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Martha C. Nussbaum
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The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future Hardcover – May 15, 2007

by Martha C. Nussbaum (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 23 ratings
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While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Martha Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state.




Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots--in which nearly two thousand Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists--the power of the Hindu right has been growing, threatening India's hard-won constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. Led politically by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right has sought the subordination of other religious groups and has directed particular vitriol against Muslims, who are cast as devils in need of purging. The Hindu right seeks to return to a "pure" India, unsullied by alien polluters of other faiths, yet the BJP's defeat in recent elections demonstrates the power that India's pluralism continues to wield. The future, however, is far from secure, and Hindu extremism and exclusivity remain a troubling obstacle to harmony in South Asia.




Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history. Ultimately she argues that the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilizations, as some believe, but from a clash within each of us, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others. India's story is a cautionary political tale for all democratic states striving to act responsibly in an increasingly dangerous world.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    432 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Belknap Press
  4. Publication date
    May 15, 2007
  5. Dimensions
    6.38 x 1.27 x 9.44 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0674024826
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0674024823
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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This is an extraordinarily interesting book on a very difficult subject. Martha Nussbaum's commanding familiarity with culturally related political issues across the world, past and present, combines immensely fruitfully here with her involvement and understanding of India. (Amartya Sen, Harvard University)

This impressive and important book grapples with the problems and consequences of religious extremism. Nussbaum's brilliant analysis of the controversy over religion and democracy in India effortlessly moves between political history, philosophy, and law, to give us a powerful and compelling narrative of the political world of the Hindu Right. It is a must-read for all those interested in understanding the dangers of religious extremism and of what preserves democracy and pluralism in the face of tensions and conflicts within. (Zoya Hasan, Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Preoccupation with the purported clash between civilizations has masked the clash within democracies. This passionate, engaged book has much to teach an American audience about the vulnerability and resilience of Indian democracy. Perhaps it will also stimulate reflections about similar clashes within American democracy. (Amrita Basu, Amherst College)

Once more, Martha Nussbaum has applied her profound philosophical intelligence to a challenging question in the practical world. In thinking through the dangers raised by the Hindu right, she teaches us a great deal about the dangers of dogmatism everywhere. (K. Anthony Appiah, Princeton University)

Few contemporary philosophers in the West have reckoned with India's complex experience of democracy; and even fewer have engaged with it as vigorously as [Nussbaum] does in The Clash Within...[A] strongly felt and stimulating book. (Pankaj Mishra New York Review of Books 2007-06-28)

Martha Nussbaum's The Clash Within presents a powerful analysis of the Hindu Right in contemporary India that is insightful and penetrating...She weaves a rich tapestry of how Hindu thought has been reshaped and distorted...She is correct to say "the clash within" that we find in India lies everywhere...The Clash Within is another remarkable achievement from the most exciting political philosopher of our age. I cannot recommend it highly enough. (Thom Brooks Times Higher Education Supplement 2007-06-29)

Nussbaum is an informed outsider looking in...Nussbaum takes one incident--the 2002 Gujarat riots that followed the burning of a train carrying Hindu activists in Godhra--and builds a grand narrative of Hindu nationalism...Nussbaum sees lessons in India's democratic achievements for the rest of the world, particularly America. Her thesis supports Ghandi's claim that "the real struggle that democracy must wage is the struggle within the individual self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other, and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality." (Salil Tripathi New Statesman 2007-08-06)

Nussbaum sounds a wake-up call to those who may have been unaware of the ugly nature of events in India in recent times, and the hate-filled ideology that informs them...As further evidence of the undemocratic danger that India now faces, Nussbaum turns to the attempt of the Hindu Right to hijack history and rewrite the Indian past to demonize Muslims and glorify Hindus. (David Arnold Times Literary Supplement 2007-08-24)

At a time when India is claiming more of the world's attention, the philosopher Nussbaum offers an informatively rich and sophisticated analysis of democracy and religious extremism there. (Lucian W. Pye Foreign Affairs 2007-09-01)

The Clash Within has a salutary message for crusading secularists as well as for lovers of India. (David Goodall The Tablet 2007-08-25)

