India: Religious Freedom Issues. A CRS Report on Hindutva

The Congressional Research Service, a bi-partisan research wing of the US Congress, published a report on rising Hindu nationalism and its threat to minorities and human rights in India. Below are some of the key excerpts. The whole report can be read or downloaded from here.

For roughly 500 years before British rule became direct in 1857, the Asian Subcontinent had been dominated by Muslims politically. Many Hindu nationalists, along with some historians, assert that Hindu traditions and institutions were suppressed during this period. As the Indian independence movement grew in the early 20th century, some were energized to "correct" this historic trend. Secularism became a more-or-less enshrined value for the independent Indian state, although its conception in both theory and practice varies widely. 

Because Hinduism does not have a specific sacred text to which conformity can be demanded, "Hindu fundamentalist" is not an accurate term to describe a purveyor of "Hindutva" or "Hindu-ness." Moreover, as conveyed by one scholar, "India's diversity along linguistic, regional, and caste line means defining a 'Hindu culture' is problematic." For political parties such as the BJP and its antecedents, Hinduism as a concept is almost always concurrent with nationalism, the core belief being that India is an inherently Hindu nation, even if establishment of a strictly Hindu state is not a goal. In this regard, it is the proselytizing religions—Islam and Christianity, in particular—that can be characterized as representing a threat to the "Hindu nation." 

In simple terms, the key tenets of the Hindutva ideology are three: (1) Hindus are the rightful rulers of India, which is a Hindu nation; (2) the Christian and, especially, Muslim minorities are viewed with ambivalence because their religious allegiances are not indigenous to India (in a way that those of Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains are); and (3) caste divisions undermine Hindu unity. 

According to close observers, despite fronting an overtly Hindu nationalist party, Modi's 2014 national political campaign touched upon these Hindutva themes only minimally, and instead stressed development and good governance as its guiding lights. Yet Modi himself repeatedly has emphasized his view that "Hinduism is a way of life and not a religion." According to USCIRF, Hindutva "forms the basis of an exclusionary national narrative focused exclusively on the rights of Hindus." In commenting on the role of nationalism in Indian politics, a group of Australian academics offers that, "The Hindu nationalists seek not so much to preserve existing social hierarchies in Hindu cultures as they do to rewrite social order fascistically to the benefit of Hindu populations.".... 

The report provides a brief overview of the RSS and BJP's violent and controversial history and their aversion to Muslims.

The RSS has had a controversial history in India, including connections to the 1948 assassination of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi.45 The organization has since been directly implicated in domestic terrorism. RSS members have been implicated in several incidents of "Saffron" (Hindu extremist) terrorism in India, including the 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings that killed 68 people on a train that runs between Delhi and Lahore, Pakistan. In 2011, former RSS activist Swami Aseemanand confessed to involvement in this and other attacks, contending that some high-level RSS leaders had prior knowledge and were complicit.46 In 2016, Maharashtra's former senior-most police official reportedly called for banning the RSS as "the country's largest terror organization."...

The BJP (along with its 1951-1977 antecedent, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh) has been a primary political purveyor of Hindutva in Indian society. Narendra Modi and current BJP President Amit Shah are credited with orchestrating the party's national surge after 2013.56 Throughout the country's history, India's Muslims have consistently favored the Congress Party over the BJP. While at least one-third of Muslim votes nationwide were cast for the Congress in the 21st century, the BJP's share of the Muslim vote dropped from 7% in 2004 to 3% in the 2009 cycle. Some surveys suggest that Modi's party and its electoral allies received up to 8% of the Muslim vote in 2014, with the main opposition Congress Party and its allies garnering 38%.57 Of 1,400 BJP members serving in various Indian state assemblies in 2017, 4 were Muslim. Muslims comprise about 19% of Uttar Pradesh's population, but 6% of its state assembly.58 Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha peaked at 10% in 1980 and lingered at about 6% until dropping to 4% in 2014.59 A 2016 assessment found that Muslims were vastly underrepresented in the legislative assemblies of BJP-controlled states, an imbalance only exacerbated by subsequent state-level wins for the party. The problem was starker when examining state ministers: at the time, only a single Muslim was among the 151 in BJP-controlled states.

A study by India's daily Hindustan Times found that, although only a small proportion of the more than 50,000 national and state-level politicians assessed were facing criminal charges for inciting religious violence or hatred (less than one-half of one percent), the BJP had the highest proportion (1.3%) of any party, more than triple that of the Congress Party. Moreover, the politicians facing such charges—including such high-profile figures as a federal cabinet minister and Uttar Pradesh's chief minister—were nearly five times more likely to win their elections than those not facing them....

