Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship 0198092075, 9780198092070

Table of contents :
1
Title Pages
Surinder Jodhka
Title Pages
(p.i) Interrogating India’s Modernity (p.iii) Interrogating India’s Modernity
Title Pages
2
Frontispiece
Surinder Jodhka
Frontispiece
3
(p.vii) Tables and Figures
Surinder Jodhka
(p.vii) Tables and Figures
Tables
Figures
4
(p.ix) Abbreviations
Surinder Jodhka
(p.ix) Abbreviations
(p.ix) Abbreviations
(p.ix) Abbreviations
(p.ix) Abbreviations
(p.ix) Abbreviations
5
Introduction
Surinder Jodhka
Introduction
Modernity, Identity, and Citizenship—Dipankar Gupta and Sociology of India
Surinder S. Jodhka
Abstract and Keywords
Introduction
Introduction
From ‘Tradition’ to ‘Modernity’
Introduction
The Challenge of Ethnicity
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Caste and Stratification
Introduction
Introduction
Rural and Agrarian Change
Introduction
The Book
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Notes:
Introduction
6
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Surinder Jodhka
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
T.B. Hansen
Abstract and Keywords
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Urban Crisis as the Return of the Ignored
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangeness and Strangers in the City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Neighbours and Neighbourliness
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Political Order and Intelligibility in the City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
Notes:
Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City
7
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
Surinder Jodhka
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
Jonathan Parry
Abstract and Keywords
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The Ethnographic Setting
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Market Situation’ of BSP Workers
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Work Situation’ of BSP Workers
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Status Situation’ of BSP Workers
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
Class Reproduction, Consciousness, and Citizenship
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
Notes:
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?
8
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Surinder Jodhka
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
André Béteille
Abstract and Keywords
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?
9
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Surinder Jodhka
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
The Trouble with Tribes in Contemporary India
Kriti Kapila
Abstract and Keywords
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Debating Tribes in the Constituent Assembly
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
Notes:
Old Differences and New Hierarchies
10
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
Surinder Jodhka
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
Reflections on Contemporary India
Gurpreet Mahajan
Abstract and Keywords
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
The Context
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
The Idea of the Civil
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
Civil Society and Associational Life
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
Movements and Civil Society
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
Notes:
What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?
11
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Surinder Jodhka
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
A Comparative Framework
Gurharpal Singh
Abstract and Keywords
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
An Organizing Framework
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
The ‘Secular’ State at Independence
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
From a ‘Crisis of Governance’ to New Roles for Religions in Public Life
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
(p.146) Electoral Mobilization of Religious Demands by Religious and Non-Religious Parties in Differentiated Regimes
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Statist C-Option of Religious Demands and Organizations by Integrationist Regimes
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Transformation of Some ‘Religions of Resistance’ into ‘Religions of Revolution’ in both Differentiated and Integrationist Regimes
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Post-9/11, Religious Discrimination and Disadvantage in Differentiated and Integrated Regimes
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Notes:
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania
12
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Surinder Jodhka
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Jana Sangh, BJP, and the ‘Moderation Thesis’ Regarding the ‘Radical Parties’
Christophe Jaffrelot
Abstract and Keywords
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
The Jana Sangh Trajectory: From a Radical Niche Party to an Uncompromising Coalition Partner (1951–77)
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
The RSS: A Sectarian and Authoritarian Hindu Nationalist Matrix
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
The Jana Sangh’s Sectarianism (1951–67): Rejection of Diversity and Radical Mobilizations
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
The Jana Sanghis’ Incomplete Moderation (1968–79)
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
The BJP Invert U Curve: A Repeated Pattern, the Other Way Around
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
The BJP as a Moderate Party (1980–9)
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
The Radical Phase of the BJP (1989–98): Elections Against Democracy or the Polarization of the Indian Voters Along Religious Lines
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
The Relative Moderation of a Coalition Leader—Except in Gujarat: The BJP in 1998–2004
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
The BJP in Opposition, Searching for a Strategy
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Conclusion: An Indian-Based New Moderation Thesis
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
Notes:
Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics
13
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Surinder Jodhka
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
A Reflexive Account
Roger Jeffery
Abstract and Keywords
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Health Policy: Pakistan, Colonial and Postcolonial India
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Ethnography and Health: The View from North Indian Villages
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Pharmaceuticals as Global Assemblages
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Clinical and Public Health Trials
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Looking Backwards and Forwards
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Notes:
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010
14
Remains of Difference
Surinder Jodhka
Remains of Difference
New Imaginaries of Otherness in Post-reform India
Ravinder Kaur
Abstract and Keywords
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
Outlining Difference
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
(p.226) Ghost of Modernity
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
Two Indias
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
Subverting the New
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
Fracture as Strategy
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
Notes:
Remains of Difference
Remains of Difference
15
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Surinder Jodhka
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Conundrum of Democracy under Nationalist Ethos
A. Bimol Akoijam
Abstract and Keywords
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Problematizing Citizenship as Redressal Strategy
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Creating and Governing the Other: Political Psychology of a Liberal Democracy
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
AFSPA: A Symptom of a Militaristic Ethos of a Liberal Democracy
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Towards a Dialogue on the Models of Power for Justice
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Notes:
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
Violence of Law and Citizenship
16
Democracy in India
Surinder Jodhka
Democracy in India
Of, By, and for Whom?
Abstract and Keywords
Democracy in India
Democracy in India
Democracy in India
Experiments with Democracy in India
Democracy in India
Democracy in India
(p.280) From Representative Democracy to Representative Oligarchy
Democracy in India
Parliamentary Democracy or a Paramilitary and Semi-Theocratic Democracy?
Democracy in India
Democracy in India
(p.284) Neoliberal Reforms and Subversion of Democracy
Democracy in India
A Fractured Judiciary
Democracy in India
Democracy in India
Democracy in India
Crisis of Democracy in India: Institutional and Moral
Democracy in India
Democracy in India
Prerequisites for Political and Social Changes
Democracy in India
Democracy in India
Looking Forward to an ‘Indian Spring’
Democracy in India
Notes:
17
(p.305) Index
Surinder Jodhka
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
(p.305) Index
18
(p.325) Editor and Contributors
Surinder Jodhka
(p.325) Editor and Contributors
(p.325) Editor and Contributors
(p.325) Editor and Contributors
(p.325) Editor and Contributors

Citation preview

Title Pages

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Title Pages (p.i) Interrogating India’s Modernity (p.iii) Interrogating India’s Modernity

(p.iv) Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in India by Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, 1 Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001, India © Oxford University Press 2013 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted Page 1 of 2

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Frontispiece

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Frontispiece

(p.ii)

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Tables and Figures

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

(p.vii) Tables and Figures Tables 6.1 State–religion Relationships at Independence in Tanzania, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan 143 7.1 Performance of the Jana Sangh in National Elections 171 7.2 Performance of the BJP in National Elections 181 7.3 Variables Accounting for the Strategies of the Hindu Nationalist Parties 188 7.4 Moderation Thesis and the Hindu Nationalist Parties 190

