ONCE asked by an American missionary about what he most despaired of in India, Gandhiji replied: ‘The hard-heartedness of the educated Indian’.¹ It hasn’t become any better since. A rising new consumerist urban middle class has legitimated a model of development that increases the divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, to the point that the underlying tensions and stress in the democratic system is turning into a perversely majoritarian authoritarian state. There’s little if any concern for Gandhiji’s least and last Indian as the talisman of our freedom struggle. Against this hard-heartedness Gandhiji urged compassion, not merely as a personal virtue but as a political necessity.

Even at a personal level, compassion is more than pity at another’s misfortune.² It is not the obverse side of schadenfreude, rather it is to put yourself in another’ place and feel/sense the situation from the perspective of the other. Compassion is crucial for humans to reach out to one another, to express a conscience of a kind. At the societal level, it is to create a culture where reciprocity of perspectives is the norm for personal and social communication.

In other words, compassion is reaching out to find myself in the other and the other in myself. Here we find the common currency of our basic humanity. This culture of compassion becomes a powerful bonding that sustains social consensus in times of crises. Such a compassionate society seems a utopia, but then utopias are meant more to critique the present than predict the future. However, today a sovereign, secular, socialist, democracy striving for justice, as liberty equality, fraternity may be considered equally quixotic. And yet, this is what the idea of ‘citizen’ must mean, if there is to be any semblance of a national community, a fellowship of rights and duties, of commitments and compassion. What we see today is an ethno-nationalism that polarizes society, that belies the idea of a universal justice for all and a unique identity for each.

Gandhiji’s compassion ambitioned ‘to wipe away every tear from every eye’. This may seem an impossible ideal, yet it has been the deep dream in all major religious traditions: The Kingdom of God, Ramarajya, Dar al-Islam (land of peace), Nirvana, Moksha. For Gandhi, ‘the real struggle that democracy must wage is a struggle within the self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality, with all the vulnerability that such a life entails.’³ This is a practical objective we can build up to, but it would take a strong and sustained collective commitment for this agenda to succeed.

 

Given the acknowledged interdependence between passion and politics, we can no longer ‘factor emotions ...out of what makes for democratic politics, in which people can be brought together’.⁴ However, compassion as political virtue is not without its ambiguities. It fosters a ‘fellow feeling’ among members of the group. It is an essential, egalitarian and an inclusive emotion. But if the group is too narrow and exclusive, it becomes a ‘narcissistic compassion’ that divides and polarizes polities into in-groups and out-groups, rather than create fraternity among free and equal citizens and communities. This is what ethnicity, whether casteism or racism, is all about.

Moreover, when reduced to a sentimental ‘pity’, compassion encourages victimhood rather than agency and thus demeans the recipients without addressing the underlying causes of the unjust situation. Such ‘sentimentality’ is more a private vice than a public virtue; it gives us a certificate of conscience without our having to leave our comfort zones.

 

Martha Nussbaum elaborates the basic structure of compassion as a motiving emotion: ‘First, in expressing compassion, the person who feels the emotion thinks that someone else is suffering in some way that is important and non-trivial. Second is the thought of non-fault: we typically don’t feel compassion if we think the person’s predicament is chosen or self-inflicted. Third, the person who has compassion often does think that the suffering person is similar to him or herself and has possibilities in life that are similar.’⁵

In other words, a reciprocity of perspectives, is a sine qua non of the category of compassion. All else is sentimental pity that finally brings an emotional overload and ends in indifference. We see so much of suffering in our social environment that we cease to notice or be affected by it. In a way this is self-protective but its social implications for a compassionate society could be enormous.

There is little room for such compassion in Thomas Hobbes’s characterization of human life in the state of nature as ‘nasty, brutish, short’ (where each was wolf to the other). Only an absolute and centralized authority could it hold together this the ‘lust of power after power’.⁶ Hobbes was reacting to the tumultuous contemporary social context, the 17th century civil wars in England (1642-1651). But his theoretical perspective still has traction even today in the cynicism of a real politique, though it has been keenly contested.

