Record Society EDUCATION1 RELIGION? CURRICULUM …

Ethical RecordThe Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society

Vol. 103 No. 1 E1

MORAL EDUCATION1CURRICULUM

COMMITY1^ tithe. IL Thtgrec onetormnallow anyvie t,,soni 0 f geed'.

asaing 11'

January, 1998

HINDUISM - IS IT TRULY ARELIGION?Surendra Lal 3

SOME CULTURAL RESPONSESTO THE BRITISH RAJSalman Asif 7

SHOULD THE QUEEN HAVEAPOLOGISED TO THE INDIANSABOUT AMRITSAR?Harold Hillman 13

SUPREME COURT RULES O.K.?Ian Ray-Todd 16

VIEWPOINTSDmitriy Golubov, Ilse Meyer 23

SOME ANCESTORS OFHUMANISMLeslie Scrase 23

EDITORIAL -.NIHIL HUMANI A ME ALIENUM PUTOMany of humanity's great cultural achievements, the pyramids, the parthenon,the pietas, were created in the furtherence of fallacious, usually religious, world-views and teachings. These products and especially the teachings arc often saidto be inspired', though humanists would dispute there was literally `inspiration'from a non-human mind involved in their creation.

The point is that a great artist, composer, playwright or novelist can, by thepower of his conception, fire our imagination and cause our disbelief to besuspended - all the while maintaining his own disbelief. (Shakespeare did nothave to believe in ghosts or witches to write their parts 'well', nor was Verdireligious, nor did Tolstoy believe his characters were real people).

A Viewpoint in this issue (page 23) laments an alleged deficit ofhumanism - it does not have `wonderful works of religious art created over manycenturies'. But why not regard these 'wonderful works' as just another style offiction and therefore quite properly available for our delectation? Then it is notillicit pleasure for a humanist to luxuriate in Verdi's tremendous Requiem, nor abetrayal for an atheist to admire Michelangelo's depiction of God creatingAdam. •

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ObituaryWe regret to report the death in December of Alex Dawn, a few days short of his98th birthday. Alex had been associated with the humanist movement all his life andhad been a secretary to Stanton Coit. His funeral at Ruislip Crematorium wasconducted by Alan Shell. Reminiscences of Alex, which may be published - arerequested. Please send them to the Librarian at Conway Hall.

December Mis-print RectifiedPages 21 and 22 of some copies of the December Ethical Record (the middle of thearticle Do We Ever See The World? by Nick McAdoo) were mis-printed. Enclosedwith this issue is a reprint of the entire article, pages 20-23, which should be insertedinto the December issue if your copy is faulty.

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the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism,the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, andthe advancement of research and education in relevant fields.

We invite to membership all those who reject supernatural creeds and findthemselves in sympathy with our views. At Conway Hall there are opportunities forparticipation in cultural activities including discussions, lectures, concerts andsocials. The Sunday Evening Chamber Music Concerts founded in 1887 arerenowned. We have an interesting reference library. All members receive theSociety's journal, Ethical Record, eleven times a year. Funerals and MemorialMeetings are available.

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2 Ethical Record, January, 1998

HINDUISM - IS IT TRULY A RELIGION?

Su rendra Lal* Lecture to the Ethical Society, 9 November 1997

A very common answer given by most educated Hindus when asked 'What isHinduism?' is that it is a way of life. This is a very vague and evasive answer. Butthen, Hindus are very good at giving vague and evasive answers. Other religions alsoclaim to be a way of life. In fact, Islam claims to be a complete way of life. It is notsurprising that Talibans in Afghanistan are forcing women to cover themselvescompletely and men to grow beards in the name of Islam. Christianity and Buddhismare also ways of life and so indeed are rationalism and secularism. So this answerdoes not give us any clue as to what Hinduism is.

Ancient Hindus did not call themselves Hindus. The word 'Hindu' is actuallya corruption of the Sanskrit word 'Sindhu'. Etymologists explain how the sound 's'often changed to 'h' when it travelled from India to Persia and how this same soundchanged to 'I' when it travelled to Greece and Europe. As a result the great 'Sindhu'river of India was known as 'Hindu' to the Persians and as 'Indus' to the Greeks.Therefore 'Hindu' is primarily a geographical term used by the ancient Persians andArabs to refer to the peoples of the Indus valley and beyond.

The Muslim rule of India began around I 200AD. Thousands of temples andVihars (Buddhist monasteries) were destroyed and a grcat part of the indigenouspopulation was converted to Islam in the following years. The Muslim rulers calledthe local Indians Hindus. As Indians did not have a unified religion likc Islam, andas the Muslims wanted to keep their ethnic and religious identity separate, the term'Hindu' was also used to identify the religious beliefs of Indians.

Although Muslims used the word Hindu in a derogatory way, in timc Indianscame to accept this new name. It gave them a large and unified identity. One couldsay that, just as British rule gave Indians a national identity, so Muslim rule gavethem a religious identity. In the absence of a unified religion the tcrm Hinduismcame to signify a wide range of beliefs and practices.

Sanskrit was the flourishing language of India before the Muslims came. Theword 'Hindu'. or its equivalent, does not exist in Sanskrit. Interestingly, there is noword for 'religion' in Sanskrit either. The term `Dharma',now used to mean religion,originally had a completely different meaning. It meant 'duty' or 'rightful conduct'.For example, the Dharma of a king is different from the Dharma of a subject, theDharma of a teacher is different from the Dharma of his student.

Hindus Must Belong to a CasteHinduism has more to do with social structure that with religion. If one is a Hinduone must belong to a caste of Indian society. The caste system is very rigid. There isno opportunity of moving upwards, or even downwards. Hindu society is alsostrictly endogamous. Therc are four major castes: Brahmins (priests andintellectuals), Kshatriyas (warriors and administrators), Vaishyas (farmers andtraders) and Shudras (servants and menials). These four castes arc further dividedinto hundreds and even thousands of sub-castes. Even the so-called untouchableshave several sub-castes. There is no mixing or intermarriage between sub-castes.

*Has translated the Bhagavad Gita into English and Hindi, published in 1997 by RahulPublishing House, Delhi at f15 (ISBN-81 7388 0719).

Ethical Record, January, 1998 3

Thus there are higher class untouchables and lower class untouchables. Socialreformers come and go yet India remains a highly caste-ridden society.

The earliest scriptures of Hindus are the Vedas. The Rigveda is the first amongthe Vedas. According to one of its hymns, the castes were made by God at thebeginning of creation. It says..

"When the primordial Cosmic Being appeared. Brahmins were Its head,Kshatriyas were Its arms. Vaishyas were Its thighs and from Its feet the lower casteswere born." Rigveda 10/90/11.

The caste system has been called thc bane of Indian, or Hindu society.However it has not been entirely disadvantageous. One or two good things haveresulted from it. Firstly, it ensured the preservation of ancient literature, bothreligious and secular, in a manner not found in any other society. Secondly, once aperson is guaranteed the security of a place in the caste system, his religious andphilosophical beliefs are his own affair. Whilst the majority of Brahmins studied theVedas and practiced complicated rituals in order to earn a living, there were alwaysa minority of free-thinking Brahmins who challenged the existing ideology andbehaviour of the day without fear of reprisal or Fatwas. Secure in their caste, theymay have had a smaller following, but were always respected for their learning andwere called Rishis' and seers.

Atheists and Materialists Not ExcommunicatedVedas have always been considered to be inviolable by the majority of Hindus butRishi Brihaspati openly criticised Vedas, saying that thc people who wrote thcmwere clowns, cheats and thieves. Jaini and Buddhist Hindus also challenged theauthority of the Vedas and the claim of the Brahmins to be the sole arbiters of the'true religion'. Athicsts (Nastiks) and Materialists (Charvakis) have always existedin Hindu society. In Hinduism there is no such thing as ex-communication forchallenging mainstream beliefs and practices.

Whilst most Hindus now believe Krishna to be an incarnation of God. most ofhis contemporaries did not think so. They fought with him and sometimes used verystrong language to address him. For example, whcn the so-called villain of theMahabharat, Duryodhan, was illegally beaten by Bheem at the instigation of Krishnain a personal duel, he (Duryodhan) rebuked Krishna and said:

'0 son of King Kansa's slave, arc you not ashamed of yourself? It is yourdoing that I have fallen in this illegal duel with maces.' Mahabharat 9/61/27.

