The Praxis of Evil

LEST WE GET OFF on the wrong foot, let it be clear that people of all religions have a conception of ‘evil’ and people of all religions also fight for territory and for other equally profane, earthly reasons. Human beings are very similar, no matter where they are, but it is in the way they factor war, religion and territory that one sees variations in their expressions.

The Christmas carols of December sang of goodwill, cheer and, most of all, peace on earth. In the West, from the US to Europe, children and their parents joined hands in churches and street corners, joyfully rendering in music the biblical promise of “Glory to God… And on earth peace, good will toward men.” These renditions were delivered earnestly and sincerely and were not hypocritical, at least for the most part.

The White House in Washington DC, where the world’s most powerful person works and lives, also rang with these happy melodies. In Russia too, Christmas is a season of peace, yet in between these joyous verses almost all European nations, and the US, were also busy escalating the war in Gaza and keeping Ukraine on the boil. The peaceful hymns of Christmas did not halt these wars; what is more, they may have actually firmed up the zeal.

Since that festive Christmas season, there was Easter, which too has come and gone. This is a festival where Christians celebrate the victory of life over death and, in particular, remember salvific prayers. In the White House, again, this is a big event and the rolling of the Easter egg is done with great fanfare on its broad, expansive lawns. All of that is captured on TV too, highlighting family values and empathy between people, most of all peace.

This stark paradox leads one to believe that humans are a crazy outcome of evolution where hypocrisy is ever present, lurking in the background. But is it the éminence grise we really make it out to be? It is, indeed, a stretch to imagine that continents are entirely populated by resolute double dealers who cynically manipulate sentiments born out of religion to foster cruel wars. Why can’t they be more honest and kill you with a sword instead of with a song?

Yet, such people are not being duplicitous all the way. In Abrahamic religions, Evil is an external power in constant combat with God. While God is merciful and, indeed, perfect, the evil forces of Satan, Mastema, Beelzebul or Shaitaan are out there to vanquish the good on earth. It was, after all, Satan’s rebellion that caused Evil on earth. It represents an exterior force of tremendous might that must be vanquished so that God may rule.

In Abrahamic religions, evil is an external power in constant combat with god. As the forces of evil stand outside the good where god reigns, to fight back against them constitutes a ‘righteous’ war. Those who are on the side of evil must be crushed. Which is why it is not a contradiction for them to sing carols extolling ‘peace on earth’ and at the same time to wage war

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As the forces of evil stand outside the good where God reigns, to fight back against them constitutes a ‘righteous’ war. Those who are on the side of evil must be crushed for Satan is not just independent of God, but is also very powerful. Which is why it is not a contradiction for them to sing carols extolling “peace on earth” and at the same time to wage war. In Abrahamic religions, to bring peace one has to fight, even kill, to make earth the kingdom of God.

The concept of evil here is not as paradoxical as it may first appear. God is undoubtedly perfect, yet alongside Him is Satan, who is often depicted as an angel in his own right but his singular mission is to tempt humans away from God’s righteous path. Did God create him too? Satan is the one who got away and will remain a forever threat to God and that spells perpetual struggle as well. What other option is there but to buckle down and fight?

Martin Luther, the 15th-century founder of Protestantism, even believed that Satan was independent of God and was, perhaps, equally powerful too; hardly one to be trifled with. The question still hangs. Is God omnipotent or does He share some of his qualities with another, namely, Satan? Is this sharing ordained? Or is it contested? These queries remain unresolved and form the stuff of Sunday pulpit sermons.

It would seem in balance that against Satan, the Evil angel, God is not all powerful but must constantly battle with his faithful followers on his side. Consequently, free will, without Godly supervision, is an evil. After all, it was free will that led Adam to eat the forbidden fruit which let Evil into the world. Human instinct needs to be controlled and this is done best by adhering to, and believing fully in, the inerrant Holy Book, the Bible, nothing else.

In Christianity, humans have a natural affinity (or “yetzer hara” in Judaism) to be tempted by Satan. This compels God to constantly contest him and wean people away from their spontaneous ten­dencies. As Jesus said in the King James’s Bible: “Get thee behind me Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” As our natural bent is towards evil, God is compelled to constantly fight for us.