 

Adam Smith’s lesser known, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, foregrounds ‘sympathy’ as the basis of community cooperation, by attuning citizens to one another so as to ‘have such a correspondence... as is sufficient for the harmony of society’.⁷ De Waal called this ‘the second invisible hand’ correcting⁸ the distortion of the market. In other words, the free market needs the moral sentiment of sympathy to function fairly. For Rousseau, compassion was the democratic emotion par excellence; for it creates bonds of affection through shared suffering. We need a sense of common humanity to support the precarious ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.⁹

More recently this relation between (com)passion and politics has become a new focus for scholars. Martha Nussbaum’s Political Emotions (2015) shows, Why Love Matters for Justice. She sees compassion as the basic social emotion and generalizing it as one of the greatest moral problems of our time. Like others she believes ‘that the security of democratic institutions and practices depends on compassion as a moral and motivational foundation.’¹⁰

 

For compassion makes visible the socially insecure, their vulnerabilities and the indignities and suffering they must endure. This can evoke a response to others’ suffering more quickly and reliably than rational choice, ‘faster than the calculus of Reason’.¹¹ For the intractable issues of justice and reconciliation, compassion is a sine qua non. Indeed, for the stability of liberal democratic politics, we need a ‘critical compassion’, with its positive evaluative content and the emotional intelligence, to bond citizens into a stable national community.

In her remarkable psychological studies of rescuers of Jews in Nazi Germany, Kristen Monroe suggests that political theory has failed to take into account the political and moral significance of altruism and compassion as precious sources of a fragile sense of common humanity.¹² Even in addressing global problems, Andrew Linklater argues critical compassion can make significant contributions for a lasting peace.¹³

As a personal virtue compassion may motivate us to relieve the other’s suffering. But political compassion addresses the causes of such suffering with an ethics of generosity that goes beyond formal, legal and market relationships. When it comes to unhealed memories and wounded histories, this political compassion is the only way forward from the violence and estrangement of the past to reconciliation and restoration of the protagonists in the future. Otherwise the unhealed wounds are reopened again and again to re-enact the remembered but unforgiven past violence.

Martha Nussbaum insists that compassion as ‘public culture needs to be nourished and sustained by something that lies deep in the human heart and taps its most powerful sentimnents, including both passion and humour. Without these, the public culture remains wafer-thin and passionless, without the ability to motivate people to make any sacrifice of their personal self-interest for the common good.’¹⁴

 

In fact that democratic reciprocity needs love, respect is not always stable enough. Here she explains what her understanding of love is: ‘a delighted recognition of the other as valuable, special, and fascinating; a drive to understand the point of view of the other; ...gratitude for affectionate treatment, guilt at one’s own aggressive wishes or actions; and, finally and centrally, trust and a suspension of anxious demands for control.’¹⁵

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa is a challenging example for all of us. But then Ubuntu culture made all the difference, besides charismatic leaders like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.

This approach involved ‘amnesty for truth’,¹⁶ based on ‘Ubuntu’ the African emphasis on ‘community’ and restorative justice. In the process of truth-telling by perpetrators in open forum with victims allowed to question them, hopefully some measure of repentance, and victims too are no longer fearful or vengeful. This brings a sense of closure: a conscience relief for the perpetrators and a reassuring public acknowledgment of the sufferings of the victims. Ubuntu, then is a culture of peace and reconciliation, premised on political compassion. It works on consensus, not coercion, with a sense of belonging, in the community. It is typically African.

 

The real legitimation for such an ‘amnesty’ for this comes from a culture of rights in a humane society that is respectful of individuals and groups; a culture of peace between its diverse communities that is sustained by consensus, not force; a sense of community that gives persons a sense of individuality, acceptance and belonging, participation and agency in the human community.

In societies where fear and hatred rule, Ubuntu would not work. There can be no sense of an integral community where it is broken up by negative emotions that divide and polarize it. However, the retributive justice of the courts and their due processes is not a very effective way to reconciliation. What is essential to succeed at any meaningful reconciliation in such a difficult and arduous quest for truth and justice is third party mediation.

Reconciliation is a political virtue, necessary for victims to recover their dignity and for the perpetrators to redeem their conscience. It is a move beyond old wounds: ‘The acid test of reconciliation is the willingness of those who were harmed to live as neighbours with those who once harmed them. It does not mean that they have to forgive, only that they are able to coexist without recrimination.’

 

The foundation for this South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was ‘Ubutu’, a distinctive African concept, though equivalents are found elsewhere as well, especially in tribal and more egalitarian societies: ‘Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls’, as Tagore wrote.¹⁷ Here is a sense of belonging to a larger community, of being more a part of the whole than apart from it. Descartes’, ‘I think, therefore I am’ set a new foundation for rationalist thinking for independent individuals. The African starts with ‘I am because we are’, the person-in-community.

