checked monkey’s reaction to unequal prize. Two monkeys are supposed to pass on a rock in order to get food. There are two different kind of food on the table:- Cucumber and Grapes. Grapes, in monkey land, is a superior food. One of the monkeys gets grapes when s/he passes on the stone while the other gets Cucumber. When the monkey observes this, she/he throws away the Cucumber and starts rattling the cage and banging the table(see this clip). It seems like monkeys too want equal pay/fairness. Other animals, like Elephants, have elaborated mourning rituals when a member of their own species dies.

Paul Bloom’s research on babies and infants has shown that a lot of human morality is innate i.e. we are born with a sense of right and wrong. Religion evolved partly as a control mechanism and partly as an avenue for exchange of goods and services which cannot be attained through secular means. This includes good weather and reincarnation/immortality. This is known as the rational choice theory of religion. Religion is one of the earliest social institutions developed by human beings. As such, it is also the worst. It is interesting to note that religion developed only in tribes which were too large to control. The anthropologist Jared Diamond has pointed out that in New Guinea God is never invoked to justify how a human being should behave towards another. Religion as a social institution served as a way to unite members of in-group against the out-group. Despite adherents of almost all religions claiming their religion to be universal, almost all religion is in fact tribalistic. In Deutronomy 20:10–18, for instance, God asks the Isralites to “lay siege” to a city and “put to sword all the men in it” while the women,children and property should be taken as “plunder”. “Do not live alive anything that breathes” commands the “universal” God. The “in-group/outgroup” distinction is inherent to all human beings. The Israeli psychologist Georges Tamarin asked to over a 1000 school students(aged 8–14) about their opinion of the biblical story of Joshua’s destruction of the city of Jericho. According to the biblical narrative, God saw it righteous of Joshua to burn the entire city and kill all its inhabitants. The students were asked whether they thought it was right of Joshua to do so. An overwhelming majority replied in the affirmative. However, when the story was changed to that of a Chinese General Lin who destroyed and killed the inhabitants of a city based on a command from the “war God”,the majority expressed their disapproval. Religion seems to strengthen tribalism and force us to care less about the well being of people who are not members of our “in-group”.

Objective morality

“Is objective morality possible without God?” is the wrong question to ask. The question that we first need to ask is whether objective morality is possible with God. So far we have seen that the values enshrined in holy scriptures are extremely regressive. We have also briefly discussed how the emergence of morality can be explained in naturalistic terms. However, there are many who agree with these statements but still continue to believe that objective morality is preferable and only possible in case of existence of God. As we have seen, the likes of Rubin claim that society will crumble without an existence of a morality external to us.

God can tell us what is right and wrong. This, in fact, can in theory be objectively true if we have specific definitions of right and wrong/good and evil. This will lead us to the Euthyphro dillema. Is good “good” because God commands it or does God command it because it is “good”? In the former case, it merely becomes an argument from authority. In the latter,it makes God redundant since “good” can exist independently of God. The irreligious person does not face this dillemma for she can choose to believe in a subjective or objective morality.

Even if we accept that God defines right and wrong objectively,we’re still left with a dillema. Remember the definition of morality? Morality is not simply the distinction between good and evil,it is also the idea that we should do whats good and not whats bad. Why should we do whats good? Because God asks us to? Why should we do that which God asks us to do?{infinite regress} “Commands/orders” cant by definition be facts. If I say “you should read this article”, I’m not making a factual statement. If your boss asks you to “do the job”, she/he is not making a factual statement. They’re giving you orders/commands(close the door, eat the carrots,do your homework etc.) Similarly when God asks us to do what’s God, he is giving us “orders”. He’s not making a factual statement. The religious person can claim that we need to do whats good in order to go to heaven. Fine but then you’d be making a consequentialist argument,not an argument for “objective morality”.

The statement-“society will crumble without a religious substructure” is a consequentialist argument. In essence the claim is that without religion, the world will be chaotic and everything will be permitted. This is a falsifiable claim. Out of the top 10 ranked countries in the Human Development Index, the majority in 8 countries consider religion to be unimportant(In Norway 78% consider religion to be unimportant, Switzerland-57%, Hong Kong-74%,Germany-59%,Sweden-85%, Australia-68%,Netherlands-67% and Denmark-81%) Religiousity is highest in poorest countries i.e. Bangladesh,Somalia,Oman,Ethiopia,Niger etc. One can find the same pattern when it comes to World Happiness Report. If this proves anything then it proves that there is a negative correlation between development,happiness and religion. We expand our moral circle(to use Peter Singer’s term) despite religion not because of it. Moreover there are many secular alternatives to morality which are infinitely better than the regressive commands of a bronze age deity(Kant’s categorical imperative, Dancy’s moral particularism, social contract, effective altruism, secular humanism etc.).

If our intention is to progress, to diminish animosity towards fellow members of our species, to increase the well being of our society and to fight tribalism and bigotry, then we must cast bronze age superstition aside. We must grow the hell up!