Challenges of Emancipatory Research

Recently I spoke about Emancipatory Disability Research (EDR) in a conference in Italy. This post presents some of the key points from that presentation, with a special focus on challenges of conducting EDR in a rural or peripheral area of a developing country.

This is my 7th article about Emancipatory Research and if you wish to learn more about this research approach, you can check the whole list of the articles.

EDR in Developed and Developing Countries

In 1990 Mike Oliver (1945-2019) proposed the basic idea of Emancipatory Research - A research about disability based on the social model and carried out by persons with disabilities. He suggested that such an approach will provide information which can't be provided by non-disabled researchers.

The university courses on Disability Studies starting in late 1990s, spread the idea of emancipatory research. Thus, most examples of EDR come from developed countries which run courses on disability studies. There are a few examples of EDR conducted by persons from developing countries, studying in the universities in Global North, who did their research in developing countries. Many of these were researches conducted by university-educated individuals with disabilities and involved personal stories or in a few cases, a small number of persons with disabilities.

On the other hand, the model of EDR developed in the AIFO projects in developing countries over the last 10 years, is different. Here the research is carried out in collaboration with the local Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs), while persons with disabilities from communities are given a short training and become the researchers. Their research has a collective approach and it focuses on the main barriers they face in their lives. A process of information collection followed by reflections and collective discussions are essential parts of these EDR initiatives. I like to think of these as the Freirian model of EDR, since it seems to reflect the ideas of Brazilian Pedagogist Paulo Freire.

All my discussions in this paper are based on my experience in EDR in developing countries in the AIFO Projects.

Freirian Model of EDR

I think that before proceeding further, it will be important to understand the general process of EDR implementation in AIFO projects:

(1) It is a part of an on-going community programme. The programme staff plays a key role in initiating discussions with DPOs and other stake-holders about conducting EDR.

(2) DPOs and community organisations such as Self-Help Groups (SHGs) are used to identify persons with disabilities who will be trained, who will become the researchers and carry out the research.

Depending on the country, local context and the activities of the community programmes, the researchers can be persons with different education levels (including illiterate persons), men and women, of different age groups, with all the different kinds of disabilities and different severity of disabilities.

(3) A group of persons with different kinds of expertise are also identified to create a Technical Advisory Group (TAG), which supports the researchers by helping to plan the research and providing feedback about the research process. This group includes academic researchers and disability experts.

(4) The researchers are provided a brief training (mostly 4-5 days), focusing on examining the different possible causes of a problem, the concept of barriers and the social model of disability, how to conduct interviews, how to carry out accessibility audit, basics of ethics, privacy and bias, and how to prepare a report. The final session of the training helps them to discuss and identify the problems about which they would like to conduct their research.

(5) A research plan is made and a calendar of activities is prepared with the support of the Programme staff. Researchers visit their communities, interview authorities, service providers and other disabled persons to collect information about their selected problem.

They meet periodically to share all the information collected about a problem and reflect on their findings. Sometimes they invite other persons as guests to these meetings. They also think about and discuss the possible solutions and strategies to address those problems, including what they can do themselves, what can be done at community level and what can be done by the DPOs.

(6) The research may last at least a few months, more usually a year or even more. All their meeting reports including their findings, reflections and suggestions are reviewed by the programme staff, DPOs and TAG members, who can provide feedback, additional information and comments.

(7) As mentioned above, the process of enquiries, discussions and collective reflection on specific issues is similar to the principles of Freirian Praxis as used in Participatory Action Research (PAR). Often, during this process, the researchers along with other persons with disabilities in the communities and with DPOs, can initiate specific activities to respond to the needs they have identified.

(8) The whole process is accompanied by a reporter, a person who documents all the findings, discussions and follow-up activities.
Challenges of Freirian model of EDR

Over the past 10 years, I have been involved in 6 EDR projects in AIFO projects (2 in India, one each in Palestine, Italy, Liberia and Mongolia).

Challenges of EDR

Some of the key challenges of these researches in my experience have been the following:

Involving persons with specific disabilities as researchers: The EDR process promotes empowerment of disabled persons who are involved as researchers. However, not all persons benefit equally. Some persons, who are very shy and lack self-confidence, they require a lot of effort and support in the beginning and often other researchers get impatient with them and ask to replace them.

Persons with specific disabilities such as deaf persons, persons with cerebral palsy, persons with intellectual disabilities, persons with mental illness, and persons with leprosy, are usually excluded from EDR. Usually they are not so active in DPOs. Both DPO staff and Programme staff, may think that it will not be easy to work with them. Thus, they are often excluded and it requires persistent dialogue with DPOs, staff and other disabled persons to convince them about their inclusion.

Participation of women is another key issue. Even DPOs which have strong women leaders in top positions, are not able to convince communities to select disabled women as researchers. Even when selected, often men dominate the discussions and when women speak, the men may laugh or make comments. It requires continuous dialogue with researchers to make them aware about these biases.

Unrealistic expectations from the research: Some times DPOs and Programme staff have completely unrealistic expectations from the research. After 4-5 days of training, they think that researchers can do all kinds of qualitative and quantitative research. They may have little patience in supporting researchers who have difficulties in articulation or who are slow in understanding. Sometimes they expect specific kinds of written reports from researchers and can be too severe in their criticisms.

NGO programme staff can also be dominating and interfering in the research process, imposing their ideas on the researchers.

Limited Support of TAG experts: Most of the time, persons invited to become part of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of experts of an EDR are busy persons with a lot of responsibilities. Unless invited to a specific EDR activity to conduct training or provide advice, they may not have the time to read EDR reports and provide feedback and advice to the researchers. At the end, it is important to ensure that at least 1-2 persons with good research experience follow and support the whole EDR process, while the specific support from the remaining expert members of TAG needs to be negotiated.

Reporter: The person selected to write all the EDR reports is the interface between researchers and the rest of the Programme team and TAG members. Having a capable person in this role, can be the most important factor in ensuring success of EDR. The person should be articulate and computer literate.