Michael Onyebuchi Eze, of Cambridge University, explains. ‘"A person is a person through other people", strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an "other" in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative inter-subjective formation in which the "other" becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am.’¹⁸

Ubuntu then is a resource for restoring broken relationships, between individuals in the personal domain, and more so between communities in the public sphere by opening up mutually acceptable remedies. However, any reconciliation process must start with a minimum level of mutual respect expressed in effective tolerance and genuine dialogue. Its focus is on restoration of the wounded community, not the punishment of individual or collective wrongdoing. Such reconciliation is a far surer and better path to healing wounded communities, and restoring their compromised dignity and negated identity. Even the perpetrators will find more fulfillment in the resulting communal peace and harmony.

However, in societies where fear and hatred rule, Ubuntu would not work. There can be no sense of an integral community where it is broken by negative emotions that divide and polarize it. Even the retributive justice of the courts and their due processes is not a very effective way to reconciliation. We will have to start by seeking common ground together and move to higher ground for the greater common good. For this we must dare ‘to take into account the political and moral significance of altruism and compassion as precious sources of a fragile sense of common humanity.’¹⁹

 

As with all emotions, compassion too has its ambiguities. It can become sentimental and self-centred, focused on its own kind while it excludes others. This is a narcissistic compassion which creates a ‘consciousness of kind’ that restricts fellow-feeling to one’s own or similar people. Much of this comes from hidden prejudice, so as to exclude ‘the different other’, the stranger, the last and the least. Often the divide is quite arbitrary, though in India today the most prevalent fault lines are between the religious communities with Muslims the worst off; the caste hierarchy with SC/STs at the bottom; and finally the gender divide that cuts across all groups. We need a critical ‘reciprocity of perspectives’ to counter any self- or group-centredness.

 

There may well be no direct involvement, with the ‘other’ but there is a broader social connection that we cannot escape. Robert Goodin argues coherently in Protecting the Vulnerable: A Re-analysis of Our Social Responsibilities, (1985), towards extending our obligations. His argument is that we cannot escape the responsibility for those dependent on us. Thus, I need not be blamed for the beggars on the street, but I still have a responsibility towards them. This is the solidarity of a republic of liberty, equality, and fraternity. This is what ‘citizenship’ must mean if there is to be any semblance of a national community, a fellowship of rights and duties, of commitments and especially compassion.

Unfortunately, populist leaders have taken advantage of the discontents of rapid change, and the inequalities it precipitates, to polarize and politicize this alienation and anomie into a politics of hate, the very contradiction of a compassionate society.

However, the boundaries of this politics of hate are never quite settled or fixed: in 1983 Nellie, Assam, thousand of Muslims were massacred; in Delhi 1984 we were shocked by massacre of the Sikhs – once considered as the ‘sword arm of Hinduism’! The 2002 pogrom in Gujarat set a new normal to the continuing atrocities against minorities, especially Muslims; atrocities against the STs and SCs have seized to shock us any more. The politics of exclusion has now precipitated a politics of hate that is tearing apart our social fabric, compelling us to ask if ‘the clash of civilizations’ has become endemic to our country?

 

When the politics of identity based on religion and caste has displaced the politics of interests premised on class and ideology, the resulting politics of passion rapidly becomes a politics of hate, nurtured on a sense of self-righteous grievance that expresses itself as a narcissistic victimhood and irrational insecurity, as a narcissistic grandiosity. In an intense atmosphere of hate, a hopeless economic situation produces social failures and failed fortune-seeker, who readily displace their anger and rage on easily identifiable and defenceless victims.

Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect attempts Understanding How Good People Turn Evil’ (2007).²⁰ His Stanford Prison experiments in which normal people were grouped as ‘prisoners’ or ‘guards’ demonstrates how easily ordinarily good people can turn into torturers. In his TED talk²¹ he identifies with seven social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil:

* mindlessly taking the first small step

* dehumanization of others

* de-individualization of self (anonymity)

* diffusion of personal responsibility

* blind obedience to authority

* uncritical conformity to group norms

* passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference and that particularly in new or unfamiliar situations.

An insecure and alienated people easily slip into such deviant behaviour – when politics polarizes the situation there is a need for scapegoats, and vulnerable enemies on whom to vent their frustration. They trust a ‘strong and based leadership’ to protect perpetrators from retribution. The despairing poverty of people allows their discontent and vulnerability to be exploited for such murderous purposes.