Figures 6.1 Types of Differentiation and Examples 138 6.2 Types of Differentiation and Examples: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania Today 158 (p.viii)

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Abbreviations

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

(p.ix) Abbreviations ABPS Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha ADR adverse drug reaction AFSPA Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act AIP Application Integrity Policy AITUC All India Trade Union Congress ANPP All Nigeria Peoples Party APSA American Political Science Association ATR African Traditional Religions BALCO Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd BJP Bharatiya Janata Party BJS Bharatiya Jana Sangh BKU Bhartiya Kisan Union BSP Bhilai Steel Plant CAD Constituent Assembly Debates Page 1 of 5

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Abbreviations CCM Chama Cha Mapinduzi CITU Centre of Indian Trade Unions cGMP current Good Manufacturing Practice Congress (O) Congress (Organisation) CPI Communist Party of India CPI (M) Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPS Centre for Political Studies CRO contract research organization CSDS Centre for the Study of Developing Societies CUF Civic United Front CWG Commonwealth Games DFID Department for International Development FBO faith-based organization FDA Food and Drug Administration FICCI Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (p.x) GDP gross domestic product GoI Government of India IAS Indian Administrative Service IIT Indian Institute of Technology IIM Indian Institute of Management ICHR Indian Council of Historical Research ICSSR Indian Council of Social Science Research Page 2 of 5

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Abbreviations IMC Indian Medical Council IMF International Monetary Fund INC Indian National Congress INTUC Indian National Trade Union Congress IPCL Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd ISI Inter-Services Intelligence JD (U) Janata Dal (United) LIC Life Insurance Corporation MCI Medical Council of India MGNREGS Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme MLA Member of Legislative Assembly MP Member of Parliament NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NCAER National Council for Applied Economic Research NCNC National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons NCO Non-commissioned Officer NDA National Democratic Alliance NGO non-governmental organization NPC Nigerian People’s Congress NWFP North West Frontier Province OBC Other Backward Class ODA Overseas Development Administration Page 3 of 5

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Abbreviations PHC Public Health Centre POTA Prevention of Terrorism Act PPP Pakistan People’s Party R&D research and development RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (p.xi) RTI Right to Information SAIL Steel Authority of India Limited SC Scheduled Caste SEZ special economic zone SIT Special Investigation Team SMS Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti ST Scheduled Tribe TADA Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act TANU Tanganyika African National Union TDP Telugu Desam Party TRIPS Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights UAPA Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act UNCTC UN Centre for Transnational Corporations UNDP United Nations Development Programme UPA United Progressive Alliance VHP Vishwa Hindu Parishad WHO World Health Organization Page 4 of 5

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Abbreviations WTO World Trade Organization (p.xii)

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Introduction

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Introduction Modernity, Identity, and Citizenship—Dipankar Gupta and Sociology of India Surinder S. Jodhka

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords The introductory chapter has three parts. In the first part it provides a context to the scholarship of Dipankar Gupta and situates his work in the larger history of the discipline of sociology in India. It argues that the scholarship of Dipankar Gupta provides a representative account of the academic responses to the turmoil and travails of contemporary India, its attempts at modernization of its social, economic, and political life, and the conflicting outcomes of these processes. The second part provides an overview of Gupta’s work and a brief introduction to his contributions to our understanding of the questions of (a) ethnicity; (b) caste and stratification; and (c) rural and agrarian change. The third part gives a brief introduction to the essays present in the volume. Keywords:   Dipankar Gupta, scholarship, contemporary India, modernization, ethnicity, caste and stratification, history of sociology in India

Indian social sciences have come of age. Until even two or three decades back, the academic celebrities of the country were mostly from among those who were trained in Western universities and had invariably also worked in one of the European or American universities for at least a part of their academic career. This is no longer the case. We now have a good number of ‘locally’ trained scholars who have distinguished themselves within the country as well as in the global academy. Dipankar Gupta’s would be one of the first names that would come to mind.

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Introduction Gupta is indeed among the most distinguished social scientists of contemporary India. He taught sociology at the Centre for Studies of the Social Systems in the School of Social Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, for nearly three decades.1 Over these years, Gupta has also been tirelessly writing and debating on issues of utmost concern in the social and political life of India. He co-edited Contributions to Indian Sociology, a leading social science journal published from India, for nearly 15 years. As a researcher, his focus has been on the questions emerging from the challenges that the Indian society faces in its attempt to come to terms with its diverse and complicated pasts in a rapidly changing and globalizing world. His contribution to the development of the discipline of sociology in India has been immense and in diverse forms. Besides being a successful and celebrated Indian academic in the world of social sciences, Gupta has also been a ‘public intellectual’ and more. Even though his primary location has been in the discipline of sociology, his academic interests and impact have been far wider. His writings in print and electronic media have been as compelling and sharp as his academic contributions through books and research papers in professional journals. He has actively engaged with the ‘policy (p.2) world’ and worked with the state institutions. He has also worked with international development agencies advising them on the nature and needs of the Indian society and has helped the corporate world in framing their ‘ethical agenda’ (Gupta 2004). In moments of ‘crises’, Gupta also worked outside the ‘institutional domain’ along with civil rights groups, in search of ‘truth’ that exposed the misdeeds of those holding positions of power and influence. Perhaps the greatest merit in Gupta’s work lies in his ability to bring together and articulate all these apparently conflicting interests in a language that is simultaneously social scientific and political/practical. It is this intellectual trajectory of Dipankar Gupta that I wish to briefly introduce here. Perhaps a good way of doing it would be to invoke the idea of sociological imaginations. C. Wright Mills, who popularized this term, rightly argued that we cannot understand the biography of an individual without connecting it with the larger history of the given society. This is true not merely about understanding individuals, but also about the social and cultural processes that shape them. No social or cultural fact can be understood without giving due recognition to its ‘context’. In other words, context is perhaps the most critical factor in the analysis of social and cultural phenomena. It is the given social and historical context that creates or provides questions for a social scientist to be engaged with. Those who try to find answers to these questions are also products of those contexts and histories. Marx, Weber, Durkheim, or later Parsons and Merton, or even Foucault and Bourdieu, have all been products of their times. It is the meaningfulness and effectiveness of their responses to the challenges of their times that makes their writings universally relevant and indispensable sources of learning for generations of students in different parts of the world.

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Introduction If one were to use this language of history and sociological imagination, we could perhaps safely say that the scholarship of Dipankar Gupta, in a sense, provides a representative account of the academic responses to the turmoil and travails of contemporary India, the India after its independence from colonial rule to the present, its journey from Nehruvian modernity to ‘neoliberal’ globalization. His scholarship articulates and represents the challenges of nation-building and transforming India into a modern and democratic society. As I will (p.3) discuss ahead, his writings have critically engaged with the changing paradigms of social policy and perspectives on change.