We have tried with both kinds of persons in this role - person with disability as well as, a non-disabled person. Both can be a support or a hindrance to the process.

A disabled person as a reporter can be too anchored to his/her own disability experience and thus become an obstacle to free discussions in the group. Specific disabilities may limit his/her interaction with other researchers. Having fixed ideas about what should or should not be done about specific disability issues, can also block open discussions in the group.

A mature person who is self-secure and does not need to dominate others, who can raise question gently, and facilitate constructive and open discussions which are inclusive of all the researchers, is needed for this role.

Language issues: In rural areas where EDR is carried out, often persons with limited education can only speak and understand local dialects. Reporter and programme staff may not understand these languages. Even researchers who can understand these languages, may not be able to translate all the ideas and concepts in to the official language. Thus, often important information can be lost in the translation and may not be a part of the official research reports.

Community activities: Many discussions and at least part of the activities stimulated by the EDR process take place in communities and small groups, outside the formal meetings. Researchers may not understand the importance of bringing all this news and information to the reporter.

Difficulties Related to Formal meetings - these have pre-decided agendas and limited time. In these meetings, there may not be enough time to share general information about what is happening alongside the research process. Even when researchers bring this information, the reporter may not see its relevance.

Thus, many collateral developments related to EDR are ignored in the official reports.

Measuring Empowerment: A key goal of EDR is to promote empowerment of the disabled persons participating in the research. While there is a lot of anecdotal information about how the researchers and other disabled persons feel empowered in this process, there is no standardised way to measure the change in empowerment of individuals. While there are some attempts to measurement of empowerment (such as by the World Bank), these are not practical for use in the context of EDR.

Conclusions

The Freirian Model of EDR needs more reflection and understanding. If similar models are being tried anywhere in the world, it will be good to exchange information with them.

EDR can not answer all kinds of research questions. It can play an important role in understanding how local contexts and cultures, including lack of proper infrastructure and lack of services, influence the barriers faced by persons with disabilities in developing countries. These experiences of EDR can provide a richness of details about people’s lives and about the solutions they find to overcome their barriers, that may be difficult to get with any other research approach.

There is still a lot about the Freirian model of EDR, which needs to be understood and defined.

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Secularism & Inter-Religious Harmony

A few months ago, I was in Kochi in south India, where I met a guy involved in a project of cultural mapping of Fort Kochi, which looked at how people from different parts of India, as well as persons coming from other countries had settled here over a period of centuries. It mapped their residential areas, heritage sites and worship places. It was a very interesting discussion.

Afterwards, thinking about that discussion made me ask myself – 

(1) What kind of norms and rules they had in ancient India which guided the settling-down of different outside communities, to ensure harmony with the pre-existing communities already living there?

(2) Another question in my mind was – how were those old Indian norms and rules different from the ideas of secularism today?

My questions reflected the situation in Europe, where we are seeing a kind of popular backlash against immigrants and refugees. Thus, I was asking myself, can there be something we can learn from the experiences of inter-religious harmony in India?

This post is a reflection on the theme of secularism and inter-religious harmony.

Ideas of Inter-Religious Harmony & Secularism

There are some fundamental differences between the concepts of inter-religious harmony and secularism. Inter-religious harmony is about how different groups live together while secularism is a state policy. However, the two concepts are inter-related and influence each other.

Experiences of inter-religious harmony depend upon how the different groups co-exist together in the community. The old proverb, "Live in Rome like the Romans do", indicated the ideals about inter-religious harmony in the west. We don't have similar proverbs in India, becaue it was and is guided by philosophies that accepts a diversity of beliefs.

The western ideas of secularism were defined at the time of theocratic state, when the Christian church held both the state and the religious powers. Secularism's goal was to separate the religious powers from the state powers. However, today most discussions about secularism are about how the Governments deal with and treat persons of different cultures & religions among their populations. These ideas developed in the West, are today seen as universal by a lot of persons, also in India.

I feel that these two ways of thinking, the traditional ideas in India and pagan cultures about inter-religious harmony and those of the secularism, are different though we do not have a clear understanding about those differences. For example, I think that the ideas of secularism are idealistic, they are about how progressive persons would like to see multi-religious societies and are focused more on safeguarding the rights of minorities, which are seen as weak and oppressed. On the other hand, the ideas of inter-religious harmony are more pragmatic and focus on a balance of powers between the groups, in which the majorities often dominate but are respectful of the minorities.

I also think that today most well-educated persons including academics, thinkers, writers and progressives, look at events in our societies mainly through the prism of secularism. On the other hand, most ordinary persons, continue to use the lens of inter-religious harmony. In the communities, there can be a mismatch between the two.

Understanding the Norms of Inter-Religious Harmony in India

The first Christian and Jew Communities came and settled near the coastal areas of south India about 2000 years ago. When Islam arrived in the middle-east, other migrants like Parsi, Baha'i and Armenians arrived in India. Over the centuries, different waves of immigrants from India and abroad also arrived and settled here. Most of these communities prospered and with time, their numbers increased. Till a couple of decades ago, this was a dominant narrative about India, which accepted that the Indic religions were open to people of other religions and welcomed them.

During the recent years, gradually the openess and welcoming of Indic religions has been replaced with dominent narratives about "militant and violent Hinduism", especially in relation to the relations with Muslims. I think that this change in narratives does not express a real change about the way Indic religions look at different religions but has other origins.

I believe that it will be useful to understand the different ways in which the Indic religions dealt with refugees arriving in India, who belonged to other religions.

For example - what kind of rules were made by the local kings to accept the persons belonging to different cultural and religious communities, to ensure religious harmony? What do accounts of foreign visitors to India over the centuries tell us about this theme?

How are those older norms and rules, similar to and different from the ideas of secularism dominant today? I searched online but, apart from some generic mentions of Ashoka’s edict and Akbar’s rule, I could not find any academic papers or research work that looked at and analysed the older norms and rules to foster inter-religious harmony in India.

