Politics of Faith

Faith can be approached outside the structures of an overtly didactic and moralistic discourse. Faith need not be linked to religion alone. As a term it has entered the public domain covering a wide range of beliefs and activities that are not necessarily centred in any acceptance of a transcendental or supernatural order. Thus we can have faith in an ideology. The ideology instills a quasi-religious fervour among its followers, who are bound to the ideology through a collective loyalty and obeisance.

Despite the universal significance of faith, one cannot afford to ignore the contextual specificities with which it is understood in different parts of the world. On the one hand, we understand faith as an intensely private concern. Yet it is shaped according to visions of particular religions and the rules and needs of specific communities. In India, these specificities are prodigious, making it almost impossible for any one to generative about the morphology of faith even within a particular religious tradition.

Faith is always embodied, realized or translated into something concrete. In itself the word surpasses definition. It is more convincingly demonstrated through action, prayer and worship rather than through mere definition of the term.