 Religious Demographics in India

Source: CRS Report

The report explains that most of the political goals of the Hindu nationalists are about restricting minority rights, especially rights of the Muslim minority:

Hindu nationalists have a relatively short, but long-standing list of political goals. Many of these are found in the BJP's 2014 election manifesto.62 RSS leaders were mostly disappointed by the BJP-led government that ruled India from 1999 to 2004, in large part because then-Prime Minister Vajpayee and his lieutenants were not seen to be taking up core RSS issues. While out of power in the latter half of the 2000s, the RSS and BJP suffered a degree of mutual alienation; at one point in 2010 the then-RSS chief suggested that the BJP be dissolved and replaced by a new party. Yet the organization's leaders appeared to view the BJP victory in 2014 as crucial to the very existence of the RSS. Its leaders thus threw the full weight of their organization behind Modi's campaign while enjoying a correlate spike in participation in 2014.63 Leading Hindutva and widely-held RSS aspirations include

• scaling back laws and government programs designed to benefit the religious minorities, Muslims in particular;

• establishing a Uniform Civil Code (to replace current personal law based on religious customs and thus standardizing all national laws regarding such topics as marriage, divorce, and inheritance);

• repealing Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which grants limited autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir (a step that would, if implemented, allow citizens from other states to buy property in Jammu and Kashmir, see "The Kashmir Dispute," below);

• redrafting public school textbooks to remove what are alleged to be insults to Hindu gods and excessive praise of the subcontinent's past Muslim rulers;

• constructing a Ram temple on the Ayodhya site of the Babri Mosque that was razed in 1992; and

• preventing cow slaughter through legislation (cows are revered animals in Hinduism)....

Overall restrictions on freedom of expression are also on the rise in Modi's India according to the report:

 A major 2016 HRW report, "Stifling Dissent: The Criminalization of Peaceful Expression in India," contended that, "Indian authorities routinely use vaguely worded, overly broad laws"—a colonial-era sedition law perhaps the most abused among them—"as political tools to silence and harass critics." More recently, HRW warned that, "Journalists faced increasing pressure to self-censor due to threat of legal action, smear campaigns and threats on social media, and even threats of physical attacks."101 In September 2017, unidentified gunmen shot dead publisher and editor Gauri Lankesh, a vocal critic of militant Hindu nationalism, outside her home in Bengaluru. Evidence suggests the existence of organized campaigns to silence critics of the Hindutva movement, sometimes called "rationalists" for their opposition to the insertion of religion into politics.102 Indian journalists report coming under increasing pressure and bullying to remove stories critical of the Hindu nationalist government, and self-censorship by media organizations is seen to be a worsening problem by many.

Even before Modi's national elevation, his supporters were known for bellicose social media activity; in 2012, one former senior Indian intelligence officer wrote, "The style of the online blitzkrieg adopted by [Modi's] die-hard followers in India and abroad are reminiscent of the methods of the Nazi stormtroopers."104 The BJP has since been accused of cultivating "an army of cyber warriors to propagate its message of Hindu chauvinism and hyper-nationalism, and to launch vicious attacks on its opponents." "Modi's troll army" is, by some accounts, an orchestrated effort by the BJP to target critics on social media. Whether officially sanctioned or not, some of the most notable offenders—who openly celebrate the murder of critics for the mere act of exercising their right to free speech—are followed by Modi on Twitter.105 One U.S.-based commentator opined that, earlier in his prime ministership, Modi could afford to associate himself with "foul-mouthed trolls on Twitter," but his 2017 choice to allow Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister "makes it much harder to argue that power will moderate the [BJP's] more feral instincts.

BJP government's committee to write a revisionist history of India

A Reuter's report last month, for the first time, revealed the existence of a committee of scholars appointed by the BJP government "to rewrite the history of the nation." The investigations for the report reveal that the revisionist history would be based on Hindutva ideology. Some excerpts from the report are reproduced below:

Minutes of the meeting, reviewed by Reuters, and interviews with committee members set out its aims: to use evidence such as archaeological finds and DNA to prove that today’s Hindus are directly descended from the land’s first inhabitants many thousands of years ago, and make the case that ancient Hindu scriptures are fact not myth. 