Learning from Personal Experiences of Religious Harmony

I grew up in a multi-religious environment with the idea that our religions were an opportunity to have fun and enjoy the different customs & festivals. On Eid day, our Muslim neighbours prepared sweet sewaiyan (vermicelli) and brought to us, just like on Deewali and Holi, we shared our sweets with them. On the Christmas eve, I accompanied a friend to the mid-night mass in the cathedral, while he was equally enthusiastic about playing with the colours of Holi. On the Gurupurab day, all of us woke up early to get a glass of Kachi lassi from the processions of the Sikhs.

From those experiences what lessons I can draw regarding inter-religious harmony? I think that the first lesson would be that we can have our own religious beliefs but we must have equal respect for other people to have different beliefs - thus reciprocal or mutual respect is fundamental in ensuring harmony. One sided respect, expecting others to respect your ideas and insisting that only your ideas are correct and must be applied universally does not lead to harmony. This mutual respect should be explicit - for example, it can be expressed by participating in each other's special moments such as festivals.

There are only a few countries in the world which have long histories of multi-religious societies. India is one of them where today the religious minorities are made of more than 150 million persons. Jerusalem is another city that comes to mind, which has a significant population of persons of different religions, though it has faced much greater religious strife.

The Ideas of Secularism

I think that secularism is interpreted very differently from the ideas of religious harmony that I had learned. Often, it means special protection of minorities.

I find some ideas of secularism a little problematic. For example, many believe that secularism means recognising that we all belong to different religions and we should take care to not to offend the persons of other religions by talking about our religious customs and festivals. So, you are not supposed to say “Happy Christmas” to non-Christians or “Eid Mubarak” to non-Muslims. You are not supposed to have Christmas trees in public places and are supposed to make only generic greetings like “Seasons’ greetings” to persons of other religions. I think that this way of thinking, it says that my religious identity is fragile and can be easily offended if any ideas of other religions come near me.

I think that a part of the populist backlash is because of the way some such secularist ideas have been perceived by people. Often when someone does not agree with any of these ideas, there are no spaces for dialogue and discussion as these persons insist that the only acceptable way to live is their way.

I don’t think that the cultural and religious majorities can be silenced by impositions, especially if they perceive them as unjust. Rather, it is a recipe for building rage, which can also explode in backlashes and violence. A process of open dialogue and debates around norms for inter-religious harmony are needed.

Personally, I also feel that we need to study the explicit and implicit traditional norms and rules of communities which govern co-existence of persons of different cultures and religions. It is possible that some of these norms and rules would be discriminatory, and there needs to be a discussion about them with communities. Using secularism as an ideology for protection of minorities can be imposed by law but it will not lead to inter-religious harmony.

Conclusions

I have to confess that my ideas on this subject are not very clear. This post is my way of starting a personal reflection on this theme. They are very much influenced by my growing up surrounded by persons of different religions in India, while the secular concerns dominating many of the discussions seem to me like playing games of identity-victimhood.

The ideas of secularism are relatively new while for centuries people of different cultures and religions have inter-mingled and lived together. India has many examples of inter-religious harmony going back to hundreds of years. We should not ignore the lessons from those experiences. Secularism should not become a way to protect the fundamentalist and ortodox ideas of some.

I believe that there is a need for serious studies to understand the kind of strategies used in different epochs in India and in other parts of the world, that allowed long periods of inter-religious harmony and compare them with the modern ideas of secularism, to look at their differences, similarities, challenges and advantages. Such a critical dialogue will be critical for mixing of people in the globalised world.

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Note: The pictures used with this post are from an exhibition of globes in old Jerusalem, a place where Jews, Christians, Muslims and Baha'i have their holy land and where inter-religious harmony faces a lot of challenges.

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#interreligiousharmony #secularism #india #jerusalem #secularism 

Cities of Art & Colour

This post is about cities that have decided to use art and colours to give a specific character to their residential areas and at the same time, improve quality of lives of its residents and have more visitors.

In this post I have chosen 3 cities from Italy (Dozza, Caorle and Burano), 1 city from Greece (Mykonos), 2 cities from India (Lodhi Colony/Delhi and Fort Kochi) and 1 city from USA (Santa Fe/New Mexico) - as cities that have made an interesting use of colours and art in the city life. Let me start with Santa Fe.

Santa Fe – USA

Santa Fe in New Mexico is a beautiful city with some amazing museums. With its typical houses built with adobe, you can breathe art in its air. The reason why I have included it in this post is because of a place called Canyon street, which is less than 1 mile long and has about 100 art galleries and artists’ studios.

Here, you can see open air installations, sculptures, paintings, and all kinds of artistic expressions in all the possible styles, from modern and post-modern to abstract, figurative, conceptual, material, western and traditional Amerindian.

Apart from Canyon street, even the city centre has some wonderful art galleries. If you go out in the surroundings, you can discover other artists’ studios and art galleries. We had an amazing time in a small village called Truchas, where the owner of the Hand Arts gallery, William A. Franke, accompanied us in a discovery of the works of some local artists like William Maxon.

Yet, every time I think of Santa Fe, I remember the afternoon spent walking from one art gallery to another on the Canyon Street, feeling drunk with the beauty of all the different art works.

Fort Kochi – India

Fort Kochi is a small island connected to Kochi-Ernakulam towns on the mainland in Kerala in south of India. Centre of the spice trade with communities from different parts of India settling here since ancient times, from 17th to 20th century, this place was under Dutch, Portuguese and British rules. Thus, the tiny and densely populated island is dotted with streets and buildings that show a mixing of traditional with the different colonial influences. With the decline in its importance as a trading centre, many of the old colonial buildings are abandoned, leading to a characteristic ambience where memories, nostalgia and decay intermingle with lush tropical greens and blue of the sea.