Regardless of the dismal performance record of the leadership, this politics of hate thrives on constructing hostile collective identities, mobilizing these into an ‘us versus them’ game of winner takes all. Targeting an enemy is an effective and efficient way to consolidate one’s own group and one’s leadership in it. This may seem a convenient and safe strategy for electioneering, but eventually it precipitates a blowback, a reaction that mirrors the earlier action, and spirals out of control.

 

To turn this back will demand a new narrative framed in an alternative discourse, open to all people of goodwill. It must be an open-ended encounter with our past for an understanding that is empathetic, following Weber’s versethen²² and a tolerance that is compassionate²³ to endure into our future. An authentic historical consciousness is about discovering where we came from, so as to realize who we are and how we got here as we reach out to construct our future.

However, ‘a ruthless, clinical theology of violence must inevitably lead to "loss of self and of signification".’²⁴ The politics of hate contradicts the tolerance with which we have for too long flattered ourselves. Without an acknowledgement of our own failure and guilt there can be no meaningful and healing forgiveness, either sincerely asked for or gratefully received.

When it comes to political forgiveness and healing, both victim and violator must experience a genuine sense of closure. Confession and forgiveness are essential for both, to redeem the violator as also to exorcise their violence, for the recognition of the violated and the healing of their hurt. Forgiveness without admission of guilt easily leads to an eventual legitimation of violence and its consequences, if only by default, while confession without forgiveness is likely to perpetuate the resentment on both sides.

This precisely was a guiding principle of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: the Commission endeavoured to do with its principle of ‘restorative justice’, premised on Ubuntu.²⁵ We have the resources to create a similar narrative of our own; Upanishadic-universalism, vasudhaiva kutumbakam; Jaina ahimsa, Buddhist compassion, Sufi-bhakti mysticism, Islamic tawhid, Christian charity. We can draw on all this to create a culture of tolerance that is compassionate and dialogic or lapse into cruelty and hate.

 

The Sufi-bhakti traditions, so embedded in the living popular religious traditions of our people, have been the basis of the traditional inter-community tolerance in Indic society down the ages. The need for a genuine religious pluralism, grounded in these popular traditions, and a celebration of our multiculturalism is where we must found an active civil society, premised on constitutional values and norms. This is evidenced by the peoples of India, at times in spite of their elites and leaders over the last seven decades plus.

There is now a lack of compassion and an inability to do a ‘reciprocity of perspectives’ which locks the perpetrators into a narcissism of victimhood and narcissism grandiosity.²⁶ Today we are witnessing how people are being manipulated into a false consciousness of communal conflict and violence, making religion into a political ideology to suit their own partisan interests. This has been up-scaled to the national level as is so evident in the majoritarian discourse on ‘nationalism’, by which is meant Hindu Rastra as inspired by Savarkar Hindutva.

 

In 1941, Savarkar’s birthday wish was expressed to the Hindu Mahasabha in the slogan: ‘Hinduise all politics and militarise all Hindudom.’²⁷ And again: ‘India must be a land reserved for the Hindus.’²⁸ It should be evident that Hindutva as a political ideology cannot create an inclusive culture of compassion, whereas Hindu tradition and Indic culture have the resources to do so.

Gandhiji demonstrated this in the freedom movement against the colonial Raj. But those who never really participated in the movement, never learnt compassion and ahimsa, nor the meaning of satyagraha and swaraj. The traditional Hindu religious leaders could not accept Gandhi, in spite of the obfuscations of those who drew their inspiration from Mazzini and his Fascism.

Will India follow other South Asian nations in an ethno-religious nationalism that thrives on polarization and hate? As long as this yields returns at the polls, the violence of collective majoritarian politics will thrive. Only a critical and alert citizenry committed to the common good of all citizens can turn this tide. This is not peculiar to South Asia. Clifford points out that traditional societies, forming themselves into new states in their struggle to catch up with the developed world, readily fall back on an ethno-nationalism, which tends to be authoritarian and majoritarian.

 

In fact compassion is antithetical to our modern way of life, according to Karen Armstrong.²⁹ Yet all the major religious traditions concede its importance. This she says must ‘reflect something essential to the structure of our humanity’, i.e. compassion is natural to humans, but so is cruelty. It’s how we are socialized that makes the difference for humans have a natural capacity for compassion – just as we do for cruelty.

She has campaigned for ‘The Charter for Compassion’, a document that transcends religious, ideological, and national differences. Supported by leading thinkers from many traditions, it has now been translated into 30 languages and endorsed by two million people in 311 communities, in 45 countries and patterned by 1300 organizations.³⁰

Among other things, the Charter calls ‘upon all men and women to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion, to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate, to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures, to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity, to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings – even those regarded as enemies.’