Wc thus see that Hinduism contains within itself a wide variety of beliefs andpractices. Of course, in every period, there is something which we call the main-stream but it would be wrong to claim that one stream constitutes Hinduism as awhole or can be the sole representative of Hinduism. Just as Roman Catholics do notrepresent all Christians and Sunnis do not represent all Muslims similarly presentday Vaishnawitcs (mainstream Hindus) do not represent all Hindus. Moreover, themainstream of Hinduism changes all the time. The following Urdu couplet illustratesthis point:

'Whenever I saw thee, I saw thee in a new form. The problem of thy identityremains unsolved.'

Most people today think that Hindus are vegetarians. Of course most prieststoday do not eat meat but more and more Hindus are becoming non-vegetarians. The4 Ethical Record, January, 1998

Aryan predecessors of Hindus were great meat-eaters. There were very few animalsthat they did not ritually sacrifice and eat. It appears that around the 6th century BCthere was a major backlash. laini and Buddhist reformers appeared and the majorityof Indians stopped eating meat altogether. Thc Code of Lord Manu (Manusmriti) isthe earliest and greatest code Hindus have produced. Yet in this code Lord Manuclearly says:

'There is nothing wrong with eating meat, nothing wrong with drinking wineand nothing wrong with having sex. All human bcings arc naturally inclined to doso but if you have had eithugh and and can live without them, this can lead to higherachievements.' Manusmriti 5/56.

Hindus pay lip service to their scriptures and holy books. They do not treat thescriptures as absolute truths. They make up their own minds. They pick and choosewhat suits them and swallow the rest with a pinch of salt, or a large amount of saltif necessary!

If Hinduism is a religion, like Christianity or Islam it would be easy for anyoneto convert to it. But conversion is not possible because conversion to Hinduism doesnot mean conversion to a particular belief system. To become a Hindu one wouldneed to be assimilated into a society which has a strict caste system and no castewould be willing to accept an outsider into its fold. Even lower castes would not bewilling to accept outsiders. Around the cnd of the 19th ccntury an enlightened Hinduleader and reformer, Swami Daynanand Saraswati, started a movement known asArya Samaj. He, for the first time in Hindu society, began to convert outsiders toHinduism. He achieved some success but in most instances it was a case ofreconverting Hindus who had been converted to Islam by the Muslims. The formerHindus were readmitted into the caste which they had left earlier. These conversionswere only possible because India was then ruled by the British. Under Muslim ruleconverting from Islam to any other religion is punishable by death.

A Pristine Vedic Religion?Arya Samaj believes in pristine Vedic religion. It wants to rid the present daymainstream Hindu society of idolatry and superstition. Its followers believe in onesupreme formless God. Unlike mainstream Hindus, they believe Rama and Krishnato be great men but not incarnations of thc supreme God. Swami Dayanand wantedhis followers to call themselves Arians, or Aryans. not Hindus and to call theirreligion Vedic rather than Hinduism.

However, most Hindus do not like the term Vedic because its meaning is verynarrow and limited and the present day mainstream is anything but Vedic. They donot want to call themselves Aryans either because a great majority of Hindus arefrom Dravidian or Shudra (non-Aryan) stock. Post-Vedic Hinduism was given thename of Brahmanism by historians but this term is also disliked by Hindus. It maybe precise in its meaning but it is divisive and offensive because, in matters ofreligious beliefs and practices, it refers to only one caste, the Brahmans, and therebyinfers the dominance of this caste.

Another precise term for present day mainstream Hinduism is SanatanDharma (Perennial Religion). This term was coined around the end of the 19thcentury to counter the claim of the Arya Samajists that they were the followers ofthe earliest pristine Hindu religion. The tcrm Vaishnav Dharma is also popularamong elite Hindus. It means worshippers of Lord Vishnu and His incarnations, suchas Rama and Krishna. During the pre-Muslim period mainstream Hindus were


divided into Vaishnavites and Shaivites - worshippers of Lord Vishnu andworshippers of Lord Shiva. During Muslim rule this distinction became irrelevant,although south Indians still mainly worship Shiva and north Indians mainly Rama.

Hindu beliefs and practices have gone through many phases. Hindus do notbelieve in wiping the slate clean at any stage. Everyone is free to choose from thismuseum of beliefs whatever appeals to him and to drop anything that he dislikes.Some still worship trees, rivers and mountains, the spirits of their ancestors, familygods or village gods. Thc ancicnt prehistoric practice of worshipping reproductiveorgans (Lingam) is still widely practiced. Once acquired by Hindus, no system ofbelief is ever completely abandoned. Communism may be long dead and buried informer Communist countries but it will always survive in India.

One can be a follower of the rationalist and materialist Charvak or Lokayatschools and still be a Hindu. Anyone can set himself up as a Guru and start a newcult or faith. Guru Nanak. Kabir, Rajneesh all have their own followers under thegrand umbrella of Hinduism. Followers of Sai Baba are very prominent these days.The biggest Hindu temple in London was built by the followers of Lord

, Swaminarayan. He started his faith in 1801 and his followers believe him to be anincarnation of the supreme God. Statues of Saint/Lord Swaminarayan and hissuccessors are enshrined in the temple along with other popular Hindu gods. Incomplete contrast to this the Hindu Arya Samajist temples of Ealing and Southallhave no icons at all.

Does Hindu 'Fundamentalism' Exist?The term is generally used by Muslims in India and by non-Muslim leaders of somepolitical parties to win Muslim votes. Thcre are no fundamentals in Hinduism. Thereis no single Book, no single Prophet and no single system of prayer. A Hindu, if hechooses to pray at all, will choose his own god, his own time and his own way topray. While Islam is a religion ready-made for conversion, Jihad and violence,Hinduism is just the opposite. Thc western press brands Bhartiya Janata Party(Indian Peoples Party) as a Hindu Fundamentalist party but it is not fighting for aHindu code of law for Indians. Instead it wants a unified Civil Codc for all Indians.India is a secular and democratic country because it is predominantly a Hinducountry.

To sum up, Hinduism is not strictly a religion. It is a name given to the wholerange of beliefs and practices of those Indians who call themselves Hindu. Withinthis range there are not only widely different but also contradictory viewpoints andbeliefs. There are Hindus who arc idol-worshippers and there are Hindus who areiconoclasts. Some Hindus believe in personal Gods, others believe in an impersonalGod or power. Still others, though a small minority, believe in no God at all.

Originally 'Hindu' simply meant the peoples of India. i.e. Indians. Howeversome Indians, although they lived in India, did not like to be known as Hindus andbecame separated from the mainstream of society. As a result, Hindus can now beidentified in a negative way, i.e. if a person is of Indian origin but not a Muslim, nota Christian, not a Parsi etc., then he must be a Hindu. Similarly any religious beliefwhich has originated from India can be considered to be a part of Hinduism unlessits followers actively disown Hinduism. A Hindu is almost certain to have a casteand his name will probably be based on a Sanskrit word. There are probably as manytypes of Hinduism as there arc Hindus. Religion is defined as a particular system ofbelief and worship and as Hinduism cannot fit into this definition it is not truly areligion.


SOME CULTURAL RESPONSES TO THE BRITISH RAJSalman Asif

Lecture to the Ethical Society, 23 November 1997

"When we have to depend, by the very conditions of our existence on all things andall beings in nature, is not this fiery love of national independence a chimera? Insociety, individuals are constantly driven by their weakness to seek help from theirneighbours, especially if the neighbours happen to be stronger than they; why, then,should a nation have the absurd pride of not depending on another? Conquest isvery rarely an evil when the conquering people are more civilised then theconquered, because the former bring to the latter the benefits of civilisation. Indiarequires many more years of British domination." Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772 -1833), 1796

"The welfare of all people of India, and of the Muslims in particular, lies inthis, that they should lead peaceful lives under the fostering shadow of the BritishGovernment. They should fully realise that Islam enjoins on us that we should beloyal to those whose subjects we are, and under whom we are leading peaceful lives.We should have no against them; nor should we make common cause withthose who are hostile te them." Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, 1897.

"To form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whomwe govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, inmorals, in opinion and in intellect." T B Macaulay, 1850 (British educationist,responsible for the formation Indian Penal Code.)

In 1921 when the Prince of Wales visited India there was rioting on the streetsof Bombay, which ironically compared strikingly with the pomp of the royal Durbarin Delhi a decade before . The intervening years of World War 1 and its aftermathwere a watershed for Britain's Indian empire. By the 1920s the old certainties ofimperial paternalism were gone. India's place within the empire was open toquestion. Just as imperial circumstances began to change radically, so too did theinternal politics of India. From the second decade of the twentieth century, Indiansshowed a greater capacity for mounting political campaigns and for capturingpositions of power within the system itself.