From ‘Tradition’ to ‘Modernity’ Dipankar Gupta grew up in India in the 1950s and 1960s. He acquired his degrees in sociology during the 1970s and began teaching and writing in the 1980s. He continues to be engaged with the predicaments of ‘our times’ during the second decade of the twenty-first century. Sociology in India has often been viewed as an extension of social anthropology.2 The early generations of sociologists in India underlined the fact that unlike the Western world, where the discipline of sociology emerged, the universe of social life in India was still largely rural or ‘traditional’/‘pre-modern’, and hence could be better understood through methods and categories evolved by social anthropologists. Even when they identified themselves as ‘sociologists’ many of the pioneering practitioners of the subject in India, during the early decades after independence and even later, continued to work with conceptual frames and methods of social anthropology. The conceptual frames used by the Western sociologists based in the West to study their own societies, largely urban and modern, they thought, were not as useful for studying India as those evolved by the social anthropologists. It is no surprise, therefore, that for a long time, the natural social universe of empirical research for the Indian sociologist was the Indian village. Most Indian social scientists went along with the popular view about Indian society, according to which the village, the caste system, and the joint family were the authentic core of the traditional Indian society—its defining features. According to this view, the village and its hamlets represented ‘India in microcosm’ (Hoebel cited in Hiebert 1971: vii). The people of India lived in villages and their social organization could be understood by studying the structure and ideology of caste hierarchy. M.N. Srinivas described the Indian village as an ‘invaluable observation centre’ where a sociologist/social anthropologist could study ‘in detail social processes and problems to be found occurring in great parts of India, if not in a great part of the world’ (1955: 99). Another pioneering sociologist of India, (p.4) André Béteille, articulated the popular faith in the value of village as a methodological category for the study of Indian society in the following words: ‘[T]he village was not merely a place where people lived; it

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Introduction had a design in which were reflected the basic values of Indian civilisation’ (1980: 108). Thus, the early generations of sociologists and social anthropologists in India focused their intellectual energies on making sense of India’s traditional social structure through studies of individual villages with primary focus on its order of caste hierarchy, its rituals, and value systems. Given the larger context of nationbuilding and development planning, sociologists and social anthropologists saw the value of their work in assisting the economists and development planners by providing them with an understanding of the traditional social life in India, which was presumably resistant to change. This also meant a preoccupation with the study of ‘social structure’ rather than processes of change (Jodhka 1998). In the early 1970s, when Gupta was a student/researcher in different universities in Delhi, the hegemonic power of the village and preoccupations with the study of ‘tradition’ would have still been very strong in the departments of sociology in India. However, Gupta chose to tread a different path. Perhaps the most striking aspect of his personality, strongly reflected in his scholarship, is his fascination with the idea of modernity, as a ‘value’ and as a substantive sociological category. It is this concern or explicit preoccupation with modernity that, in a sense, defines his scholarship and has remained a central preoccupation in Gupta’s academic work and popular writings. Institutionalization of modernity, the values of equality, and citizenship in the Indian society have been passions with him. In other words, modernity for him is not only about being technology savvy, or about complex and complicated philosophical discourses. It is a way of life and a mode of organizing social and political institutions. He articulates it in a rather simple and straightforward manner: ‘Modernity is about how people relate to other people … Modernity is an attitude which represents universalistic norms, where the dignity of an individual as a citizen is inviolable and where one’s achievements counts for more than family background and connections’ (Gupta 2000a: x). A cursory look at his (p.5) academic work will reveal how he has over the years worked through the ideas of modernity and, its allied category, citizenship.

The Challenge of Ethnicity Given his scholarly temperaments, Gupta chose to go to Bombay (Mumbai, as it is now called), India’s largest metropolitan city, for his fieldwork and worked on a social movement, the rise of the Shiv Sena, for his PhD dissertation. The activities of Shiv Sena had come to the limelight as it mobilized the nativist sentiment among the local people of Maharashtra against the ‘outsiders’ (Gupta 1982). The rise of the Shiv Sena during the 1970s could not be easily explained through the available sociological theories of the times. As the then popular modernization theory would have suggested, the process of urbanization and industrialization were the best ways of dismantling a traditional society. Bombay Page 4 of 17

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Introduction had been the most important urban and industrial centre of modern India. It was here that the ‘nativist’ sentiment should have been weakened the most. Similarly, the popular understanding of Marxian theory would have also suggested that the development of industrial capitalism would inevitably give rise to class consciousness and weaken ethnic consciousness. The rise of the Shiv Sena defied such speculations. The only possible way to explain the rise of the Shiv Sena, in the available literature of the times, was to either treat it as a ‘transitional’ and ‘anomic’ fact that would decline as the modernization process matured in a Third World county or else to view it purely in instrumental terms, as a conspiracy by the dominant capitalists and political elite of the city to divide the working class and gain power at the cost of progress. Gupta did not find either of the explanations satisfactory. The conspiracy theory did not answer the most critical question about the rise of the Shiv Sena in Bombay, namely, the popular ‘support’ and ‘enthusiasm’ that it received from the lower- and middle-class Maharashtrians of the city. It was a kind of social movement and had to be approached as such. Gupta, therefore, explored the sociological literature on social movements, from Max Weber’s idea of charisma to the Marxist and neo-Marxist writings on social movements in order to make sense of the appeal-base of the nativist ideology (Gupta 1980, 1982). (p.6) Gupta’s study of the Shiv Sena was among the first such works by an Indian social scientist that deployed the categories of social movements in the study of ethnic conflict. Until then all such conflicts were viewed as instances of ‘communalism’, a category that had become popular during the colonial period for describing the Hindu–Muslim conflicts and violence. As Gupta was to later explain to us, the Shiv Sena’s rise and other such phenomena ought to be seen as ‘ethnic’ movements, and could not be viewed as another instance of communalism—an encompassing category used to describe all kinds of conflicts around ‘sectarian identities’. He developed this argument further in his second major work on the subject of ‘ethnic conflict’. This time it was in the northwest region of Punjab, which saw the rise of a militant ethnic movement among the Sikhs during the early 1980s. Quite like Bombay, Punjab too was a region that had experienced rapid economic development and modernization. The Sikhs had been among the most well-off and progressive citizens of India. Rural Punjab had been the most enthusiastic about adopting the Green Revolution technology. By the early 1980s, the rural landscape of Punjab had already been transformed into a land of modern agriculture and prosperity. Punjab was the richest state of India, a success story of Nehruvian modernity.

