Saying Goodbye to the Savant of Our Times

It has been over a month since his funeral, and even longer since his demise from this world, but the heart still feels the void of Pope Benedict XVI's passing.

I did not start out as a fan of Pope Benedict XVI, on the contrary, at his election, influenced by the reportage in the international media, I was aghast that the “Panzer Cardinal” and “God’s Rottweiler” had been elected Pope. Surely this was a disaster I thought to myself.

At some point, however, I chided myself; surely as a scholar I had an obligation to first engage with his written works and then form an opinion about the man? And so began my felicitous encounter with his opus. I read one, and then another, and then many more of his works (I am still far from reading all his works) and was smitten.

There were several reasons for my conversion, and I will commence with the secular reason, for this was how I first approached him. My intellectual formation, since my time in the National Law School of India (between 1995 and 2000) was in what could be called the critique of modernity. Remember that this was the time when India had what I called its “Woodstock moment”. Many young people from the middle-class were in support of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, critiquing the mega developmental projects which were displacing communities and bringing impoverishment to them. I did not travel to the Narmada Valley like so many of my peers but restricted my support and engagement with the issue through scholarly engagement: reading, writing papers, and trying to understand the issue from a philosophical perspective. Modernity, I was convinced, as I still am, was a poisoned apple.

The result of this conviction, both personally and among my peers, was an embrace of the non-western (since the West was identified with modernity). As my scholarly career developed, I encountered Latin American and Southern European scholars who were also opposed to western modernity and proposed alternate models for our world. They offer concepts like ubuntu, and the Andean Pachamama in contrast to the certainties of the Western model. I soon realised, however, that these alternative models could not afford us a new way forward.

The critique of modernity often naively suggests that the non-western models displaced by western modernity are capable of offering peace to a divided world. However, there is much in these models which is offensive to the liberal values that we hold on to, even as we critique western modernity.

For example, these models are rooted in violence. How could I forget that the pre-Columbian Andean cultures routinely offered human sacrifice? Sacrifices prohibited after the coming of the Spaniards and the Portuguese to that continent? Just as they prohibited the burning of widows, and the killing of lower-caste slaves for occult reasons, in this subcontinent? The apparently pacific contemporary cult of Pachamama, and other such cults, therefore, owes more to the Catholic Iberians than its proponents would like to admit. The critique of modernity, therefore, was not providing any solution to the civilisational crisis that we were in.

It was at this point that I began reading the works of Pope Benedict XVI. In particular his encyclicals, Deus Caritas Est, Spe Salvi and Caritas In Veritate, which I now recommend to all – not just Catholic – discerning readers, and especially to you, dear reader. Reading these texts, I realised that I was in the presence of the savant of our times. Someone who had something to offer our world which seems to be increasingly spinning out of control. Benedict XVI was also critiquing modernity, he was, however, doing it from the location of Christianity, and suggesting – a suggestion I now wholly endorse – that Christianity can offer not just a critique of modernity, but a path out of the problems it has caused.

More interestingly, Benedict XVI was not simply proposing membership in the Catholic Church, or certain non-negotiable rules. Rather, I realised as I read the first volume of his biography of Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, he was offering a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. It is this encounter and engagement with Christ, he suggests, which is capable of, to borrow a Christian metaphor, turning our water into wine.

What perhaps convinced me instinctually then, which I am now able to reason out, is that the Christian faith, through the imitation of Christ whom the adherent knows personally, is able to deal with the question of violence. Violence is the central issue that plagues every civilisational model. Christ’s response to violence, was – through his death on the cross – to embrace it, an option adopted by Christians through the centuries. Where they have done so, their action has been exemplary.

And so, it turned out that my engagement with Benedict XVI's secular arguments led to a profound spiritual conversion. This was, I believe, because he managed the delicate balance between rigorous scholarship and affective tenderness, the latter born from his own love of a Christ who was personally known and experienced.

Benedict XVI was also able to critically intervene in another intellectual question that I had been wrestling with. He has drawn much flack for the role Europe plays within his philosophy, accused of being Euro-centric. But rooted in his appreciation of Catholicism, Benedict saw Europe as not simply existing eternally, but rather born from Christianity, or rather, a contemplation of Christ. Thus, when he engaged with Europe, or proposed Europe as a model, he was offering the Europe born from Christianity, not the Enlightenment project of bourgeois Europe that is itself in such a mess these days.