 

For ‘compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.’³¹

Given the bewildering diversity of India, it can’t be held together stably for long by power and coercion, much less by failing promising and bold pretensions. We need a culture of compassion which will reconcile our differences and open us to the less fortunate. At present we seem to be at a turning point to an aggressive ethno-nationalism that can only de-civilize our multicultural, pluri-religious society.

 

Appendix

Karen Armstrong’s ‘12 Steps to a Compassionate Life’: (http://www.aarp.org/entertainment/books/info-02-2011/book-review-twelve-steps-compassionate-life.html)

1. Learn about compassion: Study the place of compassion in the world’s major faiths.

2. Look at your own world: Start with compassion for your community, and assess the potential for change.

3. Compassion for yourself: You must love yourself before you can love others.

4. Empathy: Allow life’s suffering to invade your heart and mind so you can feel empathy for others.

5. Mindfulness: Observe your own behaviour and see that the cause of your suffering is not others, but rather your own anger.

6. Action: Start to act in accordance with the golden rule.

7. How little we know: Make place for other views and feelings in your mind and heart.

8. How should we speak to one another? Learn to express a strong conviction with compassion.

9. Concern for everybody: Contemplate the world’s interdependence, and make room for the more distant ‘other’.

10. Knowledge: Immerse yourself in another culture and learn to appreciate it fully.

11. Recognition: Examine your world, find a need that only you can fulfil, and start to help.

12. Love your enemies: The final step signals an end to tribalism and a move to selfless compassion.

 

Footnotes:

1. https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/mani-talk-gandhi-had-warned-of-the-insolence-of-power-673692

2. Martha Nussbaum, ‘The Morality of Pity: Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, in Rita Felski (ed.), Rethinking Tragedy. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2008, pp. 148-169.

3. Martha C. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2007, p. ix.

4. Charles Taylor, ‘Foreword: Politics and Passion’, in R. Kingston and L. Ferry (eds.), Bringing the Passions Back In: The Emotions in Political Philosophy. UBC Press, Vancouver, 2008, pp. vii-viii.

5. Martha C. Nussbaum, Political Emotions – Why Love Matters for Justice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA., 2015, pp. 143-144.

6. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651, Chapter XIII: ‘Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery’. Thomas Hobbes, 1881 (1st 1651), Leviathan, Or, The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill, Ch 13, pp 92-96, ‘The Natural Condition of Mankind as Concernng Felicity and Misery’, James Thorton, Oxford (https://books.google.co.in/books?id=3VddAAAAcAAJ&source=gbs_similarbooks).

7. A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002 (1790), p. 27.

8. F. de Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2009.

9. J.J. Rousseau, Émile. (B. Foxley Trans.) Dent, London, 1974 (1762).

10. Michael Uze and Mervyn Frost (eds.), The Politics of Compassion. Routledge, Taylor & Francis, NY, 2014.

11. Kristen Renwick Monroe, The Hand of Compassion: Portraits of Moral Choice During the Holocaust. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004.

12. Ibid.

13. Andrew Linklater, Critical Theory and World Politics: Citizenship, Sovereignty and Humanity. Routledge, Abingdon, 2007.

14. Martha C. Nussbaum, Political Emotions, op. cit., p. 43.

15. Ibid., p. 144.

16. Desmond Tutu, ‘Restoring Justice’, The Tablet 259(8525), 21 February 2004, p. 13-14.

17. Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali: Song Offerings. Macmillan, London, 1913.

18. Michael Onyebuchi Eze, Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 190-191.

19. Kristen Renwick Monroe, The Hand of Compassion: Portraits of Moral Choice During the Holocaust. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004.

20. P. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Random House, New York, 2007.

21. https://blog.ted.com/ted2008_will_ev/

22. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. William Hodge and Co., London, 1947.

23. Raimundo Panikkar, Myth, Faith, and Hermeneutics. Asian Trading, Bangalore, 1979, pp. 20-36.

24. Ashis Nandy, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1994.

25. Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness. Image Doubleday, New York, 1999.

26. Ashis Nandy, Regimes of Narcissism, Regimes of Despair. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2013.

27. Cited in Lise McKean, Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996, p. 71.

28. Veer Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform. Khare, Bombay, 1949.

29. Karen Armstrong, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. Anchor, NY, 2011.

30. https://charterforcompassion.org/images/menus/charter/pdfs/CharterFlyer10-30-2012_0.pdf)

31. Ibid.