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Introduction Notwithstanding the significant similarities in the nature of the challenge it posed to mainstream social science perspectives on ‘ethnic conflicts’, the Khalistan movement in Punjab was not the same as the Shiv Sena movement in Bombay. Apart from its significantly more violent nature, the Khalistan movement also raised questions about entire religious communities, the Sikh identity, and its relationship with the Indian nation state, which the proponents of the movement identified with the Hindu religious community. In other words, in the case of Punjab, The Context of Ethnicity, as the title of Gupta’s 1996 book stated, was very different. He argues that though ethnic and communal movements are variants of ascriptive mobilizations, they are not synonymous with each other. In an ethnic situation the attention is on nation-state level thematic, such as those of sovereignty and territory. In this case not only are the ‘self’ and ‘other’ ascriptively defined, but in addition the ‘other’ is invariably portrayed as being anti-national…. In communal movements, the partisan do not cast their antagonists as (p.7) anti-nationals, but, typically, as having received an unjustifiably better deal from the government in power. (Gupta 1996: 6) An implication of this argument would be that while ethnic movements articulate themselves around political demands for sovereignty, communal mobilizations are concerned primarily with questions of distribution. Perhaps the most fascinating part of his work on the Khalistan movement was his discussion on the making of ethnic consciousness among Sikhs, the metamorphosis of a ‘regional movement’ into an ‘ethnic one in a few short years’. Arguing against the ‘primordialist’ and essentialist position, he points to the need for understanding the political context that had created a minority and ethnic consciousness among the Sikhs of Punjab. ‘In order to understand Sikh ethnicity it is imperative that we see the role that the state … played in its making’, he argues (Gupta 1996: 109). The subject of ethnicity and its relationship with the nation state kept him engaged for several years and remained a central question in several of his later works (Gupta 1999, 2001). One of his important theoretical works, Culture, Space and the Nation-State (2000b), in a sense, was an extension of some of the nuanced theoretical arguments he had first proposed in The Context of Ethnicity. Culture, Space and the Nation-State was published at a time when the nation state was facing challenge both from below (or inside) as well as from the above (or outside). The Khalistan movement raised questions about the ability of the Indian nation to deal with its ethnic pluralities, while still maintaining a democratic form of governance, the process of globalization, which increasingly became a visible and powerful force during the 1990s, was about transcending Page 6 of 17

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Introduction the idea of the nation state and, in some ways, making the national boundaries redundant. The book engages with the idea of the ‘nation’, which Gupta defined as primarily being ‘a sentiment on which the structure of state aspires to organize a collective life’ (Gupta 2000b: 9). It also engages seriously with the ideas of tradition, community, civil society, and citizenship. Of these, it is the idea of citizenship that he developed in many of his later works. The idea of citizenship also shaped his later academic concerns and he pursued it with zeal through his extremely (p.8) popular writings on subjects ranging from poverty and social inequality to analyses of the Indian middle class urban culture. From the study of ethnicity, he moved on to the subjects of caste and social stratification, agrarian change, and the analysis of rural–urban nexus (as has been discussed later). However, he returned to the theme of ethnic violence and communalism and engages with it through the category of citizenship in a study carried out in 2009–10. Focusing on the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat, he studied the efforts of the minority religious group to recover and rebuild itself through its own resources and support from outside (Gupta 2007, 2011). But the important point that this work raised was that victims ask for ‘justice’ and without justice we cannot begin to talk about meaningful ‘reconciliation’. Dipankar Gupta made a distinction between ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’ to help us understand the idea of ‘citizenship’ in the context of rights for minorities in a state like Gujarat. He argues that premodern societies or local-level communities worked with particularistic moralities. However, with the evolution of the modern nation state, the institutionalization of citizenship as a universal ethic becomes an imperative. However, not all primordialities are critical or threatening to the nation state. For example, primordial identities based on language, caste, and region/territory are rarely seen as anti-national. In contrast, religious diversity and any demands put forward by religious minorities are invariably seen as anti-national and, hence, illegitimate. This is particularly so in a country like India with its history of religious violence that accompanied the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. He, thus, argues for a differentiated approach to the understanding of communal violence. As he observed in his fieldwork in Gujarat and Bombay, the discourse around which communities articulated their interests differed significantly across communities. Those who participated in the anti-Muslim violence in the name of the Hindu majority always invoked the notion of ‘Indian people’ and justified their attacks on members of religious minorities on the ground that they were all potentially anti-national. In contrast, those from the minorities spoke the language of citizenship, arguing that they too were equal members of the nation state and, hence, needed to be protected and treated equally by the (p.9) nation state. Here the invocation of the language of citizenship enables us to Page 7 of 17

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Introduction recognize the dangers of the populist discourse, the notion of ‘Indian people’, which is often viewed uncritically as an innocuous manifestation of nationalist sentiment, he argues. The idea of citizenship instead also carries with it a discourse of rights and justice, an essential requirement for a society that aspires to be modern.

Caste and Stratification Perhaps the most popular and best sold of his books has been the edited Oxford University Press India reader on Social Stratification. The book was first published in 1991 and has gone through several reprints and continues to be one of the most popular books on the subject in India. It has virtually become a compulsory reading for students of sociology, particularly for those doing courses on ‘social stratification’. Apart from selecting a wide range of readings on ‘caste’ and ‘class’ in India, he also wrote a long introduction that provides a very useful way of approaching the subject of social stratification. In this introduction, Gupta also opens up an important area for social science researchers in the subtle distinction that he makes between ‘differences’ and ‘inequality’. This distinction was perhaps also important for him as it finds resonance in his later arguments around the idea of citizenship. It may be worthwhile to quote from the piece: [S]ocial stratification implies differentiation, but does this also mean that the strata thus differentiated are also unequal? … [T]here can be separate classes of stratification, or strata, without there necessarily being any inequality (whether of wealth, power, or prestige) between them. To bear this in mind is to guard against an oft-adopted assumption that inequality pervades all forms of social differentiation. This then quite unthinkably leads one to hierarchize systems of social stratification which are essentially horizontal. Unexamined prejudices thus find their way into academic exercises. (Gupta 1991: 9) He goes on to cite examples of horizontal social differences like those of language, religion, race, or sex. Even in case of categories like class and caste, only certain kinds of operationalizations ‘justify the implication of inequality’. The edited reader was certainly not the beginning of his work on the subject of stratification and inequality. His own work on caste (p.10) and class had greatly helped in our understanding of contemporary Indian society. Perhaps the most important of his writings on the subject of caste were his criticism of Louis Dumont (Gupta 1981, 1984). Similarly, his reinterpretation of concepts like Sanskritization (Gupta 2000c) has far-reaching implications for our understanding of caste-based politics today.

