Weaving Alternatives through People’s Resources

Shiluinla Jamir1

Introduction

An attempt will be made in this paper to explore the process of Saffronization in the North East of India. Taking the contradictions that emerge in the context of saffronization as the context, the presenter would attempt to construct alternatives based on people’s resources. These alternatives will be located in one of the most important activities of a tribal woman’s life: weaving. The writer takes this art as a model on which alternatives can be constructed in our search for alternative power. The kind of power that builds life weaves people of different identities into one, while acknowledging the existence of others. Weaving can provide a pertinent image to engage in ethical theological articulation of power.

Tribal communities in India and the world over are increasingly under pressure in the contemporary world. We are in the ‘defensive struggle of resisting homogenizing and hegemonizing forces that are stridently and concertedly overpowering us’.2 Saffronization, like globalization, is an overarching all embracing unitary body that seeks to colonize the intellect of minorities with ends of hegemonizing the already silenced tribal community. Saffronization in the North East of India is espoused by the right wing Hindu, the elite Brahmin caste. It is an ideology propagated by the Hindutva forces or the Brahmincal powers. According to Gail Omvedt, those who began to mobilize under the ideology of the militant Hinduism from the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards were identifiable not so much in class terms but according to caste. They were overwhelmingly Brahmins.3 Saffronization is carried out by and under the tutelage of organizations and political parties, like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Hindutva, literally translated would mean ‘Hinduness’, which seeks ‘to establish the political, cultural and religious supremacy of Hinduism and the Hindu Nation’.4

The North East of India5 refers to the seven states cocooned in the northeastern part of India, consisting mainly of Mongoloid stock. We are characteristically tribals who are easily or racially distinguishable from the people of mainland India. Like many indigenous people of the world, the tribals in the North East have no written history about our customs, traditions, legends, beliefs, and values except those passed through oral or visual tradition in the form of songs, dances, story telling, rites and rituals, wood cravings, festivals, megaliths, etc. Many of these tribal groups accepted Christianity while some continued to remain as observers of traditional religion. Tribal religion is a way of life. Religion and culture are intrinsically linked. Concepts of gods, spirits, and life and death determine one’s action, decision and choices in one’s life. Wati Longchar succinctly explains: “to be truly human is to belong to the whole community, including the ancestors and creation, and to do so involves the active participation in the beliefs, ceremonies, rituals and festivals of the community”.6 Tribal religion is a community religion. The religious ethos is contained in the hearts, minds, oral tradition, rituals and rites.

Methodology: Using Hegemony as a Tool of Analysis

Antonio Gramsci7 used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one class over the others (e.g. bourgeois hegemony). This represents not only political and economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as ‘common sense’ and ‘natural’. This involves a willing and active consent. Hegemony is an active and continuing process, not a static condition. A class sustains its dominance not just by an organization of force but with a moral and intellectual leadership. Compromises are made with a variety of allies who are unified as a social bloc of forces. It is in this social order that the hegemony of the dominant class is created, sustained and recreated in the web of institutions and social relations. The implied consent is not always achieved through force, but by various means, like religion and ideology, which “have the capacity to influence people towards a specific worldview”.8 The writer here proposes to use Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to interrogate and unearth the role of Hindutva and Saffronization in the North East. This is being used with correctives making it applicable in understanding the construction of hegemony. This tool will also enable us to garner alternatives in deprivileging hegemony.

Reading Brahmin, Saffrons and Hegemony

As a result of the intensification of the Hindu-Muslim tension between 1921 and 1923, the dormant Hindu Mahasabha, formed in 1915 as a forum for a variety of Hindu interest (e.g. cow protection, caste reforms, etc.), was revitalized. It was in the setting of ‘Hinduism in danger’ that a new, more influential Hindu militant organization known as Rastriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) was established in 1925 by Keshab Baliram Hedgewar. Its goal has been that of “establishing a vibrant Hindu nation with the ethos of the alleged Golden Vedic Age at its core”9 . Other sister organizations like the BJP, VHP were later formed.

Down through the ages, the Brahmins had a tenacious hold over people’s minds, and the great majority of the Dalits10 were assumed to be ignorant. Their control over the general population was maintained through the Hindu scriptures whose interpretation lay in the hands of the Brahmins. It was from this religious authority that a hierarchy of authority and social relations was maintained: the supreme valuation of ritual purity, and the unquestioned supremacy of the Brahmins. However, with the Dalits becoming conscientized and speaking out, the Brahmins began to create other ways to control them. The Brahmins used concepts and images like nationalism, cultural revivalism and sanskritization to impose a unified ideology. They spoke of a Hindu nation, demarcating India as a Hindu nation through ideological, cultural and political work. They traced the lineage of the nation to the ancient past, claimed Hindu scripture to be the source of all knowledge, and Indian civilization as superior to every other civilization, and ancient India’s achievement as unsurpassed by other civilizations. Critical scholars have reacted to this thinking. The ideological supremacy and rationale for this quest is sought in the religious interpretation of the past, a Hinduised history that Pannikar describes as a “deliberate construction, which seeks to valorize the Hindu in the chequered history of the nation”.11 Romila Thapar, an eminent Indian historian, calls this attempt as ‘historically baseless fulmination’. This misinterpretation lies in ideological preference and not in ignorance. They identify the non-Hindus as foreigners and stigmatize them as enemies by invoking a weird logic that their ancestors were guilty of aggression, iconoclasm and proselytisation.

