Under this title, the conference was held on November 20, 2007 at the Research Center for Religious Literature and Russian Abroad, which is a specialized division of the All-Russian State Library of Foreign Literature named after M. I. Rudomino (BIL).
The conference was attended by Oriental scholars from institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, representatives of university science, as well as religious organizations. The conference was attended by Abhay Thakur, Director of the J. Nehru Cultural Center at the Embassy of the Republic of India in the Russian Federation.
When compiling this analytical review of the conference, I used, first, the notes I made of the speeches of the conference participants, and secondly, the preprints of the reports presented by some of the speakers.1
Opening the conference, Director of the BIL Research Center for Religious Literature and Chief Researcher of the Center for Modernization and Development Problems of IMEMO RAS E. B. Rashkovsky pointed out the special importance of understanding modern socio-humanitarian knowledge of the problems of resilience and the special creative potential of Indian civilization - multilingual, multiethnic, multi-confessional. This civilization-from the Vedic times to the present "science cities " on the" Dravidian cone " of Hindustan-has not only absorbed and integrated diverse ethno-linguistic, cultural and spiritual flows since ancient times, but also exerted a powerful influence on neighboring regions, and now influences the entire structure of global socio-cultural, intellectual and spiritual development.2
1 References to preprints are specified separately and agreed with the speakers.
2 This issue is partly covered in the recently published book "Indian Civilization in a Globalizing World. Based on the materials of the international conference " (Moscow: IMEMO RAS, 2005), created with the participation of the author of this review.
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PARADOXES OF HINDUISM
The problem of Hinduism as one of the most important civilizational matrices and bonds of India is always immutable and relevant for indological knowledge.3 It is all the more relevant because it always seems to escape the usual stereotypes of our European thinking, forcing each generation of scientists, politicians, publicists and the general public to re - evaluate the existing theoretical positions and cognitive attitudes every time - in the light of new data from historical science and current history. The conflict between the well-established skills of scientific (and, in particular, socio-humanitarian) thinking and the living, time-changing, but still historically consistent Indian specifics concerns not only the external world, but also the Indians themselves, concerns the processes of their own cultural and religious self-knowledge.
L. B. Alaev's report "Riddles of Indian Religiosity" was devoted to this complex problem of cognition of India and its Hindu "matrix".
According to L. B. Alaev, the approach to Hindu matter, which is familiar to religious scholars, faces fundamental difficulties of a source study order: how and at what periods of history to identify specific "founding fathers" of Hinduism? How can we build any clear and convincing chronology of the history of Indian religiosity? Going back to time immemorial, the Hindu religious tradition has not only accepted the challenge of the world's "axis" religions (i.e., religions with a special emphasis on universal sanctity and universal humanity) - Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam - but has also managed to compete with them in the most successful way over the centuries. Hinduism in the eyes of European or Europeanized thought is far from ancient Vedism, but Hindus themselves do not think so. The concept of humanity is not opposed in Hinduism to the concept of the natural; the Vedic gods are relegated to the background in modern Hinduism, but they are not rejected. Monotheistic and polytheistic interpretations of spiritual reality in the minds of adherents of Hinduism get along peacefully with each other. Rites, theology, philosophies, liturgical skills are plentiful, ways to distinguish and relate the sacred and profane are plentiful, but the Indians themselves do not consider the dissimilar ways of intuitive, theoretical and ritual modeling of the universe to be mutually exclusive.
Currently, according to L. B. Alaev, the process of formation of Hinduism is underway not only as a local religion of the peoples of Hindustan4, but also thanks to the multi-million-strong Indian diasporas as a world religion. In this case, Hinduism - both in India and on the global scale-will have to consciously adapt to other models of thinking and consciously distinguish itself from these models. And, therefore, the growing elements of unification and exclusivity in it, which can be fraught with considerable difficulties for the future development of India. However, according to L. B. Alaev, if Hinduism manages to preserve some traditional moments of its archaic syncretism (filling them, of course, with new meanings and contents) and internal heterogeneity, if it manages to preserve the traditional multiplicity of psychological, ideological and spiritual niches, then the future of India may look more favorable.
