Religion and the imagination

Relativism is the death of liberalism, says acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie. It is possible to argue for the universality of certain rights, like the right to language, to dream, to imagine, he says, in an interview with Professor Gauri Viswanathan of Columbia University. We carry below excerpts, edited from a longer conversation...

July 03, 2010 05:00 pm | Updated 05:03 pm IST

Of debates and conversations: Gauri Viswanathan with Salman Rushdie.

Of debates and conversations: Gauri Viswanathan with Salman Rushdie.

Gauri Viswanathan: InThe Ground Beneath Her Feetyou depict contrasting characters, such as the ultra rationalist Sir Darius and his miracles-chasing wife, Lady Spenta. For Sir Darius, every intellectual effort begins with the death of the gods, whereas his wife searches for enchantment. And inThe Enchantress of Florence, your most recent novel, you have Akbar as a modern man who questions the existence of God and presides over spirited debates of the Tent of the New Worship between competing philosophical schools. And yet the same rationalist skeptic has created his imaginary Queen Jodha, and he lives in a world that is steeped in magic and miracles. How do you reconcile these two images, which co-habit the same world in your novels?

Salman Rushdie: I don't reconcile them. I just allow them to go on arguing inside me as well as outside. It's true, I think, that if you are involved in the making of imaginative writing, what you're doing is against pure rationalism. I would argue, not unconventionally, that religion comes after reason and that actually religious texts were invented — and gods indeed were invented — to answer the two great questions of life: “Where did we come from?” and “How shall we live?” It seems to me that every religion is based on an attempt to answer those questions: the question of origins and the question of ethics.

Religion has nothing to say on the question of origins. And on the question of ethics, whenever religion has got into the driving seat on that question, what happens is inquisition and oppression. So it seems to me not just uninteresting, but not valuable to turn to religion. I don't want the answers to come from some priest. I would prefer them to come from the process of argument and debate. And the first thing you accept in that situation is that there are no answers, only the debate. The debate itself is the thing from which flows the ethical life.

But when I'm writing books, something weird happens. And the result is that these books clearly do contain a large amount of what you would call supernaturalism. And I find that as a writer, I need that in order to explain the world I'm writing about. As a person, I don't need it, but as a writer I do need it. So that tension is just there, I can't reconcile it. It's just so.

GV: In an earlier conversation we had, you had said that when you wroteThe Satanic Versesyou were attempting to depict the convulsions that take place at the birth of any new religion, which you described as a history often marked by discord and disagreement. You said, “There are scenes inThe Satanic Verses, in which the early religion is persecuted and early members of the religion are verbally and physically abused by the mob in the city not called Mecca, and some of that abuse is there in the novel, and some of these sentences were taken out as my abusive view of Islam.” And then, you ask, “If you're going to make a portrayal of the attacks on a newborn faith, how can you do it without showing the attackers doing the attacking? If then those attacks are made into your view, it's a distortion.”

You spoke then about the difficulties of representing religious debates, especially when those arguments are effaced from the historical record. In reviving that suppressed religious history of dissent, disagreement, and disputation, do you think that writers almost inevitably end up participating in those debates? Or do you think a reasonable distance can be maintained?

SR: I think it ought to be possible to say simply, “This is something like what might have happened at the birth of this religion.” It ought to be possible to say that neutrally, without seeming to be on one side or another. Clearly what happened in the case of The Satanic Verses is that there was an assumption that I was on one side rather than another, and that therefore my meaning should be found in the hostility, rather than in the defence. I think, on the whole, it ought to be possible in any open society to discuss openly how things happen. I think it's a great shame in the world of Islam that so much interesting contemporary scholarship about the origins of Islam is not acceptable. And the reason it's not acceptable is because of the insistence on the divine origin of the text. If, however, you are willing to historicise the text, and to look at the text as an event inside history rather than above history, then immediately what we know about the history of the period opens up and illuminates the text.