Despite their seeming antagonism, globalization and saffronization12 are subtly intertwined. They have been able to implement projects of globalization in India on the terms of the local cultural elite. An obvious example is the ‘sanskritization of McDonalds’ in India (no beef burgers in McDonalds). They have been able to provide a brahminic face to modernity and globalization. This nexus between globalization and nationalism is causing further threat to the minorities. At the same time anti-science rhetoric of postmodern intellects has given philosophical respectability to the eclectic patchwork of science and Hindu metaphysics that goes under the name of Vedic science. Philosophical arguments for “alternative science” favored by prominent feminists, environmentalists and post-colonial intellectuals seem to converge with the right wing Hindu claims of superiority or holistic and authentic science of Hindus.13 The marriage of globalization and nationalism and the rise of postmodernism have all contributed to strengthen the cause of the Hindutva pushing the tribals and other subjugated masses into the periphery in power relations. Only by asserting the particular identities of the submerged peoples can they challenge the exploitative hegemony of the upper caste.

The Problem: Saffronization in North East of India

In India, structures of preeminence and homogeneity are predominantly manifested in the reality of Saffronization. In a context where multifarious structures of oppression operate, one has to talk of primary identity, an identity on which a person or a community is first and foremost marginalized. It could be race, gender or tribe. In North East India, it is undoubtedly about tribal identity. When we talk of clash of identities, it means identities of various persuasions. There are progressive subaltern identities as well as regressive dominant identities. In this context the progressive subaltern identity is represented by the North East Tribals and the dominant regressive identity is represented by the upper caste Hindu elite couched in the ideology of Hindutva.

The Hindutva began its activities in the North East of India in the early 1960s. The VHP was formed in 1964 to counter Christians and missionaries in the North East, but doing so in the name of “protecting the tribal culture and religion”. While opiating the people, this sought to maintain the Brahminic hold over tribals and their society, which did not have any caste system. Its end was to control Tribals economically, politically and culturally to keep them in a subordinated state.

One peculiar aspect of the Saffrons is that they take advantage of the poor, illiterate and traditional followers. In promoting a unified God as the God of all Indians (e.g. Ram), tribal gods are projected to be an extension of Hindu gods. They propagate the myth that North Eastern tribals are Hindus, subsuming the ‘colonized other’ into the self. Once colonized, they are taught Sanskrit, taken to mainland India and put in Gurukuls where they are registered as RSS cadets. Brainwashed with Brahiminc ideas, they are brought back to Nagaland with a view to increase their number. Women are made to wear tikas. Temples are built with statues of Hindu gods and pictures (tribals do not worship in temples). School classrooms are named after the RSS ideologues like Veer Savarkar. While giving a unified identity to the tribals based on religious identity, conflict lines are redrawn between tribal Christians and traditional religion believers. A hate ideology is created between traditional followers and Christians in the villages, even between brothers and sisters. They are made to ignore their primary identities and assume and internalize an alien religious identity, i.e., as Hindu. Nagas need to realize the danger and folly of the fault line conflicts, to reclaim and reaffirm their original identity, to de-link themselves consciously from the homogenizing, authoritarian identity, not to be subsumed and absorbed into such tyrannical system.

One activist shared in an interview that there is a foundation called the Surya Foundation based in Delhi, which gives an eight-month training. They pick people from the villages, pay a paltry sum of Rs. 1000 a month and target pre-school children to join the Rastriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). Sanskrit textbooks are prepared and evening classes are held for two to three hours. The syllabus consists of Hindu mythology, bhajans are sung. Although they tell the people, “we are here to counter Christian missionaries. We do not want to erode your culture”, they do Hindu practices before any function or program (e.g. breaking a coconut, lighting the Diyas). An organization called Jan Jati Vikas Samiti acts as mouthpiece of the RSS in Nagaland. It has been responsible for bringing Westerners to the North East and creating forums and rhetorics against Christians and early missionaries, accusing them of spoiling the sublime Naga culture. Since some RSS Naga cadets are doctors and engineers, village people become eager to send their children to that school. Ultimately these Naga RSS cadets will be used to fight against the Muslims in the larger Indian context. Fascism always needs an enemy to survive and accusing the Muslims and Christians as aliens and invaders have paid rich dividend in gaining their political power at the center. Only by asserting the particular identities of the submerged people can they challenge the exploitative identity politics of the upper caste Hindu in India.