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Introduction Through a series of essays and a book, he questioned the popular Orientalist assumptions about a single hegemonic notion of hierarchy that every caste group in India accepted. He argues that while the idea of hierarchy was indeed central to caste, those located lower down in the caste hierarchy did not necessarily accept their position as being inferior to those above them. In some sense, every caste was proud of its identity (Appadurai 1974). An obvious evidence of this is the fact that no caste likes its members to marry outside the community or merge its identity with another caste, whatever may be its ritual status and even when a ‘low’-ranked group accepts the ritual superiority of the other caste group. Most groups ranked ‘low’ down in the hierarchy also do not accept the ‘upper caste’ theory about the origin of the hierarchical order, which ranked them ‘low’. Everyone has a different story to tell about their past and the reasons for their current location in the hierarchical system. Though the notion of Sanskritization suggests that the lower castes tried to uplift their status by imitating the ritual practices and social life of the ‘upper’ castes, the processes could also be seen differently. Even when a group located lower down in the hierarchy claimed a higher status, it did not wish to merge itself with the so-called upper caste. It was more a reflection of competitiveness among caste groups for status than an evidence of the wider acceptance of Brahmin as the ‘role model’ (Gupta 2000c: 77–85). As he argues, marrying within one’s jati, is a strict rule that all castes hold dear. It is not at all true that poorer castes are less punctilious in observing their caste norms. Each caste inspires its own variety of caste patriotism for which reason jati puranas, or origin tales, are such an important aspect of their cultural legacy and heritage. All dominated castes explain their subjugation, not on the basis of purity and pollution, but on the basis of lost wars, chicanery and deceit by kinsmen and fair weather friends. Sometimes the gods too are blamed for being fickle, inconstant and temperamental in bestowing their favours. (Gupta 2000c: 73–8, 116–29) (p.11) There are, thus, as many hierarchies in practice as there are castes. Caste, as he argues, ought to be seen as discrete groupings that resist being forced into a single hierarchical frame. An important implication of this reinterpretation of hierarchy is that caste is not a harmonious system, devoid of any notion of competition, as is popularly believed. The competition among different caste groups that we see in electoral politics today is not something totally new. Nor is caste-based politics a completely recent phenomenon. Quoting from scholars of ancient and medieval history, Gupta argues that even during the traditional and medieval times, castes fought and slaughtered each other to gain worldly pre-eminence. However, the format of competition has indeed changed, with democratic politics and market economy introducing a totally different kind of social space for its operation (Gupta 1981, 1984, 2005a).

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Introduction Rural and Agrarian Change Apart from the powerful ethnic movement among the Sikhs in Punjab and the resurgence of caste identity, the 1980s also witnessed mobilizations by farmers from different parts of the country. These agrarian movements were very different from the earlier mobilization by poor peasants against the colonial rule or for land reforms. These ‘new’ farmers’ movements were mostly led by the well-off agriculturalists and their demands were shaped mostly by their growing relationship with the market. They demanded better prices for what they produced and sold in the market, and asked for subsidies on what they bought from the market for carrying out agricultural operations. The rise of these movements took Gupta to the villages of Uttar Pradesh and other parts of northern India. Over the years he has produced a substantial amount of research on issues related to rural and agrarian change. It would, perhaps, be fair to say that after ethnicity and aspects of social stratification and caste, this has been the third major area of research for Gupta. His approach and perspective to rural and agrarian questions was obviously very different from that of the classical social anthropologists who carried out village studies, where the ‘rural’ was viewed as a signifier of ‘tradition’, the unchanging past. His research work has been focused on the process of change, the growing interaction between the ‘rural’ (p.12) and the ‘urban’, the Country–Town Nexus, as the title of one of the earlier books he edited on the subject suggests (see Sharma and Gupta 1991). It was through this framework of the ‘country–town nexus’ that he approached the rise of farmers’ movements in Uttar Pradesh. Instead of working with the method of social anthropologists, Gupta used the perspective of a sociologist to the study of Indian rural society. Given his earlier preoccupation with the Shiv Sena movement in Bombay, he looked at the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) as a social movement; he studied its leadership, its social base, and its strategies of mobilization. Perhaps the most important contribution of his work on the ‘kisan’ movement was his criticism of the then dominant anthropological tradition that viewed peasant movements as ‘pre-political’. He also questioned the interpretations of some of the Indian political scientists who romanticized castebased mobilizations of rural farmers as reflection of an indigenous civil society (Gupta 1997). Everyone in the village is not a peasant or a farmer. While Jat farmers may have issues with the Indian state, they perpetrate violence on the ex-untouchables living in the village. In a later research paper, he also criticized many of the postmodernist peasantologists who romanticized the ‘everyday forms of peasant resistance’ and celebrated subaltern consciousness (Gupta 2001). The so-called everyday resistances were of no consequence. They did not make any difference to the larger structures of power and domination. For this work he was also awarded the Eric Wolf/Krishna Bhardwaj Award in 2004.

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Introduction The framework of the rural–urban nexus also enabled him to look at the Indian village in a historical perspective. He was among the first to point to the decline of the social and cultural order of the Indian village. In a rather provocative essay published in 2005, Gupta argued that the Indian village, as we have known it from popular and anthropological imaginations, was a thing of the past. The village in India, where life was once portrayed as ‘unchanging’ and ‘idyllic’, has in recent decades seen profound changes. The twin shackles that once decided matters for India’s villagers, caste and agriculture, no longer exercise their vigorous hold. While a break in caste rigidities has fostered greater fluidity in occupational choices, agricultural stagnation has ensured the constant march, in increasing numbers, of employable people in the villages towards urban areas.… (Gupta 2005b: 751) (p.13) In the concluding section of his essay, using even stronger words, he writes: ‘The villager is as bloodless as the rural economy is lifeless. From rich to poor, the trend is to leave the village…’ (Gupta 2005b: 757). As one would expect, not everyone would agree with Gupta’s indictment of the village, but it invites us to think of the contemporary Indian society through engagements with empirical processes as they unfold in an increasingly fluid and changing world. It also enables us to abandon the reified notions about Indian civilization, where categories like village and caste were represented as eternal realities. Though such formulations of Indian society and Indian-ness have been extensively criticized for the politics of knowledge that they produce, they have far from disappeared from the intellectual landscape of India. Besides the three broad areas of research where Gupta has made substantial academic contributions, he has also written extensively on subjects like ‘affirmative action’, aspects of Indian social thought, sociology of medicine, and sociology of religion and secularism, among many other subjects.

The Book This volume brings together 11 essays written by colleagues and friends of Dipankar Gupta and these cover a wide range of subjects. Given that Gupta started his research career with the study of an ethnic movement in Bombay, the opening essay by T.B. Hansen takes us back to his field of research and underlines the significance of taking the story of South Asian cities like Bombay seriously, not merely for understanding the specificities of South Asian urbanization—‘a deviation from a historical/theoretical norm’—but also because they increasingly represent the ‘real’ world and its futures. [T]he decisive challenge seems to be to bring new conceptual and analytical tools to bear on the enormously complex realities of the megacities that have grown out of colonial entrepots and administrative centres of the past. Such an endeavour ought to reconfigure not only how Page 11 of 17