Saddam Hussein too was characterised as antichrist and if he were to win that would mean the end of the world was near. The Gaza war has taken on a religious overtone for this reason. For Netanyahu, Hamas is the source of unremitting evil and this sentiment is reciprocated

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When Satan does not bare its serpentine fangs, it tempts people by promising them the kingdom of earth, as it did in the last tempta­tion of Christ. The ungodly weak are those who give in but in the end they will never win. The Old Testament makes it clear that those on Satan’s side will be finally punished with a “rain of fire and brimstone”. Similar phrases can be found in other Abrahamic texts too. That should not surprise us as their origins are the same.

God can never sleep, nor must his chosen people. The war is perennial. To be religious demands diligent sacrifice and the post­ponement of gratifications; similar to what many economists believe is the reward for profit. This is a coincidence but one that is interesting for it may have influenced the wide appreciation of this facile economics mantra. Unwittingly, the Bible may have made the ground for this lesson in economics to gain favour.

It, consequently, becomes almost spontaneous, as argued by Friedrich Nietzsche, for believers to demonise the enemy. Saddam Hussein too was characterised as Antichrist and if he were to win that would mean the end of the world was near. In Israel today, the war has taken on a religious overtone largely for this reason. For Netanyahu, Hamas is the source of unremitting evil and this sentiment is reciprocated from the other side too.

During the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, Iranians labelled Americans as the “Great Satan” and Israel “Little Satan”. The Sovi­ets were not forgotten and they earned the epithet “Lesser Satan”. In return, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went to the US in 2007, Daily News headlined the event with the words: “The Evil has Landed.” Students at a leading US university wore shirts with the message: “Stop Ahmadinejad’s evil”.

In Gaza today, the war is between people of different faiths but both combatants, in this case, emerged from the same Abraham­ic fount. This is why Islam and Judaism have common prophets and parables before the divide between them took place. Evil in both cases is a congenital condition in humans and Satan ma­nipulates this vulnerability to his advantage. He never tires; he even tried to tempt Christ. This is why we need God to save us.

During the Cold War years it was easy to cast the Eastern Bloc as irreligious because atheism characterised communist thought. When Soviet athletes won medals at the Olympics, their achievements were often undermined in the Western world for these athletes were depicted as soulless machines. If phrased biblically, they would be closer to being creations of Satan than of God. There was also a parallel, reinforcing, view that Eastern Bloc Olympic competitors were not Europeans either.

Last Christmas, the carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ was sung in churches and homes, though in Bethlehem itself there were no celebrations. How heavily armoured is this irony? Yet, those lilting to tunes of this familiar song did not feel the gritty rub. In their minds, war is the price the righteous must pay for rekindling peace in Bethlehem. This is a continuing mission and futuristic in its scope; a work in progress.

In Christianity, humans have a natural affinity to be tempted by Satan. This compels god to constantly contest him and wean people away from their spontaneous tendencies

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Wars in the West seamlessly take on a religious aspect because evil in Abrahamic religions, as mentioned earlier, is an external adversary. Evidence of this is strewn across texts from the Hebrew Book of Job to the Bible, to Martin Luther’s teachings and, predictably, to Manichean litera­ture as well. There are no shades of grey, just black and white. If Gaza is a long war, think of the centuries during which the Crusades were relentlessly fought.

It is for this reason that warfare in these religions can be viewed as a Godly cause. Believers do not, necessarily, want to kill, but they cannot sit back and let the ungodly followers of Satan take over the earth. Peace loving though they may be, they love God more. It is this that compels them to enter into a holy war where they are not wantonly shredding bodies but incapacitating Satan. The means may be bloody, but the end is both glorious and righteous.

Thus, while they sing praises to God, they must also wage war in or­der to win peace. In doing this, the believers also mend themselves. Meditation, gazing into space, or listening, as John Keats said, to the “celestial sirens’ harmony” will not kill evil. To give peace a chance one must be ready for a religious fight. At the Pearly Gates you will be asked if you did the right thing. At this juncture there is a fork in the road: one to heaven, the other to hell and perdition.

War is a hard choice, but how is one to decide who is on God’s side other than putting your faith in the religion you were born into? Islam, Christianity and Judaism encourage conversion as if that were a well past deadline offer for the ungodly to reform and choose the right path. If after this generous opening, they con­tinue on the same path, then they have only themselves to blame for the rain of hellfire and brimstone that will come upon them.

