With the shrinking demarcation between faith and politics leading to violent conflicts the world over and fanaticism and bigotry dominating much of our political discourse, nothing can be more pertinent than talking about religion in literature. But when religion is central to a discussion, it’s usually fraught with frayed tempers, scattershot argumentation, heated debates and sharply differing perspectives. They may not have been blatantly evident on the Lit for Life 2015 platform, yet the great divide manifested, prompting moderator A. R. Venkatachalapthy to remark in a lighter vein, “I am in the middle, right in the middle. I have sympathy for both views since I am a historian and a translator.”
The session began with Venkatachalapathy stressing on the need for a secular study of religion. He also spoke about how language can convey the essence of the philosophy behind a thought. He referred to writer Jayakanthan’s probing comment: “Kaduval poi, bhakti poiya?” (God is false, but is devotion false?). “Devotion is a productive force,” he said, asking well-known columnist Renuka Narayanan how to handle religion from the point of view of literature.
“I was a party girl in jeans when I was told by the editor to write a column on religion for the edit page of the Indian Express . And I realised much of our religious writings were by babajis and the older generation.
I chose Irawati Karve’s Yuganta , where the writer has looked at the Mahabharata as an insider, as the reference point for my first piece,” she said.
A reputed arts editor and popular teacher of cultural journalism, Sadanand Menon argued how it is important to not look at religion only through texts and become their victim: “Because religion manifests itself in several ways.”
But Renuka felt it’s the human need to address the unknown, the deepest fears that force them to seek comfort in these texts. “Personally, whenever I have gone through a crisis, words from religion have put steel in my spine,” she said.
According to Sadanand, the interesting aspect of religion is that the greatest amount of critiquing has come from within. “Many of the Bhakti poets have been unsparing of rituals and the tyranny of institutional practices. But what all of us have to be concerned about right now is the role of religion and its cumulative impact from the perspective of the State and daily life.
No point in glamorising the beauty of religious poetry. It has to throw in new lines of enquiry,” he concluded, but not without mentioning that “nobody can have the last word on this topic though.”