Interviews with members of the 14-person committee and ministers in Modi’s government suggest the ambitions of Hindu nationalists extend beyond holding political power in this nation of 1.3 billion people - a kaleidoscope of religions. They want ultimately to shape the national identity to match their religious views, that India is a nation of and for Hindus. 

In doing so, they are challenging a more multicultural narrative that has dominated since the time of British rule, that modern-day India is a tapestry born of migrations, invasions and conversions. That view is rooted in demographic fact. While the majority of Indians are Hindus, Muslims and people of other faiths account for some 240 million, or a fifth, of the populace. 

The committee’s chairman, K.N. Dikshit, told Reuters, “I have been asked to present a report that will help the government rewrite certain aspects of ancient history.” The committee’s creator, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma, confirmed in an interview that the group’s work was part of larger plans to revise India’s history...

 Source: Reuters Investigates: By Rewriting History, Hindu Nationalists Aim to Assert Their       Dominance Over India

Referring to the emblematic colour of the Hindu nationalist movement, RSS spokesman Manmohan Vaidya told Reuters that “the true colour of Indian history is saffron and to bring about cultural changes we have to rewrite history.”

Balmukund Pandey, the head of the historical research wing of the RSS, said he meets regularly with Culture Minister Sharma. “The time is now,” Pandey said, to restore India’s past glory by establishing that ancient Hindu texts are fact not myth. 

Sharma told Reuters he expects the conclusions of the committee to find their way into school textbooks and academic research. The panel is referred to in government documents as the committee for “holistic study of origin and evolution of Indian culture since 12,000 years before present and its interface with other cultures of the world.” 

Sharma said this “Hindu first” version of Indian history will be added to a school curriculum which has long taught that people from central Asia arrived in India much more recently, some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, and transformed the population. 

Hindu nationalists and senior figures in Modi’s party reject the idea that India was forged from a mass migration. They believe that today’s Hindu population is directly descended from the land’s first inhabitants. Historian Romila Thapar said the question of who first stood on the soil was important to nationalists because “if the Hindus are to have primacy as citizens in a Hindu Rashtra (kingdom), their foundational religion cannot be an imported one.” To assert that primacy, nationalists need to claim descent from ancestors and a religion that were indigenous, said Thapar, 86, who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi for decades and has authored books on ancient Indian history. 

The theory of an influx of people from central Asia 3,000 to 4,000 years ago was embraced during British rule...

 According to the minutes of the history committee’s first meeting, Dikshit, the chairman, said it was “essential to establish a correlation” between ancient Hindu scriptures and evidence that Indian civilization stretches back many thousands of years. Doing so would help bolster both conclusions the committee wants to reach: that events described in Hindu texts are real, and today’s Hindus are descendants of those times... 

Culture Minister Sharma told Reuters he wants to establish that Hindu scriptures are factual accounts. Speaking of the Ramayana, the epic that follows the journey of a Hindu deity in human form, Sharma said: “I worship Ramayana and I think it is a historical document. People who think it is fiction are absolutely wrong.”  The epic tells how the god Rama rescues his wife from a demon king. It still informs many Indians’ sense of gender roles and duty. 

Sharma said it was a priority to prove through archaeological research the existence of a mystical river, the Saraswati, that is mentioned in another ancient scripture, the Vedas. Other projects include examining artifacts from locations in scriptures, mapping the dates of astrological events mentioned in these texts and excavating the sites of battles in another epic, the Mahabharata, according to Sharma and minutes of the committee’s meeting... 

Modi did not order the committee’s creation - it was instigated by Sharma, government documents show - but its mission is in keeping with his outlook. During the 2014 inauguration of a hospital in Mumbai, Modi pointed to the scientific achievements documented by ancient religious texts and spoke of Ganesha, a Hindu deity with an elephant’s head: “We worship Lord Ganesha, and maybe there was a plastic surgeon at that time who kept the head of an elephant on the torso of a human. There are many areas where our ancestors made large contributions.” Modi did not respond to a request from Reuters that he expand on this remark. 

Nine of 12 history committee members interviewed by Reuters said they have been tasked with matching archaeological and other evidence with ancient Indian scriptures, or establishing that Indian civilization is much older than is widely known. The others confirmed their membership but declined to discuss the group’s activities. The committee includes a geologist, archaeologists, scholars of the ancient Sanskrit language and two bureaucrats... 

