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Akshay Alladi

15 Oct, 10 tweets, 2 min read

Thread: “Religion” (actually Dharma, mistranslated) does permeate many aspects of Indian life (it is not just an undercurrent). But actually India or Hinduism isn’t the exception here. Not just Indic faiths, even Islam permeates the lives of its adherents. (1/n)

“Religion”, culture are inextricably linked. That there could be a separation of public and private spheres, and that religion is a matter of “private belief” not necessarily public observance and culture is ONLY Christian theology, and unintelligible to other societies. (2/n)

Scholars such as Jakob de Roover have traced that not just to the separation between the regnum (the realm of the king) and the sacerdotium (the rule of God and the Church), but also to the body- soul and hence belief -practice distinctions in Christianity. (3/n)

There are historical reasons also as well, not just theological, especially what Christianity was in the pagan Roman Empire. But the point is at least one can try and make a distinction in a Christian society. In any Indic or Eastern or even Islamic one, one cannot easily (4/n)

So “secularism” at least as understood in Christian societies doesn’t work elsewhere. A call for a full separation of the state or even public spaces (as the French do) from “religion” is a call for cultural deracination because culture is permeated by “religion” (5/n)

You cannot separate Dharma from society, culture, public spaces and even the state. Thinking you can is an implicit acceptance of Christian theological concepts which don’t make sense to people of practically every other religion (6/n)

What we should call for is diversity and harmony. It is a fallacy to think that diversity and harmony is ensured ONLY by a “secular” state and a society whose public culture is purged of all “religion”. In fact that is an inferior solution (7/n)

The Hindu solution of thinking of “religion” itself as a set of inherited (diverse) traditions that one has to follow rigorously for liberation and reaching the ultimate truth, automatically opens up the space for diversity- different traditions, paths, even beliefs (8/n)

I also think it makes culture more lively, and less bland. Myth, legend and practice, ritual and folk practices, even “modernity” and tradition, all blend seamlessly. As minor anecdotes, just yesterday my Saraswati Puja included books on private equity and finance… (9/n)

…A factory I went to had a state of the art machine, for which an Ayudha Puja was done. The airline pilot saying “city of Shiva to city of Shakti” for a Kashi to Kolkata flight. This happens organically. This is something to cherish. (10/10)

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More from @akshayalladi

Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

21 Sep

Thread: Last evening, our house owner, whom we had over for dinner, was narrating an anecdote about our villa complex’s watchman from UP. He had gone back home only to find that his brother had sold one of their ancestral lands to someone. The sale was technically “legal” (1/n)

The watchman then appealed to the Panchayat. Not just the Panchayat elders, but even the buyer of the land, on hearing of the fact that the seller had not consulted his own brother before selling their ancestral land, saw that as a violation of “Dharam” (2/n)

The buyer returned the land and got back his money. Everyone involved was convinced that was the right thing to do. We were then musing- how much does our *law* reflect our own customary practices and shared moral intuitions? (3/n)

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Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

30 Aug

Thread: Happy #Janmashtami everyone. Sharing 7 bhajans/ Carnatic songs about Lord Krishna composed (both music and lyrics) by my mother - Smt. Meera Alladi; 5 in Hindi, and 2 Tamil. The first "Govinda, Tere Bina" in Janasammohini ragam, Hindi (1/8)

The second is "Shyam Tere Naam", Jog Ragam, Hindi (2/8)

The third is "Vasudeva Venu Madhava", Bhageshree ragam, Hindi (3/8)

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Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

28 Aug

Musing: If you model sections of the academia and media - what is called the “intellectual ecosystem”, not as a free market, but as a closed oligopoly, actually not even that because there is no market test, then one can see why bad ideas perpetuate. (1/n)

In the “real world” that many of us inhabit, large companies that are not innovative, get disrupted by more agile startups or attackers. That’s not as easy in the “intellectual ecosystem” because there is no currency such as actual consumer purchases, that acts as a test (2/n)

Anyway, as an outsider who is a consumer so to speak of intellectual outputs, I watch out for the heterodox ideas, because those are the “startups”- the ideas that actually merit greater consumption, as they bring fresh novel insight, but get killed in their infancy..::: (3/n)

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Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

27 Aug

Some policy analysts confidently saying India should take in lots of refugees from Afghanistan. See what happened in Kabul. People who operate in the real world know that many decisions have to be taken with incomplete information, and that malign actors want to harm us.

“bUt tHe OrDiNaRy AfGhAn lOvEs iNdIa”- yes they do, and this is a tragedy. Tell me how you have the deep perception to know, *without prior information*, who is an ordinary Afghan versus an ISI trained terrorist to wreak havoc in India?

The only people we can help are the Hindus, Sikhs and the known friends of India- that is those whom we have adequate background checks or information on, or have actively collaborated with us. Lamentations that the ordinary Afghan will start disliking us are silly

Read 4 tweets

Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

25 Aug

General musings in this thread: Going back to a great book again- psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book on Moral Foundations theory, since there is a lot of debate on moral universalism versus differences between societies. I was intrigued by the origin story of the theory….(1/n)

..he first saw it when he spent time as a researcher in Odisha! Until then he was a hardcore liberal, but when he spent time with people here and found them to be friendly, but also deeply moral he saw that it was a different moral “matrix” (2/n)

…And he even introduced this notion of different moral matrices by asking the overwhelmingly liberal audiences in his talks whether they are willing to take the “red pill” (he used this term!) and see past their own moral matrix (3/n)

Read 10 tweets

Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

26 May

Thread: On the Lakshadweep controversy, some observations at different levels. First, at an institutional level, we should debate whether all UTs should also have legislatures. That’s a good way to channel democratic opinion institutionally. (1/n)

In any case a consultative approach is better, but institutional mechanisms for the same are always a more robust way to achieve that, else you’re at the mercy of the conduct of particular post holders. Of course the powers of a UT govt may be different from that of a state (2/n)

On the cow slaughter issue: I think the right balance here is to leave it to states/ UTs. I am neither a believer in absolute individual freedom nor in cultural uniformity. In the case of Lakshadweep cow slaughter should NOT be banned, but it should be in most states (3/n)

Read 10 tweets

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