EM Forster, as early as 1924, saw that a proper dialogue between a Briton andan Indian could not take place while one was the ruler and thc other thc ruled. At theend of his novel A Passage to India, Fielding, the British liberal, and the westerneducated Indian Aziz, ride together and wrangle about politics. Aziz cried: `With theEnglish anyhow. That's certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick. We shall driveevery blasted Englishman into the sea, and then" he rode against him furiously 'andthen,' he concluded, half kissing him, 'you and I shall be friends."Why can't we befriends now?' Said the other, holding affectionately. 'It's what I want. It's what youwant.' But the horses didn't want it they swerved apart: thc Earth didn't want it,sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank,the jail, the palace, thc birds, the carrion. the Guest House, that came into view asthey issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in theirhundred voices. 'No, not yet." and thc sky said. "NO, not here."

The history of reform movements in India in thc 19th century offcrs a strikingparallel to the Reformation in Europe. Just as the advance of Protestantism in Europewas followed by the Counter Reformation, which strove to recover ground lost tothe reformers, similarly we find that the forces of reaction made a determined effort


to win Muslims and Hindus back to the orthodox ways of thought towards the endof the 19th Ccntury.

The Swedishi MovementThough it was a singularly short-lived and its political style later disparaged as"extremist," by some sections in the Congress party, the Swcdishi (of-one's-own-country) movement (1905 - 1908) played a definitive role in the shaping of anational culture. Swadeshi was demonstrably as much a cultural as a political contestto represent, repossess and inhabit a territory that had been meticulously andsystematically alienated under colonial rule and to enfranchise an "Indian self."

Colonial formulations were critically confronted as thc imaginative contoursof thc country were refashioned and nationalist aspirations articulated. Theachievements were impressive. History was reinterpreted, traditions invented.Existing festivals were charged with passionate new meanings and ncw ones werecreated; fairs were held, songs that drew on the forms and rhythms of folk poctrywere composed; crafts that had almost become extinct were retrieved; and attemptswere made to support artisans, to draw their products once again into the mainstreamof national culture, and to renew village economics that had been badly hit bycolonial rule. The aggressive publishing initiatives that Bangalore Nagaratanammaand thc Vavilla Press took in the first decades of thc 20th Century could hardly haveenvisaged outside the contexts created by thc Swcdishi movement.

Painters who had for decades struggled to master thc techniques of watercolour and oil painting as well as the proportions and perspectives of western art,and to represent Indian landscape of figures within those visual regimes, now turnedto various indigenous miniature painting and to folk art for inspiration. Poets drewon the imagery and meter of rural ballad singers, while the country setting of thoselyrics merged with the romantic landscape of Sanskrit literature and were infusedwith the unmistakable new authority as they were rehabilitated in the literature of theperiod. Philosophers. literateurs, political theorists, art historians and indeedscholars in almost every field began to search for an essentially Indian genius.

However, implicit in the establishment of the Indian tradition was theelaboration and endorsement of an Orientalist image of Indian society as essentiallyreligious and, in the setting up of Hindu India as norm, an "othering" of Islam. Bothtendencies drew on a logic that had been fed and fattened through many years ofcolonial rule. British administrators not only used religion as the basis for theanalysis of Indian society, history, and politics, but also considered the religiouspredilection of of the people as the explanation for a variety of "problems" thatconfronted the colonial government. These discourses had a double effect. Theycontained the threat that popular uprisings (riots) posed to an administrative orderand provided a reassurance that an enlightened government would always benecessary since the natives' primitive passions and incurable factionalism madethem incapable of managing their own affairs.

These narratives were given a new lease of life by the nationalists. AurobindoGhosh's (1872 - 1950) pamphlet Bhawani Mandir, 1905 for example envisaged thebuilding of a national unity through the "link of a single and living religious spirit,"that could eventually "Arayanize the world.-

In his 1917 treatise Hindutva. VD Savarkar developed the notion of the"Hindu Rashtra." which would not only fight the colonial rulers to restore Hinduself-confidence and pride, but also would embody the glories of an ancient Hindu

8 Ethical Record, January 1998

civilisation and contain what was described as a growing threat from Islam. Literarytexts played a significant role in the growth of a communal mode of thinking.Bankimchandra Chatterjee (1838-1894) the Bengali novelist who idolised theSwadeshi movement, had referred to the Muslims as Yavanas (foreigners)(Anandmath, Debi Chaudhurani and Sitaram).

James Tod's (1782 - 1835) tales of Rajput chivalry and honour and hisaccounts of the valour with which they resisted Mughal invaders acquired newcurrency as they were recreated in stories, poems, plays and even children's booksin nearly every Indian language. Muslim writers with similar ideologies soon beganto glorify the periods and figures denigrated in this way and spoke of the lostgrandeur of Islam on a world scale. An assorted selection of religious Muslimschools: The Nadvat-ul-Uiama, Lucknow, the Dar-ul-Ulum Deoband, the Madris-e-Ulum Cawnporc and thc Anjuman-e-Himayat-e-Islam, Lahore - though leavenedwith liberal ideas, were strongly entrenched in the past; and with their triumph theMuslims once more entered the fold of orthodoxy.

James Mill's View of Indian HistoryThe periodisation of Indian history proposed by James Mill (1773 - 1836) in 1817was repeatedly drawn upon to set up a Vedic India, characterised of course asessentially upper-caste Hindu, which was contrasted to the mediaeval period ofMuslim rule when the country had gone into material and spiiitual decline.

Notes Bipan Chandra renowned Indian scholar in his book India's struggle forIndependence (1885 - 1947): Delhi, Viking 1988: The teaching of Indian history inschools and colleges from a basically communal point of view made a majorcontribution to the rise and growth of communalism. For generations, almost fromthe beginning of the modern school system, communal interpretations of history ofvarying degrees of virulence were propagated, first by imperialist writers, then byothers. So deep was the penetration ... that even sturdy nationalists accepted,however unconsciously, some of its digits.'

In the words of Aldous Huxley, 'one of the evil results of the politicalsubjection of one people by another is that it tends to make the subject nationunnecessarily and excessively conscious of its past. Its achievements in the old greatdays of freedom arc remembered, counted over and exaggerated

'In course of the last thirty, forty years a huge pseudo-historical literature hassprung up in India, the melancholy product of a subject people's inferiority complex.Industrious and intelligent men have wasted their time and their abilities in trying toprove that ancient Hindus were superior to every other people in every activity oflife. Thus, each time the Wcst has announced a new scientific discovery, misguidedscholars have ransacked Sanskrit literature to find a phrase that might be interpretedas a Hindu anticipation of it . Such are the melancholy and futile occupations ofintelligent luen who have the misfortunc to belong to a subject race.' (AldousHuxley, Jesting Pilate)

Whether the Swedishi movement was also a genuine response to a new waveof adult confidence which swept over India after the victory of Japan in the Russo-Japanese War (1904) - instantly acclaimed by Swedeshis as the victory of East overthe West - or their disenchantment with sharing the white man's burden and a desireto jettison it from their over-exploited shoulders - its effects were less than aspredicted.


It was in many ways beset by recreating an essentially dogmatic, exclusivistpast, refuelling slumbering prejudices at the cost of consigning the stark realities onthe ground and streets of famished cities like Calcutta to almost chillingindifference. For the new generation of Muslims and Hindus a tempestuous journeyinto soul-searching which was a result of the study of Western thought and literaturewas acting as a powerful solvent of old ideas and prejudices. Darwin, Nietzche,Bergson - all had their share in giving a new orientation to the thought. but by farthe most potent influence was that of Freud.

Even though European civilisation, formerly idolised, was now condemned asbeing too materialistic and the East was acclaimed as spiritual, and it was held thatwe had only to go back to the past to recover our lost greatness. yet, all along intothis rigid framework there has been a steady infiltration of forces that were to crackand disrupt it. Scepticism was in the air and religion was thought of as a spent force.This view was reinforced by thc Marxist revolution in Russia and its risc as averitable model; a panacea for a world out of joint, against a crumbling Raj. Equallyimportant in this respect was the impact of the World War 1 and its aftermath. Thesevere economic dislocation which resulted from it caused widespread discontent.

A loss of faith in the traditional points of reference - religion and nostalgia fora perceived past - caused these emotional anchors to evaporate before the youngerwestern-educated Indian generation who were then in thcir thousands.