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Introduction we understand such urban spaces, but also the very canon of urban studies itself.… [T]heir rich history of movement, cultural difference, and competing political imaginaries are a pertinent site from where one can begin such a rethinking of what urban studies might look like in the twenty-first century. (p.14) Based on his decades of fieldwork in the steel city of Bhilai, the second essay by Jonathan Parry discusses the ‘embourgeoisement’ of a ‘proletarian vanguard’, another important aspect of Indian modernity, and a core preoccupation of Gupta, the changing nature of social stratification in the urban Indian context. Through an extensive discussion of the changing values related to urban labour, Parry shows how the old obsession with white-collar work no longer holds in urban India. What seems increasingly critical for social status or social class is the type and nature of employment, the distinction between a permanent job (naukri) and an insecure employment in informal sector (kaam). This, he argues, has very important implications for our understanding of social stratification in contemporary India because it also points to a shift from ‘caste’ to ‘class’. In terms of lifestyle, life chances, and the values that most people now share more in common with people of other castes from the same class or ‘class fraction’ as themselves than they share with caste fellows of different classes or ‘class fractions’…. In contemporary Bhilai, the most important of these is class, which—irrespective of how one is placed in the ‘caste’ hierarchy—is the major determinant of one’s children’s future.… [I]t is caste that has faded and class that has moved centre stage. Continuing with the theme of social stratification André Béteille, in the following essay, tells us about the complexities and problems of making sense of the middle-class formation in India. The significance of the middle class in the Indian social life has grown since the early 1990s, partly because of its demographic expansion. Contrary to classical Marxist expectations, the Indian society has not seen any kind of polarization. ‘But the general tendency, to which India is not an exception, has been towards the proliferation of occupations rather than the polarization of classes.’ However, Béteille underlined an important point that even though it has become internally differentiated and socially diverse, entry into the middle class remains restrictive. For large sections of the Indian population it is still difficult to find a foothold in the middle class. Those who find relatively easy entry into the ranks of the salaried middle class, mainly through the expansion of education, are the offspring of skilled manual workers in the organized sector, and also the offspring of relatively well-to-do peasants and farmers. Beyond them are (p.15) the vast masses of agricultural labourers, sharecroppers, and labourers in the unorganized sector for whose Page 12 of 17

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Introduction offspring entry into even the lower ranks of the middle class still remains a distant prospect. The following essay on the dimensions of social inequality and stratification is on the Scheduled Tribes (STs) of India by Kriti Kapila. Invoking Gupta’s distinction between ‘hierarchy and difference’, she approaches the much neglected ‘tribal question’ from the perspective of social stratification/inequality. Her essay explores the implication of the national dilemma on the tribal question. She argues that ‘the future of tribes came to be formulated as a problem of potential for modernity and, therefore, became hostage to the (false) binary between the assimilationists and the isolationists’. Several essays in the volume focus on another area of Gupta’s interest—the civil society and citizenship. Invoking the growing use of the term civil society in the popular discourses on subjects like corruption, Gurpreet Mahajan argues for the need to ‘revisit the idea of civil society … [to] reflect upon the purported distinction between civil society and movement’. Her essay interrogates the anticorruption movement’s use of the term ‘civil society’ with the larger context of the question of ‘deepening of democracy in India’. She asks and engages with the questions that follow, namely, the ways in which civil society is linked with democracy. The question of citizenship and civil society is closely linked to the question of politics and governance. How to institutionalize citizenship in a religiously plural society? Gupta’s work on ethnicity and identity also raised questions about the significance and the role of the state in a religiously divided society like India. The essay by Gurharpal Singh provides a comparative understanding of how the state systems in South Asian countries have been trying to come to terms with these questions in their agenda of governance. Continuing with the theme of ‘religion and politics’, Christophe Jaffrelot deals with the ‘right-wing’ radical political formations in India and interrogates the ‘thesis’ or ‘hypothesis’ that inclusive regimes which incorporate radical parties in electoral games usually transform these parties into more moderate political actors. This moderation process may result from four factors that are likely to make cumulative impacts. First, when an extremist party contests elections in a democratic (p.16) framework, it accepts institutions that are based on liberal principles…. Second, when a radical party contests elections, it is bound to dilute its ideology to attract voters outside of its core constituency…. Third, when radical parties are power-driven and aspire to govern, those who fail to win an absolute majority are likely to rely on alliances with parties that do not share its extremism. Fourth, while extremist parties emerge in most cases from ideological movements Page 13 of 17

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Introduction displaying a deep sense of doctrinal purity, they gradually emancipate themselves from them in the process of transforming from niche into mass parties. The ‘moderation theory’ evolved out of the experience of left-wing radical parties. In the Indian context of the right-wing radical parties too, this may appear to be happening but the process of moderation is not linear. There have been instances, Jafrrelot argues, where while participating in the electoral process, religious political parties could become even more radical. Though different in focus, the remaining four essays continue the critical engagement with the themes of ‘citizenship’, rights, and ‘identities’, with a focus on growing disparities in contemporary Indian society and its emerging state system. The essay by Roger Jeffery focuses one of the weakest aspects of citizenship in India, namely, the health care. Using ‘a “reflexive” and subjective approach’, Jeffery offers us a critical history of the development of medical and health services in India and shows how the prevailing economic and social disparities and a lack of administrative will keeps the health services in a bad shape. Interestingly, medical sociology has been one of the less-known interests of Gupta. In fact, before joining the Centre for Studies of the Social Systems, he taught at the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health at the Jawaharlal Nehru University for nearly four years. Continuing with the theme of growing economic and social disparities in contemporary India, Ravinder Kaur explores the changing self-identity of India as a nation state during the 1990s, after the introduction of neoliberal reforms. What is seen to be ‘new’ and how is it different from what was before? How is an optimistic narrative of a ‘new’ global self-created within the terrain of inequity and inequality in post-reform India? The essay argues that it is through a strategy of fracture—of deliberately created ruptures which compartmentalize (p.17) and separate what is deemed of value to the global economic networks from all that is deemed waste—that the newness is constructed in the popular domain. Through an exploration of two cultural events in the recent past, the essay shows how the idea of the internal other in new India is produced and reiterated. In the following essay, A. Bimol Akoijam extends this argument by critically interrogating the idea and the concept of citizenship, as it has come to be understood within the liberal-statist framework and he shows its limits ‘as a redressal strategy while seeking justice’. He does it through a discussion of the ‘the violence of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a law which effects deployment of the military as a regular part of administering the affairs of the state by bestowing the armed forces certain “special powers”, including the power to shoot and to kill on basis of suspicion’. The subject of violence and violation of basic human rights by the Indian nation state through the enactment Page 14 of 17

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Introduction of special acts, which give excessive powers to the armed forces, also find an echo in the concluding essay on democracy in India by Sumanta Banerjee. I hope these critical engagements presented in different essays of this volume, by some best-known social scientists from across the world working on India, will not only be a fitting tribute to the accomplishments of Dipankar Gupta, but would also be a source of inspiration for the younger generations of scholars to intellectually engage with the social and political realities of emerging India. References Bibliography references: Appadurai, Arjun. 1974. ‘Right and Left Hand Castes in South India’, Indian Social and Economic History Review, 11: 216–60. (p.18) Béteille, André. 1980. ‘The Indian Village: Past and Present’, in E.J. Hobsbawm (ed.), Peasants in History: Essays in Honour of Daniel Thorner. Kolkata: Oxford University Press, pp. 107–20. ———. 2003. ‘Sociology and Social Anthropology’, in Veena Das (ed.), The Oxford India Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 32–6. Gupta, Dipankar. 1980. ‘The Shiv Sena Movement: Its Organisation and Operation’, Social Scientist, 8(10): 22–37. ———. 1981. ‘Caste, Infrastructure and Superstructure: A Critique’, Economic and Political Weekly, 16(51): 2093–104. ———. 1982. Nativism in Metropolis: The Shiv Sena in Bombay. New Delhi: Manohar. ———. 1984. ‘Continuous Hierarchies and Discrete Castes’, Economic and Political Weekly, 19(46–8): 1955–8, 2003–5, 2049–53. ——— (ed.). 1991. Social Stratification. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 1996. The Context of Ethnicity: Sikh Identity in a Comparative Perspective. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 1997. Rivalry and Brotherhood: Politics in the Life of Farmers of North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 1999. ‘Survivors or Survivals: Reconciling Citizenship and Cultural Particularism’, Economic and Political Weekly, 34(33): 2313–23.