L. B. Alaev's report turned out to be very heuristic and provocative for the entire future course of the conference. If L. B. Alaev raised the question of Hinduism as the "matrix" of Indian sociality and politics, 5 and in this sense partly the "matrix" of Indian history itself, then a number of speakers supplemented it with considerations about the specifics of Indian thought as such. And with it - and about the specifics of indological knowledge. For, as has been known since the time of Hegel, the structure of human thought also partly determines the dynamics of history.6
3 See: The Tree of Hinduism. Moscow: Vostochnaya litra Publ., 1999; Indiskaya tsivilizatsiya [Indian Civilization].
4 According to A. Thakur's subtle remark, the only definitely Hindu country in the world is not India, but rather Nepal. Indeed, in both India and Nepal, the proportion of the Hindu population is approximately the same (just over 80%), but unlike constitutionally secular India, Hinduism is the state religion in Nepal.
5 Unfortunately, the conference did not discuss one of the most pressing problems of Indology: the problem of small blood-related groups as important liturgical units of Hinduism.
6 See: Rashkovsky E. B. Osoznannaya svoboda: materialy k istorii mysli i kul'tury XVIII - XX stoletii [Conscious Freedom: Materials on the history of thought and culture of the XVIII - XX centuries]. Moscow: Novy khronograf, 2005, pp. 46-69.
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Extremely important in this regard was the report of N. A. Panaeva (Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences) "Problems of research of the Indian logical tradition"7. According to her, the process of correlating Indian logical concepts with European ones requires considerable cognitive effort, because the very formulation of logical problems among Indians is such that these problems are not confined to the field of purely discursive operations, because they cannot be separated from their epistemological and ontological premises. So Indian logical thought is concerned not only with the culture of discourse and not only with the multiplicity of ontologies behind human judgments, but also with the possibility of finding common ways of reasoning and argumentation for obviously different-minded people. However, the assumption of common platforms of theoretical proofs in the general discourse of those who think differently, willingly or unwittingly, implies the absence of the concept of theoretical truth. This does not mean that there is no category of truth in Hinduism at all. It is there. This is the category of sathya. However, truth-sathya-is not articulate, discursive, or all-inclusive. It forms, as it were, a general, but always unsaid context for the interview of those who have different thoughts.
Isn't this the cognitive background of Hindu inclusivity, which is so often and hastily referred to in the European fashion as "pluralism" or"tolerance"?
To a certain extent, the problems of N. A. Kanaeva's report were continued in the reports of A. V. Kondratiev (MSU) "Cosmology of the Pancharatra" and S. V. Ryabov (Central Spiritual Administration of Buddhists of Russia)"The Doctrine of the Four bodies of the Buddha with Hindu parallels". Both speakers pointed out that habitual European (essentially Aristotelian) approaches to the fundamental problems of thinking are hardly applicable to the knowledge of traditional Indian thinking and, more broadly, to the knowledge of the socio-cultural reality of India itself, which is inextricably linked with this thinking. The identical and the non-identical, the real and the conceivable, the personal and the impersonal, the "I" and the" not-I " are not here categorically opposed to each other. Rather, their relations are relativized in the "play" (lila)of the ineffable and sacred being-unity. However, as noted by S. A. Minenkov (Mosk. state legal department In the report "Methodological prerequisites of the Bhagavata Purana as a historical document", this traditional Indian approach to the cross-cutting problems of thought and reality is not so archaic and anachronistic: the absolutization of the scientific picture of the world based on verified facts in relation to the field of local and universal history no longer fully meets the requirements of modern science. For history itself - the history of events, institutions, and ideas-takes place in contextual interaction with the history of the cosmos and with the history of deep layers of human consciousness and subconsciousness that cannot be rigidly verified. 8
In any case, the difficult ways of understanding the paradoxes of Hinduism are useful not only for indology, but for science in general.