The Launch of the Progressive Writer's AssociationThe spearhead which provided an outlet to the revolutionary forces simmeringwithin these young men and women was the Progressive Writer's Association(PWA), which became a powerful alliance of all thosc intellectuals, writers, poets,dramatists, artists and political activists who were tired of thc tyranny of theassociation of middle-class and the clergy. Amongst its supporters were great andinfluential names such as: Tagore, Aliama Iqbal, Hasrat Mohani. Maulvi Abdul Haqand of course a fiery orator at the time Pundit Nehru who gave a passionate speechin the first PWA Conference in 1936. The Association found dic-hard loyaltyamongst persons with modern education who had silently broken away fromorthodoxy.

The PWA was launched in London in 1935 in the wake of the meeting in Parisof Writers for the Defence of Culture against Fascism led by Gorky, Gide, Malrauxet al - it became a broadly based cultural movement after the first All-India Congressin Lucknow (1936) As thc first major cultural initiative involving the independentLeft and the CPI, the PWA made a formidable impact, introducing a politicallyaware realism into the predominantly feudal and reformist traditions of Urdu,Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali. Marathi, Telugu and Malyalam literatures.

The phenomenal success of the PWA was also due to the adroit way in whichits manifesto had been drawn up. It said nothing about Communism at this stage. Itdeclared the goal of its endeavour to assist the spirit of progress and to develop anattitude of literary criticism which would discourage the general and revivalistictendencies on questions like religion and sexual libertinism:-

'The objective of our movement is to liberate the art and literature of Indiafrom the clutches of the orthodox classes, who are tugging with them the art andliterature into a deep crevice of decadence. We want modern Indian literature tobecome a bridge amongst its diverse people. Wc believe that the new literature of

10 Ethical Record, January; 1998

India must deal with the basic problems of our existence today - the problem ofhunger and poverty, social backwardness and political subjection. All that drags usdown to passivity, inaction and unreason we reject as reactionary. All that rouses inus the critical spirit, which examines institutions and customs in the light of reason,which helps us to act, to organise ourselves, to transform, we accept as progressive.'

The foremost task before the PWA was what they described as redefiningbeauty, 'refashioning the touchstone of aesthetic beauty,' in the minds of their fellowmen; to release literature from the bizarre and stubborn domains of the frivolous andflippant, full of banter, gaiety and religiosity. They would have to change ideals inliterature. As Munshi Premchand, the President of the PWA said: they would have toshake the orthodox obsessions with either abstractions of mysticism, metaphysicalpursuits, or self-inflicted pangs of pain for an elusive and outlandish beloved - whichwere little more than desperate exercises in escapism - and replace thcm withconcern and respect for what was visible in all its ugliness, depravity and destitution.Art was not to remain a poignant record of passive suffering, it was to transcendpersonal predicament and chronicle the pain of a people and present a catalogue oftheir struggles.

'So long as the sole purpose of literature was to provide people entertainmentwith its ornate weaving of lofty words, of farfetched metaphors, or to bring tears topeople's cyes with its self-centred pathos, the artist had very little function inpractical life. He was a pompous social oddball. But we refuse to consider art andliterature as merely a means for entertainment and massaging our egos. Ourtouchstone would only allow an art which would be rooted not in ideals butideology, that is driven by a passion for freedom, one that stirs within us tempestsfor change, one that lifts the shrouds of mist from reeking realities of life,' saidMunshi Premchand.

Nehru, Tagore and Gandhi Give SupportPresent at the first PWA conference, said Pundit Nehru: 'Each artist and writer isdistinct for the distinct creativity and individuality of his or her work. But if thisindividuality divorces him from social realities around him, or the forces that causesocial changes, then his creative endeavours arc useless. All great writers are alsogreat representatives of their societies.

There may be a confusion in pointing out individuality of an artist. We arehistorically listing towards socialism and communism. It might be true thatcommunism suppresses unbridled individuality, but it doesn't eliminate it. If creativeindividuality can prosper in these times, it can do so only under socialism.'

From its extremely humble beginnings, to just in a period of two years, PWAhad captured thc imagination of a whole nation. By the time it held its secondConference in 1939, presided by the grand old man of Indian literary world at thetime, Rabinder Nath Tagore, the association had attracted interest of. if not alreadyand active support from, any writer-artiste of merit. A haven of literary figures, italso became a robust forum of revising history. For once, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhintelligentsia found themselves selflessly meshed in a bond of such camaraderie thatrccent history had not witnessed. Messages of concerted support began to pour infrom figures such as Mahatma Gandhi. Branches of the PWA were formed across thesub-continent. The young men and women running the Association, now boldenedand more venturesome than ever before declared their communist views. This leadto a series of arrests of the key members and censorship of their publications.


Purdah Abandoned by PWA WomenThe literature, drama, painting, film, music and even dance of every reunion bear theimpress of their ideas. Strong support came, rather astonishingly, from Muslimwomen. Educated Muslim women from orthodox family backgrounds abandonedpurdah - the veil, in order to join forces with men and other Hindu femaleintellectuals and activists. Dr Rasheed Jahan, Ismat Chughtai, Usha Dutt, RaziaSajjad Zaheer, Arpita Das, Sheila Bhatia, Binata Roy, Uma Chakravarthy, SarojniNaidu, Kamala Devi Chatopadhyay, Siddiqa Begum Sevharvi and Nail D'Siiva -became a hcroic band of PWA members who were at once writers, poets andpolitical activists. Figures like Sarojni Naidu, a poetess and Mahatma Gandhi'sfollower earned the title of Bul-Bule Hind for her stirring oratorical excellence.

Support also came from Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA).

The Association drew its inspiration both from the anti-imperialist struggle athome and from writers and intellectuals in Europe. In Bengal and Andhra studentsflocked to the Association and volunteered to walk from town to town and village tovillage singing and staging street dramas about the lives of peasants and artisans,spreading the word of change. For once Indian women found the kind ofemancipation that had never visited their lives in recent history, and foundthemselves awarded a space within the socialist ideology which was never reservedfor them in traditional settings.

The focus of PWA short stories, and plays remains the middle class protagonistand their moral awakenings to social responsibility and therefore also to citizenship.Often the "other woman", the prostitute, the working class woman, is a figure cut tothe measure of this middle class woman's requirement that is also, we must notforget, the requirement of the nation. These stories may be about those on themargins but they are all the same stories of the centre told by the centre.

()Naomi ,:Wenwrial ,reclure

7.00 pm Thursday 15 January, 1998

MINDS, BRAINS and CONSCIOUSNESS

by

Professor Colin Blakemore PhD, ScD, FRSWaynetlete Professor of Physiology, University of Oxford, Reith Lecturer

Apply to Librarian for free tickets.

The views expressed in this journal are not necessarily those of the Society.


SHOULD THE QUEEN HAVE APOLOGISED TO THE INDIANS ABOUT AMRITSAR?

Harold Hillman Lecture to the Ethical Society 23 November 1997

What Are Our Personal Responsibilities?I would propose that in a free country, in which individuals can choose freely, peoplehave responsibility for (a) their own actions; (b) the reasonably predictableconsequences of their own actions; (c) the reasonably predictable consequences ofthe policies they advocate.

This is our first problem. Often, we have no way of predicting theconsequences of, say, a decision to divorce, the damming of a great river, or thedeclaration of war. However, our support of such a decision depends upon ourjudgement that the totality of consequences Which are desirable to our families andsocieties outweighs the totality of undesirable consequences. Unfortunately,ignorance on our part may complicate matters. We may be ignorant of importantconsiderations either about the decisions, or the likely consequences of the actionsresulting from them. A psychological element may induce us to ignore or exaggerateimportant desiderata. We normally judge the actions of our friends and allies moresympathetically than we do those of our enemies and adversaries.

What Are Our Responsibilities for Parties We Join Voluntarily?If I join the Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democratic Party, I take upon myselfthe general responsibility for all the actions which the particular party executes ingovernment, which it supports in parliament or local councils, or does not opposevigorously. Does that mean that every member of the Labour Party has personalresponsibility for the policies of Mr Blair's Government, and that, similarly,Conservatives are responsible for policies advocated by Mr Haigh, the Leader of theOpposition? I would maintain that it does.

"Wait a minute", you will say, "I disapprove of tuition fees for students, aninternal market in medical treatment, league tables in schools, inability to discusspolicy al annual conferences, reduction of benefit for one-parent families, andsponsorship of sport by tobacco companies - yet I am a loyal member of the LabourParty". I think that one can resolve this dilemma by asking oneself the followingquestion. Is my opposition to my party's policy a real matter of principle or anunimportant difference of opinion? One may say, "Although I disagree with leaguetables for schools, it is not a matter of principle, but cutting financial provision forsingle parent families is so important to me that I could not support a party or agovernment which does this". One could remain in the party, while vigorously tryingto prevent or reverse a policy to which one is opposed on principle. However, if onefailed to prevent it, I believe that one should resign from the party. That is the onlyway to abrogate the moral, if not legal, responsibility for an immoral act.