In The Clash Within, a passionate look at the crisis of democracy and religious violence in India, Martha Nussbaum provides a detailed reconstruction of the genocide she says occurred in Gujarat. She shows that the violence had been planned well in advance, and she chronicles the failures of the state to prosecute the accused Hindu-right activists or their mentors in the Bharatiya Janata Party...Nussbaum says the main purpose of her book is to inform European and American readers about a "complex and chilling case of religious violence that does not fit some common stereotypes about the sources of religious violence in today's world." She does that well. (Basharat Peer The Nation 2007-11-19)

This is a humanistic and psychological study that traces the [Hindu] Right's rage to reaction against both the Muslim and British conquests of India, which humiliated and shamed Hindus...Instead of the "clash of civilizations," Nussbaum sees a clash within each culture, but her book could serve as a Huntington case study of the roots and rise of Hindutva (Hinduness). (M. G. Roskin Choice 2007-10-01)

Martha Nussbaum is a distinguished American philosopher, whose formidable corpus of academic work is the more remarkable for her enlisting of philosophy in the service of her commitment to a more just and rights-respecting world. Nussbaum is also a passionate Indophile who has collaborated, with Amartya Sen, on the capabilities approach to human, and especially women’s, development. This book—written chiefly for an American audience—is an expression of her deep personal engagement with the challenges of pluralism in Indian democracy. (Niraja Gopal Jayal Outlook India 2007-07-16)

The Clash Within is a book of and for our time. It will profoundly change the way we think about religio-national violence and about pluralism and democracy. Nussbaum’s persuasive tour de force makes clear that cultural diversity is a source of innovation and creativity and that a national identity that is layered and multiple, rather than exclusive or exclusionary, leads to cosmopolitan thinking and cultural innovation. Her command of the ethical, legal and sociopolitical problems that a political reading of religion poses for a multicultural plural democracy makes this work essential reading for anyone interested in the role of religion and the future of the nation-state.
, (Tulasi Srinivas Harvard Divinity Bulletin 2008-01-01)

In an age of academic specialization, [Nussbaum] is one of the few modern renaissance scholars...The Clash Within should be read not only by those interested in India's present and future, but by anyone seeking to understand the processes by which even the most complex and sophisticated societies can navigate their way into a morass of violent intolerance. (Irfan Yusuf Weekend Australian 2008-08-16)

About the Author

Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Belknap Press; Reprint edition (May 15, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674024826
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674024823
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.63 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.38 x 1.27 x 9.44 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 23 ratings

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Martha C. Nussbaum

Martha C. Nussbaum

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Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School and Philosophy Department. She has received honorary degrees from sixty-four colleges and universities in the US, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. Among her awards are the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy (2016), the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture (2018), and the Holberg Prize (2021).

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
23 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kenneth Koo
5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for anyone interested in understanding contemporary India or religious extremism
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2013
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I ordered this book as a reading assignment for a college-level course on religion and violence in Asia. My students - many from Asian countries plagued by religiously motivated violence - and I were deeply moved by what Professor Nussbaum had to say about the rise of Hindu extremism in India. She offers a thorough historical account of Indian democracy as intended by the country's modern founders, and compares it to the present-day reality in India where those early ideals are increasingly being challenged by Hindu extremists in disguise of mainstream politicians. She interviews major Indian thinkers of the day, closely examines the national political landscape, analyzes the legal code especially in the realm of personal laws, and details controversies over history textbooks, all in order to draw a compelling picture of how the battle against democratic principles is being waged by India's Hindu right. Her language is clear, forceful, and accessible, making the book an enjoyable read for both scholars/students and the general public.

Prof. Nussbaum convincingly demonstrates that extremism is not the exclusive preserve of Islam and that democracy is a fragile institution. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in knowing more about contemporary India or religious extremism in general.
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Pa Xiong
5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2018
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The Gandhi Foundation
4.0 out of 5 stars this highly passionate study
Reviewed in the United States on February 29, 2012
Martha C. Nussbaum is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She worked for eight years (1985-93) with the Research Project of the UN World Institute for Development in Helsinki, focusing on the economic and cultural problems of India. She chose India when she wanted to write on human rights norms for women's development worldwide. She was a consultant with the UN Development Programme's New Delhi Office and in 2004 was a visiting Professor at the Centre for Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She lectured in various parts of India and wrote extensively on India's legal and constitutional traditions. She travelled so many times to India that it now feels like her second home.