DALNAYA HISTORY
So, as the reports of a number of conference participants showed, the intellectual and spiritual principles of inclusivity and constant syncretism inherent in Hinduism should not dictate such sentimental ideas about the history of Hinduism as a continuous history of "tolerance" and "pluralism", which are characteristic not only for popular, but also partly for scientific literature9. It is hardly possible to study Indian history without studying religious traditions.-
7 This speech by N. A. Kanaeva turned out to be a continuation and interpretation of the dual monograph: Kanaeva N. A. Problemy otvodnogo znaniya v Indii; Zabolotnykh E. L. Logiko-epistemologicheskie vozzreniya Dignagi i ego ideinykh posledelnikov [Problems of derived knowledge in India].
8 See: Minenkov S. A. Methodological prerequisites for the study of the Bhagavata Purana as a historical document (preprint). Moscow, 2007, pp. 3-4.
9 I would like to draw attention to the incorrect use by many historians - Indian, Western, and Russian-of the concept of pluralism in relation to the history of India and Hinduism. This is a concept (not in its etymological, but in its meaningful interpretation!) First of all, it is connected with the history of civil society, not traditional, and implies the right of an individual to make an informed choice of their cultural and social orientations and priorities. The multiplicity of beliefs, cultures, and subcultures characteristic of traditional India, as well as the multiplicity of inter-caste hierarchies and blocks, was mostly prescribed. The average person, as a rule, obeyed the group-varnovo-dzhatnaya-discipline and decisions (most often group) of their caste notables. This fact concerns not only the history of Hinduism, but also the history of the Indian versions of the monotheistic religions of the Middle Eastern family - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
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conflicts. And around these conflicts, sometimes entire arrays of historical sources could be composed.
A source study of this kind, related to the history of early medieval Tamil Nadu, was proposed by the well-known researcher of Tamil literature and culture A. M. Dubyansky (ISAA at Moscow State University). A. M. Dubyansky's report "Interfaith relations in South India in the middle of the 1st millennium AD" is based on the materials of Tamil Vaishnavite and Shaivite poetry related to the history of rivalry between both branches of Hinduism and aboriginal beliefs, Buddhism and Jainism, whose positions at that time were very strong in Tamil land.
The bhakti poetry of both branches of Hinduism (VI - VII centuries AD) bears clear traces of confessional hostility and ridicule of non-believers (they pray in incomprehensible languages, do not know Shiva and Vishnu, do not observe the rules of ritual and caste purity, and besides, they preach the illusory nature of the world in which they live...The history of Tamil Nadu during this period undoubtedly knew religious repression, but fortunately it did not come to religious wars. In the religious controversy of this period, the intellectual and organizational power of the Brahmana Varna was formed and developed, which corresponded to the power and economic interests of the upper classes of the then Tamil Nadu.
As for the actual religious history, it was precisely during this period that the most important intellectual and spiritual skills and traditions of South Indian Bhakti were formed in this region, which gave special power and persuasiveness to all subsequent Hindu experience in the lands of Hindustan. As the speeches of a number of conference participants showed, it was Bhakti Hinduism, which passed through the crucible of intellectual and spiritual experience, primarily in the person of its great leaders of the XIX - first half of the XX century, that was able to give its original answer to the socio-cultural challenges of the West (and partly of revolutionary Russia)10, to give its own - and historically very constructive-version of the East-West cultural-historical synthesis 11.
What were the ways in which this synthesis, which partly determined the entire course of subsequent Indian history, was built? A huge literature is devoted to this problem, this historical riddle, huge layers of historical sources are described, published and republished. But serious scientific understanding of this problem, which, in my opinion, has global historical significance, is only at the very beginning.
The problem of the Indian East-Western spiritual and historical synthesis of the last two centuries was discussed in a series of lectures delivered at the conference, in particular the report of T. G. Skorokhodova (Penza State Pedagogical University). Belinsky University) "Religious humanism of the Bengali Renaissance of the XIX-early XX century".