Another counter-argument is as follows: "I support the Labour orConservative Party, because it is more acceptable to me than the alternative". I amafraid that, in my view, this does not absolve one of responsibility for those aspectsof the party's policy with which one disagrees in principle. Another response is thatone can only influence policies by belonging to a large party. Unfortunately, this stillleaves one with the responsibility for policies with which one disagrees.


Responsibility of Influential PeopleWe elect those candidates with whose manifestoes we mostly agree but this has itsproblems; firstly, the resultant governments often go back on their promises, and onehas no way of preventing or reversing this; secondly, in Britain, one elects themember of parliament as the person most likely to carry out what one believes; onedoes not mandate the person on each policy, so that, after election, one has no controlover the member; thirdly, the voting of the members of parliament is controlled bythe whips on behalf of the prime ministers - who themselves decide the policies,choose the members of their Cabinets and instruct the whips. Few ambitiousmembers of the House of Commons or the Lords would risk their careers by votingagainst their parties on matters of principle. About 100 members of the ruling partyare in government, and they are competing for promotion.

The more influential a person is, the more responsibility that person has for hisor her public pronouncements. If an ordinary person asserts that China is ademocratic country, it makes no difference to the policies of our government, orthose of the Chinese government. However, when such celebrated writers as theWebbs, Sartre, Gide, Shaw and Picasso denied or ignored Stalin's massive crimes,they influenced Western public opinion - particularly of intellectuals - enormously.Thereby they aided and abetted the crimes of the Soviet regime. Anyone whoknowingly acts as an apologist of a criminal takes upon him or herself the moralresponsibility of the crimes. Unfortunately, the consequences of misdemeanours arethe same, whether or not the apologists know about them. I would maintain that it ishighly unlikely that Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tze Tung or Pol Pot would have murderedso many million people if influential thinkers had criticised their crimes loudly.

Responsibility of ClericsResponsibility for one's actions is accepted by religious people. One often hearsbelievers say, "I am proud to be a religious Jew, Christian or Moslem, because of thepowerful moral influence in history of my religion". In my opinion, one can only bcproud of the history of one's religion and claim it to be a moral force, if, and only if:the religious Jew condemns the massacre of the Canaanites; the Christian admitsthat the Crusades and the Inquisition were crimes against humanity; the Moslemabjures the current misogyny, female genital mutilation and severing limbs as apunishment, in religious Islamic countries. Of course, one cannot be responsible forthe actions of one's ancestors, but one cannot bc proud of their traditions unless oneis also prepared to admit and denounce their crimes. One should not be able to salveone's conscience by saying that the religious authorities - who claim to advocateeternal truths - were only reflecting the social forces of the times, or by asserting that- although the Church or Mosque authorities carried out these policies - they arc notsanctioned by the holy books.

Should the Queen Have Apologised for Amritsar?Between April 10th and 12th, 1919, chaos reigned in Amritsar, the holy city of theSikhs. Crowds of angry people murdered 5 Europeans and two Englishwomen; theyset fire to the Anglican Church and mission school; they looted two English banks,killing 3 managers; and they set fire to thc railway station, the central telegraphoffice and the town hall. The government communication system was disrupted, andSir Michael O'Dwyer the British (actually he was Irish) Lieutenant Governor had todepend on the radio. He forbade all demonstrations. Whcn a crowd collected in theJallianwalla Bagh Square which was blocked off by soldiers, he ordered thcm toopen fire. 379 civilians mere killed and 1208 were wounded. No medical treatmentwas provided for them.


The Amritsar Massacre - as it was called by the Indians - was approved by the(British) Punjab Government and the House of Lords on the grounds that the unrestthreatened British rule. However, it was condemned by the Secretary of State forIndia, the Army Council and the Hunter Commission. Some historians regard it as akey event in the development of Indian nationalism.

Following the Mogul Empire, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the French in the16th and 17th Centuries, 'settled' in India, and the British arrived after them. TheEast India Company traded and the British Army conquered. The long 'historicalrelationship' between Britain and India was that between a conqueror and a colony.The Queen is the grand-daughter of George V. Thus the declaration of the longhistorical relationship should be interpreted as the British acceptance ofresponsibility for the previous events in India.

According to my view, therefore, the British Queen and Government can onlyescape the moral obloquy of what their predecessors did by announcing publicly thatit was morally wrong, and apologising to the descendants of those who werc killedand wounded and to the Indian people.

The Consequences of ApologyThe modern Americans have apologised to, and to some extent compensated, thenative Americans, the Australians have apologised to the Aborigines and theGermans to the Jews, the Vatican to Galileo, etc. The Japanese nearly apologised totheir Allied victims in the Second World War. Even President Zhang Zemin admittedthat mistakes had been made in handling unrest in China.

Obviously, an apology cannot in any way reverse the consequences of pastcrimes but at least it would show the descendants of the victims that the governmentswho acted criminally now admit that they were wrong. The Truth Commission inSouth Africa pardons those who admit their crimes in order to make a new start. TheQueen should apologise to the Indians.

By the- same token, modern rulers and religious leaders should admit andapologise for the large-scale crimes which their predecessors perpetrated. One istalking of imperialist crimes in Canaan, the Roman Empire, the European Empires,the Crusade, the Inquisition, the spread of Islam, the Stalinist Empirc, modernChina, modern Indonesia, Bosnia, and many other places. These apologies should beaccompanied by offcrs of access to the archives to any interested historian. Thus allpeople concerned - whether as successors to criminals or their victims, could restarttheir relationship in an open and honourable way. Later, they might be able to rewritehistory with honest descriptions of the relationships between countries.

A poll was held at the conclusion of the debate which followed the above talk.Thc overwhelming majority of the audience voted for an affirmative answer to thequestion - Should the Queen apologise for Amritsar? [Ed.] El

DISESTABLISHMENT: WHAT THE BISHOP SAYS TO THE SECULARISTS

Speakers: The Bishop of Woolwich and Dr. David Nash 6.30 pm. The Library, Conway Hall, Tuesday 3 February 1998.

Organised by the N.S.S. and SPES.


SUPREME COURT RULES, O.K.? (Or, is there an ethical duty to obey the law?)

Ian Ray-Todd

Principal ThesisThe thesis of this essay is, broadly, that the answer that most fair-minded, reflectivepeople will give to the question whether there is any ethical obligation to obey thelaw of the land will depend upon our own fundamental political and other ethicalassumptions and outlook: and on whether that law, or any values we find enshrinedin it, supports or instead does or may conflict with our own cherished values (i.e.with what the leading American realist jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935),called our 'major inarticulate premises'). The answer I thus give to this time-honoured question seeks to be sufficiently non-dogmatic and open-ended to becapable of standing the test of changing historical conditions over time, particularlyappropriate as we hurtle towards and are about to embark upon a new millennium.

I. IntroductionWhen anyone thunders an authoritatively, albeit sympathetically, in rather generalterms about any sort of philosophy of normativity, the urge to respond becomes, forthis writer, well nigh irresistible. Your editor thus presented us with an editorial onrules and their consequences on the front page of the November 1997 issue (vol.102, No. 10) of this journal: hence this essay. That suffices on provenance,provocation or gestation. Now we turn to substance.

In principle, the central question of political philosophy,* whether there is anethical obligation to obey the laws of one's country of abode, must surely receive aresounding, absolute, negative answer: NO! There is not even a prima facie ethicalobligation to do so. The obligation to obey the law of the land is political, or, morenarrowly, legal, not moral. Law and morality are far from co-extensive. There maybe overlapping legal and moral duties but that does not turn political obligation intomoral obligation. The duties may correspond but their sources do not coalesce.Moreover, it soon appears, even at first impression, not only that conflicts betweenlegal and moral duties can arise but that there may, on rare but significant occasions,be a positive moral duty to disobey the law. Some would even regard that as theoverriding duty, as does Ted Honderich in his Conway Memorial Lecture,Hierarchic Democracy and the Necessity of Mass Civil Disobedience (1995), arivetting, cheering read delivered towards the end of the post-Thatcher years ofdoleful decadence, though it is not a lecture whose prescription the non-trainee saintmust follow punctiliously, universally or immediately in practice.