For past couple of decades, Fort Kochi was one of the haunts of the European tourists, who came to stay here in the old houses converted into simple bed-n-breakfast places. In 2012, the first art biennale was held here. In the past 6-7 years, the Biennale has transformed the sleepy island, as every two years, for 3 months, many of its old buildings and abandoned warehouses are taken over as sites of art installations.

I have visited the art biennale in Kochi twice and every time I come back with amazing memories of some great art works that have an extra dimension to them because they are scattered among the decaying and abandoned old buildings and warehouses.

In Fort Kochi, the sea, the lush vegetation, the memories, the history and the nostalgia, are all one with the art. However, its success may lead to its undoing. As Fort Kochi attracts more visitors, the old colonial houses are being replaced by multi-story concrete buildings.

Earlier this year, I was sad to see many changes - the old vegetarian restaurant near the bus stand replaced by a swanky juice and burger joint, the quaint place where I had stayed a few years ago now had a new multi-story building and the bus service which connected Fort Kochi to Munnar had been cancelled. I am keeping my fingers crossed but to be honest, I am worried that soon much of the central part of old Fort Kochi will be gone forever.

Mykonos, Greece

Mykonos in the Aegean Sea off the Greek coast is the second island in my list. It is also the only one where the dominant colour is white, which gives its characteristic ambience.

This island was already a holiday destination in the pre-second World war period. However, it became famous as a tourist hotspot of the rich and famous in 1960-70s. Traditionally, the houses here were always painted white to protect them from the harsh sunlight.

The white houses of Mykonos with their blue window shutters and church domes make for a striking effect.

Burano, Italy

Burano is the third and last island on my list – actually it is a group of 4 interconnected islands, part of Venice town in the north-east of Italy. It was famous for its delicate crocheted lace.

Burano is also famous for its houses painted in all the colours of the rainbow. Its narrow venetian streets, reflected in the waters of the canals, make for incredibly picturesque views.

While looking for the history of Burano, I found that its houses have been painted like this in different colours since old times. The place is magical and if you are visiting Venice, do not miss visiting Burano.

Caorle – Italy

From the islands, now we move to the seaside. The tiny town of Caorle, north of Venice, also has brightly painted colourful houses just like Burano, but that is not why I have included it in my list.

Its link to the art is in boulders that line part of its seaside. Every year, the city invites some sculptors to carve a sculpture on a boulder (image below).

In this way, a walk on the path close to the boulders, becomes an opportunity to admire open-air sculptures of artists from around the world.

The last two cities in this list are examples of urban street art projects.

Lodhi Colony, Delhi, India

Lodhi Colony is a residential area in central Delhi, close to some urban land marks that are well known to the tourists including the Lodhi Gardens, India Habitat Centre and Safdarjung tomb. Using the walls of this residential colony to make street art by well known artists from around the world started in 2014.

The third edition of Lodhi Street Art festival, during which artists from India and other countries were invited to make new street art was completed recently in 2019.

I feel that the beautiful colours and the different artistic styles have transformed this drab and monotonous looking area into something more vibrant and joyful. Walking around the streets of Lodhi Colony, you can see an open-air art exhibition.

Let me share a local secret - if you are visiting the Lodhi Street Art project, keep your eyes open for the street vendor next to a park in Block 10. It is usually crowded with visitors – this is Chidambaram’s Dosa place, one of the best places in Delhi to get south Indian food. There is no place to sit and it may not look very impressive, but the food will have you licking your fingers and it costs little.

Dozza – Italy

The tiny medieval town of Dozza located on a hill, not very far from Bologna in northern Italy, was one of the first towns to use street art to bring visitors. After the second world war, young persons from small towns had started migrating to the nearby bigger cities and medieval towns were often left with elderly persons. In the 1970s, the town decided to invite every year a few artists from Italy and other countries to come and paint on the houses of the old walled city.

Dozza has a little medieval castle and is surrounded by gently rolling hills covered with vineyards. This is the area of San Giovese wines. Visitors coming to the see the painted town can also visit the castle, buy local wines and perhaps eat at one of the characteristic restaurants.

While Dozza is beautiful, its limitation is that the old walled city is small and almost all its houses are already covered with paintings. Unless the paintings keep on renovating, I guess local persons from surrounding areas may not come here frequently. Fortunately, the smaller towns located around big cities have had a renaissance – young people who had migrated to bigger cities, are coming back because of higher quality of life in smaller towns.

Conclusions

I hope that you have had as much fun reading about the cities of colour and art as I had in writing this post. It gave me an opportunity to think back to some travels, go through old pictures and relive the joys of those journeys.

I believe that as countries around the world reduce poverty and develop, and the coming 4th industrial revolution based on artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies and biotechnologies takes off, increasingly we are going to look at places which offer better quality of life – less pollution, historical roots, natural beauty and cultural opportunities. Cities which choose colours and art, add an extra dimension of joy to our lives.

As the cities I have chosen for this post show, it is not enough to have one innovative idea, but you need to nurture it and keep on innovating. At the same time, when tourists do come, we need to make sure that the essential characteristics and heritage of our cities are not destroyed because of commercial greed.

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#urbanrenewal #citiesofcolour #citiesofart #usa #italy #greece #india #kochibiennale #dozzaitaly #santafeusa #mykonosgreece #lodhicolonystreetart

Thought Is Also Matter - Raju Sutar

At the Kochi Biennale 2018-19 in India, I had a chance encounter with the Pune-based artist Raju Sutar, curator of one of the collateral exhibitions. We talked a little while we sat together to have a coffee.

I always love talking to artists of different kinds, especially when they are persons who think about their art and are aware of their own motivations and ideas about what it means for them. In that sense, talking to Raju was immensely satisfying.

The Theme of Raju’s Exhibition

Raju had curated the exhibition on the theme of “Thought is Also Matter”, which probed the distinction between conceptual art versus material art and concluded that the distinction is arbitrary, since concepts (thoughts) have material consequences in our brains.