As noted by T. G. Skorokhodova, who studies the legacy of Bengali religious reformation12, the religious, philosophical and social search of Bengali thinkers (from Rammohon Roy to Rabindranath Tagore) went in parallel and, moreover, in some counterpoint connection with the so-called Brahmin Renaissance of the same time. However, if the leaders of the Brahmin Renaissance were zealous for the re-formation of Hinduism into a certain updated type of religious orthodoxy, then the Bengali reformers pursued qualitatively different goals, aimed not only at modernizing Hinduism, but also at the entire complex of Indian life. T. G. Skorokhodova identified four ideological and religious-philosophical dominants of Bengali reformism: 1. The desire to renew - largely under the influence of the ideological challenges of Christianity and Islam-the latent monotheistic spiritual potential of Hinduism, based primarily on the modern reading of the Upanishads 13.
10 See consequently: Sinha P. B. Indian National Liberation Movement and Russia (1905 - 1917). New Delhi: Sterling, 1975; Belenky A. B. International factor in the ideology of the national liberation movement. From the "Awakening of Asia" to the conquest of independence, Moscow: Nauka-GRVL, 1988.
11 The special role of bhakti as one of the immutable spiritual prerequisites of this synthesis is an important topic in the works of E. N. Komarov in recent years. E. N. Komarov addressed the same topic at our conference. But more on that later.
12 Recent articles and monographs by T. G. Skorokhodova are devoted to the legacy of Rammohon Roy (1772-1833), Rabindranath Tagore (1817-1905) and Keshobchondro Sena (1838-1884).
13 P. Ya. Chaadaev, a contemporary of Rammohon Roy, who did much to popularize the texts of the Upanishads among Europeans, after reading the fragments of the Katha Upanishad, wrote to the French Catholic thinker Baron Ferdinand d'ecstein (April 15, 1836) that Indian thought should be among the prerequisites for the "Catholic philosophy (cette philosophie catholique)"developing in the world driven by the "omnipotent principle of unity" (Chaadaev P. Ya. Poln. sobr. soch. i izbr. letters, vol. 2. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1991, p. 103). For the French original, see: Chemerisskaya M. I. P. Ya. Chaadaev's letter on Indian Philosophy / / Peoples of Asia and Africa, Moscow, 1986, pp. 106-107).
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2. The desire to bring a moment of historicism to Indian thinking, with its ability to see different accents of the principles of knowledge, piety and justice in human life for different eras. 3. Defending the idea of human freedom and dignity regardless of "karmic" ideas about the circumstances of his birth, i.e., regardless of those often humiliating characteristics that society mechanically and innocently imputes to a person due to the circumstances of his birth. 4. The idea of universalism, derived from the inclusivity of Hindu ideas about the diversity of the world, encompassed by a single spiritual principle.
According to T. G. Skorokhodova, these theses, grounded by Bengali reformers in theory and defended by them in practice, were truly some kind of intellectual and spiritual revolution in Indian history: the ideas of protecting another, different person, the ideas of social compassion became a qualitatively new element in both Indian spirituality and Indian social movements.
Bengali religious renaissance draws a line under the "far", traditional history, opening the gates of the "near"history.
NEAR HISTORY
In general, much attention was paid to the Indian spiritual and historical turning point of the past, the twentieth century, a turning point that was forerunned by the Bengali religious Renaissance. For it is precisely this turning point (in its various aspects) that two reports were devoted to - E. N. Komarov (IB RAS) and E. B. Rashkovsky (BIL / IMEMO RAS).
The famous Russian indologist E. N. Komarov began his report "Confessional diversity and the process of democratization of India" with a question that has been worrying Orientalists and political scientists of different countries for decades: why did the political fate of India turn out to be so different from the political fate of the majority of post-colonial peoples of Asia and Africa, and even partly Latin America, as much as they were pushed by history on the path of totalitarian unification?
Usually, researchers and publicists look for the main reason for India's democratic choice in the extreme complexity of its ecological, caste, ethno-linguistic and confessional structure. According to E. N. Komarov, this argument is significant, but it is unlikely to have absolute explanatory power. Many features of modern Indian politics go back to the spiritual and political-legal history of previous centuries.
Hindu bhakti movements have long cultivated the idea of multiple ways of knowing God. In the Mughal period, the same idea (in the words of E. N. Komarov, "the idea of consubstantiality of dissimilar religions") under the influence of both bhakti (i.e., the principle of loving service to a personified Deity) and Sufism, a number of Indo-Muslim thinkers, such as Abu'l-Fazl and Emperor Akbar, began to establish themselves. So the first modern reformer of India, Rammohon Roy, who was mentioned above, turned out to be a conscious successor of these centuries-old Indian relays.
