Professor Irfan Habib Religion and Society in South Asian History

Third South Asian History Congress, 16-18 2015

                        RELIGION, STATE AND SOCIETY IN

                        SOUTH ASIA: A Historical Perspective

                                        16-18 October 2015

Keynote Address

                          ASPECTS OF RELIGION, STATE AND

                        SOCIETY IN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY 

                                                                —IRFAN HABIB

        I should like to begin by congratulating the authorities of the Punjabi University, Patiala, for convening this conference on South Asian history. We in South Asia may now be a group of separate nations, but we do not have corresponding separate pasts. That past, despite its extensive regional and customary variations, remains sturdily common; and it is time to recognise this and to pursue all the implications it has for us today. I would, therefore, particularly greet colleagues from other countries who have taken the trouble to come here to enrich our knowledge and understanding of our common but complex past.

        The theme that we are asked to concentrate on is, in effect, the role of religion in our history. The historian’s task is here certainly a delicate one. Various religious denominations have sincere believers, who wish to see their own faith projected as playing a particular role in the past. This may, however, not be borne out by an impartial scrutiny of evidence. In such a case one expects a degree of clinical neutrality from the historian, who, however, being a human being, is himself affected by a number of subjective influences —usually of a religious kind, but also, as in the present case, of an irreligious turn. However, no one can deny that religion has been an important factor in history; and so any one with any pretensions to be a historian must always assay to assess its role.

        The very first problem that is set for us here is to define religion. A definition, given in the authoritative Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English by Fowler and Fowler, is, “one of the prevailing systems of faith and worship,” which amounts to saying little more than that a religion is a religion. The same Dictionary, therefore, attempts yet a second definition: “human recognition of a superhuman controlling power and especially of a personal God entitled to obedience.” While this would justify Zoroastrianism and the Semitic faiths and Sikhism being assigned the tag of religion, it would not apply to Buddhism and Jainism, which are non-theistic in character; and much of ancient Brahmanism too would also have to be excluded. Clearly, the central belief in all religions is not monotheism, but expectation of afterlife of some kind or another (whether heaven or transmigration of souls, or nirvåna). The individual’s anxiety to continue one’s existence after death seems really to be the common, essential element of all religions, not divine authority, which only follows as a derivative factor in one group of religions.