I have been to a couple of Biennales in Kochi as well as, once to the Venice Biennale. While visiting the art installations in these events, looking at some of the conceptual art, often I asked myself about the boundaries between art and life, or between an artist and an art appreciator.

A lot of us, including me, we can appreciate art in daily life – from the way nature expresses itself, to casual juxtapositions of colours, forms and ideas in spaces, to the way cobwebs and discarded materials may express concepts. However, my doubt is - Is just appreciating that art-concept in the daily life and putting it together as an art installation, enough to make us an artist?

I think that there can be some extremes of such so called “art-installations” where the artist has conceptualized an art-expression from daily life, to hide his/her laziness and is using creativity to cheat. For example, look at the image below presenting the work “Melting Pot” by the artist Prabhavati Meppayil, which has rubble from a broken wall or a house as an installation. When I saw it in Kochi Biennale 2016-17, I thought that rubble can be artistic and it can have deeper significance of what it says about life, death, time and memories. Yet, an installation like it blurs the boundaries between an artist and appreciating art in daily life, and it probably illustrates my point about lazy artist.

Different forms of Art

I think of art biennales as events celebrating different kinds of visual arts. Finding video and sound installations in the biennales is another area of confusion for me. How is a video installation different from a video shown in a film festival?

One of the deepest emotional experiences for me in this year’s Kochi Biennale was the video and sound installation by the Iranian artist Shirin Neshat called Turbulent with two singers on two screens, one male and one female, on the two sides of a room. Yet, I wondered, how was this different from a film shown in a film festival? Does it mean that different art forms – dance, sculptures, films, singing, can be mixed and presented in all kinds of festivals? That thinking of different art forms and expecting to see specific things in an exhibition is old-fashioned? Isn't that taking and stretching the basic idea of "everything can be art" a bit too far, not in real life, but in organising art festivals?

Thought is Also Matter

Sorry for wandering off in different directions - let me get back to my discussion with Raju.

He explained that the idea of this exhibition came from the works of the American neuroscientist Candace Beebe Pert who had discovered the opiate receptor in the brain which binds the endorphins and who proved that thoughts result in chemical changes in the brain and thus turn into matter.

“Neuropeptide is a chemical protein. In reality it’s a piece of matter. And the mind-blowing truth is that it’s a new little piece of universe that didn’t exist just moments before”, he explained.

The exhibition “Thought is also matter” presents the works of a collective of artists from Pune, most of whom had been part of another exhibition called “Roots/Routes” curated by Raju in Kochi Biennale 2016-17. He said that once he had the theme of the exhibition, he talked with the other artists and together started reflections on how this idea can be expressed in different ways.

Apart from Raju’s own works, the other artists in this exhibition were Hrishikesh Pawar, Rajesh Kulkarni, Sandip Sonawale and Vaishali Oak. Let me share some information regarding their works.

Raju Sutar

Raju had paintings on huge canvases covering the whole wall. About these works he said, “Time is made of past, present and future. The past is in the memory and the future is in the imagination. ‘Now’ is present and in a moment, it becomes the past. This ‘now’ is the result of the past and it will shape the future. In fact, now, past and future are all together in one. I am trying to paint large canvasses in a kind of action painting way, as an action is now and not a moment of thought … by avoiding the movement of thought I am trying to look at the possibility of mutation to happen in the moment of ‘now’.”

Hrishikesh Pawar

Hrishikesh is a dancer and his installation called “I Travel/I/Arrive/Not” (ITIAN) brought together performance art (dance) with video and a sculpture of threads with beads. He is trained in kathak and contemporary dance, and has done many national and international performances. In 2007 he set up the Centre of Contemporary Dance in Pune.

The dancers in his installation asked the question, “Where do thoughts begin and end?” through an abstract rhythmic poetry of sounds, gestures and forms. The installation included live performances but they were not there on the morning when I visited it.

Rajesh Kulkarni

Rajesh’s installation had terracotta pots in different forms linked together by threads, ropes and steel wires, connected together in a kind of a galaxy. He works with clay and lives in a village, where he has an ancestral home, and where he runs “Aakar Pot Art”.

The ideas behind his installation was explained as: “thought that travels with speed, that has the fickleness of the present and at the same time, a strong flowing reality. Present that annihilates the moment it creates itself … the moment the present becomes past the energy that thought beholds transforms into enigmatic undiscovered form. The very abstract thought bunches and gathers together, packed in tiny particles, joining with multi-layered wired structures, electrifying, dynamic, flowing back and forth …”

Sandip Sonawale

Sandip is an artist and also runs a printing press. For this exhibition, he expressed himself through colours and basic forms such as circles and triangles.

By breaking down the art into the basic forms, he was “breaking down the thoughts in a similar way. The thoughts are complex in nature, we try to break them down to make sense …”

Vaishali Oak

Vaishali had 4 works in the exhibition, all made from fabric assemblage which expressed the idea of “Seed Post”. She works with fabrics, joins pieces together, layering them, and creating textures. She has been honoured by the National Academy Award from Lalit Kala Academy.

She looked at the ‘thought’ as a ‘seed’: “A seed is responsible for the future – future of trees, vegetation, life and the entire planet. A seed is also a possibility, ultimate and unlimited possibility … seeds of thoughts are invisible, one can witness it when a thought comes into action and becomes matter.”

Discussions with Raju Sutar

Apart from the installations in the exhibition, we also talked about some other issues related to art and artists in India. Raju teaches art and yet he said that he did not believe in formally trained artists and is open to persons who take up art because they have a passion for it.

I was a little surprised, so he explained, “Hardly any students come to study art because they are passionate about it. Most students in art college are there because they did not get admission in any other college. You can see in the class that they have no real interest in it.”

I could understand his point but I felt that he was too harsh. It may be true for most students in an art college, that they did not get admission in other more prestigious colleges/courses. Yet, in the end, they chose an art college, so perhaps they did have some interest in the subject.