I've often spoken about Ibn Rush'd — I'm not really called “Rushdie”,” my father made up the name. And the reason he invented it is because he was an admirer of the philosopher Ibn Rush'd, known to the West as Averroes. And so at a certain point I had to go and find out about Ibn Rush'd. He was one of the people who, in the 12th century, tried to fight the literalist interpretation of the Koran, and did so with great brilliance and scholarship, but, as we can now see from the history of the world, lost the battle. But I've always found one of his arguments very beautiful, and so I offer it: He said that if you look at the Judeo-Christian definition of God, it differs from the Muslim definition in one important particular, which is that the Jews and Christians say that man was created by God in his own image. And what that sentence clearly suggests is that there is some relationship between the nature of man and the nature of God — “created in his own image.” Islam says the opposite. Islam says that God has no human qualities. He has divine qualities. And so Ibn Rush'd argued that language also is a human quality, and that therefore it was unreasonable to suggest that God spoke Arabic, because God presumably spoke “God”. And as a result, when the archangel — even if you believe the story literally — appears on the mountain and delivers the message, the Prophet, understanding it in Arabic, is already making an act of interpretation: he's already taking something that arrives in non-linguistic form and understanding it linguistically. He takes something that arrives as a divine message and transforms it into human comprehension. And so it was argued, if the original act of receiving the text is already an act of interpretation, then further interpretation is clearly legitimate. And that was Ibn Rush'd's attempt — probably the most brilliant attempt, in my mind — to destroy literalism from inside the text. It didn't work, unfortunately, but I wouldn't mind having another go.

GV: Let's look at one of the characters in your last novel,The Enchantress of Florence, Akbar. Do you see the historical presence of competing beliefs as a model for experiments with intellectual and religious pluralism, such as that offered by Akbar in the Tent of New Worship?

SR: Well, he's attractive because he had open-mindedness on the subject of religion. But it's more a belief that all religions were ways of worshipping the same God — described and named differently, but essentially the same. He tried to invent a religion that expresses that idea, the so-called Dîn-i Ilâhî, and it didn't catch on. People in the end preferred their differences to the idea of unity. One of the poignancies about the project of Akbar, is the Ibâdat Khâna, the house of worship, the place of debate…

GV: But it's not even a house, it's a tent. That's what's so interesting in the conceit you use.

SR: Well, that's what interested me. What's clear, if you read the history of Akbar, is that the Ibâdat Khâna, the debating chamber where all the philosophers met every day in debate, was clearly a very important place in the court. And yet in what remains of Fatehpur Sikri, the capital city, nobody has any idea of where this building might have been. And so from that, I decided maybe it was never a permanent building in the first place.

The Mughals were incredible tent-makers. And in fact, you can say that the architecture of the Mughal period is a rendering in stone of some of the principles of the tent-makers. So I thought, “Maybe it's a tent.” And then I thought, that's very appropriate, because ideas are not permanent. Ideas are things in flux, they move and shift, and you can pick them up here and put them down over there.

GV: Is Akbar an ideal for you in any way?

SR: No. I worry about the idealisation of Akbar, because I think a lot of that is backwards projection. We want to have a liberal, tolerant, almost democratic man in the 16th century. But Akbar was a despot. He was a man jealous of his power, and exercised it. So I think what interested me was to write about that conflict in him: between the self that was disputatious and open-minded and the other self that didn't want anyone to argue with him. Of course he tried so hard to break down the barriers between the peoples of India — the barriers created by their different belief systems. And I think it's a heroic action. I do think Akbar's project is admirable, but there are limits to it.

There's a story which shows the possible limits of such a project. The story is that the court musician Tansen created a raga, which was the Raga of Fire, and he sang it so beautifully that his skin began to burn. At the end of the music there were burns on his body. So Akbar said to him, “Go home, rest, get well,” so he went back to Gwalior to rest and recover, and in Gwalior he met two girls called Tana and Riri who were famous for the beauty of their singing. And they sang to him the megh malhar, the Song of the Rain. And the rain fell, and it was magic rain, and washed away his burns. So the Emperor, hearing this story, astonished, invited these girls to the court so that he could celebrate them. The problem was that these were Hindu girls from a Hindu family, and they did not wish to go to the court of a Muslim king. And yet the girls felt that, if they were to refuse to go, the king would be angry and there would be reprisals against their family. They didn't know how to say yes, nor did they know how to say no, and so they committed suicide.