PEOPLE OF THE EAST—Hindus, Buddhists or Confucians—also killed for wealth and crown. They also ask for heavenly blessings for their endeavours, much as cricketers and football players do today. Yet, the wars they waged were not sanctioned as ‘righteous’ or ‘religious’. The winning side often made off with precious temple deities of their competitors, not to stamp on them, or undermine them, but to place those idols in their own temples for add-on benefits.

For example, in 642CE, according to local tradition, King Narasimhavarman of the Pallava dynasty took away the image of Lord Ganesha from Vatopi, the capital of the Chalukyas. From across the straits, in the 9th century, the Sinhala royalty were intimidat­ed enough to give away several idols that represented that dynasty as gifts to the Rashtrakuta king. All this was possible because of the religious overlap between kingdoms in India of those times.

While history records many wars in the east, they were not so much in the name of religion but for a kingdom. There is no equivalent of the crusades in the non-Abrahamic eastern lands

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Interestingly, there is more than an overlap between Shiva and Vishnu though they have spawned different traditions, often at logger­heads. Shiva worshipped Vishnu and vice versa and this aspect of mutual worship and adoration is known as “Vishnu-Shiva-Prapanchi- Pati”. Such commonalities and blurring of boundaries between the various Gods of Hinduism allow this religion to be one of accretive identities that are not exclusivist in nature.

This is probably why, unlike Abrahamic religions, in the East, religious wars have not entered folk history. There are no spectacular examples of battles fought, sometimes over decades and centuries, in the name of faith in India, China or in South and Southeast Asia. Yet, warriors are highly prized in tradition in all these societies. The Cholas were great warriors and they defeated the Jains but Shravanabelagola still stands.

The enchanting Ellora monuments were established over time by the Rashtrakutas, Kalachuris, Chalukyas and Yadavs. It is interesting though that the Rashtrakutas and the Chalukyas fought each other and toppled each other’s kingdoms over several decades. Yet, they clearly took time off to patronise the same religious sites. That these rulers could interact, in spite of hostilities, to make these awe-inspiring caves is because their faiths harmonised.

As many as 12 of the 34 caves of Ellora are Buddhist and five are Jain in their allegiance. These along with the 17 Hindu caves exist side by side, as if in segue, and it requires an expert eye to spot the differences. In distant Bengal, the Pala kingdom was Buddhist, which ruled for a long period from the 7th century CE to the 11th century CE. Hinduism and Buddhism, notwithstanding the Shunga interregnum, were braided over centuries from east to west.

That this could happen despite long and bloody wars is because in Eastern religions, evil is not an exterior entity to be quelled by righteous force but by attaining ‘moksha’ through internal discipline. As Buddhists, Confucians and Hindus push the same buttons it was unexceptional that King Harsha was a Shaivite, his brother a Buddhist, and for both to claim the Sun God as ancestor. The Hoysalas too built Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples without prejudice.

The Rashtrakutas and the Chalukyas fought each other but took time off to patronise the same religious sites. That they could interact to make the Ellora caves is because their faiths harmonised

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Confucianism has a somewhat different take on this subject. Of course, cleansing one’s heart to rid oneself of the monster within is an option, but it also advocates strict institutional laws and regulations at the same time. This has been interpreted to suggest Confucianism is what makes dictatorship easy, as in communist China. Confucianism also suggests that mistakes are not sins but opportunities to learn and move farther in the direction of the good. The Mencian view, as expounded by the Korean thinker T’oyegye, insists that evil rises from a failure to practise good mind and heart. This position can also mean that though good is a transcendental human trait, the world has both virtuous and evil qualities. Therefore, it is up to the people, finally, how they cultivate their dispositions. Some deviate far from the mean and incline towards evil while others maintain a balance and end up being good.

It is quite remarkable that there is a broad concurrence among Eastern religions that evil should be cleansed from within. As evil is not an external agent to be conquered by force, it would be a trav­esty of Eastern tradition to war in the name of religion. When you have the option of being evil on your own steam, why ask Satan for help? The fault then does not lie outside but is interred in our souls and it is up to us, nobody else, to extirpate that evil.

The Buddhist Dhammapada clearly pronounces that “by oneself evil is done”. Buddhism teaches us that others are not fundamentally good or bad, nor is there an omnipotent, forever watching God handing out rewards or punishments. Karma rises from our own wilful action and karma is not fate, nor is it some form of esoteric cosmic justice. The Gita also saysthat karmic consequences, independent of God, await those who wilfully hurt others.