He also felt that Kochi biennale is the biggest and most significant art movement in post-independence India. He was critical towards the ‘latest art fad’, that of the Conceptual art. He felt that sometimes it was all about concept and ignored the canvas, while for an artist, the canvas has to be important. He told me about a discussion he had many years ago with the well-known artist, M.F. Hussein saheb, “He said that these fads are iconic entertainment.”

In a way, the exhibition he has curated ‘Thoughts are also matter’ is an expression of his dissent with the way conceptual art is being used. “Today there is great insistence on concepts and everything else is looked down and is considered of less importance. I was thinking about the origin of the idea of conceptual art, and challenging it in different ways. I was interested in finding what is not a thought.”

Conclusions

The visit to exhibition “Thought is also matter” was very interesting because of my chance encounter with Raju Sutar and because of our discussions, which gave me a glimpse into the different ideas that were there as a foundation and which were developed in different ways by the artists.

Due to my own confusions about the boundaries of art and concepts, I found an echo of my thoughts in Raju's ideas about conceptual art.

*****

#conceptart #kochibiennale #rajusuttar #indianartists #artinindia #fortkochi #kerala #keralaindia 

When One Religion is Not Enough

Duane R. Bidwell’s book “When one religion isn’t enough: The lives of spiritually fluid people” (Beacon Press, Boston, US, 2018) is about persons who feel an affinity with more than one religious tradition. In this post I look at some of the ideas of this book. 

Growing up in India means growing up together with persons of different religions – India is the original multi-religious country. Often persons growing up in India can have different religions in their family histories and thus accepting different religious traditions is quite common. Duane is from a Protestant Christian background and his approach to looking at multi-religious identities seems more analytical, compared to the emotional approach I had while growing up in India.

About Duane R. Bidwell

In the book, Duane defines himself as: “I am Buddhist and Christian. Jesus is my savior, and the Buddha is my teacher … I am a minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA), part of the Reformed tradition of Christianity … I am more apt to feel tearful or joyful when chanting at the temple than when I am worshipping in church. Buddhism changes the way I know and experience God. It broadens and deepens my understanding and experience of Christianity … I identify as Buddhist/Christian because that’s what I understand God to be asking of me. I’m not worried about salvation, and I don’t mind incompatible doctrines.”

Different Approaches to Multi-Religious Identities

Persons like Duane, come from traditions that believe in one prophet or a “true God”, and when they find themselves attracted to different religious ideas, they need to find a logical explanation for their ideas. It is very different from the way I look at it, I don't need any explanations for it, it seems like a self'evident truth.

Thus, in the initial part of the book Duane raises some questions and his understanding about God:

How and why does someone become spiritually fluid? Are spiritually fluid people simply confused, syncretistic, unable to commit? Are they idolaters? How should we make sense of spiritually fluid people? Do they belong in our religious and spiritual communities? What might they teach us? And what do complex religious bonds imply about our own religious and spiritual identities, practices, and commitments?… I do not believe that God is one or that all paths reach the same mountain. Religions are not different descriptions of a single reality; they describe different (and sometimes related) realities.  
I was a little shocked when I read what Duane says here - "I do not believe that God is one or that all paths reach the same mountain." I think that a person who believes in there being different Gods for persons of different religions would look at persons having multiple-religious beliefs very differently from a person who believes that roads lead to the same God - these would be two very different ways of looking and understanding religious beliefs.

Different religions originated in India including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism – together these religions are called the Indic religions. In the Indic religions, we often say that God is one and all the different paths (religions) lead to that same ultimate truth.

Duane’s analysis of spiritual fluidity

Duane uses the term “spiritual fluidity” for persons having an affinity for more than one religion. He explains that people can come to this state of fluidity due to different events in their lives:

Normal spirituality believes in religious monogamy; people must leave one religion to cleave to another, taking on a new name, a new identity, a new set of beliefs and social mores. The old life is gone; a new one begins. But some people claim two (or more) religions at the same time. Maybe they belong to a Christian church and practice Buddhist meditation, or they grow up with a Jewish mother, a Hindu father, and an extended family that doesn’t expect them to choose one tradition or the other. Or they might publicly identify as Muslim while secretly praying to Hindu gods … it can confuse and perhaps threaten people who have only encountered singular religious and spiritual identities … More often it leads to conflict in families, communities, institutions, and individuals.

The problems in families and communities caused by belonging to multiple religious identities can lead to hiding of the true feelings – thus persons may outwardly show their beliefs only in their family or community religion, while hiding their feelings about their other spiritual beliefs:

Spiritually fluid people seem exceptional because cultural conversations in North America, Europe, and parts of the Asia-Pacific region position them that way. Public conversations tend to frame spiritually fluid people as privileged, subversive, or both—an attitude that keeps religious multiplicity out of the public eye … First, academic discourse tends to frame religious multiplicity as exotic, elite, and rare and therefore distant from what most think of as ordinary. Second, because it can be dangerous to violate family, community, and institutional expectations of normal spirituality, some spiritually fluid people—especially those bonded voluntarily to two or more traditions—fail to identify publicly as religiously multiple.Much of this (academic) writing assumes a normal spirituality, especially the ideas that (a) religious traditions have clear boundaries, (b) religions are primarily focused on doctrine, and (c) conflicting spiritual or theological perspectives must be reconciled. … Ordinary people who live religiously multiple lives are seldom celebrated and often unseen. They hide their multiple allegiances from family members who will not tolerate someone practicing a different faith; they mask themselves in one or more of their religious communities to avoid shame, judgment, punishment, or other negative consequences; and they switch from one type of religious language to another, depending on context.

Duane acknowledges the different approaches to "spiritual fluidity" among different cultures. Thus, while persons raised up in monotheistic religions feel the contradiction between the doctrines they have learned from childhood and their attraction to other spiritual ideas, indigenous persons growing up with more open traditions in Asia, Africa and South America do not always see any contradiction. Thus, in countries where monotheistic religions dominated, in the past, spiritual fluidity often had to be hidden. This may still happen to some degree.