And it just struck me, if you were the kind of king who thought that the borders could be broken down, what a shock it must be to discover that there are people who would sooner die than buy into that project. And it seemed to me that that was the limit — that's why I'm saying it's not idealistic. And we have to recognise that and see why that is and what comes out of that.

GV: There is one strand of thought, especially in India, where Akbar is held as a proto-secular syncretic figure. Amartya Sen's bookThe Argumentative Indianmakes the strong claim that the diffusion of argumentative traditions in Indian life cut across social classes and shaped the Indian social world and culture. He even goes so far as to link argumentation to the development of democracy. Would you go in that direction?

SR: Far be it for me to argue with Amartya Sen…but why not? Sen uses Ashoka and Akbar as early examples of the development of a kind of Indian intellectual tradition which he espouses and values, and which he offers as an intrinsically Indian tradition, not something imported from the outside. And the idea that this kind of open, disputatious, secularist principle can be discovered inside the Indian tradition, rather than outside it, is of course important. But the problem with selecting a couple of exemplars and saying “This is what the Indian tradition comes from” immediately makes one want to say that there are opposite examples. Why is Akbar the model and not Aurangzeb? Why is it that the 50 years of tolerance, of the reign of Akbar, should be the model, rather than the 50 years of oppression and violence under Aurangzeb, only three kings down the line? Ashoka and Akbar are both enormously impressive figures. And yes, it's perfectly right to try to derive from them an Indian tradition that one would want to have. But the reason I resist doing only that is that there is also a counter-tradition: there is a tradition of Muslim oppression of Hindus and of Hindu oppression of Muslims, and of the unwillingness of those two sides to compromise and get along, and that's unfortunately part of the tradition too. And that's not only about India, that's true anywhere you look. You always have to recognise that there is a counterexample. It's very difficult to write novels and only be on one side of the fence.

GV: You depict Akbar's vision of new intellectual and religious pluralism, but certainly it's dispiriting to reach the end of the novel and see that vision disintegrate. It's an extremely bleak sense of the very possibility that Akbar had worked so hard to achieve in his life.

SR: It is bleak, but look at the world we live in. I don't want to be singing some happy song while people are slitting each others' throats and throwing bombs at each other all over the place. We live in a harsh world. We don't live in a world of tolerance and happiness and music and dance. We live in a world of death and bombs and suspicion and hatred and distrust.

GV: Do you think there is some kind of perfect order or world that resists being represented in your imagination?

SR: No. I have no utopian tendencies.

GV: But you do have a sense of alternative political futures?

SR: Oh yes. I'm saying I believe in the argument. Also, if you are by nature satirical in your imagination, it's easy to see what you don't like. I'm good at seeing what I don't like. It's much, much harder to work out what you do like. And often you can be wrong about the things you think you do like.

GV:Shalimar the Clownoffers a terrifying glimpse into the world of religious extremism, which plays on minds and hearts tortured by longing and betrayal to serve its own violent purposes. And yet, in your hauntingly lyrical portrait of Kashmir, the counterpoint to religious extremism is not necessarily secularism but religion restored to a more expansive and inclusive practice.

SR: Yes, exactly. I think many people my age who have any knowledge not just of India, but of other parts of the Muslim world, can remember another idea of Islam which had, more or less, nothing to do with what walks around the world calling itself Islam nowadays, in which it was okay to argue about things and talk freely and live at peace with other people. And it wasn't perfect, because none of us are perfect, but it was possible. And I remember my parents' generation — I remember growing up in that world of people who were in many cases devout Muslims. My grandfather went on the Hajj to Mecca, he said his prayers five times a day every day of his life, and his grandchildren, being grandchildren, would make horrible fun of him and ask him why he spent so much time with his bottom higher than his head. And instead of getting cross with us, he would laugh at us and encourage us to come and have a talk about it.