After he was named culture minister in 2014 following Modi’s victory, Sharma, a doctor and chairman of a chain of hospitals, said he received guidance from the RSS. Sharma, a genial man with a wide smile, has a portrait of Bharat Mata, or Mother India, hanging above the doorway of a meeting room in his bungalow in central Delhi. Below it are portraits of past RSS leaders.

During the last three years, Sharma said, his ministry has organized hundreds of workshops and seminars across the country “to prove the supremacy of our glorious past.” The aim, he said, is to build a fresh narrative to balance the liberal and secular philosophy espoused by India’s first prime minister, Nehru, and furthered by successive governments for most of the nation’s post-independence history. 

The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, now controlled by Sharma’s ministry, these days mixes in sessions about right wing Hindu leaders and causes. At one such event in 2016, the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Amit Shah, took the opportunity to lambast Nehru as a man influenced by the western world. “We have always believed that our policies should have the smell of Indian soil,” Shah said. It was time for a history of India that concentrates on “facts about our great past.”

Modi, Prabowo and the threat to Indian and Indonesian civic nationalism

It is fascinating to compare India and Indonesia, two nations at critical junctures of their history. Narendra Modi, the current Indian Prime Minister and Prabowo Subianto, leading contender in the Indonesian presidential elections, are similar in promoting a strong nationalistic cum religious agenda. Despite lingering doubts about Modi and Prabowo's leadership qualities, they seemed to have captured the minds and hearts of many of their countrymen (and women). Can these strongly (religiously) nationalist leaders succeed in very diverse societies that are based on civic nationalism?

No doubt, India and Indonesia are different. Though both are very populous countries, India is much larger. In terms of nominal GDP, again Indian economy is more than double the size of the Indonesian economy, although Indonesians are richer. Their political systems and history are also different. While India is a stable parliamentary democracy, Indonesia is a military-dominated state, still trying to find its feet as a fragile democracy. Moreover, majority religion of India is Hinduism whereas the majority of Indonesians are Muslims.

However, Indonesia and India also share many characteristics which make their comparison compelling. Both Indonesia and India were successor states of colonial empires. As there was almost no history of a united India or a united Indonesia before colonial times, nationalist elites of both countries had to perform an exhausting balancing act. They had to fight against the colonial state but also try to preserve it. Preservation of the colonial state was difficult as not only the boundaries of the colonial state were new (similar to many other colonial states), but these states also had mind-boggling diversity. To deal with the ethnic/linguistic/religious/caste/tribal diversity, nationalist elites of both India and Indonesia adopted civil nationalism so that all communities can identify with the new state, ignoring the demands of many Hindus in India and many Muslims in Indonesia. This decision was one of the main reasons why both these states have not only managed to stay intact for the last sixty years but also showed impressive progress.        

Source: India, Indonesia Sign Pact To Cooperate On Criminal Matters

Another similarity between Indonesia and India is the recent rise of new elites; elites quite different from the leaders that had governed both these countries since independence. For more than half a century, the civic nationalism imposed by the founding fathers of both states was not under threat. There was some criticism but it lacked broad popular support. The nineteen nineties brought a big change in both countries. The Economic crisis in both countries (India in 1990-91 and Indonesia in 1997-98) jolted people out of their slumber and the spell that founding fathers' ideas had on the nation was broken. Suharto and aged Congress leadership, defenders of the old ideas, lost their grip on the country and were thrown out. New elites were 'outsiders'. Never before they had held power collectively. Their defining characteristics were overt religiosity and aggressive nationalism. This combination posed a threat to the civic and secular nationalism, both nations had adhered to since independence.

While economic crisis was the immediate cause of changes in both countries, two long-term developments helped the cause of the new elite. First, inhabitants of these countries were socialized, using public education system and national print media, into myths of (inherent) national greatness and threats to this 'manifest destiny' from outsiders and insiders. This socialization process was not very different from what happens in other countries but, due to the huge size of these two countries, these myths became more real. Socialized on these myths of national greatness, many ordinary Indians and Indonesians supported the strong nationalistic stance of the new elite. Second, the opening of a large number of private TV channels in both these countries around the start of 21st century gave an enormous fillip to religious nationalism. To win the rating war, TV channels mass-produced programs on two themes which the majority of the public can understand and appreciate i.e. religion and nationalism. These large doses of religion and nationalism fed to the public for the last fifteen years are now showing results. Modi's spectacular win is one such result and Prabowo's success in presidential election might be another.