On this subject, Buddhism and Hinduism have a symbiotic relationship. In Hinduism, it has been long established, that evil is not an external enemy. This makes it the person’s singular re­sponsibility to do as much good as possible in order to escape the karmic cycle. By extension, then, moksha will elude those who deliberately do evil and harm others. For Hindus, release from karma is the final goal, and death must, therefore, be welcomed.

We find a clear elucidation of this in the Ramayana once we examine Ravana in totality. Ravana is not an equivalent of Satan, but a wise person of great learning and a devotee of Lord Shiva. This, paradoxically, put Ravana in a spot. As his devotion was so outstanding, Shiva granted Ravana the boon of immortality. That pleased Ravana till he realised that if he lived forever he would never attain moksha for the karmic cycle would envelop him eternally.

The raison d’être, or rationale, behind Rama’s victory over Ravana stems from Shiva acceding to Ravana’s request and taking back the boon he had granted. Now Ravana would die because he would be wracked, wrought and compelled, by circumstances, to abduct somebody else’s wife; a sin that can only invite death. Yet, when he is about to die in the battlefield, Rama hastens his brother, Lakshmana, to Ravana’s side to pick up the last words of wisdom from him.

The Hindu epic, Mahabharata, also has lessons for us on this subject. If there is a righteous war in Hindu lore and tradition then the Mahabharata would be a prime example. Yet, while the Pandava clan is clearly the aggrieved party cunningly inveigled by the conspiring Kauravas, the two sides were not arraigned against each other as representing the absolute good and bad. It was not a fight between God and Satan as in Abrahamic religions.

The Kauravas were not all evil: they had heroes like Drona, Bhishma and Karna on their side. The Pandavas won in the end but that was because they stooped to deceit to conquer. Though Lord Krishna encouraged them in this, Yudhishthira stood accused by Yama at heaven’s gate for spreading the false rumour on the battlefield that Ashwatthama had died. When Drona heard his son was killed, it sapped his willingness to fight and the Pandavas triumphed.

Apart from Hinduism, there are Greek and Egyptian traditions too, where good and evil are not always clearly separated. This is why in such cultures, unlike the Abrahamic ones, wars of any kind do not receive a clear sanction. It would then need careful construction for a war to be declared as ‘righteous’ for there is good on both sides.

This is probably why though wars happen everywhere, rarely do they receive the tag ‘religious’ in non-Abrahamic faiths.

The agonies that the Mahabharata contestants had to endure to pursue the war between cousins are writ large in this sacred text. These are not unlike issues real people face on a quo­tidian basis and that is why the Mahabharata is so instructive. As no mortal is purely good or unremittingly evil, nor, inciden­tally, are the Gods, wars become ‘just’ or otherwise depending on the context. Where context is central, real life dilemmas dominate and come to the fore.

As in non-Abrahamic faiths wars cannot be easily labelled as religious, the causes of conflict must then be eminently worldly. This corrects the caricatured view of Hinduism as an ascetic and otherworldly religion with no thought for the material world. Yes, there are sacerdotal texts that stress this aspect but so much of lived Hinduism is dedicated to resolving real-world problems and the two epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, stand testimony to this.

Consequently, while history records many wars in the East, they were not so much in the name of religion but, quite bluntly, for a kingdom. There is no equivalent of the crusades in the non- Abrahamic Eastern lands. Unless Abrahamic warriors thrust faith into the mix, bivouac and battlegrounds did not typically fight for religion in the Eastern hemisphere. In which case, the secular gains must be quite pressing to motivate kingdoms to fight each other.

Even Genghis Khan, fierce though he was, had no interest in converting people to his faith. He was religiously unmusical. When he unleashed bloody horror on the people of Khwarezm it was because their ruler violated a treaty and killed the Great Khan’s traders. Through all the bloody mess, Genghis took care not to slaughter craftsmen for he needed them. Eastern warriors were always ready to fight for power and pelf, not so much for religion.

Ravana died because he was wrought to abduct somebody else’s wife. Yet, when he is about to die, Rama tells Lakshmana to pick up the last words of wisdom from Ravana

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Wars in India were not cloaked in religion either. They were spurred by straightforward secular reasons, such as adding to land revenues and increasing trade. Often this led rulers to strike unlikely alliances, which may appear strange to contemporary sensibilities, but their intent was driven by reasons of power and not by religious considerations. Taking the adversary’s idols was also prompted by statecraft, not religious antipathy. There are, of course, instances in the East when Buddhist monks and Hindu sadhus have often taken to the streets, but those were protests against the government and not wars directed at other religions. This is true of the 1963 uprising of Buddhist monks in South Vietnam when the Catholic president there disallowed Buddhist practices. This agitation, too, was not an attack on Christianity but for self-preservation of Buddhist rites.