In spite of the seemingly distressing situation, there are hopeful signs because the tribals have begun to re-assert themselves. One classic example is the celebration of the spring festival called Lui Naga Ni, the seed sowing festival. Every Naga tribe celebrates seed sowing festival at the onset of spring. During this festival, the gods are evoked to shower their blessing on the sown seeds. A collective shape was given in 1987 naming this festival as the Lui Naga Ni festival in which all Nagas come together. This year’s spring festival adopted the theme ‘Our Culture, Our Identity’ to make a conscious fresh view of their history at this stage. In their own words, this conscious effort of our mind shall be “an act of faith in what is elemental to human nature and our tribal lives”.14 This is an act of rejecting the hegemony of the Hindutva and reasserting and reaffirming our identity, values, cultures and customs. Another movement that has been formed to counter this homogenizing god is the Zeliangrong Theological Association.

Depriviliging Hegemony: Constructing Alternatives

Weaving is an integral part of a North Eastern woman. Weaving is a necessity besides being an art. A weaver is expected to be strong because it requires enormous energy to weave, to bring the different strands together without submerging other strands. In the olden days, rich people would hire weavers and provide them nutritious food in the form of adding salt and dried fish, a rare delicacy then. A shawl was known to be bad or good by its strength, by the way the different hues of strands are held together without overshadowing the other strands. This particular activity was tabooed for men, hence, an art meant for women alone.

Each member of the family is entitled to at least one shawl. After one dies, the woven shawl is used to cover the dead body as a sign of respect. Since a traditionally woven shawl was considered sacred, misusing it was considered bad. Likewise, every community is sacred, therefore, one cannot think of misusing the other for one’s interest. In this present context where others are being used for one’s interest of furthering hegemonizing power, respect for the other is a strong message that the whole dynamics of weaving offers. Through the woven shawl, communication is possible. One need not tell which tribe/community they belong to. In a time when all forms of violence are used to make ones’ power felt, the woven shawl in its pristine silence communicates to onlookers the tribe/community one represents.

Weaving offers a paradigm of communication without being violent and loud; where communication does not happen; where silencing the marginalized is used as a means to hegemonize the minorities. Weaving calls for a communication with respect between and amongst us and conjures images of interrelatedness and community ethics. Girls would get together and weave, helping each other put the threads around the weaving instrument. One could not weave alone for she needs at least one person to help her in tying the thread around. Weaving depicts a strong image of interrelatedness. One strand of thread does not make up a shawl. It needs other strands to become a shawl. We need the presence of others and the existence of other communities and cultures to lend colors to our collective identity. Recognition of the otherwise subordinated is an act of deprivileging hegemony.

Weaving also shows one’s power of creation, creating the kind of design we like, a design that will enhance life. It speaks about our ability to create the kind of community we want, one that preserves life, lends color to life, and sustains life with respect. Weaving offers this model. Weaving accommodates both the rich and poor, humbly serves the needs of the poor and rich alike. Weaving invites us to serve each other. Living for others, a strong tribal ethics called Sobaliba in Ao, is an alternative power that serves all according to need.

It was earlier mentioned that weaving is a taboo for men. Weaving was not recognized as an important activity as headhunting (a purely man’s domain) or working in the field, simply because it was done by women. Although seen as secondary, this art has served, built and sustained lives and communities. Weaving serves as an empowering agent for the womenfolk. Self-help groups (consisting of women alone) share ideas and recreate designs, styles and cruises along with the world. Through this art the silenced community of women speak many languages, their hitherto unexpressed messages are spoken and their dreams and longings are woven. With this they weave their stories, struggles and hope. Weaving invites minorities and other hegemonised groups to continue to hope, dream and speak our language in our terms, rejecting handed down knowledge and being critical of our ‘assumed’ natural world. It invites us to be aware of our subordination and to weave a new world that we imagine together. Weaving the kind of world we want deprivileges hegemony and empowers ourselves.

Alternative Power

Power can be either abusive or constructive. Power can be life-negating or life-building. Power can be either fragmenting or uniting. The kind of power that weaving posits implies an openness to others, willingness to learn, to be co-sojourners together. This is grounded in the acknowledgement of the plurality and relativity of one’s self. It symbolizes a creative area that facilitates the interaction of the self with the other, supporting, respecting and building each other. This power can be well explained by the art of weaving. In the face of the brutal reality of hegemonization of culture and life, weaving provides an alternative space of care and resistance. Through this act a woman strives to be a subject, not an object. The beauty and aesthetics of weaving enhances the dignity of the submerged community. The experience of the supporting environment, a place that feels familiar, is safe enough to be creative, and stable enough to open to new avenues is the paradigm weaving offers.

