Religious Fundamentalism in India and Beyond

W e live in turbulent times. Our epoch is characterized by startling advances on the one hand and conditions of extreme socioeconomic retrogression and distress on the other. Social development is severely uneven and yet deeply intertwined. This has created unexpected convulsions which are exploding across the planet. Both a consequence and a cause of this turbulence is a resurgence of religion. Religious fundamentalism has appeared at the turn of the century as a prominent tendency, a habit of mind found within religious communities and paradigmatically embodied in certain representative individuals and movements. It manifests itself as a strategy by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive group identity. Feeling this identity to be at risk in the contemporary era, the believers fortify it by selective retrieval of doctrines, beliefs, and practices from a sacred past. This selection is carefully done so that it is not only appealing to the audience but also readily acceptable. While selective retrieval claims only to be restoring the ancient ways, in fact fundamentalist movements pick and choose carefully among inherited doctrines and practices, as well as cloaking innovations in the garments of antiquity. These retrieved fundamentals are refined, modified, and sanctioned in a spirit of pragmatism: they are to serve as a bulwark against the encroachment of outsiders who threaten to draw the believers into a syncretistic religious or irreligious cultural milieu. The problem of fundamentalism knows no borders, and it is a common enemy of humanity. For many, “fundamentalism conjures up images of mobs shouting ‘death to America,’ embassies in flames, assassins and hijackers threatening innocent lives, hands chopped off, and women oppressed.” The inquisitive observer must ask not only “how effective have fundamentalist movements been in influencing their own adherents,” but also “how much impact have they exercised in the lives of non-fundamentalists.” In cases in which the state is fundamen-