 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Martha Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state. Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots--in which nearly two thousand Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists--the power of the Hindu right has been growing, threatening India's hard-won constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. Led politically by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right has sought the subordination of other religious groups and has directed particular vitriol against Muslims, who are cast as devils in need of purging. The Hindu right seeks to return to a "pure" India, unsullied by alien polluters of other faiths, yet the BJP's defeat in recent elections demonstrates the power that India's pluralism continues to wield. The future, however, is far from secure, and Hindu extremism and exclusivity remain a troubling obstacle to harmony in South Asia. Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history. Ultimately she argues that the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilizations, as some believe, but from a clash within each of us, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others. India's story is a cautionary political tale for all democratic states striving to act responsibly in an increasingly dangerous world. (20070628) |
Average Customer Rating:    Often Shocking & Frustrating, but always an Important Book I strongly recommend "The Clash Within," but first...The book prompted me to think about the creation of a "Surgeon General" of books.. A "Book Surgeon General" could then warn readers about Martha Nussbaum's panoramic text. Perhaps the following: "The book you are about to read contains statements and assertions which, if taken out of context, or read without appropriate qualifiers, or read in the absence of an understanding of, and agreement with prior scholarship, can be expected to infuriate, possibly insult, but very likely bewilder you, the hapless reader. If you experience any of these symptoms, the General recommends you read the last chapter repeatedly, take a grain of salt, or have stiff drink until the symptoms subside." Maybe a patient insert would work better.
At any rate, this book opened a world which I, at best, only vaguely understood, since my knowledge of India is derived almost exclusively from casual perusals of the financial pages. The thesis, roughly, is that Samuel Huntington's emphasis on a clash between civilizations is misplaced; that the more important clash is within civilizations; that this, more important clash is ubiquitous in modern democracies; that the clash itself is between those citizens willing to embrace a diversity of people and backgrounds and those seeking to establish a nation in which citizens share similar (or the perceived same) backgrounds, ethnicities, religious beliefs and the like; that India, with the possible exception of the United States, is exemplary among nations in its record of inclusiveness, and; that the Hindu right is threatening India's evident capacity for diversity through the Hindu right's efforts "to craft a public culture of exclusion and hate," a culture exemplified by the tragic events in the state of Gujarat in February of 2002.
Members of the Hindu right may well take exception to the way they are portrayed in "The Clash Within." For those, like myself, peering in from the outside, the lack of statistical data on the composition, size and beliefs of the Hindu right that might verify Ms. Nussbaum's depiction is somewhat frustrating. Perhaps reliable data do not exist.
Further, it is worth noting that Huntington was very much aware of the "clash within," and acknowledge as much in the opening pages of his book. Huntington was, however, focused on clashes likely to spark conflict on a global, or multi-national scale.
Finally, some of what Ms. Nussbaum says about the Hindu right and the motivations underlying it apparently draw upon a wealth of earlier research. To an outsider, some of this can be quite puzzling. She claims, for example, that "shame grew like a wound in the psyche of some Hindu males" and that "the female body came to symbolize the nation." As a result, Nussbaum notes, "one might suppose" that this "symbolic association" would lead to the "veneration of women and delicate treatment." Far from it. Partly because males of the Hindu right exhibit "an unusual degree of disgust anxiety," killing Muslim women in Gujarat while brutally defiling them was, in effect, tantamount to having intercourse with them. (Ms. Nussbaum's account is more graphic.) In light of the gravity of the incidents she describes it may seem like small beer to raise this point, but Nussbaum's premise - that "the female body came to symbolize the nation" - would seem to be valid in either of two widely diverging outcomes, (a) the female body is venerated or (b) the female body is defiled. That would lead me, a stranger in this terrain, to question the premise that "the female body," in India came to "symbolize the nation." Or at least ask: Did the males in Abu Ghraib symbolize Iraq to the soldiers, some female, who subjected them to denigrating poses?
Martha Nussbaum's text prompted at least as many questions as she purported to answer. Yet, it is this very capacity to raise questions, summon thoughts and overall expand the sensitivity of readers to events in India and elsewhere, that makes "The Clash Within" an essential book, one likely to remain so as the 21st century continues to unfold. A Bombastic Tract Full of the sound and fury , signifying nothing. Acamedician Nussbaum engages in intellectual bumper-car to the cheers of her small, misguided audience. Now its India, and she is going to tell them what for. The level of mediocrity goes along with high self-opinion. It's a lesson, that intellectuals with lots of book-learning like to pontificate on things they know nothing about. It's embarassing really, that the crazy aunt is now out of the attic and raving in the street. I address this problem directly, the almost hallucinatory psychology of academic elites who think they know what's good for the rest of us. Not almost. We face this problem in America right now, with another teacher-ideolog increasing big government, which goes along with the yetta nannying like horse and carriage.
