APARNA
VINCENT
University
of Hyderabad
Paper Title: The
Sacredness of Secular Symbols: A Reading from the Indian Experience
Abstract
Creation
of symbols is a special skill possessed only by human beings. Ernst Cassirer
designates human beings with the title ‘animal
symbolicum,’ to emphasize the role of symbols in human life. Symbolization
marks the distinct nature of human existence. It is impossible for human beings to evade the
influence of symbols. They are present both in the conscious and the unconscious
state of human mind. A number of enquiries into the multiple aspects of
symbolism can be seen in the disciplines of religious studies, anthropology and
psychology. Of late scholars have also started focusing more on the symbolic
aspects of politics. In particular, scholars have tried to understand the interaction
between religion and politics through the medium of symbols.
Efforts to understand the same have taken three
significant directions. Firstly, scholars have tried to understand how
individuals and groups who occupy positions of authority use religious symbols
to reinforce their dominant position. Secondly, the role of religious symbols
have been analysed from the point of political mobilisations, by paying
specific attention to their utility in mobilising people against authority.
Finally, scholars have tried to understand religious symbols as used by vested
interests in the society for spreading and reinforcing communal tendencies. It
is the sanctity associated with the religious symbols that makes them a potent
force in all these instances.
There has been minimal research, however, on how certain secular objects, activities and
spaces attain a status, symbolically similar to that of religious symbols, in
political imagination. By drawing attention to certain instances from the
Indian public sphere, this paper tries to understand the different nuances of
the processes by which the secular or the profane becomes the sacred. It will
examine how the sanctity associated with certain secular symbols enhances their
relevance as powerful political tools.
Aparna Vincent is a Doctoral candidate at the
Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad. She specialises in
the area of Political Symbolism.