Though both are using religious nationalism to win support, Modi and Prabowo have very different backgrounds. Modi is a man with whom most poor Indians can relate to. He belongs to a low-caste and poor household and didn't have much education. Starting from the lowest rung of the political ladder, he rose to become the chief minister of Gujarat state of India in 2001 and then Prime Minister of India in 2014. 

Prabowo's background cannot be more different. One can argue, he was born into Indonesian royalty and married a princess. Prabowo's grandfather was one of the founding fathers of Indonesia and his father was a cabinet minister under President Suharto. Prabowo joined military and then married President Suharto's daughter. As a princeling, Prabowo got the most prized assignments and rose in military quickly. In 1998, he was serving as Lieutenant General, commanding the key garrison near Jakarta. After his retirement from the military, Prabowo became a successful businessman. More recently, he led the newly formed Greater Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) that came third in 2014 legislative elections and now, according to some polls, he is leading the Indonesia's presidential race.

Modi at a Hindu hardline RSS function, giving the RSS salute

Source: The Hindu hardline RSS who see Modi as their own

However, what unites Modi and Prabowo is their use of religious nationalism and the threat they pose to civic nationalism. They have been criticized for abetting or allowing the massacre of religious minorities. While one can argue Modi really believes in Hindutva and Prabowo's attachment to religious nationalism is more instrumental, but we really do not know. Prabowo has a strong support of the religious right and they obviously would demand more religion-based laws, if Prabowo won the presidential election. Prabowo's supporters, however, point to his brother and the major financier of his campaign (who is a Christian) and argue that Prabowo belief in civic nationalism (Pancasila ideology) is paramount.

Another factor that will affect the rise of religious nationalism under Modi and Prabowo is the economy. Both of them are very pragmatic and know that economy is the make-or-break criterion for their success as leaders. Therefore, it is hoped that they will try to unite the nation and move ahead, rather than dividing the nation along religious lines. However, if the economy falters, it is not difficult to see them using religion to win again. 

India-Israel ties under Modi: Can Jewish and Hindu nationalism fraternity help?

San Diego Jewish World yesterday published an article on the excellent prospects of Indo-Israel relationship after the recent coming to power of the BJP government (See India and Israel strengthen ties. Indian commentators have also agreed with the predictions. See India 2014 Elections: Narendra Modi, Israel's Best Friend In South Asia). Several reasons were given by author Sean Savage as to why the bilateral relations could see an upsurge under Prime Minister Modi.

First, there is a talk of similarities between the two countries: 

Differences in size and culture aside, India and Israel have many modern and historical similarities. Hinduism and Judaism are among the world’s oldest existing religions, and both share ethno-religious components that set them apart from other major faiths. At the same time, both religions have complicated systems of laws, purity codes, and dietary restrictions that define their communities. In modern times, both India and Israel achieved independence from Great Britain during the late 1940s, after long internal struggles and bloody partition plans.

But these similarities didn't initially result in close ties as Nehru and later Congress Party governments thought Israel as a sign of Western imperialism (colonial policy of divide and rule) and supported Palestinian struggle. So, due to Congress Party's 'mentality', India supported Palestinians from the 1940s to 1980s. However, during the last two decades, both countries have not only become close trading partners but also joint collaborators in military research.

Source: India & Israel Partner To Strengthen Startup Ecosystem

The reasons given for the improvement in relations under Modi are mostly related to the religious nationalism of BJP (particularly of Modi) and its affinity with Israel and Bibi's Jewish nationalism. The author argues that Modi gives importance to his religion as Bibi does.

One of Modi’s first public gestures as prime minister was to visit the Ganges River, one of holiest places in Hinduism, where he promised to restore the heavily polluted river to its former glory. Over the years, Netanyahu has taken a similar approach, focusing on securing Israel’s Jewish heritage sites and insisting that Jerusalem remain under Jewish sovereignty.

Due to this attitude, both and Modi are criticized in the West, which may bring them closer.

Modi, meanwhile, has garnered significant attention for his strong Hindu nationalism, resulting in criticism from the West—especially for Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002. Yet his views in that area may also allow him to form an ideological bond with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is similarly chastised in some Western countries.

It is also mentioned that Israel supported India during its Kargil conflict with Pakistan in 1999 and Israeli companies invested billions of dollars in Gujarat when Modi was Chief Minister there. Modi's foreign policy team is also considered Israel friendly. What is not directly mentioned, although implied, is the fact that the main enemies of both Hindu and Jewish nationalism are Muslims. Internally, Hindu and Jewish nationalism want to deny basic civil rights to their Muslim minorities and externally they have difficult relations with their Muslim neighbors and face terror attacks. These are probably the 'ideological affinities' mentioned in the article.