The British have planted some rudiments of their competitive political and legal consciousness in India. And here we are confronted with one of the essential paradoxes of Indian political history: bypassing the European principles of secular legal awareness and yielding to the strength of local customs and ideas, the British, introducing elements of elective self - government, allocated a special electoral curia for the Muslim elite, and then for wider layers of Indian Muslims. This circumstance, on the one hand, enabled the political self-organization of the Indo-Muslim communities, but on the other hand, it almost fatally predetermined the religious division of the country that took place in the middle of the XX century.
And another paradox in the processes of Indian democratization. Indeed, the Indian national Liberation Movement, and above all the Indian National Congress party, carried a huge universalist and, therefore, rallying a significant part of Indian society charge. However, the formation of communalist forces is outside the Congress (which even admitted communists before independence, but not communalists!) it promoted pluralization and competition among the pan-Indian and local elites.
So Indian history over the past six decades - at least with violence, even with outbreaks of communal passions-still shows a steady trend-
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a strong desire for democratic transformation. Totalitarian or dictatorial tendencies, from whatever camp they come, are blocked by the fundamental trends of Indian development.
Over the decades of independence, the socio-economic and political structure of Indian society has changed dramatically. It is no longer the land issue that has come to the fore (as it was before), but the problems of industrial and information production and their political and infrastructural support. Modernization continues. However, the conflict between communalism and secularism, which largely determined the appearance of present-day India, remains in force. To this day, the words of the late Indira Gandhi remain relevant: "We are not a developing country, but an unevenly developed one."
In general, Indology, like India itself, is paradoxical. And therefore, according to E. N. Komarov, he does not like one-sided categorical judgments.
One of the key and complex figures of not only Indian, but also global history of the XX century - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) was dedicated to the speech of E. B. Rashkovsky "Satyagraha - the revolution of nonviolence".
According to E. B. Rashkovsky, the idea of satyagraha as a spiritually grounded thought and practice of a person, taking into account the fullness of his connections with God, the universe, other people and with himself, is one of the central and fundamental achievements of the last century. Achievements not only of India, but also - through India - of all mankind. And the meaning of this achievement is in a certain combination of the centuries-old spiritual developments of humanity with the burning problems of rationalism and modernization, characteristic of the last two or three centuries of universal history.
In the very genesis and formation of Mahatma Gandhi's satyagraha ideas, a number of basic and immutable needs of human existence were reflected: the need for a decent life; the need for a decent meeting with an opponent; the need to adequately turn your opponent today into tomorrow's partner and, perhaps, even the day after tomorrow's friend (the opponent cannot be humiliated by his victory, but, on the contrary, it is necessary to prepare the ground to raise it to mutual understanding and compromise); the need for a dignified death (one's own, not someone else's!).
All this, in fact, is satyagraha, i.e. spiritual perseverance in what is true, holy and vital. In other words, satyagraha can be defined as a practice that grows out of the immutable imperatives of thought and faith. Moreover, there are 14 imperatives that seek to relate an individual's own spiritual life to the pain and needs of others.
It is not necessary to cultivate an unctuous image of the specific practice of Gandhi and his followers: the moments of rigid doctrinarianism and cultural blasphemy are well known. But these were unfortunate and historically explicable overexpenditures of a great intellectual and spiritual discovery. This discovery itself, which is primarily rooted in Indian experience and traditions, occurred at the juncture of dissimilar trends in spiritual, cultural and social development, which manifested themselves in the universal history of the beginning of the last century.
The very idea of satyagraha was formulated by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in 1906 in the British-conquered Boer territories of South Africa. As for Gandhi, in him the spiritual experience of a traditional Indian truth-seeker-Vaishnavite collided with the public experience of an English lawyer who was forced to defend representatives of the Indian communities of South Africa (Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Christians) from the racist sentiments and attacks of most of the local "white" community. It was only in 1914 that Gandhi transferred this experience of social practice as one of the private expressions of his deep spiritual life to India.