Through this nuance that Benedict brings, I was able to graduate my own critique of modernity. The position was no longer simply anti-west, rather it was critical of the bourgeois Europe that was divorced from Christ. For westernised Christians like myself, this nuance is useful in intra-Catholic debates, especially those among Catholics in India. Too many Catholics effectively wind-up embracing nationalism as their religion, when they de-westernise their faith practices. What we need to do instead, is to disengage from the modernity that has insinuated itself into Christianity and Catholicism. This is a delicate, intellectually demanding project, and we could have well done with Benedict XVI’s continued guidance through such a project.

However, perhaps Benedict XVI has done enough. He has left us a wealth of reflections, and more importantly an affective path through which to deal with this project. To once again paraphrase scripture, he has finished the race, he kept the faith. Now there is in store for him the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award him.

Adeus Papa Bento, rogai por nós. 

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo dated 8 Feb 2023)

Responding to the Desiring God

In 2017, while sitting in the Jardim Munícipio in Panjim and discussing ecclesial and liturgical matters, a priest friend expressed a fairly popular idea. He asked me: “Have you noticed how it is often it is priests who are gay who are overly interested in liturgy?” My response at the time is the seed for the thoughts that I write here, which I believe allow for us to put desire within a Catholic frame.

My first response suggested that to speak about celibates – as priests are required to be – as gay was incorrect. One could possibly refer to these people as having homosexual inclinations, which is perhaps what most people suspect when they link a fascination for liturgy with aberration from a heterosexual norm. However, to confuse this predilection for liturgical beauty with being “gay” would be a categorical mistake. To be gay is to occupy a political position. A political position, which despite its widespread global occurrence, is located in a certain cultural milieu – one which could be described as predominantly white, in particular Anglo-American and Northern European, and segments of the national(ist) elites that articulate with this cultural group across the post-colonial world.

 This is not a novel argument, but has been made by a number of queer activists and academics, among which I could point to Jasbir Puar’s argument in Terrorist Assemblages. The problem that gay culture and politics poses is especially visible to me, a Catholic in an increasingly Hindu majoritarian India. In a recent essay, I have pointed to the subtle, and not-so-subtle ways in which gay politics aligns with Hindu nationalism. As such, I can quite literally see how gay agenda poses a threat to my own life, and the communities I belong to.

I continued to counter my priestly interlocutor by going on to point out that the association of an appreciation of beauty with homosexuality draws upon a recent and modern tradition which has reconstructed masculinity. A tradition that associated men with brute power, and the appreciation of beauty as effeminate. I wasn’t satisfied in simply denying an imposition of a gay identity ; however, I suggested that the sexual frame was one that we were imposing on them. Perhaps, in other times, when the sexual frame was not the primary frame of reference that it is today, similar men would have been understood differently, seen as having gifts, or graces, from God which were being put to good use.

My rationale was, and remains, that our selves are composed of desires that we are unable to interpret, and the hermeneutical framework arrives from outside of us, from society. It is the singular tragedy of our times that our primary frame of reference in contemporary times is, and has been since at least Freud, sexual. Thus, we tend to interpret things sexually, rather than being open to other, particularly transcendental, frames of reference.

I am not unique in feeling this distress with the primarily sexual way of understanding the world. In How Catholic Art Saved the Faith (2018), art historian Elizabeth Lev contests the largely sexual reading that Bernini’s famed sculpture of the ecstasy of St. Teresa of Avila has received ever since the Enlightenment: Bernini was not representing an embodied spiritual experience, but sneaking a profane, erotic, work into a sacred space. Lev argues that Bernini was doing was nothing of the sort. Rather, he had offered a “compelling” and “powerful argument for the Catholic experience of divine love” (150).

Lev suggests that the secular world is unable to comprehend this interpretation, because we have lost sight of the spiritual and our relationship with God, in other words, the divine love that God has for us. She argues that, “Teresa’s Face, emulating that of Christ in Michelangelo’s Pietà, is the ultimate image of total self-offering to God, as well as the knowledge, through these moments of ecstasy, that the love is requitted” (150). I would like to work with this idea, that the total self-offering to God is a valid sexual response to the desire that God expresses for us.