Resistance may seem futile because the mechanism of saffronization seems so ‘natural’ and subtle. But in the midst of this we continue to resist. Resistance forms an integral part in deprivileging hegemony. Resistance can be observed from the weavers’ ability to conjure up images, dreams, symbols, transcending the limited space of creativity. They dream, imagine, create their own symbolic worldview, which can be a basis of hope for working out their own subjectivity. They articulate a new world of meanings, symbols. This multiple process of dreams and imagination does not take place in a vacuum but are shaped by the environment in which they live. Resistance can be a creative way of affirming selfhood and a creative expression of rejecting the imposed identity brought by agents of Saffronization. Through imagining and resistance, women interrogate, unearth the vast expanse of knowledge that they hold and which their community can provide.

The premise upon which we begin our discussion is the fact that ‘human beings are fundamentally incomplete’. Yet we have the power to modify the environment, ourselves, and our thought processes in significant ways. It is an open world that must be fashioned by us. In fashioning our world, we also fashion our own personhood; the institutions and ideologies we form in turn shape us. Unlike other beings, we have an important role in determining our own world. This self-creation is the essence of ethics. We can make decisions about our own nature, what we are and what we will become. We must all choose, and choose continually what we are and what we will do collectively as well. We choose what we will be and how we will act as societies and communities. This compelling ethical premise enables us to question the kind of world that is being created, using power to subjugate and hegemonize. This premise challenges us to talk of alternatives because it challenges our conception of the world that we want to create. Let us use power to bring people together, to accept the other without assimilation, and to empower the already subjugated communities.

NOTES:

1 Shiluinla Jamir is a theologically trained woman from Nagaland, North East of India, who works with rural women and people with HIV/AIDS.
2 Sathianathan Clarke discusses this point in the context of religious minorities’ struggle against the Hindutva ideology, that seeks to demonize all non-Hindus as aliens and therefore traitors, an ideology that creates a colonizing self and the colonized other. Sathianathan Clarke, “Hindutva, Religious and Ethno-Cultural Minorities, and Indian Christian Theology”, a paper presented at the Faculty Seminar, United Theological college, Bangalore Nd. p.1
3 Gail Omvedt, “Hinduism, Social Inequality, and the State”, Religion and Political Conflict in South Asia: India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, ed., Douglas Allen (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993), 27.
4 Brenda Cossman & Ratna Kapur, Secularism’s Last Sigh? Hindutva and the (Mis) Rule of Law (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 7.
5 It has an area of 299,095 sq. km. with an estimated population of 26.64 millions. It is small in area and population.
6 Wati Longchar, The Traditional Tribal Worldview and Modernity: Focus on North East India (Jorhat: Eastern Theological College, 1995), 6.
7 Antonio Gramsci, an Italian thinker (1891-1937) was a leading Marxist who rejected economism, insisting on the independence of ideology from economic determinism. He rejected crude materialism, offering a humanist version of Marxism, which focused on human subjectivity.
8 S. Selvam, “Sociology of India and Hinduism: Towards a Method”, Dalits in Modern India: Vision and Values, ed. S. M. Michael (New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1999), 177-178.
9 Both theoretically and programmatically, the Hindutva foundation was laid by V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwakar, in their well known texts Hindutva (1924) and We, Or Our Nationhood Defined (1942), respectively.
10 The word Dalit derives from a Sanskrit work dal meaning “burst, split, broken or torn asunder, downtrodden, scattered, crushed, destroyed”. The word refers to the lowest order in the Hindu social system or hierarchy. Cf. James Massey, Dalits in India: Religion as a Source of Bondage with Special Reference to Christians (New Delhi: Manohar Publication, 1995), 15.
11 K.N. Pannikar, Introduction, Concerned India’s Guide, p.xxi
12 George Mathew Nalunnakkal lucidly discusses the marriage of globalization and nationalism in the context of Caste oppression pushing Indian Christian Theology to a new arena in its search for liberation, justice and plurality. Cf. George Mathew Nalunnakka, “The Clash of Identities: Identity Politics as the New Locus of Doing Theology in India”, keynote address presented at the Young Indian Theologian Colloquium , Hyderabad, 2002,
13 Meera Nanda, “Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and ‘Vedic science’,” Frontline, Jan 16, 2004 pp. 87- 91.
14 Nagaland Post, Dimapur: 6, 2004, p.3.
15 Charles Kammer, Ethics and Liberation: An Introduction (SCM Press Ltd.), 7.