In practice, however, as reflection on the events of a mere few centuriesreveals, any universally valid answer to our question is, unfortunately, impossible.One's answer is likely, instead, to be conditioned by a number of variables, such as:one's country - its identity and political system; one's attitude towards that politicalsystem; the view one takes of the nature of law, of moral obligation and, moreobviously, of the nature of the relation between the two. (It could also be profoundlyaffected by one's original position within the social hierarchy. For example, if weever see a genuine jurist of the miscellaneous dispossessed, he or she may adhere tosomething like what is currently called the Critical Legal Movement by stressing, asin, e.g. The Critical Lawyers' Handbook (eds. Grigg-Spall and Ireland, Pluto, 1992),the function of law in maintaining the subordination of the lower orders, rather than


its traditional supposed role of fairly protecting the legitimate intercsts of allmembers of society, as highlighted in the dominant, conservative 'liberal' model.(But this is, analytically, a sidc-issue, so let us not be side-tracked into that obsessionhere and now.) For some, thc question will indeed arise in its most acute form as thedilemma of conflicting legal and moral duties. It is likely to appear most starkly intimes of transition and change - not only of transfers of political power andallegiances. as in early twentieth century revolutionary and late twentieth centurycounter-revolutionary Russia, no less than in post-war Germany, but also ofchanging moral attitudes, as in mid-1960s Western Europe, notably Britain andFrance. For others, the way in which they pose the question, the particular way inwhich they define law, morals and the relation between them, will make thatdilemma unreal. For still others, even the considered answer to the question will betoo obvious to cause serious pause. For yet others, it may be the question itself whichis unreal - it will not call for answer, since it will not even arise.

II - DevelopmentFor the rangc of attitudes to these and similar questions is in fact so wide and diversethat any attempt to represent those attitudes comprehensively here would be self-defeating: but still, some examples arc possible. In ancient Greece, the Nomistspractised religious legalism. They held that moral conduct consists entirely inobservance of the law. In the modern Anglo-American tradition, the issues have beenjoined primarily between two schools of jurisprudence - the one of Natural Lawtheory and the other of Legal Positivism. The background to their debate is theWhiggish ideas of those - like John Locke (1632-1704), Two Treatises ofGovernment (1690), who, in sparkling opposition to a rather silly butdisproportionately influential apologist for the (allegedly) 'divine' right of kings,based government authority on the (openly) presumed consent of 'the people': a'consent' intelligently taken as likely to last only so long as political power wasexercised (and, one may interpolate, is seen to be exercised) in accordance with thespirit (pace 'anti-spiritualists' everywhere!) of the trust on which it is (presumed tobe) yielded up by the people to their sovereign; ideas rapturously if uncriticallyreceived in the revolutions of both France and America and enshrined in the Rule ofLaw doctrine formulated and defended by, inter alios, A.V. Dicey (1835-1922) in hisIntroduction to the Law of the Constitution from 1885 onwards and preserved (forits reification by later pilgrims) in thc French and American constitutionaldocuments. Natural Law thus has a complex metaphysical (one might also saymetaphorical) history and to make it more problematical, it may also rest in parteven upon a confusion with the 'laws' of nature. However, its basic tenet was and isthat any 'law' which seriously or substantially derogated or derogates from 'theinternal morality of the law' would not be law and a judge would therefore be freeto disregard it: Lon L. Fuller, Morality or Law (1969) (also in Harvard Law Review,passim); Beyleveld and Brownsword, Law as a Moral Judgement (1986). Inopposition to that view, Legal Positivists have asserted that there was and is nologically or analytically necessary connection between law as it is and law as itought to bc: Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), Introduction to the Principles of Moralsand Legislation (1789); J.S. Mill (1806-73), On Liberty (1859); John Austin (1790-1859), The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832); Hans Kelsen (1881-1973), General Theory of Law and State (1949); and H.L.A. Hart (1907-92). TheConcept of Law (1961). For Hart, while the appeal of the essential core of NaturalLaw Theory was understandable, its way was too crude with delicate and complexmoral issues, yet, for him, one strength of the equally simple Positivist doctrine thatmorally iniquitous rules might still be law was that at least that doctrine offered nodisguise for the choice between evils which, in extreme circumstances, might have


to be made. Natural Law theory was already dismissed, not without reason, as passe'or at least unfashionable and in any event caught between what we may perhaps callthe Scylla of cynicism and the Charybdis of chimera, by Douzinas et al. inPostmodern Jurisprudence - The law of text in the texts of law (1991). Yet their ownarch enemy, John Finnis, was selected as a contributor, by no less an editor than TedHonderich himself, to prepare several of the relatively few articles on jurisprudencein The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995). (Very strange bedfellows are madeby a strict application of the maxim audi alterenz partem but as Honderich explainsin a revealing preface to the Companion, it was easier to be nominated for inclusionthan to be excluded from the list).

The Russian ExperienceOne might suppose that these problems would be disposed of more efficiently inwhat we have until historically recent times been pleased to call totalitarian regimes:but in post-revolution Russia, similarly, for many years jurists differed widely onrelated questions. According to the leading view of that period there, in thetransitional phase, there remained for a time not only bourgeois 'right' but even thebourgeois State without the bourgeoisie: V.I. Lenin (1870-1924), The State andRevolution (republished in translation, Foreign Languages Publishing House,Moscow, in e.g., 1961), ch.5. That idea appeared in its most developed form as theproposition that the bourgeois law which had existed immediately before theproletarian revolution was a form which, despite its nature, could be used by thevanguard of the proletariat (i.e. by Communists) to advance the dictatorship of theproletariat and that after the revolution the law which would thus exist until the Statehad withered away could meanwhile be permeated by socialist values and therebybecome a means to progressive ends, as argued by, e.g.. A.Y. Vishinsky, in 1937.That is at least compatible with the view that the law represents a certain ethicalminimum, a view expressed by Vladimir Solovyov, following Schopenhauer. It isless clear whether it can stand with the pre-revolutionary notion that, whereas lawhas a bilateral, imperative-affirmative character, morality is only unilaterally bindingor purely imperative: L.J. Petrazhitsky (1876-1931), Introduction to the Study ofLaw and Morals (1905). Fundamentally opposed to the dominant Russian view from1924 to 1937 was the doctrine - possibly closer to Marx's attitude - that morality, lawand the State were all simply forms of bourgeois society. According to that position,on the success of the proletarian revolution, law ceased to exist: General Theory ofLaw and Marxism by E.B. Pashukanis (1924), ch.6 - Law and Morality (cf. ch.5,Law and the State). Pashukanis 'disappeared', and was probably liquidated, in 1937,the year after his appointment as commissar for Justice. His work has been moreinfluential outside Russia than that of any other Marxist legal philosopher. Thelegality of his execution, if that is what he suffered, is scarcely more problematicalthan its immorality; and, on our view as on his, the resolution of the one questionwould, I think, be far from conclusive of the other. Howbeit, his ideas have neverbeen officially rehabilitated. Nor does his name appear in the index to AlanBullock's magisterial study of paranoia at the top, Hitler and Stalin: parallel lives(1991), presumably because he was, after all, only a lawyer. It is difficult to explainthe omission in any other way, for, even if Bullock shares the notion of E.H. Carr,What is History? (1961), that 'we shall arrive at no real understanding either of thepast or of the present if we attempt to operate with thc concept of an abstractindividual operating outside society', Pashukanis would seem the paradigm of theconsistent intellectual whose capacity for theorising was so threatening to Stalin thathe was vulnerable the moment he came within the General Secretary's range ofvision. Perhaps the cull was so comprehensive that thc historian in search ofrepresentative examples is faced with an embarrassment of riches. However that


may be, Pashukanis's masterpiece has at least been republished in English (by PlutoPress since 1978) and is still avidly read by Marxist and other socialist students ofjurisprudence. Like most writings of the genre, it is no literary tour-de-force: but itstill demands and commands serious attention as an attempt to take politicalphilosophy seriously in circumstances in which erroneous conclusions were all toolikely to have fatal consequences. However, if law in itself can thus seem largelyirrelevant, functionless and ultimately unjustifiable to one battle-hardened oldMarxist, it may in onc sense have had as little purchase on the consciousness of the(now rapidly ageing) New Right. For it seemed to one of that flash-in-the-pan'sphilosophical mouthpieces that, at any rate on the liberal view, almost the entirelegal system of a country (any country?) becomes indefensible: Roger Scruton,some-time professional academic philosopher now beginning to turn an honest centor two as a more publicly published writer, The Meaning of Conservatism (1984) (afitting Orwellian echo). Cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), described,possibly rightly, in Chambers Biographical Dictionary (centenary cdn., 1997) (ed.Magnus Magnusson) as 'probably... the most discussed text on social and politicalphilosophy since World War II', but also, and somewhat less convincingly, asgrounded in and supported by 'moral psychology', for one 'liberal' view (than whicha more blatant piece of special pleading on behalf of the Anglo-American liberal-democratic academic elite is hard to imagine). How readily people forgive thelogical errors of those whose sentiments they share! (Op. our reverence for theloveable, unerringly rigourless John Locke, and conservatives' and liberals'uncritical deference to the bland and blasé generalisations of the Blessed Hume, withour shrinking from Nietzsche and their abhorrence of Marx, in each case on thefeeling that they were not quite nice). In time Rawls' work should come to becondemned precisely because of its all too ready acceptance by his peer group,which, sadly, spares his ideas the opportunity for improvement on revision that canspring from the need to defend an original position. They have not so much damnedhis work with faint praise as allowed its barren banalities to assume the grotesqueproportions of mega-murnpsimuses.