Jewish families in Spain and Portugal converted to Catholicism to save themselves from the Inquisition but continued Shabbat rituals in secret, and Buddhists in Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) converted to Christianity to qualify for stable, higher-paying jobs but still participated in ceremonies at Buddhist and Hindu temples. In North and South America, governments insisted that indigenous nations “civilize” themselves by becoming Christian, a policy that made indigenous people hide their spirituality beneath a veneer of church language and practice … “The problem with Indian Presbyterians,” one denominational executive said to me more than a decade ago, “is that they want to be Indian and Presbyterian at the same time.”Outside the North Atlantic region, religious lines aren’t always so sharp. European missionaries encountered this porosity as they began to evangelize people in various regions of Asia. When Catholic priests arrived in India, for example, the emperor Akbar delighted the Jesuits who came to convert him. He assured them that he had indeed become a Christian—and then infuriated them by continuing to worship as a Muslim and, in many ways, a Hindu. This multiplicity was not what the Jesuits had in mind at all and is yet another incident that reveals how Europeans regarded the boundaries between religions as impregnable, whereas Indians saw the lines as rather porous.

Sometimes people adopt dominating religions because these allow them freedom from religious persecution or access to education, mobility and resources. Yet, at the same time, they may continue to believe in their ancestral beliefs, though they may hide these beliefs from their new religious companions.

Today’s complex religious belonging also reflects centuries of Christian expansion beyond Europe. Through encounters with local spiritualities and other religious traditions, Christian missionaries have seen spiritual fluidity as an option for centuries. Those sympathetic to local religions, like Ruben, sometimes developed spiritually fluid ideas, practices, and identities. At the same time, local residents forced or persuaded to convert to Christianity might continue to practice their original religions in secret. Other local people converted (or added Christianity to their mix of spiritualities) because of the link between Christianity, social mobility, and economic privilege. By adopting strategic multiplicity—performing Christian norms in public while practicing original traditions at home—local people gained access to otherwise unattainable economic and social goods.

Over the recent past, in India, there have been a lot of debates about religious conversions and many persons ask for strict laws to stop induced or forced conversions. However, Duane's point is that conversions can be a way of creating multiple religious identities and thus act as bridges between religions. Thus to safeguard cultural unity of persons, it may be a better strategy for Indic religions to continue to be welcoming to the converted persons, so that they can acknowledge both their religious identities instead of being forced to give up their original religious identity.

Interfaith Families and Their Children

In his book, Duane also touches on issues related to the interfaith families and children of these families who grow up surrounded by different religious traditions:

Many people who inherit complex religious bonds grow up in an interfaith family. They have a Jewish mother and a Christian father, for example, and grow up attending church and synagogue. Others might have a Christian mother and a Hindu father and refer to their family religion as Chinduism. Still others are raised by parents of two religious traditions, with aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins from several other traditions. 

Duane shares different life-stories of persons to explain the complexities in dealing with spiritual fluidity. One of these stories is of Sita, a Caribbean immigrant to Canada, which raises the issue of fitting different religious identities in public and private.

Until Sita started school, she thought every home honored Jesus and Hindu gods at the same time. “As I got older, I became more aware,” she remembers, “kind of realizing: Oh, OK, the Christian part is the part that fits in with society, the part I can mention in school. The Hindu stuff is the stuff I keep to myself ... I remember in school, if people asked, ‘What did you do on the weekend?,’ I felt comfortable saying we went to church. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable saying we went to puja, which is one of the words for prayer gatherings in the Hindu faith. So I just sort of instinctively learned to hide it, because it wasn’t—because if I had said it, they wouldn’t have known what I was talking about.

Conclusions

A few years ago, I had thought of conducting a research with interfaith couples to understand how they reconciled their religious differences, especially in terms of religions of their children. However, after some initial work I had given up that idea as I wanted to do other things. However, I think that if I had done that book, I would have approached this subject very differently from how Duane's has done it. Till some years ago, I had a t-shirt that I had bought in India, which showed symbols of different religions and carried the words, "God is too big to fit in one religion" - to me, those words are a better expression of how I look at multiple religious identities.

When I started reading this book, initially I was a little frustrated by the gap between my own emotional approach to spiritual fluidity compared to the analytical approach adopted by Duane. Before reading this book, I had looked at spiritual fluidity as exclusively a positive value, while I had ignored that for some persons, it can be a challenging path. I am glad that I persisted with the book and I think that I have gained some new insights from it.

I believe that in future with increasing international travels of persons from different countries, the encounters between persons of different religions and interfaith marriages are going to increase exponentially. At the same time, with a decrease in the controlling power of traditional religions, increasing number of persons are going to experiment with and adopt spiritual ideas from different traditions. Such mixed couples and their mixed families can help in building bridges between the people.

I think that Governments should document and valorise these multiple identities. For example, in the national censuses, instead of assuming that persons belong only to one religious traditions, countries should provide specific options for persons with multiple religious identities. Learning about different spiritual beliefs, celebrating all the different religious festivals, can be a way to promote peace and brotherhood in the 21st century. Duane's book provides important reflections and insights on this crucial subject.

*****

Sabarimala and Religious Reforms

An Italian journalist friend had asked for my opinion on the on-going Sabarimala controversy in India. It became an opportunity for me to reflect on the issue of religious reforms. This article is a slightly modified English translation of my Italian article. In it, I explain why I do not agree with the Sabarimala decision of Indian Supreme Court and why I see that decision to be similar to the Hindu fundamentalist discourse which favours a narrow understanding of Hinduism.

Apart from the Sabarimala temple controversy, in this post I also touch on the difficulties of promoting religious reforms in Hinduism and among religious minorities, not just in India but across different countries.

Promoting Religious Reforms

For centuries, social costumes often sanctioned by religious norms had determined the acceptable behaviours in society. The adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948, gave a new way to measure our social costoms. In many countries, the increasing understanding of human rights violations led to adoption of new laws that undermined the control of the religious authorities on the societies.