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Introduction ———. 2000a. Mistaken Modernity: India between Worlds. New Delhi: HarperCollins. ———. 2000b. Culture, Space and the Nation-State: From Sentiment to Structure. New Delhi: Sage Publications. ———. 2000c. Interrogating Caste: Understanding Hierarchy and Difference in Indian Society. New Delhi: Penguin Books. ———. 2001. ‘Exaggeration as a Weapon: Routine Repression in Peasant Societies’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 29(1): 89–108. ———. 2004. Ethics Incorporated: Top Priority and Bottom Line. New Delhi: HarperCollins. ———. 2005a. ‘Caste and Politics: Identity over System’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 34: 409–27. ———. 2005b. ‘Whither the Indian Village: Culture and Agriculture in Rural India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 40(7): 751–8. ———. 2007. ‘Citizens versus People: The Politics of Majoritarianism and Marginalization in Democratic India’, Sociology of Religion, 68(1): 27–44. ———. 2011. Justice before Reconciliation: Citizenship and Ethnicity in Post Conflict Ahmedabad and Mumbai. New Delhi: Routledge. (p.19) Hiebert, P.G. 1971. Konduru: Structure and Integration in a South Indian Village. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Jodhka, S.S. 1998. ‘From “Book-View”to “Field-View”: Social Anthropological: Constructions of the Indian Village’, Oxford Development Studies, 26(3): 311–32. Sharma, K.L and Dipankar Gupta (eds). 1991. Country-Town Nexus. Jaipur: Rawat Publishers. Srinivas, M.N. 1955. ‘Village Studies and Their Significance’, in D.N. Majumdar (ed.), Rural Profiles (1). Lucknow: Ethnographic and Folk Culture Society, pp. 87–100. Uberoi, Patricia, Nandini Sundar, and Satish Deshpande. 2007. Anthropology in the East: Founders of Indian Sociology and Anthropology. Delhi: Permanent Black. Notes:

(1) . Dipankar Gupta started his career as a Fellow at the Centre for Social Studies, Surat, in 1978. He came back to the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health a year later, from where he Page 16 of 17

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Introduction moved to the Centre for the Study of Social Systems (Jawaharlal Nehru University’s department of sociology) in 1983. He retired in 2009. In between (1993–5) he also taught at the University of Delhi’s Department of Sociology. (2) . See, for example, Béteille (2003) and Uberoi et al. (2007).

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City T.B. Hansen

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords This essay underlines the significance of taking the story of South Asian cities like Bombay (now Mumbai) seriously, not merely for understanding the specificities of South Asian urbanization, ‘a deviation from a historical/ theoretical norm’, but also because they increasingly represent the ‘real’ world and its futures. The author calls for a rethinking of the central tenets of established urban theory, which has been based mainly on Western trajectories of urban growth and capital formation, in the light of the South Asian urban experience. Drawing mainly on historical and his own contemporary studies of Mumbai, he argues that established urban theory is particularly inadequate in understanding three interrelated dynamics in South Asia: questions of belonging and ‘right to the city’; questions of strangers and neighbourliness; and the relationship between political power and administrative authority. Keywords:   South Asia, urban theory and experience, Mumbai, belonging, politics, administrative authority

Urban studies stands at a crossroad at the beginning of the twenty-first century. On the one hand, urban studies are more important than ever. The majority of the world’s population now lives in urban spaces and studies of urban social forms and dynamics ought to be at the very heart of what the social sciences are about. On the other hand, urban theory as we know it, overwhelmingly based on the twentieth-century European and American metropolis, seems strangely inadequate to the task. Thousands of sociologists, geographers, planners, and anthropologists exploring the enormous and sprawling urban landscapes of Asia, Page 1 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City Africa, and Latin America at this moment all share, and rely on, a surprisingly slim collection of canonical texts on the city from classics by Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, and Henri Lefebvre to more contemporary theorists like Michel de Certeau, David Harvey, and Mike Davis, to mention the most quoted and invoked perspectives. Many of the underlying mechanisms and institutional forms that structured the emergence of metropolitan life in Europe and North America—massive and labour-intensive industrialization, powerful class divides that lent themselves to a measure of shared class consciousness, a relative homogeneity of large groups of urban populations in terms of race, religion, and ethnicity, a heavily enforced regime of property pertaining to land and dwellings, as well as a systematic severing of ties with the countryside—are neither present nor obvious in most of the so-called megacities in the southern hemisphere. Rather than analysing the southern metropolis as a deviation from a historical/theoretical norm, the decisive challenge seems to be to bring new conceptual and analytical tools to bear on the enormously complex realities of the megacities that have grown out of colonial entrepots and administrative centres of the past. Such an endeavour ought to reconfigure not only how we understand such urban spaces, but also the very canon of urban studies itself. The burgeoning cities (p.21) in South Asia with their rich history of movement, cultural difference, and competing political imaginaries are a pertinent site from where one can begin such a rethinking of what urban studies might look like in the twenty-first century.

Urban Crisis as the Return of the Ignored Many policymakers and academics currently frame the profound and often chaotic transformation of urban spaces in India as multiple forms of crisis—of housing, service provision, infrastructure, population pressure, environmental degradation, and so on. In one view, represented most eloquently by Partha Chatterjee, the current urban crisis is borne out of the attempts in the last two decades to make Indian cities bourgeois, at last, that is to reconquer the control over urban space, which the elite and the middle class had relinquished from the 1960s onwards (Chatterjee 2004). This happens, Chatterjee argues, through the import of post-industrial models of city planning and techniques of urban sociality that enables the privileged to control all the essential parts of the urban economy and infrastructure, while cordoning itself off in discrete community spaces, shopping malls, and other privatized public spaces. Becoming like Brazil, in a word, including residential enclaves, flushing out the poor from the city centres, increased social segregation, recapitalization of land, and other features of what Neil Smith strikingly called the ‘revanchist city’ (Smith 1996). There is much evidence to support this version of events that suggests that India increasingly is in sync with the overall trends of global capitalism, and what David Harvey has called ‘accumulation by dispossession’, a strategy of capital accumulation driven by privatization of public assets and financialization that in

