The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

This is an extraordinarily interesting book on a very difficult subject. Martha Nussbaum's commanding familiarity with culturally related political issues across the world, past and present, combines immensely fruitfully here with her involvement and understanding of India.
--Amartya Sen, Harvard University (20070629)

This impressive and important book grapples with the problems and consequences of religious extremism. Nussbaum's brilliant analysis of the controversy over religion and democracy in India effortlessly moves between political history, philosophy, and law, to give us a powerful and compelling narrative of the political world of the Hindu Right. It is a must read for all those interested in understanding the dangers of religious extremism and of what preserves democracy and pluralism in the face of tensions and conflicts within.
--Zoya Hasan, Jawaharlal Nehru University (20070806)

Preoccupation with the purported clash between civilizations has masked the clash within democracies. This passionate, engaged book has much to teach an American audience about the vulnerability and resilience of Indian democracy. Perhaps it will also stimulate reflections about similar clashes within American democracy.
--Amrita Basu, Amherst College (20070824)

Once more, Martha Nussbaum has applied her profound philosophical intelligence to a challenging question in the practical world. In thinking through the dangers raised by the Hindu right, she teaches us a great deal about the dangers of dogmatism everywhere.
--K. Anthony Appiah, Princeton University (20070901)

Few contemporary philosophers in the West have reckoned with India's complex experience of democracy; and even fewer have engaged with it as vigorously as [Nussbaum] does in The Clash Within...[A] strongly felt and stimulating book.
--Pankaj Mishra (New York Review of Books 20071119)

Martha Nussbaum's The Clash Within presents a powerful analysis of the Hindu Right in contemporary India that is insightful and penetrating...She weaves a rich tapestry of how Hindu thought has been reshaped and distorted...She is correct to say "the clash within" that we find in India lies everywhere...The Clash Within is another remarkable achievement from the most exciting political philosopher of our age. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
--Thom Brooks (Times Higher Education Supplement 20071001)

Nussbaum is an informed outsider looking in...Nussbaum takes one incident--the 2002 Gujarat riots that followed the burning of a train carrying Hindu activists in Godhra--and builds a grand narrative of Hindu nationalism...Nussbaum sees lessons in India's democratic achievements for the rest of the world, particularly America. Her thesis supports Ghandi's claim that "the real struggle that democracy must wage is the struggle within the individual self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other, and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality."
--Salil Tripathi (New Statesman 20070716)

Nussbaum sounds a wake-up call to those who may have been unaware of the ugly nature of events in India in recent times, and the hate-filled ideology that informs them...As further evidence of the undemocratic danger that India now faces, Nussbaum turns to the attempt of the Hindu Right to hijack history and rewrite the Indian past to demonize Muslims and glorify Hindus.
--David Arnold (Times Literary Supplement 20080101)

At a time when India is claiming more of the world's attention, the philosopher Nussbaum offers an informatively rich and sophisticated analysis of democracy and religious extremism there.
--Lucian W. Pye (Foreign Affairs 20080816)

The Clash Within has a salutary message for crusading secularists as well as for lovers of India.
--David Goodall (The Tablet )

In The Clash Within, a passionate look at the crisis of democracy and religious violence in India, Martha Nussbaum provides a detailed reconstruction of the genocide she says occurred in Gujarat. She shows that the violence had been planned well in advance, and she chronicles the failures of the state to prosecute the accused Hindu-right activists or their mentors in the Bharatiya Janata Party...Nussbaum says the main purpose of her book is to inform European and American readers about a "complex and chilling case of religious violence that does not fit some common stereotypes about the sources of religious violence in today's world." She does that well.
--Basharat Peer (The Nation )

This is a humanistic and psychological study that traces the [Hindu] Right's rage to reaction against both the Muslim and British conquests of India, which humiliated and shamed Hindus...Instead of the "clash of civilizations," Nussbaum sees a clash within each culture, but her book could serve as a Huntington case study of the roots and rise of Hindutva (Hinduness).
--M. G. Roskin (Choice )

Martha Nussbaum is a distinguished American philosopher, whose formidable corpus of academic work is the more remarkable for her enlisting of philosophy in the service of her commitment to a more just and rights-respecting world. Nussbaum is also a passionate Indophile who has collaborated, with Amartya Sen, on the capabilities approach to human, and especially women’s, development. This book—written chiefly for an American audience—is an expression of her deep personal engagement with the challenges of pluralism in Indian democracy.
--Niraja Gopal Jayal (Outlook India )

The Clash Within is a book of and for our time. It will profoundly change the way we think about religio-national violence and about pluralism and democracy. Nussbaum’s persuasive tour de force makes clear that cultural diversity is a source of innovation and creativity and that a national identity that is layered and multiple, rather than exclusive or exclusionary, leads to cosmopolitan thinking and cultural innovation. Her command of the ethical, legal and sociopolitical problems that a political reading of religion poses for a multicultural plural democracy makes this work essential reading for anyone interested in the role of religion and the future of the nation-state.
--Tulasi Srinivas (Harvard Divinity Bulletin )

In an age of academic specialization, [Nussbaum] is one of the few modern renaissance scholars...The Clash Within should be read not only by those interested in India's present and future, but by anyone seeking to understand the processes by which even the most complex and sophisticated societies can navigate their way into a morass of violent intolerance.
--Irfan Yusuf (Weekend Australian )

Product Description

While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Martha Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state.

Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots--in which nearly two thousand Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists--the power of the Hindu right has been growing, threatening India's hard-won constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. Led politically by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right has sought the subordination of other religious groups and has directed particular vitriol against Muslims, who are cast as devils in need of purging. The Hindu right seeks to return to a "pure" India, unsullied by alien polluters of other faiths, yet the BJP's defeat in recent elections demonstrates the power that India's pluralism continues to wield. The future, however, is far from secure, and Hindu extremism and exclusivity remain a troubling obstacle to harmony in South Asia.

Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history. Ultimately she argues that the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilizations, as some believe, but from a clash within each of us, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others. India's story is a cautionary political tale for all democratic states striving to act responsibly in an increasingly dangerous world.

(20070628)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (May 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674024826
• ISBN-13: 978-0674024823
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #506,872 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A bit surprised, December 2, 2008

By	Paul Scott (Texas) - See all my reviews

I am a bit surprised by all of the misplaced animosity towards this book. I think Nussbaum is a very intelligent human being and I agree whole heartedly with most of her positions. I don't think she is portraying Hindus in any particular way. She clearly points out an intellectual trend that is on the rise (actually being revived) in India. I'm giving the book two stars only because I think the book is poorly written and seems to be a rehash of stuff other people have written before and written better. You can tell that her opinions are all second hand and I was truly convinced of this when she commented on the 600 hour Television series Ramayana which I am pretty sure she never watched (It seems unlikely to me that she would). Not to mention the series didn't seem at all full of any sort of propaganda (I unfortunately saw all of it). She could have done so much more such as looked more carefully at the rise of the movement, looked at it in a historical context, or many other ways. But then again I don't think she is exactly an expert on India and is perhaps poorly qualified to do so. The section on the constitution (her expertise) is very good however but certainly not worth the price of this book. I suggest one go elsewhere for infirmation on this subject.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars this highly passionate study, December 13, 2008

By	The Gandhi Way (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future (Paperback)

Martha C. Nussbaum is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She worked for eight years (1985-93) with the Research Project of the UN World Institute for Development in Helsinki, focusing on the economic and cultural problems of India. She chose India when she wanted to write on human rights norms for women's development worldwide. She was a consultant with the UN Development Programme's New Delhi Office and in 2004 was a visiting Professor at the Centre for Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She lectured in various parts of India and wrote extensively on India's legal and constitutional traditions. She travelled so many times to India that it now feels like her second home.

Her relationship with India is intensely political, focussed on issues of social justice, and she has had close contacts with Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1988. Three personalities in particular feature, namely, Nehru, Tagore and Gandhi. In her Preface she states: "This is a book about India for an American and European audience". But it is not only about India but also about the present clash between Islam and the West.

She writes: "... that the real clash is not a civilisational one between `Islam and the West', but instead a clash within virtually all modern nations - between people who are prepared to live with others who are different, on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity, achieved through the domination of a single religious and ethnic tradition".

At a deeper level the thesis of this book is the Gandhian claim that the real struggle that democracy must wage is a struggle within the individual between the urge to dominate and defile the other, and to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality, with all the vulnerability that such a life entails.

Nussbaum deals extensively with the ethnic/religious pogrom in Gujarat in February-March 2002 when approximately 2,000 Muslims were killed by Hindus. She analyses the Hindu nationalistic personality and finds sufficient hatred within to explain the Gujarat events. Her conclusion - based to a great extent on Gandhi's thinking - is worth quoting:

"The ability to accept differences - differences of religion, of ethnicity, of race, of sexuality - requires first, the ability to accept something about oneself: that one is not lord of the world, that one is both adult and child, that no all-embracing collectivity will keep one safe from the vicissitudes of life, that others outside oneself have reality. This ability requires, in turn, the cultivation of a moral imagination that sees reality in other human beings, that does not see other human beings as mere instruments of one's own power or threats to that power."

She argues, in this highly passionate study, that ultimately the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilisations, but from a clash within each of us.

Piet Dijkstra

49 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A remarkable book, June 21, 2007

By	Aaron P. Rester (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Having studied Indian history and the Hindutva movement for many years, I must disagree entirely with the first reviewer. Nussbaum's descriptions of the violence in Gujarat, and the state and national government's complicity in it, are well backed-up by official sources, interviews with prominent Indian public figures, and the Sangh Parivar's own texts. Moreover, the point of the book is not to provide a history of this dark incident in India's recent past -- though it does so ably -- but to understand what motivates people to inflict such violence on their own neighbors and countrymen. In doing so, Nussbaum displays a remarkable empathy for Hindutva activists and sympathizers without condoning actions and beliefs that she sees as deplorable. Believing (as did her heroes Tagore and Gandhi) that understanding and caring about one's fellow human beings is essential to a nations's political and ethical well-being, she argues that Gujarat represents "a failure of the moral imagination" that allows humans beings to recognize the humanity of others, and that the furious pace of economic development in India should be matched by the development of humanist ideals that have been abandoned in the last two decades.