The new Indian prime minister “might warm up considerably to Benjamin Netanyahu, say, driven by ideological affinities on some issues,” said Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Ningthoujam.

So, does it matter for Indo-Israeli relations that Modi is a Hindu nationalist?

I think yes it matters but probably not much. Where it matters i.e. in security/military affairs, Indo-Israeli relations are already very close as accepted by Ningthoujam in his own article (See India-Israel Defense Cooperation). Incremental improvements aside, the next level of bilateral relations in these sectors can be a defense pact but that is never on the cards because of India's need for Middle Eastern 'Muslim' energy resources. So, the close cooperation will continue and increase but under wraps.  

Economic ties, despite efforts, have not been very close to the potential of improvement is greater there. Can Modi's regime be a game changer? Yes, it is possible and odds-on but does it has something to do with Modi being a Hindu nationalist? Probably not. 

Modi's victory: Do we need public religion today?

There will not be many people who would deny the important role of religion in human lives. However, a public role of religion is controversial. As religion comes out of the shadows and is embraced not only publically but also enthusiastically, the debate has increasing relevance. The most recent triumph of public religion came on May 16 when Hindu nationalist party BJP won a landslide election victory in India (See Landslide for Modi).

 

An overtly religious party winning in secular India is new. Though BJP had won in late 1990s too, in at least two ways this win was different. First, in late 1990s, BJP was led by the intellectual, poet, 'soft' team player Vajpayee who is world away from the current leader Narendra Modi (NaMo) who is brash, street-wise and domineering (See The fact remains, Narendra Modi can never be a Atal Bihari Vajpayee). While Vajpayee's religion was closer to Gandhian model, Modi has been accused of being anti-Muslim and (although not proved) is widely implicated in 2002 riots when around two thousand people were killed (mostly Muslims) under his watch. Secondly, in late 1990s, BJP government was dependent on other parties as it didn't have simple majority in Lok Sabha. In 2014 election, however, BJP won a landslide victory and is not dependent on anyone. So, it can implement its agenda of Hindutva, if it wants (See Will Modi be India’s Putin?)     

 

So, religion is not going anywhere. Ok, but can we justify or understand religion's powerful existence in this modern age? Habermas, possibly the most celebrated intellectual/philosopher of our current age provides some answers. His detailed views are available in his many books and lectures. Here is a small tasting discussion by Michele Dillon on his views of post-secular society and religion (See Enter the Post Secular).

Among other points, Habermas noted that the Enlightenment project of modernization had gone somewhat awry, has become derailed. In particular, as he had previously elaborated, he noted that globalizing economic markets defy the control of consensual rational judgments, and he lamented not only the extent of global socioeconomic inequality but the mass political indifference toward it. This indifference is part of a longer depoliticization process resulting from modernization and increased affluence and consumerism, highlighted by Habermas decades earlier. For Habermas, the threat posed by current globalizing forces to potentially “degrade the capacity for democratic self-steering,” both within and across nations, makes the need for public communicative reasoning all the more necessary. He thus looks to discover new (i.e., underappreciated) political cultural resources for the democratic revitalization project. Hence, “a contrite modernity,” one characterized by several social pathologies that need fixing, may benefit, Habermas argued, from religious-derived norms and ethical intuitions. He conceded that these religious resources can help human society deal with “a miscarried life, social pathologies, the failures of individual life projects, and the deformation of misarranged existential relationships.”

Many sociologists have elaborated on the perils of globalization and the increased polarization between classes and regions as the profit logic of capitalist markets inexorably trumps normative considerations. Yet only Habermas looks to the religious domain rather than pushing for attentiveness to a rearticulated political ideology of, for example, global social democracy, as a way of reorienting societal thinking about modern socioeconomic pathologies. In his view, “The translation of the likeness of the human to the image of the divine into the equal and absolutely respected dignity of all human beings” offers a way of using religious values to reorient society’s values toward principles of economic and social justice. Clearly, Habermas’s new affirmation of the relevance that religious ideas and ethics have for contemporary political debate marks a major transformation in his thinking. I very much welcome this more inclusive view of religion as a potentially emancipatory political and cultural resource, a resource that can open up and enhance rather than retard public discourse, and energize the creation of more deliberative and more participative social institutions.

A Habermas's article on the solution of the 'problem' of religion in public sphere can be read here ( See Religion in the Public Sphere).