If we talk about the traditional Hindu premises of satyagraha, then, according to E. B. Rashkovsky, a special role is played here by the belief that any attempt by a person to protect his life, dignity and rights should be - as far as possible-above anger and violence, should be rooted in a deep, meaningful and sincere experience of prayer, contemplation and love. work on yourself. Any socially significant act performed by a person should lead him out of the power of low and dark passions. The spiritual and historical material that was used in the study of-
14 Here the parallel of Gandhi's quest with the spiritual and social quest of Bengali reformers described by T. G. Skorokhodova is obvious.
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Gandhi's personal experience of satyagraha is based on the Vaishnavite (or, more precisely, even Hare Krishna) sense of Hinduism, to which Gandhi belonged by birth. The speaker asks the question: what elements of the Hindu-Vaishnavite perspective particularly influenced the formation of satyagraha ideas and practices in the interpretation given to them by Gandhi? These elements are primarily as follows: a special emphasis on prayer asceticism; the idea of a deep identity of the inner life of the individual with the innermost spiritual essence of the Universe and everything living in it; the idea of disinterested action, based in the Bhagavad Gita: I have no right to claim the near and distant results of my actions, my task is to understand and recognize that the actions themselves and their results are in the Divine, not in my power, that the uncontamination of an act by lust for power is the reward in itself; the idea of sacrificial service to God, which goes back to the Rig Veda, to the Upanishads, and again in many respects to the Bhagavad Gita, as a partaking of the fullness of the Divine life and as a moment of restoration and replenishment of the universal harmony (by Rita)15.
E. B. Rashkovsky also briefly focused on the problem of Christian influences on the Mahatma, since this problem is discussed in detail in the works of the Indian Christian researcher Margaret Chatterjee, and partly in the works of the speaker himself. In any case, the Christian postulate of human self-denial, self-giving for the sake of the Lord's truth (renuntiatio, in English reading - renuntiation) is very often found in the texts of Gandhi. Gandhi's attitude to the person of Jesus Christ was reverent, but he did not believe in the Divine hypostasis of Christ. For him, Christ is only one of the greatest and most inspired ascetics of love and faith, perhaps the greatest of the satyagrahas. But no more.
As for the New European presuppositions of the satyagraha doctrine, the speaker suggested identifying at least three of them: egalitarian and competitive legal consciousness, the idea of social compassion, 16 the idea of sharpened reflection, consciously self-observing cognition, the Cartesian, Hegelian, and Tolstoyan ideas, which, moreover, acquired particularly distinct religious and social overtones in Gandhi...17.
In any case, no matter how much fans of "good with fists" treat the Mahatma's legacy, the idea of satyagraha seems to the speaker to be internally involved in the most profound trends in human history. For life itself, and even more so the historical life of man, is in many respects a gift, a dedication, a separation of oneself from others. This is what Pasternak, one of the most profound Russian poets of the last century, wrote about:
Life is just a moment,
Only rastvorenye
Ourselves in all others,
How to give them a gift 18.
INDIA AND ISLAM
According to A. Thakur, India is the second Muslim country in the world after Indonesia. The only paradox is that in the vast human Hindu ocean, tens of millions of Muslims turn out to be a significant, but still a minority. By the way, this fact was not always noticed by many notables and ideologists of Indo-Muslim communities in the period between the liquidation of the remnants of the Mughal Empire (1850s) and the Indo-Pakistani partition
15 Let me remind the reader of E. N. Komarov's reference to the special role of bhakti traditions in the history of India's ideological and social modernization.
16 Here again there is a consonance with the report of T. G. Skorokhodova.
17 Speaking at the discussion of the report by E. B. Rashkovsky and agreeing with the main provisions of the report, E. N. Komarov drew the attention of the audience to another important source of satyagraha ideas, almost not reflected in the direct texts of Gandhi, but without which it is impossible to imagine all the contexts and intertexts of the ideological and political life of that era. We are talking about the peaceful tendencies of European social democracy in the first half of the last century (with their rejection of the ideas of social violence and revenge and the desire to put the problems of social mercy and social protection in a wide range of tasks of political and legal self-organization of the masses).