III. Towards an Open-Minded ResolutionFor those of us for whom a necessary election between good and evil actions orbetween lesser and greater evils is a real phenomenon, not a mere figment of anideological dreamworld, however, certain broad propositions may yet seem, thenperhaps later prove, to hold good. No humanist can sensibly dismiss, much lesscondemn, the ideas of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Leviathan (1651), inunqualified terms. The quite hard-headed materialism alone is proof against anysuch sweeping response and there is more in it, which I need neither expound norexplicate here, that lends support to much within the humanist outlook. Hobbes'virtually complete consistency is nevertheless the political expression of adependent, neurotic attitude which doubtless would have led Alfred Adler (1870-1937) to speculate along the experimental, intuitive lines outlined in his What LifeCould Mean to You(1931) that he might expect to find in Hobbes' family history thathe occupied the position of, or a position analogous to that of, either a dominant,authoritarian first-born or only child or a frustrated second child seeking protectionagainst an older sibling from an all:powerful parent figure. No doubt he would alsobe seen by Adler's successors as high on the F-Scale. However that rash speculationmay be resolved, it would be going too far to say, with Master Hobbes, that as ageneral rule there is a virtually absolute moral obligation to obey the law.

Subsidiary ThesisThe most that might be said is that, insofar as the law subserves and does not subvert


one's individual moral responsibility and agenda, one has a social duty to obey thelaw, which may, at least in some sense, be itself a moral duty.

If that tentative proposition seems somewhat rootless, loose or even anarchic,it can perhaps bc tightened up by being related to, for want of anything morcattractive and unassailable, Kant's categorical imperative. As for what constitutes amoral obligation which would justify breaking a conflicting legal duty, that questioncan really only be answered meaningfully or with any hope of reliability byreference to particular, concrete dilemmas. In general, the only golden rule is thatthere is no golden rule: G.B. Shaw (1856-1950), Maxims for Revolutionists (1913).To recognise an individual moral obligation transcending a larger, socially basedlegal rule is not automatically anti-social, however, even in a socialist society. Forexample, the notion that there is a private sphere to which the Statc should be deniedaccess was not the monopoly of the New Right. It was equally to be found in thework of such original leftist thinkers as André Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class(Pluto, 1980). It is, indeed, opposed to the Fascist idea that there should be nopossible nook or cranny of social life in which to escape the tentacles of the State.(Imagine what sort of private house, if any, Hitler personally would have designedif his early ambition to practise architecture had not been disappointed andfrustrated!) The fact that one cannot readily define its precise boundaries in theabstract and in advance of a life test is no good reason to deny, though it was a goodreason previously to question, the existence of any such overriding moral obligation.Nor need the fact that one cannot or will not couch one's arguments in support ofone's answer to the question in a more cut and dried fashion lead one to dismiss themor radically to change one's tentative answer. For, as H.L.A. Hart recognised, therewas, in Natural Law theory, despite its limitations and contradictions, an element ofgood sense. As he emphasised, the law of every modern State shows at a thousandpoints the influence of both the prevailing, widely accepted social morality andwider moral ideals. But the arguments on that other side of the question are certainly(indeed, emphatically!) no more secure for sometimes having been expressed withmore audax than cautax. For the best of paper is deckle-edged. So to worry undulyabout our own gift package being wrappcd a little crudely would therefore be to fallprey to the 'morbid hatred of disorder' by which T.E. Holland (1835-1926), the juristgreat-grandson of a lord chancellor, once pronounced himself impelled in writing hisdurable bestseller, The Elements of Jurisprudence (1880), a psychological attitude(one might even say a condition) the critique of which is central to DavidSugarman's leading article, Legal Science and Imperialism, at pages 344-67 inDangerous Supplements - Resistance and Renewal in Jurisprudence, edited by PeterFitzpatrick (Pluto, 1991). Paradoxically, because the Critical Legal Movement is atthe opposite end of the linear spectrum to the Natural Law faction, when theperspective is changed by bending that spectrum almost into perfect circular form,the members of each camp come close enough to hold hands - but that, too, is aproblem for another day.

This essay may also fall into that other trap, alleged by Anthony Carty againstDicey in Dangerous Supplements, of cutting English (sic) constitutional theory offfrom the history which gives it a sense. It would certainly be germane to consider1688 and all that - but given the length of this paper and the usual space constraintson publication in article form, it seemed better to resist the strong temptation toattempt also to assess John Locke's views on the sources of what, like most theoristsof his kind, he took to be the citizen's obligation to obey (the laws enacted inParliament or settled by the judiciary as part of the processes of) the government,where a glimpse at the politically and intellectually lively historical epoch would


really have come into its own. Yet since, even with big questions, perhaps especiallywith such questions one must accept some limits, however arbitrary, to the range ofinquiry in order to make even modest progress, the history of our own anaemicrevolution is, on reflection, here omitted.

Honderich Argued PowerfullyIn his Conway Memorial Lecture for 1995 noted in the introduction to this presentessay, Professor Honderich argued powerfully for an overriding duty to, in effect.disobey the law. To oversimplify very crudely for brevity's sake, he asserts, inessence, that: because governments in 'hierarchic democracies' as he defines themsystematically use brute force and other illicit means of exercising superior power tosuppress dissent: and because law and its enforcement are merely two such means;it is legitimate - nay, essential - to oppose such oppression by any means necessaryto resist successfully. If that seems to be painting with too broad a Marxist brush,please do compare the cogency of the full lecture and contrast it with this poorsummary. Why is my attempt so poor? Honderich says at one point that lawyers areprone to miss the point a little in political philosophy: and that in my own ruefulexperience, can prove very • true when the lawyer comes to the problems with nogreat feMliarity with the philosophical tradition. Yet even he, Professor Honderich,is not entirely immune from counter-criticism when, as a fairly distinguishedwestern political philosopher, he demonstrates that Socrates can also nod, bydefining the Rule of Law in two senses, one correct, the other apparently erroneous.Despite that one seeming lapse, however, his lecture still provides a superb exampleof a competent argument openly being allowed to arise from and expressing acommitment to a healthily ideologically charged view of the (im)morality of law inhierarchic democracies. At its very lowest, that lecture is a perfect piece ofphilosophical agitprop and with popularisers like Scruton on the other side we cando with as many such propagandists actively agitating as we can muster!

It follows from all that has been said already that law is definitely not itselfonly, if any, foundation of ethics; and indeed it is quite clear that any claim to law'sbeing exclusively founded in morality or vice versa is doomed from the start.Various suggestions have been made as to the ultimate foundation of ethics,including that of Hermann Bondi in his Conway Memorial Lecture, Humanism - TheOnly Valid Foundation of Ethics (1992), q. also v. Sadly, I find myself in respectfuldisagreement with that doyen of humanism about his thesis there. Sir Hermann'sposition Would doubtless by taken mutatis mutandis. by the Pope, possibly theArchbishop of Canterbury and certainly the most fundamental of ayatollahs. We maybe seeking the samc view at the peak but meanwhile I want nothing to do with sucha direct and uncomplicated assault on the ascent.

