Prasenjit Duara on the Role of Chinese Religion in Environmental Protection
Prasenjit Duara is
one of the most original thinkers on culture and religion in Asia. A
66-year-old historian of China, he was born in Assam and educated at Delhi, Chicago and
Harvard. He later taught at Chicago, Stanford and Singapore and now teaches at Duke. Professor Duara began
his career with a pioneering study of Chinese religion: “Culture, Power, and the State:
Rural North China, 1900-1942.” This work, published in 1988, helped
redefine how many people thought of Chinese religion, showing it to be one of
the most powerful forces in traditional Chinese society. His subsequent books
reflect a broadening of interests to include topics such as nationalism and imperialism. His latest work, “The
Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future,”
brings many of these strands together, along with issues such as climate change.
In a recent interview
in Beijing, Professor Duara discussed Buddhist environmentalism, what aspect of
religion most alarms the Chinese government and the South Manchuria Railway
Company.
Most people would
have no problem accepting the first two premises of your new book: that we have
an environmental crisis and that it is due to recklessly fast economic growth.
But more counterintuitive is your argument that there’s a solution beyond
nongovernmental organizations and international frameworks like the United
Nations. You think faith has a role, too.
We need the NGOs and
the U.N., and we also need bioengineering and market mechanisms. But one of the
most important factors that has emerged in the past 10 or 20 years — slowly,
but catching on — is that the most effective communities are in some ways the
most traditional, too. They have integrated ideas about nature and community
that are faith-based. In Taiwan, for example, I’ve been very interested in
“fojiao huanbao” — Buddhist environmentalism. I was there this summer, and
there are large-scale Buddhist groups that have taken to saving the
environment.
Can this apply to
China, too? Can the return to traditions help motivate people?
China is more
difficult in some ways. But there are efforts at Taoist environmentalism,
like at Maoshan [a
sacred mountain in Jiangsu Province]. They depict Laozi as a green god. Some
villagers seek to protect their local ecology through revived temple
communities.
One of your
strengths is your ability to cross borders and describe the situation in East,
South and Southeast Asia. I was struck by your new book’s cover. What does it
show?
The painted faces are
of people who live in the Prey Lang
forest in Cambodia. The forest faces destruction by massive logging.
These people hold demonstrations, painting themselves and staging ritual dramas
using traditional ideas of avatars as well as from the movie “Avatar” to publicize their
cause. They have organized surveillance systems of the forest and links to
NGOs.
And in India?
It is a little more
hopeful because it is a functioning democracy. While India has a hierarchical
society, democracy is good for allowing differences. You had movements like the Chipko women
tree-hugging movement of the early 1970s. This then bloomed into a
huge environmental movement.
But India now faces
the problem of the strong man that we have in other states with the rise of
leaders like [Russian President Vladimir V.] Putin and [Chinese President] Xi
Jinping. It’s interesting what they’re going after: environmental movements.
They are banning foreign NGOs and closing
these groups down.
Your contention is
that local faiths inspire some of these movements. When I look at China, I
wonder how much of faith is about social goals. Much of it seems to be only
about personal salvation.
In fact, it’s the
social element of religion that most scares the Chinese government. Although it
starts with personal salvation, it’s about social relationships. Religions in
China have been the basis of social communities — temple-centered communities.
The state has tried but hasn’t been able to prevent groups that challenge
injustice. The Chinese state sees the social organizational impact of religion
much more clearly than any other state.
You make this case
forcefully in your first book on religion in north China. Until it came out in
1988, most researchers believed that Chinese villages were primarily linked by
market days and economic ties. But you coined the term “cultural nexus of
power” to describe how villages were linked by something else: religion and
culture.
I intended to write a
book on revolution in north China. Instead I stumbled on how religion held
society together. My research showed a network between people and villages
linked by temple fairs and rituals that brought people into contact with each
other. This was the beginning of my interest in this topic.
I was always
interested in your sources for this work. In the bibliography to this work you
primarily cite archives of the South Manchuria Railway Company, a Japanese
colonial organization. What was it doing looking at Chinese religion?
It was as much of a
railway company as the British East
India Company was a shipping company. The South Manchuria Railway
Company — Mantetsu — was a vast colonial enterprise spread across the Japanese
Empire with a research wing staffed by many people who fled Japan during the
rise of the militarists and wanted to do something for China. They employed
researchers to survey this new territory. It was the biggest modern research
organization in the world at the time. I also used the archives in Tokyo for a
year.
You also coined
another important term in understanding Chinese folk religion: “redemptive
societies.” In the West, people often use the term “secret societies” for these
groups.
They had millions of
members, so they were hardly secret. Instead, I thought it better to find a
term that describes what they were doing. They were trying to save Chinese
society in the early part of the 20th century. Some people said “redemptive”
sounded too Christian, but Buddhism has this idea, too.
This brings up an
important idea in your current work: the idea of “transcendence.” You argue
that religions try to effect more than personal salvation. They try to save the
world as well.
The idea originated
with Karl Jaspers’s theory of the Axial Age, which refers to the rise of key
religions or thinkers among Jews, Hindus, Chinese and Greeks in the sixth
century B.C. Before that, religion was mainly based on worldly exchanges with
ancestors or gods. They might be apart from the physical world, but they played
a role in your everyday life: I will sacrifice, so you will give me a son, or
I’ll say this prayer 1,000 times and you give me a first class in the exam.
The transcendent idea
says there’s something beyond that in another realm. It might not help you
immediately in the here and now, but it gives you moral authority to do what is
right. This was a time when big states and empires were forming and you needed
a view that is larger than your own community. Transcendence is an idea of
something beyond the here and now.
This idea spread
around the world, but in Asia you see a unique development. You use the
adjective “dialogical” to describe it. What does this mean?
It refers to the idea
of a dialogue. It is the idea that you can accept other notions of how to
achieve that transcendental state. So there are transcendental ideas, but not
just one path to get there.
So it is more
inclusive.
Yes. The problem with
the Abrahamic faiths is they come to be formed like nation-states: us versus
them. We believe this, they believe that. We have to convert them. It doesn’t
easily allow for a dialogue. Of course, some have
moved away from this, but under certain conditions, these ideas pushed the
formation of the nation-state and colonialism. We celebrate the nation-state in
large part because it is the engine of competitive capitalist success and
modernity. As the nation
gradually dropped the religious dimension, it also removed the barrier to the
conquest of nature and global resources. It does not know where and how to
stop. It’s bringing about the dystopia of modernity.
So you see
traditional faiths in Asia as being more suitable for solving today’s problems?
The problem with the
Abrahamic faiths is their idea of an absolute truth. Buddhism or these other
pluralistic religions don’t have as much confidence in a substantive,
transcendental truth, which comes with the idea of an absolute god. An absolute
truth brings about reform movements that are very radical because they always
want to get back to the pure and the true — such as in fundamentalist Islam, or
early Protestantism. This leads to the idea of expanding your nation, or your
prosperity, even if at the expense of others.
So is your
contention that these faiths are important because Asia is a big part of the
world, so we should look to them as appropriate for this part of the world? Or
because they can provide alternative modes for the rest of the world?
I do tend to the idea
that these concepts, be they in India or China, were dialogical. They repressed
others, of course, but ultimately they didn’t have that doctrinaire dimension
of excluding other truths. They linked ideas of personal cultivation with
universal goals. To the extent they survive, they could be transported to other
places.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/world/asia/china-religion-prasenjit-duara.html?ref=world&_r=0China Seeks Tighter Grip in Wake of a Religious Revival OCT. 7, 2016