World War II also provides interesting variations on the posi­tioning of evil when the fight is between people of Abrahamic

faiths. While Judaism, also Abrahamic, had no hesitation in denouncing Hitler, it did not do so in the name of religion. Jews needed Western Christian Allies on their side and Hitler was a Protestant. World War II Japanese sol­diers fought and committed hara-kiri for the Sun King, and not for Kami divinities. The Nazi extermination of six million Jews led leading scholars to wonder what their God was doing. Martin Buber saw Hitler’s rise as an “eclipse of religion”. Yet, Christian­ity was never attacked by them for strategic reasons. It was during this period that the Judaeo-Christian alliance came about in the US. This mindset continues to this day and it has helped Israel isolate Palestinians, allowing Netanyahu to make the war in Gaza a holy war.

While the horrors of the Holocaust rightly led to soul-search­ing among the Judaeo-Christians, there was none of that when five million in the Congo were killed by Belgian colonialists. Why had God not been eclipsed then? If one were to measure evil, then the Belgian massa­cre would rate higher in terms of per capita killings. Finally, it is all about which God we are talking about. Congolese Spirits were too distant to ruffle 19th-century Western consciousness.

In spite of the terrible persecution of the Jews, and the nearly 10,000 US Army wartime chaplains, Hitler, a Protestant Christian, was rarely, and grudgingly at that, portrayed as anti- Christ. Hitler also believed that Protestantism was the natural religion of Germany, and that “Jesus’ entire character and learn­ing displayed German blood.” It would be difficult, under these circumstances to bracket Hitler with Satan. It was much easier for the West to label Saddam Hussein, a Muslim, as one.

Though Vaishnavites and Shaivites are also contending factions in Hinduism, the conflicts between them did not get the status of religious wars. This is primarily because the figureheads and presiding deities of these groups, namely Shiva and Vishnu, wor­shipped each other as mentioned earlier. Also siblings in Hindu families and in earlier royal families, too, owed allegiance to both these sects.The rivalry between these two groups have occasionally led to bitter physical clashes but these were not with soldiers flashing swords on battlefields but, sporadically, in pilgrim centres.

The point of contention being which sect gets to dip first in the holy river, or whose flag is hoisted before all others at a holy site. Such a clash happened once in 1790 and later again in 2015; but in both cases, they were not consequential enough to be called wars.

Do Hindus and Buddhists fight and war? Of course, they do. What is different here is that Eastern kingdoms are not motivated to spread or secure a faith but to aggrandise and expand their domains. This complicates the Orientalist view of those like Max Müller and Max Weber that Hindus are otherworldly. Wars in the East were fought primarily for worldly gains and religion was not an excuse. Still, that does not make them any less bloody.

With the coming of nation-states, the problem of evil gets a different fla­vour even among Eastern societies. Not just trade, but animosities too are now carried out long-distance. All too often, passionate votaries on one side have never encountered passionate votaries on the other side. On most occasions, they don’t even share a border, yet hostilities continue long-distance with soldiers and weaponry flying across oceans and continents.

It is also true that nation-states have transformed earlier secular Eastern dichotomies of ‘us’ and ‘them’. This duo now takes on a quasi-religious turn because nations are built on a mother’s milk ideology as if nature has answered people’s yearnings. In this process, the earlier secular ‘others’ become ‘evil others’ as they are now the offspring of a different mother. Under these circumstances, wars can become a ‘righteous’ act.

It is not as if non-Abrahamic religions are adopting Abrahamic features. Rather, it is the logic of nation-states that gives warring sides a kind of religious gloss, for nations are seen as a gift of nature, hence immutable. In almost every country, the nation is imaged as a ‘mother’, something we are born into, as it is with religion. For this reason, ‘us’ and ‘them’ become ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and take on a near-religious quality in most contemporary nation-states.

The more consciously we get secular, the more religious becomes our unconscious.

About The Author

Dipankar Gupta

Dipankar Gupta is a sociologist. He is the author of, among other titles, Q.E.D.: India Tests Social Theory and Checkpoint Sociology: A Cultural Reading of Policies and Politics