IV. ConclusionUnsurprisingly, my own considered answer to the opening question is the same asmy gut retort: but as befits an initially emotional response that has passed throughthe sieve of reflection, it is more qualified and quiet: no: to go to prison would bebetter than to participate in a cull of all blue-eyed babies, just as, in Chandler v.Director of Public Prosecution (1964) A.C. 763, it was rational, in my opinion, toprefer standing until arrested in front, or in the take-off strip, of a Vulcan or a B-56to being burnt to a cinder and sent up in a mushroom cloud by standing under theflight path of an Ilyushin. The decision of the House of Lords, in its judicial role asthe final court of appeal in the land, that the appellants, C.N.D. demonstrators, werecaught by legislation which everyone but thc participating law lords in their officialrole knew perfectly well from earlier parliamentary debates reported in Hansard was


intended solely to catch spies rather than peace-loving saboteurs, was roundlycriticised at the time by inter alios D. Thompson, The Committee of 100 and theOfficial Secrets Act, 1911 (1963) Public Law, 201. It was not, however, sodemolished as to be uncitable (hence my own lack of embarrassment about letting itinfect me with cystitis here!) and it therefore stood as a target and as a paradigm forHonderich, op. cit., as well as for eminent Professor Emeritus of Public Law, J.A.G.Griffith, in support of his thesis attacking the myth of judicial impartiality in ThePolitics of the Judiciary (Manchester U.P., 1st edn. c. 1979) a work that enjoyed thedistinction of making many a Thatcherite judge choke on his beluga caviar. Howbeit,the decision itself had the distinction of being cited to great effect by counsel for thefederal government of Canada in a mid-1980s Canadian Supreme Court challengeby protesters of that government's policy of accommodating American cruisemissiles on Canadian territory. They lost, of course; but it was a moral victory tobring the challenge and to be met only with such shabby and discredited 'reasons'for the appeal's inevitable dismissal. Life is sometimes sweet, even in 'defeat', forsome lives are more bitter than hemlock. Similarly, suicide and abortion as such arenow no longer illegal per se but they are neither more nor less moral than euthanasia,which, in the U.K. as in most western states, continues to be treated officially asculpable homicide, at least on those rare occasions when the discretion to prosecuteis exercised in favour of bringing the perpetrators of such heinous crimes to trial.

EnvoiContemporary English philosophers are sometimes accused (often rather unfairly, Ithink) of having cut themselves off from any sort of intellectual activity that mightpossibly make the slightest difference to any practical project. For the benefit of themore robustly anti-intellectual reader, who remains untouched and thus unconvincedby the essentially relativist position adopted in this essay, therefore, may Irecommend a time capsule journey back to a closely-guarded courtroom in the ThirdReich, or, if that is too absurdly imaginary, then perhaps a brief but instructiveencounter, as an accused West European expatriate, with the legal system of, say,present-day Iraq or Saudi Arabia? (Having regard to the release in November 1997by Judge Zobel of the young British au pair Louise Woodward, the US system istemporarily reprieved from conviction for comparable barbarity; but no matter: itstime will doubtless return.) Those imaginary excursions will not convince anyonethat the theses of this essay are sound but that is far less important than that as manypeople as possible become convinced that the question they address demands aconsidered, reflective answer.

Footnote*For example, Anthony Quinton, Oxford (Trinity) philosopher, in his n.,'philosophy' in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995), p. 666, says, at p. 670:'Political philosophy is an extension of ethics into the domain of organised socialinstitutions and, like ethics generally, is perhaps over-moralised. Its fundamentalproblem is the basis of the obligation of the citizen to obey the State and its laws...':and 'legal philosophy adds to but is enmeshed in political philosphy's main issues':op. cit., p. 469, per Oxford (University College) jurisprude, John IVI. Finnis.However, 'the traditional role of the political theorist is to justify the existingstructures of society': op. cit., p. 31, per Richard T. George, Kansas University, inn., 'anarchism' ; so 'liberal' jurisprudence thereby distracts its followers (or victims)from the deficiencies of 'liberal' law by bypassing a logically prior point of inquiry.Fortunately, in contrast, 'the role of the anarchist is to challenge these (i.e. society'sexisting) structures and to demand their justification prior to accepting them.' fl


VIEWPOINTS

Difficulties of a Would-be Humanist in RussiaI work at a secondary school. For various reasons I would like to become a memberof your Society. Our country is enduring very difficult times now. The communistideology has collapsed, but it succeeded in educating our society in the spirit ofCalvinist morals. After Stalin's time this moralify considerably softened but it'srather strong today. Now political parties and organisations of a communist andjingoist orientation are trying to revive it. It's a reaction to the destruction of theethical principles of the soviet society and connected with that raging of corruption,criminality and widespread nihilism. The moral orientation of people today is atonce antisocial nihilism and calvinism and intolerance io people with .differentnorms of behaviour.

For all that, these qualities as a whole do not contradict one another, butinterlace in different ways. It's 'very difficult to have a humanist view of ethics,living in this society. I feel a potent influence from puritanism and to counter-balance it, a strong temptation to become a nihilist. Most people here do not thinkabout that, of course; they keep their human feelings (nihilism and puritanism areonly their life philosophy), but I am continually torn. Because of that I would like tobe in contact with world humanist thought. I think the best way for me is to be amember of your organisation and a subscriber of your magazine. I would like toknow addresses of branches of your society in Russia (if any) and other humanisticorganisations and their journals. Dmitriy Golubov - Stavropol, Russia

Humanism's Deficit?I'd like to supplement Vivien Gibson's P.S. in the November issue of the EthicalRecord. She says: 'Humanism has, of course, one great deficit: we don't have localpremises which we own'. I would add another deficit: we don't have all thosewonderful works of religious art, created over many centuries: masses, requiems,oratorios, psalms as well as paintings, sculptures, church and cathedral architecture.How would we commemorate a national disaster or celebrate a joyful event? Andhow do we promote warmth and togetherness, the value of which cannot be over-estimated? Ilse Meyer - London NW3

SPES Publishes 'SOME ANCESTORS OF HUMANISM' by Leslie ScraseSubtitled 'Precursors of Humanism in the Ancient World', we have just receivedcopies of SPES member Leslie Scrase's latest book, available from the Librarian atConway Hall for £7.95 inc. postages, (ISBN 0 902368 20 6).

Leslie is known for his previous books Coping with Death and The SunlightGlances Through (poetry) and for publishing the magazine The Humanist Frame fortwelves years. Leslie was a Methodist Minister before, as he says, 'the intellectualshackles fell away and he felt a great load had been lifted from him.' His move toatheism was like 'a religious conversion in reverse'.

The new book is based on a lecture course that Leslie gave at the EthicalSociety. Chapters on Jainism, Buddhism and Lokayata philosophy are followed byConfucius and Chinese naturalistic philosophy, a section on Greek thinking,finishing with Epicurus and Lucretius. Anyone interested in the part played byhumanist ideas in the ancient world should read this clearly written and throughtfulbook. N.B.Ethical Record, January 1998 23

PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall Humanist Centre, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1

Tel: 0171 242 8037 No charge unless stated

JANUARY 1998Sunday 1111.00 am PSYCHO-ANALYSIS: SCIENCE OR COMMONSENSE?

Dr David Snelling who lectures on psycho-analysis at London University askswhether it is the scientific enterprise Freud hoped.

3.00 pm MARGARET GILLIES: Unitarian, painter and friend of W.J. Fox and theHower sisters. Dr Charlotte Yeldham.

72nd Conway 3(onoriartecture7.00 pm Thursday 15 January, 1998

MINDS, BRAINS and CONSCIOUSNESS

by

Professor Colin Blakemore PhD, ScD, FRSWayneflete Professor of Physiology, University of Oxford, Reith Lecturer

Apply to Librarian for free tickets.

Sunday 1811.00 am

3.00 pm

Sunday 2511.00 am

FREEDOM AND LIBERTYBrian Micklethwait (Libertarian Alliance).

CAPITALISM, FREETHOUGHT AND COMFORTJohn Rayner believes freethought and technical development were dependenton the pre-emergence of capitalism.

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN TWINS AND SINGLETONS.Emma Shackle.

3.00 pm L. Ron Hubbard: Founder of the Church of Scientology. Video.

FEBRUARYSunday 111.00 am MEMORY AND THE SENSE OF SELF. Philosophers including Kant and

Wittgenstein have written on this subject. Andy Hamilton surveys their viewsbefore presenting his own account.

, 3.00 pm TOPICAL TOPICS with Terry Mullins. Discuss your ethical concerns.

SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS AT CONWAY HALL - 6.30 pm Tickets £4Jan 18 THE ALLEGRI STRING QUARTET

Haydn: Op. 71/2, Tippet: No. 5, Beethoven: Op. 131.25 ALBERNI STRING QUARTET

Mozart: K42I, Shostakovich: Op. 49, Ravel: Quartet in F.Feb 1 SCHIDLOF SWING QUARTET with VLADIMIR MENDELSSOHN (viola)

Mozart: K.515. Brahms: Op. 1 1 I

For full programme, send S.A.E. to: David Morris, PO Box 17635, London N12 8WN

Published by the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC I 4RL Printed by LG. Bryson (Printer) Ltd. 156-162 High Road, London N2 9AS ISSN 0014 - 1690

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