18 "Wedding" (from the poetic supplement to the novel "Doctor Zhivago").
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the subcontinent almost a century later. These notables and ideologues still considered Hindustan to be the traditional "abode of Islam" in the old-fashioned way, which aggravated the tragedy of Hindu-Muslim relations of the past 19th, and partly this century.
D. B. Abramov's report "The Origins of Islamic Radicalism in India"was devoted to the political aspects of these relations. A preprint of this report was presented to the conference organizers. Moreover, the word" sources " is interpreted by the speaker very broadly: the sources of both yesterday and today, the sources of spiritual and historical, social and political.
One of the main problems of the whole complex of religious relations in India is the principle of secularism defined by the Constitution of the Republic of India as the principle of favorable attitude of a secular state to the beliefs, religious institutions and spiritual aspirations of its citizens. This constitutional approach, which objectively restrains the forces of sectarian hatred and a creeping civil war, hardly suits radicalist groups from both the Hindu and Islamic sides. This problem is all the more painful because the historically inevitable division of Hindustan into India and Pakistan20, ethno-religious strife, pogroms, and mass migrations in the middle of the last century had a particularly strong impact on the status of Indo-Muslim communities (already divided ethnically, linguistically, and caste-wise, not to mention the diversity of trends and interpretations in Indian Islam itself). And all these wounds of the past have hardly healed to this day.
After India's independence, D. B. Abramov notes, the majority of Muslims, regardless of their social status, faced a dilemma: agree with the secularist approach of Abul Kalam Azad [21] or choose the path proposed by Muslim fundamentalists. Abul Kalam Azad and a number of other leaders called on members of the Muslim community to join national political parties, 22 and thus become involved in the political life of the State.23
However, the tendencies of religious exclusivity that have spread in the Muslim world in recent decades, and moreover superimposed on strong communalist tendencies in Indian society, have largely contributed to the formation of a rigidly separatist platform among some Indo-Islamic radicals. Thus, according to the leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind party, " democratic principles and norms are fundamentally wrong. After all, democracy proceeds from the principle of sovereignty of the people, and Islam recognizes only Allah as sovereign. India's multi-party system is also unacceptable for Jamaat supporters, since Islamic politics allows for the existence of only one party - the "party of God" (Hezbollah). The participation of Muslims in the strengthening and legitimization of secular statehood is assessed simply as a direct "betrayal of the Prophet": politics and Islam are inseparable, so secularism is considered as having an obvious anti-Muslim orientation. " 24
One way or another, according to D. B. Abramov, the unresolved situation of many acute religious, historical and social problems of Islamic communities in India (this "second Muslim country") is fraught with many current and future problems. The standard of living of the urban Muslim population is dangerously low, the speaker points out. Up to 40% of Muslims living in urban areas are below the poverty line; for Hindus, the figure is almost twice as low (22%). This is largely due to polygamy, which is widespread among the poorest Muslims. A man is forced to find funds for the maintenance of wives and more-
19 See: Toczek E. Bye muzulmaninem w Indiach. Wroclaw, etc.: Ossolineum, 1984.
20 Again, I refer the reader to the report of E. N. Komarov.
21 Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888-1958)-one of the leaders of the Indian National Congress, a supporter of Hindu-Muslim unity. The idea of supra-confessional solidarity was also expressed by other Muslims, in particular the writer Mir Mashraf Husain (1847-1920), who advocated friendship and cooperation between Hindus and Muslims. Many secular ideas were shared by Imdad-ul-Haq, Lutfar Rahman, Nazrul Islam and others. Nevertheless, the name Abul Kalam Azad marked the direction of secularism among the Muslim elite (Note by D. B. Abramov. Abramov D. B. The origins of Islamic radicalism in India (preprint). Moscow, 2007, p. 3).
22 " Now the picture has changed in many ways, and regional parties have begun to play an increasingly important role, but this has made the choice of Muslims much more difficult "(Note by D. B. Abramov. - Ibid., p. 3).
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., pp. 3-4.
