WHAT IS HINDUISM?
It is hoped that the essay as a whole may make some
small contribution to a deeper and more thoughtful
exploration of the secular-religious divide in India today.
Marxism and Moksha
‘Marxism’ and ‘Moksha’. At first, the disparity signified
by the two terms seems too great, the distance between
them too daunting, the contradiction or ‘duality’ they
signify too clearly defined to even warrant any deeper
consideration – leaving us to accept without questioning
for example, the unavoidability of the continuing political
opposition in India between parties with a secular Marxist
orientation and those based on a Hindu religious ideology.
So let us begin by precisely setting out the distance and
disparity between Marxism and its so-called ‘materialism’
on the one hand, and the spiritual-religious concepts of
‘Moksha’ or ‘Mukti’ on the other – doing so in the most
seemingly irreconcilable or ‘dualistic’ of terms:
- Marxism: a global secular, historical, atheistic and
‘worldly’ philosophy rooted in European thought and
offering the prospect of liberation (the meaning of
‘Moksha’) and release from suffering only through a social
revolution founded on the recognition and overcoming of
real economic contradictions or ‘dualities’ in the world of
work, in particular the unfreedom of the labourer in class