I remember the Sufi Islam of Kashmir, and the way in which that Islam was affected by its contiguity with Hinduism, and the way in which the Hinduism of Kashmir was affected by its proximity to that Islam. Something interesting and rich developed in Kashmir, a composite culture that was neither completely Hindu nor completely Muslim. And for a while it worked. And now it has been destroyed, and I think the loss of it is a thing to grieve over, not only in Kashmir but in many places of the Muslim world.

Yes, in that novel, I tried to write about that other (to my mind) more beautiful approach to the world. And yes, you're right that the answer to religion is not “No religion”, but another way of thinking about the religion, another way of being in the religion. In The Enchantress of Florence , one of the characters is asked by Akbar, just before he has his head chopped off, what his idea of paradise is, since he's on his way there. And he says, “In Paradise, the words ‘religion' and ‘ argument' mean the same thing, and there is no suppression in religion.”

GV: If I can just stay onShalimar the Clowna little longer — the social ostracism and violent death of your central female protagonist, Boonyi Kaul, are among the most memorable parts of the novel, in fact, among the most memorable passages I've read anywhere in your work. You wrote in aNew York Timesop-ed piece, in December 2005, “Multiculturalism has all too often become mere cultural relativism, under cover of which much that is reactionary and oppressive of women, for example, can be justified.” And you referred to a couple of notorious cases of women — Imrana in India, Mukhtar Mai in Pakistan — women who were very brutally victimised by their religious communities. But the object of your critique in this article is not just the religious authorities and judicial systems that defer to them in India and Pakistan, but also the international community that refuses to get involved, saying “Oh it's their culture, and it has to be respected even if it offends us.”

The question of relativism is a very interesting one in your work: it seems to work for you when it comes to resisting a single origin from which all things and beings derive. But you draw the line when it comes to saying that cultural difference cancels out a single standard of justice.

SR: I don't know how unfashionable this is, but I think there are universals. I think there are things that are universally true and I think there are such things as universal rights. They are not culturally specific, in my view. The argument made by relativists is that it is culturally specific to argue that there are universals. I think there are other ways of approaching it.

One way of approaching it is to say that there are things which are essential to our nature as human beings, wherever in the world we come from. To go back to what I was saying about Ibn Rush'd, one of those essential characteristics that we all share is the characteristic of language. We are a language animal which always, from the beginning, has used language in order to understand itself, and in order to define and shape the kind of creature that it is. So then, if you begin to restrict, limit, forbid, circumscribe how language can be used, you are committing an offense which is not culturally specific: you are committing an existential offense. We have to be allowed to use language to understand ourselves. Therefore, to defend the freedom of language as a universal human right is justifiable not by appeal to this or that cultural tradition but simply to the biology of the beast.

So it seems to me that it is possible in this way to argue for the universality of certain rights. We are a dreaming animal. We live very richly through things that we imagine. Were it not for the capacity of imagination, there would be very little progress in human rights, in human existence. All through human history, imagination precedes reality, and things move constantly from the border — through the border — between imagination and reality. What starts as a dream becomes reality. So again, to start restricting our ability to dream and envision, and to tell us that there are things we can dream about, and other things that are bad dreams, which we must not have — it's a crime against humanity.

I think relativism is the dangerous death of liberalism. If you will justify anything that anybody does because it comes from their tradition, it means you abdicate your moral sense and you cease to be a moral being. Going back to the article you mentioned which talks about the question of women, if you were to take religion away as the justification, nobody would tolerate that for a minute. The kinds of limitations that women have been placed under and the crimes against women in the name of religion are so profound, and yet somehow people don't get as agitated about them as when the same things are done by somebody who wasn't using God as the reason. That seems like nonsense to me.

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