Faith, infidelity and change

Ratna Raman

THE word ‘fidelity’ (from Latin fides) is synonymous with faith. Fidelity and faith are examples of abstract nouns, which describe emotions, ideas, concepts; in fact, anything that is not physically tangible and cannot be quantified. Hope; love; joy; pain; grief and sorrow are  some examples of abstract or qualitative nouns. Objects that can be numbered are termed collective or quantitative nouns, such as team, group, swarm, herd, class, pack and group. While these can take on the plural form, the singular form is more frequently used. Then, of course there is the common noun, which describes the objects we see in the everyday world.

In its earliest usage, in Latin, the word ‘fidelity’ was associated predominantly with the ecclesiastical tradition. A faithful person (Latin, fidelis) possessed fidelity. Over a period of time, the word ‘fidelity’ was also associated with loyalty and allegiance to a cause. In modern usage, fidelity is associated with the world of audio and video recordings. Fidelity is a measure of the accuracy or exactness with which something is copied or reproduced.

‘Infidel’ is the antonym of ‘believer’. An infidel was a person who did not believe in the tenets of his own faith. It was an ecclesiastical term associated with the church to identify those who had not been baptised and fell outside the tenets of Christian theology. An infidel was also a person who followed a different faith. For the devout Christian, every person outside the Christian faith was viewed as an infidel, heathen or barbarian. As early as the crusades, the right to invade the land belonging to infidels and take control in order to save their souls was part of the prescribed Canon Law.

Under the Islamic faith, a non- believer was termed a kaffir (infidel). The term nastik (of Indian origin) indicates a non-believer. More modern terms such as ‘agnostic’ and ‘atheist’ indicate the slow but steady shift in the evolution of new belief patterns over the centuries.

In patriarchal and religious societies, the word ‘infidel’ primarily indicated a betrayer of faith. Subsequently, it was used to refer to any person disloyal to a cause. It is difficult to determine the point in cultural history when the idea of the infidel, who did not believe in the religious tenets of his community or someone with a different set of beliefs from another community, began to extend itself to the domestic dimensions of ‘infidelity’.

Oddly enough, the adjective ‘infidelity’ derives from the noun infidel. Infidelity does imply faithlessness, yet it has assumed a usage in the context of conjugal relationships. A betrayal in sexual terms is defined in this context as infidelity. Infidelity or faithlessness becomes a marker of adulterous relationships, frowned upon by all religions. Those accused of infidelity have usually been subjected to extremely harsh treatment in conservative communities and in theocratic states. Adulterous women have been stoned to death by self-righteous crowds, both in mythic folklore and in parts of the world where harsh  penal systems of correction prevail. 

 Infidelity has also been the ‘cause celebre’ (French, controversial issue attracting public attention) in real life, literature and film for the unfurling and unravelling of personal relationships, punctuated by continuing sagas of betrayal, combat, disappointment, suffering and revenge. 

In recent times, infidelity is no longer viewed as a criminal offence. Persons accused of infidelity are seen as civil offenders. Social change is slow because an extraordinary amount of time needs to elapse even for words to be extricated and freed from the contexts and connotations they are imbedded in.