Before developing ideas about the love of God, it would be useful to point out that contemporary sexual politics has problems with understanding celibacy as a valid sexuality. In Celibacies, Benjamin Kahan notes how “even champions of sex and advocates of sexual diversity like Alfred Kinsey feel free to denigrate” celibacy as part of a trio of “the great distortions of sex,” including it alongside delayed marriage and asceticism and suggesting celibacy to be a “cultural perversion” (1). Two of these practices, celibacy and ascetism, are not unique to Catholicism, but are typical to it. The hostility towards these practices is not coincidental, but part of a larger culture of anti-Catholicism (13-16) motivated by the threat perceived by Anglo-Protestant middle class national elites of the USA.

The Catholic tradition is redolent of God’s love for humanity. This love is often represented in particularly spousal terms. Indeed, as the first letter of John teaches us, love is not that we love God, but that God loved us first (4:10). In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est (2005) Benedict XVI boldly links this love not only to agape, as is often done, but also to eros (9). Calling for an attitude that unites the body and the soul, Benedict XVI suggests that “eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns” (4). This approach provides the possibility of integrating a transcendental framework into our all too immanent frames.

This suggestion is not too different from that offered by St. John of the Cross. In his biography of St John, Peter Tyler, a psychologist concerned with holistic approaches that are not restricted merely to the immanent, points out that “rather than seeing sexuality as separated from spirituality” St. John acknowledges the intimate connection of the two whilst at the same time being able to distinguish their different properties”. Tyler quotes from St. John’s opus, The Dark Night of the Soul in support: “‘Both the spiritual and the sensory part of the soul receive gratification from that refreshment, each part experiences a delight according to its own nature and properties’ (DN 1.4:2)” (90). 

Unlike a Freudian approach where sexuality comes first as the wellspring of many aspects of the personality, including spirituality, Tyler notes that “in [St.] John’s schema we can almost say that sexual desire derives from spiritual desire” (90). St. John highlights that “’it happens frequently so that in a person’s spiritual exercises themselves, without the person being able to avoid it, impure movements will be experienced in the sensory part of the soul, and even sometimes when the spirit is deep in prayer or when receiving the sacraments of Penance or the Eucharist’ (DN 1.4.1)” (91).

St. John suggests that we should not panic in such situations. Rather, he offers an appealing explanation: “As we are full of joy by spiritual delights so… it is inevitable that the bodily passions will be excited too. It is not bad as such, just taking its share according to its mode” (91). In making this argument, Tyler points out, he is quoting Aristotle: “Whatever is received, is received according to the mode the receiver” (91). These challenges, however, are to be subjected to purgation, in St. John’s words, or to the discipline that Benedict XVI refers. The primary principle of this discipline and purgation is that the desires and senses are not bad in themselves, but need to be ordered towards our first principle, God. It is when they are disordered, or directed away from God, that they become concupiscible desires which cause us to push away things for God (89).

It is through this broad context that I investigate the experience of same-sex desire. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that same-sex activity is disordered (CCC § 2357). This is because it teaches that sexual activity must be exercised within the bonds of the sacrament of matrimony, and directed towards confirmation of conjugal love and procreation. This teaching has understandably caused much hurt among those who experience same-sex desire, and have understood this desire within the framework offered by gay politics – a politics which is, as I have indicated above, racially, economically, and geographically marked. However, we need to appreciate that this teaching comes within a context – that of natural law, Thomism, and above all one that is actively transcendental in its imagination of the political – which – once we appreciate the nuances of this context – does offer space for dialogue.

Further, this teaching does not, as I will continue to argue, necessarily turn what manifests as same-sex desire as manifestation of a disordered nature. On the contrary, it could be argued that what is understood as same-sex desire is in fact the result of our inability to understand the movements of our hearts moved towards wholly returning the love of God by living a chaste life directed toward the service of His community. We are unable to understand this desire precisely because of the sexual frame that contemporary society places over us, and the lack of a transcendental framework to guide the stirrings of our hearts. I believe that it would be worth contemplating the idea that a numbers of persons confessing a same-sex attraction are the result of a larger social and personal inability to interpret the call of God to himself. As should be obvious, what I am trying to do here is affirm “queer” sensibilities, while pointing that understanding ourselves, or labeling others, as being gay is not the only option available.