Her relationship with India is intensely political, focussed on issues of social justice, and she has had close contacts with Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1988. Three personalities in particular feature, namely, Nehru, Tagore and Gandhi. In her Preface she states: "This is a book about India for an American and European audience". But it is not only about India but also about the present clash between Islam and the West.

She writes: "... that the real clash is not a civilisational one between `Islam and the West', but instead a clash within virtually all modern nations - between people who are prepared to live with others who are different, on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity, achieved through the domination of a single religious and ethnic tradition".

At a deeper level the thesis of this book is the Gandhian claim that the real struggle that democracy must wage is a struggle within the individual between the urge to dominate and defile the other, and to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality, with all the vulnerability that such a life entails.

Nussbaum deals extensively with the ethnic/religious pogrom in Gujarat in February-March 2002 when approximately 2,000 Muslims were killed by Hindus. She analyses the Hindu nationalistic personality and finds sufficient hatred within to explain the Gujarat events. Her conclusion - based to a great extent on Gandhi's thinking - is worth quoting:

"The ability to accept differences - differences of religion, of ethnicity, of race, of sexuality - requires first, the ability to accept something about oneself: that one is not lord of the world, that one is both adult and child, that no all-embracing collectivity will keep one safe from the vicissitudes of life, that others outside oneself have reality. This ability requires, in turn, the cultivation of a moral imagination that sees reality in other human beings, that does not see other human beings as mere instruments of one's own power or threats to that power."

She argues, in this highly passionate study, that ultimately the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilisations, but from a clash within each of us.

Piet Dijkstra
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Logan Sutton
2.0 out of 5 stars Two Stars
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2015
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a decent analysis. wouldn't have read it if i didn't have to of course.
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Gary C. Marfin
5.0 out of 5 stars Often Shocking & Frustrating, but always an Important Book
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2010
The thesis, roughly, is that Samuel Huntington's emphasis on a clash between civilizations is misplaced; that the more important clash is within civilizations; that this, more important clash is ubiquitous in modern democracies; that the clash itself is between those citizens willing to embrace a diversity of people and backgrounds and those seeking to establish a nation in which citizens share similar (or the perceived same) backgrounds, ethnicities, religious beliefs and the like; that India, with the possible exception of the United States, is exemplary among nations in its record of inclusiveness, and; that the Hindu right is threatening India's evident capacity for diversity through the Hindu right's efforts "to craft a public culture of exclusion and hate," a culture exemplified by the tragic events in the state of Gujarat in February of 2002.

Members of the Hindu right may well take exception to the way they are portrayed in "The Clash Within." For those, like myself, peering in from the outside, the lack of statistical data on the composition, size and beliefs of the Hindu right that might verify Ms. Nussbaum's depiction is somewhat frustrating. Perhaps reliable data do not exist.

Further, it is worth noting that Huntington was very much aware of the "clash within," and acknowledge as much in the opening pages of his book. Huntington was, however, focused on clashes likely to spark conflict on a global, or multi-national scale.

Finally, some of what Ms. Nussbaum says about the Hindu right and the motivations underlying it apparently draw upon a wealth of earlier research. To an outsider, some of this can be quite puzzling. She claims, for example, that "shame grew like a wound in the psyche of some Hindu males" and that "the female body came to symbolize the nation." As a result, Nussbaum notes, "one might suppose" that this "symbolic association" would lead to the "veneration of women and delicate treatment." Far from it. Partly because males of the Hindu right exhibit "an unusual degree of disgust anxiety," killing Muslim women in Gujarat while brutally defiling them was, in effect, tantamount to having intercourse with them. (Ms. Nussbaum's account is more graphic.) In light of the gravity of the incidents she describes it may seem like small beer to raise this point, but Nussbaum's premise - that "the female body came to symbolize the nation" - would seem to be valid in either of two widely diverging outcomes, (a) the female body is venerated or (b) the female body is defiled. That would lead me, a stranger in this terrain, to question the premise that "the female body," in India came to "symbolize the nation." Or at least ask: Did the males in Abu Ghraib symbolize Iraq to the soldiers, some female, who subjected them to denigrating poses?

Martha Nussbaum's text prompted at least as many questions as she purported to answer. Yet, it is this very capacity to raise questions, summon thoughts and overall expand the sensitivity of readers to events in India and elsewhere, that makes "The Clash Within" an essential book, one likely to remain so as the 21st century continues to unfold.
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