The "myth of the meritocracy" must be replaced with a more realistic view of the "elite mediocracy" and their "celebritocacy." Now, vote against my review.
PS - nothing tells the academic hallucination like Gandhi. A social reformer, he also said the British should surrender to Hitler. Non-violence, right? this highly passionate study Martha C. Nussbaum is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She worked for eight years (1985-93) with the Research Project of the UN World Institute for Development in Helsinki, focusing on the economic and cultural problems of India. She chose India when she wanted to write on human rights norms for women's development worldwide. She was a consultant with the UN Development Programme's New Delhi Office and in 2004 was a visiting Professor at the Centre for Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She lectured in various parts of India and wrote extensively on India's legal and constitutional traditions. She travelled so many times to India that it now feels like her second home.
Her relationship with India is intensely political, focussed on issues of social justice, and she has had close contacts with Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1988. Three personalities in particular feature, namely, Nehru, Tagore and Gandhi. In her Preface she states: "This is a book about India for an American and European audience". But it is not only about India but also about the present clash between Islam and the West.
She writes: "... that the real clash is not a civilisational one between `Islam and the West', but instead a clash within virtually all modern nations - between people who are prepared to live with others who are different, on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity, achieved through the domination of a single religious and ethnic tradition".
At a deeper level the thesis of this book is the Gandhian claim that the real struggle that democracy must wage is a struggle within the individual between the urge to dominate and defile the other, and to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality, with all the vulnerability that such a life entails.
Nussbaum deals extensively with the ethnic/religious pogrom in Gujarat in February-March 2002 when approximately 2,000 Muslims were killed by Hindus. She analyses the Hindu nationalistic personality and finds sufficient hatred within to explain the Gujarat events. Her conclusion - based to a great extent on Gandhi's thinking - is worth quoting:
"The ability to accept differences - differences of religion, of ethnicity, of race, of sexuality - requires first, the ability to accept something about oneself: that one is not lord of the world, that one is both adult and child, that no all-embracing collectivity will keep one safe from the vicissitudes of life, that others outside oneself have reality. This ability requires, in turn, the cultivation of a moral imagination that sees reality in other human beings, that does not see other human beings as mere instruments of one's own power or threats to that power."
She argues, in this highly passionate study, that ultimately the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilisations, but from a clash within each of us.
Piet Dijkstra A bit surprised I am a bit surprised by all of the misplaced animosity towards this book. I think Nussbaum is a very intelligent human being and I agree whole heartedly with most of her positions. I don't think she is portraying Hindus in any particular way. She clearly points out an intellectual trend that is on the rise (actually being revived) in India. I'm giving the book two stars only because I think the book is poorly written and seems to be a rehash of stuff other people have written before and written better. You can tell that her opinions are all second hand and I was truly convinced of this when she commented on the 600 hour Television series Ramayana which I am pretty sure she never watched (It seems unlikely to me that she would). Not to mention the series didn't seem at all full of any sort of propaganda (I unfortunately saw all of it). She could have done so much more such as looked more carefully at the rise of the movement, looked at it in a historical context, or many other ways. But then again I don't think she is exactly an expert on India and is perhaps poorly qualified to do so. The section on the constitution (her expertise) is very good however but certainly not worth the price of this book. I suggest one go elsewhere for infirmation on this subject. Democracy's Weakness Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers never advanced a theory of natural rights, notwithstanding their ubiquitous ethic of human virtue. Consequently, they associated democracy with mob rule, where the tyranny of the majority would ever so easily abuse the unfavored few. The execution of Socrates is a case in point. So too, the execution of Cicero came at the hands of a populist dictator. From Plato to Augustine, nearly all the Greco-Roman political philosophers derided democracy for its abuse and violence toward minority groups.
Martha Nussbaum takes up this same theme as she examines the 2002 Gujaret Riots in India, when Hindu nationalists brought about the deaths of thousands of Muslims. Nussbaum closely examines the history of Hindu religious riots in India with a view toward warning us all of the dangers of a democracy that does not at the very same time advance a universal commitment toward tangible human rights. Nussbaum sees India's liberal, rights-based democracy as under threat from Hindu religious extremists, especially.
Nussbaum's book has, of course, been vilified by Hindu nationalists. Yet her highly researched work affords lessons for all so-called democracies across the globe, where the rule of law is under threat from those who would subvert human rights (such as the rights of habeas corpus and due process), whether it be India or Pakistan, Israel or Palestine, Russia or the United States.
Nussbaum's case study is an admirable presentation of the perils facing political life when democracy is unchecked by human rights. |  |
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