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children's rights. But to give up the traditionally large number of children in the family means to belittle your status in the community, to lose the respect of co-religionists. Another important reason is, of course, the habit of paternalism that has developed among a significant part of Muslims, and hence the hope for the state in solving vital issues of their future and the future of their children. Of course, in such a social situation, the seeds of radicalism fall into very fertilized soil.
When evaluating Muslim fundamentalism in India, it should be recognized that in general, even moderate Muslim organizations for the most part have little faith in the possibility of secularist integration in the country and intend to continue to support the separate existence of two communities (i.e., Hindu and Islamic) as carriers of independent religious cultures and separate political interests. 25
Of course, as A. Thakur noted, individual cases of terrorist attacks and pogroms, and even many hundreds of radicalist and terrorist cells of various directions, are hardly capable of seriously shaking the multi-million-dollar Indian ocean of people today. However, this situation described by D. B. Abramov objectively poses many immutable and creative tasks both for the Indian statehood, and for the civil society of India (including political parties, trade unions, regional and cultural communities, small affairs - grassroots organizations), and for the Indian intelligentsia, and for the Indian religious thought with its characteristic task of justifying ways of mutual understanding of spiritually dissimilar people on their common land. All this fully applies to the advanced part of Indo-Muslim intellectuals and leaders of Indo-Muslim communities.
But after all, this kind of problem in our so mobile and mosaic world is not just intra - Indian. This is a universal problem that also concerns the fate of our own country.
INDIA AND RUSSIA
The topic of Russian-Indian relations deserves hundreds of documentaries and monographs, just as it would deserve a special conference.
Still, during our one-day session, we couldn't ignore this topic. The report of S. D. Serebryany (Director of the Institute of Higher Humanities Studies at the Russian State Pedagogical University) - "Leo Tolstoy and the spiritual heritage of India"was devoted directly to her.
Serebryany reminded that Leo Tolstoy's artistic, religious, philosophical, and journalistic heritage developed during the relatively early development of indological knowledge in Europe and Russia; Mahatma Gandhi, a sincere admirer and correspondent of Lev Nikolayevich, did not fully understand the Russian background of his thinking and the specific Russian problems that faced him. behind this mindset. But all the more surprising is the spiritual, philosophical and public resonance in the culture of both countries, which arose as a result of the mutual interest and correspondence of these brilliant people.
In addition to S. D. Serebryany's report, we would like to note how important it would be for future researchers of this topic to analyze in depth those world social, artistic, religious and philosophical contacts (primarily Anglo-Saxon, but also continental-European) that permeated the life and work of both thinkers.
Report of the head of the Vaishnava University in Moscow S. V. Zuev " Gaudiya Vaishnava Sampradaya in India and Russia (history and current state)" It was devoted mostly to the history of Hinduism on Russian soil.
Founder of the Vaishnavite movement (Sampradaya)in the 15th and 16th centuries Sri Chaitanya justified the universalist nature of this religious movement. The existence of the first Vaishnavite communities in Russia was noted in the 17th century (within the city of Astrakhan); in 1788, I. Novikov published the first Russian edition of the Bhagavad Gita.
On the eve of the First World War, Russian officials agreed to build a Vaishnavite temple in St. Petersburg. However, further Russian history has followed a different track.
25 Ibid., p. 7.
page 154
The first Moscow Vaishnavite community was registered in 1988; it is currently small and has only a few thousand believers in Russia, both Indian and Russian.
Among the main activities of the community, S. V. Zuev singled out the following: human work on self-improvement (under the motto: "Simple life and sublime thinking"); charitable activities (canteens for the homeless, delivery of meals to the homes of the infirm and weak); correlation of the basic concepts of one's own faith with the spiritual and aesthetic traditions of the peoples of Russia, which is necessary for the organic existence of this small community in the Russian spiritual and social landscape.
In general, as Abhay Thakur noted, along with such vital economic and political contacts between the two spiritual continents - India and Russia - deep personal contacts between people and small groups that cannot be massized are extremely important - contacts in the areas of religious, philosophical, artistic and scientific interests.
I would like to think that this conference is one of such contacts in this objectively planned spiritual and historical process for decades and centuries.
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