With this argument in place, I would like to suggest that this requires us to broaden Benedict XVI’s understanding of the direction of eros, which he indicates is directed towards marriage (11). It would be more appropriate to indicate that eros directs us towards the sacraments at the service of communion, i.e. the sacraments of matrimony and holy orders. One could argue that the sensibility of homosocial company, even desire for homoaffective intimacy is, in fact, the result of graces granted to enable one to live in a religious community. Communities which have traditionally been, and still are, ordered by gender.

I recognize that there are many who argue that the priest must be heterosexual, i.e. able to feel physical desire for women to be fit for the priesthood (see for example the discussion Why celibacy? reclaiming the fatherhood of the priest 101 – 105). However, I wonder if this response to contemporary sexual politics is not as trapped within the frame of the immanent as sexual politics itself. For example, the arguments of Carter Griffin, the author of Why Celibacy? referred to above, make no reference to grace, but rather seem to smack of an immanentist psychology and cultural politics unmarked by the operation of grace. As Patrick Hannon points out in “Can Gay Men be Priests?”, such a response is not restricted to theological and religious conservatives. On the contrary, he offers examples of persons who position themselves as liberals, a notable example being James Martin SJ, who seem to exclude the possibility that what are experienced as homosexual tendencies may in fact be mistaken readings of our feelings.

What I suggest, however, is that they are not gay, nor are they in fact, homosexual. I am opposing any idea that the sexual desire they may be experiencing is, in fact, a permanent part of their nature at all. I argue that such persons are unable to discern the movements of their heart, and it is being determined for them by a hypersexualised society. I am suggesting that we simply do not know enough, and may be guilty of a mistaken analysis – when looking at this desire as homosexual in the first place.

In conclusion, I would hazard that the issue that was first broached between my friend and I in a public garden in Panjim, is not about merely homosexuals or gay men at all. Rather, the question is a larger one about sexuality itself, a question that impacts all of us. To this extent, we must recognize that what we see as homosexuality and the cause of disorder, is in fact a gift, which urge us to reconceive the world outside of the straightjacketed modern frameworks that have been dominant thus far. As such, I propose that we approach the issue of (sexual) desire with humility, acknowledging that despite our arrogant post-Enlightenment scientism we still simply do not know enough about workings of the human psyche. What we do know, however, because it has been revealed to us, is that God loves us (first) and that He calls us all to Himself. We are all fundamentally attempting to respond to his call. After all, St. Augustine astutely observed so many centuries ago: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

(A version of this text was first published in the blog of the Political Theology Network"

Benedictus, Qui Venit: When a letter speaks to more than the immediate…

It seems rather appropriate that Pope Benedict XVI released his Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland on the feast day of St. Joseph, the Catholic model for fatherhood. The Letter is directed toward resolving the controversy around Child sexual abuse that has erupted in Ireland. Right at the very outset, at para 4 of the letter, the Pope indicates that the crisis has its roots in the “the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society” a transformation that he argues impacted on the religious no less than it did on the lay. Also, he argues, “The programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council was sometimes misinterpreted” resulting in a certain laxity in following both tradition and canon law. This larger context was compounded by “inadequate procedures for determining the suitability of candidates for the priesthood and the religious life; insufficient human, moral, intellectual and spiritual formation in seminaries and novitiates; a tendency in society to favour the clergy and other authority figures; and a misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties and to safeguard the dignity of every person”.

In identifying the problem in this way, the Pope continues his critique of the problems that secularization, in the sense of a divorcing of spirituality from our lives, has brought to our world. In identifying the problem in this manner, without explicitly saying so, he sharply disagrees with secular critiques of the problem. He does not say that these cases of sexual abuse are the result of the requirement of celibacy by Catholic religious. The problem he argues is the result of spiritual and moral laxity. This logic seems to be in keeping with the larger position of the Church with regard to human sexuality; the human being is not only about physical desires. The human being is much more than his or her physical desires, and has to necessarily restrain oneself from what is known to be wrong.

There is another side to his analysis of the problem. The Pope rather appropriately points out, that “that the problem of child abuse is peculiar neither to Ireland nor to the Church”. However when saying this, he does not shy away from the fact that there has been something amiss within the Church. Where the tendency towards sexual abuse is open to all human beings, once it has occurred, the question is how we deal with it. The letter is clear that the problem lies in the manner in which these cases of child abuse have been dealt with. The letter is clear that the manner in which the local Church sought to deal with the testimonies of those abused, and with the guilty, was definitely gravely lacking.

