21 April 2020, NIICE Commentary 4183
Dr Tamanna Khosla
Before I begin to discuss my points of view on the declared topic, I would like to point out that a radical response by liberal democracy is no answer to radical terrorism. Liberal democracy will have to develop a new narrative to address this issue.
Jürgen Habermas, a German Philosopher, for example wants us to see terrorism as a modern phenomenon. Habermas differentiates contemporary fundamentalism from pre-modern religious world-views. His adherents understood their faith as a ‘world faith’. Fundamentalism emerges ‘when, under the cognitive conditions of scientific knowledge and of religious pluralism, a return to the exclusivity of pre-modern belief attitudes is propagated’. The riots which are seeing in Delhi these days where both parties are equally to blame are taking the discourse to pre-modern times.
A liberal democracy should be able to tackle these issues on its own. As Jacques Derrida would point out, a liberal democracy is able to do it with its own auto-immune system. Where this is lacking the situation becomes cancerous and the auto immune system of a liberal democracy is unable to function. This is what is happening at the moment in Delhi. The intolerance associate with fundamentalism shocks people because it denies the respect for religious and ethical freedom, which a liberal democracy takes as an established fact. Religious violence implies a moral attitude that is repugnant to our sense of what justifies violence (such as defence of human life in the face of aggression).
Habermas elaborates religious-fundamentalism as “anti-modern not pre-modern: political terrorists fuelled by religious fundamentalism don’t misunderstand modern values; they reject them”. This is what is happening in the riot-hit Delhi where both Hindu and Muslim extremists are taking an anti-modern turn. Probably because even now enlightenment is an unfinished agenda in India where religion is such a sensitive issue that people consider it to be no big deal to lynch each other based on small issues. Today, human life, and logical reasoning, have no value. For example, cases of Muslims being the victim of mob lynching based on false accusation of cow slaughtering is on rise
Habermas believes that violent fundamentalism arises because modern societies have failed to inspire alternatives that compensate for the loss of traditional ways of life. Fundamentalists repudiate the values of enlightened secular politics which places human rights, if not practically, at least normatively, at the centre. Here, the question one need to ask is, is Indian secularism the right kind of secularism and does India need to renew its vision of secularism, is it modern or anti-modern?
Terrorism, fuelled by any religion or hate speech, jeopardizes what is positive in the system of nation-states, which is at least an attempt to ensure violence is legitimately grounded through reasoned argument in an enlightened public sphere. Terrorism is not rudimentary. It is a pathology of modern life; the effect of a cancerous disregard for the pain of others.
This points us to Habermas’s characteristic stance on the ‘project of the enlightenment’. He sees it as an unfinished project that one should not abandon, despite its shortcomings. Both terrorists and states commit acts of violence, which as violence, have the same deplorable character. Yet, there is an important difference that Habermas thinks people cannot ignore. The normative basis of liberal democracy is ‘an egalitarian individualism of morality that demands mutual recognition, in the sense of equal respect and reciprocal consideration for everybody’. This level of moral justification of violence acts as a potential safeguard in liberal-democracies, ensuring that the use of force is justified in public with reference to universal standards of human rights. The absence of such universal standards of justice is what Habermas feels is most grave in the fundamentalist counter-movement.
Habermas’s philosophy centre’s around this idea of ‘normative standards’ which he argues are built into the structure of everyday speech. He has attempted to provide a more plausible account of how individuals can come to regard others in a more democratic way. Instead of relying on the individual to test their plans against the criteria of universal validity (a la Kant), he argues that universality is built into speech. According to Habermas, whenever people communicate to reach an understanding, they automatically subject our ideas and plans to criteria that are universal; viz. ‘could all rational individuals accept what I am saying’. This perspective expresses the enlightenment ideal that Habermas defends as a legal and political principle.
Powerful Western democracies have failed to live up to their own normative standards of justification for violence. The recent mendacious invasion of Iraq compellingly exposes this failure. Unable to reconcile their beneficent self-image with the animosity expressed by national groups who support terrorism, many in the West portray these communities as benighted masses in need of liberation. Habermas proposes an alternative to this unsympathetic view. He asserts that ‘the critical power to put a stop to violence, without reproducing it in circles of new violence, can only dwell in the telos of mutual understanding and in our orientation to this goal’. This discourse has to come about among the Hindus and Muslims of India, and the ruling BJP has to dwell in telos of mutual understanding and communicative ethics.
As a philosopher, Jacques Derrida is interested in the limits of concepts and what happens when they are challenged. For example, in the Indian context, people need to challenge the very notion of religion and focus on spirituality and enlightenment principles. Derrida’s political philosophy concentrates on what happens when people excluded, or feeling excluded, such as Muslims (which the violence is all about) from any system of politics or law present themselves and ask for refuge or justice. How must the Indian state respond? How should people regard these ‘minorities’ termed as ‘others’? The answer Derrida offers us, to summarize, is an ethical stance of openness to the other. This will also close us off to the threat of future terrorism and hence it is this closing off that people must avoid.
The state, as Derrida points out, requires an unconditional commitment (complete openness, complete autonomy, and complete justice for all), yet require limits to be effective. Derrida leaves with the message that attention to these limits and how people deal with them characterizes how they regard others. Thus, India and the world, including countries like the US and China, need to complete the enlightenment project. A new churning and new revolution in enable the second phase of enlightenment needs to come about for a peaceful world, where humans do not need to fight against their sister and brothers. The value of hospitality needs to be deeply inculcated in society. One need to focus on brotherhood and tranquility among each other and not play with wounds of people whom they regard as others.
