Can we speak of universals in a multicultural world? Is it all relative? Who is right, and how do we determine that? How do we collaborate when cultures differ on what they consider to be the moral thing to do? We asked Homi Bhabha, world-renowned thinker on post-colonialism, Professor of English and American Literature and Language, and the Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University, about how he sees morality in a global world. 

What is your view regarding the idea that there might be a subjective or objective morality?

I think it’s very difficult to make the case for an objective morality if you’re using the word ‘objective’ in a strong sense, either to mean a universal morality or a foundational morality that all people everywhere understand and accept in a globalising world.

Ironically, I think the issue arises because individuals and institutions are aware of the existence of conflicting, even incommensurable, moral values and normative orders – subjective and objective, private and public –  but, for a range of strategic or exigent reasons, they want to normalize them, render them congruent or consensual. 

By talking about “individuals and institutions”, I suppose I am already blurring the line between public and private, “subjective” and “objective”. Many of the pressing political movements of our times – Black Lives Matter, MeToo – display the problematic moral balance between personal morality and public, professional ethics. When there is a vast imbalance in gender power, when a person is in a position to alter the circumstances of another, sexual “consent” is a very problematic issue. You do not have to be a crass predator to be aware, even in the “heat” of the moment, that you are taking undue advantage of a colleague or a client or a friend, and putting them in an “impossible” situation. Institutional power is being deployed, however subtly or significantly, to achieve a coerced compliance or an exploitative outcome. 

We should really think through these issues from the perspective of what it means when we say that people are put in “impossible” positions that continually tip the balance between subjective choice and objective decisions.

Of course there is a difference in scale between “state secrets” that may need to be kept, or “covered up” for matters of state security, and “personal secrets” that may not be divulged by a partner in a relationship in order to ensure the security of the relationship. In both cases there is a lack of transparency that affects one’s “agency’  and one’s right to know, to judge and to act. “Lies” perpetrated by the state are often beyond our control; but a lie performed within a relationship disempowers the person lied to, it doesn’t allow them to exercise their judgment and act in their best interest. In both cases however, cover-up is not merely the violation of an objective “truth” or an undeniable “fact”, although that may be the case; a cover-up, private or public, puts an unfair constraint on one’s agency, on one’s right to act in keeping within your ethical frame of reference.

I read in an interview of yours about a case where a Hindu community refused to convert to Christianity because the Christian priests were not vegetarian. Is this an example of a cultural clash on what is moral?