It has been observed that given the rash of abuse controversies that seem to be hitting the Catholic Church, spreading from the initial and highly-publicized scandals in the US, this pastoral letter of the Pope will be read for direction and guidance all over the world. While this may be so, we may find that given the manner in which he has located the problem, the letter may be, and indeed, MUST be read by local Churches, for an insight into issues beyond sexual abuse.

The manner in which the testimonies of the abused in Ireland, and the guilty in those cases, were dealt with may sound familiar, in entirely different contexts, to those living in Goa. Time and again parishioners from various parts of the territory allege that when they wish to highlight the misdemeanors of errant priests, they are faced with a silent and sullen community, both religious AND lay. Appeals to the office of the Archbishop go unanswered. When responded to, it appears that the manner of the response, where one is confronted with a committee, rather than the paternal and pastoral figure of the Bishop, leaves complainants feeling let down. Where religious have been caught with their hands in the till, the response apparently is to transfer them to another post, rather than take strict, canonically sanctioned penal action against them. At times in the face of a clear violation of canon law, one is presented with the blithe response that a waiver for the operation of this particular aspect of the law has been sanctioned. This column does not wish to provide the stamp of truth to these allegations. Nevertheless, a personal experience leads me to believe that the Catholic Church in Goa; hierarchy, religious and laity, would do well, especially given our presence in the season of Lent, to reflect on this letter and engage in some serious soul searching.

Toward this end, let us redirect our attention once more on the extract already referred to above. “…inadequate procedures for determining the suitability of candidates for the priesthood and the religious life; insufficient human, moral, intellectual and spiritual formation in seminaries and novitiates; a tendency in society to favour the clergy and other authority figures; and a misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties and to safeguard the dignity of every person”.

This extract seems to ring particularly true in the context of the continuing accusations that the hierarchy and clergy of the Church (through errant members) have participated in the destruction of the Goan environment, and the embarrassment that was the official response of the Archbishopric to the Dogui Bodmas incident.

When speaking of our ‘misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church and the avoidance of scandal’ the Pope seems to suggest our attention in the direction of the image of the pilgrim church. The Church is a human institution struggling to follow in the footsteps of its founder. The hierarchy should not loose sight of this fact, and open itself to suffer scandal and ensuing persecution, especially if it is for the larger goal of safeguarding ‘the dignity of every person’. We should not forget that it is these persons, in the singular and the collective, who make up the body of the Church. The infringement of their dignity leaves the body of the Church itself, wounded.

For the Goan Catholic, as with Catholics across the world, the Big Boss has spoken. His letter while focused firmly on the sin of sexual abuse, speaks to contexts beyond sexual abuse. Do we hear it speaking to us?

(A version of this article was first published in the Gomantak Times, 24 March 2010)

References:

The title of this blog has been taken from the title of a post on the blog titled Whispers in the Loggia. The phrase is an extract from the larger Latin phrase 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini' that translates to 'Blessed who comes in the name of the Lord'.

Ballot gone Bust: Contemplating the ‘Wasted’ Vote

When on the 23^rd of March I informed friends and family that I had voted for the Communist Party of India as my choice of representative in the Lok Sabha, a number took it on themselves to inform me that I had ‘wasted my’ vote. The Communists stood no chance at winning either in Goa, or forming the Government at the Centre. It is to this notion of ‘waste’ that I would like to attend to today. Is voting in an election only about voting for a candidate who is likely to win, or is it about making other statements as well?

At the time when Al Gore stood as the Presidential Candidate for the Democrats against George W. Bush Jr. a number of my friends expressed some amount of anguish that the Green Party insisted on fielding a candidate of their own. Al Gore they believed was as green a President as they would ever get, and fielding a Green Party candidate merely divided the loyalties of those who would otherwise vote for Al Gore. To this general position, another held the opinion that regardless of how green Gore was, it was necessary for the Greens to field a candidate merely to make a statement about the viability and seriousness of the Green Party as an electoral option. I believe I am able to appreciate that position only today, subsequent to this general election in India.