I feel that reforming the religions through new laws and court judgements is particularly important in two kinds of situations:

(a) When there is a risk to the physical integrity or the life of persons: For example, the old Indian practice of Sati in which widows were forced to be cremated along with their dead husbands, would be seen as one such situation. In fact, the practice was made a criminal offence in 1829 under the British colonial rule.

Today, the female genital mutilation practiced in some parts of the world and among the Bohra community in India, would be another example of a religiously sanctioned practice that must be stopped because it damages of physical integrity of girls and women.

On the other hand, there is considerable debate about the practice of male circumcision, compulsory among Muslim and Jewish communities according to the religious-social norms. Many persons believe that even this is a violation of human rights of children and should be stopped.

(b) When there is a systematic discrimination or violation of human rights: Discrimination against some group of persons based on their gender or other characteristics such as caste, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic affiliation are examples of systematic violation of human rights and need to be challenged though appropriate laws and court judgements.

Some examples of such discriminations come from countries where orthodox religious groups are the majority and control the decision-making. For example, in different Islamic countries, women, homosexuals and persons belonging to other religions face discriminations. In countries like Uganda, dominance of some orthodox evangelical groups has resulted in laws that foresee jails or even death penalty for homosexuals.

Sabarimala Temple

I am personally not very conversant with the Hindu deities in south India, so I am not familiar with the myths of lord Ayappa to whom Sabarimala temple is dedicated. From what I have read, it seems that there are many Ayappa temples and only the temple in Sabarimala prohibits the entry of women in the fertile age group because here Ayappa is seen as a Brahamchari (celibate).

Thus, I don’t see the Ayappa cult as a systematic exclusion of women, it is only in Sabarimala and is justified by a specific myth. I am not a follower of Ayappa but if his followers see him as a celibate god, it is not up to me or to anyone else to judge their faith.

Hinduism is full of diverse ways of interpreting and practicing the religion, all of which are considered equally valid. They vary from belief in nature worship to a universal formless infinite consciousness (Parmatma) to faith in some or all of millions of gods and goddesses. There is no common sacred book or a supreme authority who can judge and say if one way of Hinduism is better than another. Many fundamentalist Hindu groups see this a weakness, and they want to impose a restricted view of Hinduism, deciding which gods to pray to and how to pray.

I feel that forcing Sabarimala to accept women of child-bearing age and to forego its ideas of a celibate god, is another way to obliterate diversity of Hinduism, a kind of Macdonaldization of religious diversity and pluralism. Though motivated by a different goal, that of promoting gender equality, it violates the basic idea of that temple and forces it in to a narrower definition of Hinduism, just like the ideas of conservative fundamentalists.

Reforming Hinduism in India

After the independence of India in 1947, Government of India has enacted different laws for reforming Hinduism including those related to caste-based discriminations and equality of women. Probably there are still many other aspects of Hinduism that require changes in laws. However, in my opinion, the bigger challenge is how to promote the social transformation in the society, especially in rural areas and smaller towns, so that the laws do not remain aspirational documents but are translated into reality.

The social transformation needed in India, for example for removing caste-based discriminations and promoting equality of women, require decades of patient work in the communities, helping our traditional and religious leaders to change. In comparison, advocacy campaigns and organising protests in the cities for changing the laws is much easier, while making those laws work for everyone is a long and hard struggle. Campaigns and protests also provide more opportunities for image-building and creating star activists, while working in communities to change them is ignored by most and can even be life-threatening.

Reforming other religions in India

Reforming the religious and social costumes of minorities is not easy in any part of the world. The biggest challenge is how to not be manipulated by the racists and fundamentalist groups from other religions. Thus, often persons who are active in promoting reforms among the majority groups, prefer to keep silent or look the other way when similar concerns are raised with regards to the minority groups.

For years, Afro-American feminists have lamented the difficulty of talking about the violence faced by Afro-American women because the progressives and activists are afraid that these debates will be hijacked by white supremacists and right-wing fundamentalists to reinforce negative stereotypes about Afro-American men. In the same way, LGBT Muslims in Europe get very little support from the liberals and activists, who do not wish to strengthen the Islamophobia.

It may be because of similar reasons that gender-based inequalities among the minority religions in India do not get much attention from activists and mainstream media. For example, I have read some progressives writing against the Modi government’s attempts to ban the practice of “triple talaq” among Muslims because they see it as minority-bashing by a nationalist government, though it violates women's rights. In the same way, the story of the Catholic nun who had charged the bishop of Patiala with repeated rapes has received limited attention from the mainstream media and activists in India while a report detailing the widespread sexual abuse of nuns has been written by Tim Sullivan, a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press.

Fortunately, blogs and social media are giving new opportunities for persons from different communities to raise their voices and be heard, even if "official" activists and mainstream medias do not wish to talk about their issues for ideological or political reasons.

Conclusions

I believe that it is fundamental to change and reform all the religious practices which violate the human rights. Making appropriate laws and court judgements should be seen only as a first step in the reformation process since the social changes require decades if not centuries to change. For example, the Sati practice outlawed by the British in 1829 was still occurring, fortunately not very frequently, even after India’s independence. I still remember the story of Roop Kanwar being cremated with her husband in 1987 and that some persons were still defending this practice.

However, preventing human rights violations and promoting equality should not be confused with the promotion of monocultures and loss of the rich cultural diversity of India. In this sense, I do not agree with the Sabarimala verdict of the supreme court of India because I do not see the practice of one temple as a systematic gender-based exclusion of women.

All the images used in this post are from the annual Ambubashi festival at Kamakhaya temple in Guwahati, Assam in India, which celebrates the mensturation of the Goddess, and represents one of the diversities of Hinduism. Only fundamentalists and misguided activists would try to cancel all such diversities of Hinduism in the name of "equal rights".

*****

#sabrimalaverdict #india #religiosdiversitiesindia #diversitiesinhinduism #womeninhinduism #religiousreforms