Utopias in Conflict: Religion and Nationalism in Modern India.

• Author: Rocher, Rosane

Much insight, experience, and wisdom reside in this slim volume, which brings together in a coherent whole revised segments of articles originally published over the two turbulent decades between 1968 and 1987, while the modern Indian state was buffeted, as it continues to be, by the competing ideological demands that both bedevil and make possible evolving democracies. Rooted in a knowledge of the historical past, it nevertheless focuses intently on the present, with perilous yet inescapable considerations of the future. Limpidly written, it challenges the reader to shun the simplistic explanations and the ready catch phrases that fetter a proper appreciation of complexities born of separate yet valid rationales. At issue is the constantly revised resolution of the fundamental tension between a nation's perceived need for a common ideological identity and the legitimate wish of groups--in this case, religious communities--to fulfill their often diverging views of what an ideal society ought to be. This, Embree convincingly argues, goes deeper than the protection of minority rights, for, in the Indian democracy, the wishes of the Hindu majority can both run against, or, more insidiously, define the official ethos of secularism adopted since independence. One of the great merits of the volume is that it does not cast religious minorities or the militant wings of religious groups as the sole sources of problems for the Indian state, but that it also lays bare the dogmatic streaks in apparently benign liberal and secular views. In only one case is this done to excess, when it is asserted that "the legal system makes explicit provision for the guarantee by the state of the laws relating to marriage, divorce, and inheritance for Muslims and for Christians, but not, it is important to note, for Hindus. For Hindus all such matters of personal and family law are governed by the general laws of India, passed after India became independent." This is clearly misstated, since the Hindu Marriage Act, Hindu Succession Act, Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, and Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act passed in 1955 and 1956 are not cast as general...