Increasingly I have come to believe that in a democracy one does not vote only to win, and place one’s candidate of choice in Government. One votes also to express one’s choice. This choice may not be a popular one, but it nevertheless needs to be expressed for reasons that I will discuss below. This association of elections with getting one’s party into power we can perhaps trace to two tendencies within our democracy. The first is one where getting one’s work done has come to mean everything. By any means, fair or foul, one must obtain one’s objective. The second is the tendency to assume that coalition politics of the kind we have seen in the last few Parliaments is a problem, and we should move toward a two party system. It is in the expression of support for this shift towards dual party politics, that the full significance of ‘choice’ becomes evident.

The two-party system is, at least in today’s world, no choice at all! Is there a significant difference between the Republican and Democrat Party? Some would argue not really. Is there a difference between the Congress and the BJP? I believe that the choice between the two is a false one, both playing pretty much the same game. These parties (and especially the BJP) welcome a two party system, because coalition politics requires you to balance the interests of the diverse segments of the polity. A two-party system where a single party has a significant majority, allows greater leeway in simply pushing agendas through. A two-party system in fact allows for majoritarianism (the rule of the majority). In India t

oday, by and large democracy has been understood to be majoritarianism. However, democracy is really about securing the rights and interests of the minority groups, a political truth that most of us would rather ignore. The creation of multiple electoral choices is therefore a crucial aspect of rescuing the Indian democracy from the morass into which it seems to be sliding.

Over the past few years, and especially in Goa, we have been encouraged to think that electing representatives to create the government is our sole democratic responsibility. Subsequent to the election, these representatives take over and we need to exercise ourselves only in another five years. This situation has led to the almost oligarchic tyranny that prevails both in Goa and in the rest of India. Voting in this scenario must also be about the active creation of political choices, voting for parties despite their dim chances, because this vote may encourage them to refashion themselves. A ‘wasted’ vote this year, could result in a ‘serious’ option opening up at the next election.

None of these possibilities make sense however, in an environment where ideologies, principles and dreams (all variations of Hope) have perished under the glare of cynicism. The crisis we face today, the same crisis that allows us to consider a vote ‘wasted’, is fundamentally a spiritual crisis. The early secular republics in separating the Church from the State, also set up a spiritual realm for the citizens of the God-absent polity. The Nation was deity in the Republic, and the dreams of liberty, fraternity, equality were its religious creed. Like the religious vision it replaced, Republicanism also believed in a paradise. The only distinction was that this Paradise would be achieved not through the coming of the Deity on earth, but through the political labours of (hu)man. Voting in the elections was therefore just one of the citizen’s many actions towards committing to the realization of Paradise on earth. Citizenship called for (and still does) a total commitment of human endeavour toward the realization of this perfect polity. The election, if only one, was nevertheless an important mystical ritual in the life of the secular Republic. In the glare of the cynical sun of contemporary politics, this vision has all but burned away.

A return to the mystical in politics therefore would not be out of place and the ‘wasted’ vote has a fine tradition to fall back on. One thread in this tradition is that of Nishkama Karma, where the action is performed without the expectation of the fruit of the action. One performs the action merely because it is the right thing to do, not because of the fruit of the action. Another elaborate argument is present by Pope Benedict XVI in his Encyclical titled Spe Salvi. Spe Salvi presents an argument in favour of Hope, arguing against the cynicism of our times, against the selfish individualism that marks our times and our pursuit of justice. A reading of Spe Salvi, in the context of political action would present to us a scenario where voting for a party most likely to come to power is not an option at all. On the contrary he argues that Hope would ‘give us the courage to place ourselves on the side of good even in hopeless situations, aware that, as far as the external course of history is concerned, the power of sin will continue to be a terrible presence’. The ‘wasted’ vote then, has also a mystical dimension, where it is a symbol of our commitment to Hope, a refusal to participate in the ‘sin’ of ‘pragmatic’ politics. Where the BJP is marked by ‘sin’, the option for us is not the Congress, marked as it is by similar and other ‘sins’. We are charged with creating the option for choice, even if this means our preferred candidate does not win, and the exercise of this vote will place us in a seemingly hopeless situation. When the ballot is exercised with Hope, and our participation in democracy extends beyond participation in a quinquennial ritual, the ‘wasted’ ballot in fact lays the foundation for the emergence of a stronger democracy in the future.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 6th May 2009)