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City Harvey’s account seems largely indifferent to cultural and political specificity (Harvey 2005; see also Banerjee-Guha 2010). However, this overarching narrative of the transformation of global capitalism must be complicated by a more layered story of several forms of crisis that are endemic to the postcolonial city in South Asia. The most obvious is that while the ‘urban revanchism’ in Europe and America was directed at removing from urban spaces unproductive beneficiaries of welfare economies—seen as superfluous in the new economy—revanchism in India seems directed at large segments of (p. 22) the population that provide essential services in the urban economy: cleaners, domestics, service workers, security personnel, low-level public sector workers, and so on. The other obvious complication is that the link between land use, dwelling, and legal property rights is extremely complex in Indian cities. Acts of dispossession are complicated by local configuration of electoral politics and patronage. While publicly owned land can be privatized, it is quite another thing to remove informal dwellings that often have proliferated on public land for many decades. It is one thing to privatize or capitalize public service provision, but quite another to actually make residents in large slums and informal settlements pay for metered water and electricity (Anand 2011). Let me provide a somewhat alternative account of the contemporary sense of an urban crisis by framing it as the return of several burning political and social questions of de facto urban citizenship that were left both unaddressed and unresolved since India’s independence. With new economic policies after 1991 and the attendant changes in the capitalization of land and property, and the rise of an urban service economy and an accompanying consumer bonanza, the regulation of urban space and populations acquired an urgency that was vastly different from previous decades. Let me just discuss three of these questions here: (a) Who belongs to the city, who owns it, legally and symbolically, that is, who is a stranger and who is an outsider? (b) With whom can daily exchange, sharing of space and coexistence translate into a workable ethics of neighbourliness? And (c) what kind of political authority and social order can be invoked to regulate the contested everyday existence between tumultuous electoral politics and the powers of administrative fiat inherited from the illiberal colonial state? In reflecting on these questions, I will assess critically how insights from the ‘church fathers’ of urban theory—Lefebvre, Simmel, Harvey, and de Certeau—may be applied to the contemporary South Asian urban scene.

Strangeness and Strangers in the City Historically across the Indian subcontinent, modern city life was associated with moral danger if not outright loss of proper values and personhood, a life full of new possibilities and economic gain, (p.23) but also a life condemned to be stuck in a cultural halfway house, neither properly cultured in the proper mores of the hinterland nor properly modern. The theme of urban alienation is Page 3 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City particularly rich in the cultural production in twentieth-century South Asia, and the reasons are as many as they are well-known: most of the new urban spaces were colonial entrepots and military centres, ruled through tongues and conceptual schemes utterly foreign to most migrants to the city. Colonial cities were also homes to a multitude of religious and cultural minorities, and what Walter Benjamin called ‘the shocks and collisions of urban life’ was indeed the shock of unrelenting strangeness. This is a theme familiar across the world— from the 1920 boom towns of Chicago and Berlin (Prakash 2010) to the themes of proliferation of desire, and dangers of death that define writings on the postcolonial African metropolis (Nuttall and Mbembe 2008). Claiming the colonial city spaces through strikes, processions, and other manifestations of ‘the people’ were, in most cases, intertwined with nationalist aspirations and with inter-communal enmity, both of them forcefully articulated in Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s invention of the Ganesh Utsav as a public and popular festival in Pune and Bombay (now Mumbai) (Kaur 2003). However, few of these manifestations of political will, protests, or religious community in public places and streets in the city during the colonial era were about claiming a ‘right to the city’ in Lefebvre’s and Harvey’s sense as an active involvement in the social and economic life of the city as such (Harvey 2006). Any major city is a highly visible performative space where all kinds of claims can be asserted by mass action by crowds—whether disciplined or volatile. Tilak’s staging of the Ganesh Utsav was a manifestation of the sovereign will of the Hindu community and of national aspiration, directed at colonial power, and Muslim communities and Muslim leadership in colonial India as such. Later, the events leading up to the dramatic and bloody ‘Battle of Bombay’ in 1956, staged by the regionalist movement Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti (SMS), revolved around the city as a symbolic and economic prize within the new linguistically organized states (Palshikar 2007; Phadke 1979). The SMS protested against Nehru’s decision to make Bombay a Union Territory and, instead, wanted the city to belong to the new state of Maharashtra, (p.24) as it eventually happened in 1960. However, it would be difficult to describe the SMS as an urban movement that was organically linked to the city. Rather, it was a movement that tapped a regional sentiment (Feldhaus and Vora 2005), with a wide support base in small towns and villages and sustained by local intellectuals who promoted a rather rustic, purified, and idealized Hindu idea of Marathi culture as shaped by the landscape and history of the Deccan hinterland rather than by the modern urban experience. For the SMS activists, Bombay was a prize to be won, but fundamentally a strange place—full of minorities, and strange tongues and habits that were to be domesticated within a Marathi speaking universe. This sentiment later gave birth to the Shiv Sena in the 1960s, stylistically the most urban of all the populist movements in India and, yet, entirely dependent on a particular plebeian version of an embattled Maharashtrian culture at Page 4 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City perpetual war with outsiders and cosmopolitans—a version that also had taken root in small towns and villages across the state. Like the labour movement it emerged from, at least in part (Gupta 1982), Shiv Sena was indeed animated by a certain desire for ‘the right to the city’ as acknowledged citizens, and also rights to its multiple amenities and possibilities of social advancement. But even the much-celebrated labour movement in its heyday in Girangaon and the mill districts was never the largely self-reliant proletarian urban culture that some of its chroniclers portray (for example, Wersch 1992). Instead, it was a complex world of labour and service marked by its own hierarchies and middlemen, dependent on strong rural–urban linkages and extensive systems of casual and migrant labour (Chandavarkar 1998, 2009). By the 1970s, regional sentiments had become very strong across the city, in part due to tacit support from the Congress party. The Shiv Sena set out to domesticate the city’s public spaces by Marathi names, posters, speech, and symbols. In doing this, the Shiv Sena expressed a yearning for a wholly vernacular public—a marking of space that would make the cosmopolitan public culture of the city less strange, more domesticated, welcoming, and comfortable to Marathi speakers. That selfconsciously low-brow version of urban belonging and domestication was recently re-articulated in the most ordinary realm imaginable, around the vada pav, the quintessential (p.25) Maharashtrian street food that Shiv Sena promoted as the signature of the city (Finkelstein 2012). Claims to the ‘right to the city’ were, in other words, often premised upon political sentiments mediated by a shared language and the attendant potential for a xenophobic undercurrent. In Calcutta (now Kolkata), Chatterjee (2004) suggests, the ‘right to the city’ was articulated through the Bengali theatre that galvanized the literate middle class against colonial domination, and later the football leagues that gave the much-maligned East Pakistani refugees a sense of belonging. These movements succeeded largely through the availability of a shared language and language ideology (a fact so obvious that it is never mentioned by Chatterjee), but the city became neither more inclusive nor egalitarian. The current drive towards high-rises and slum demolition aim directly at rolling back the hard-won foothold of East Pakistani refugees in the life of the city. Now, the city itself is moving on, away from those who laid political claim to it. It is a strong underlying assumption in most of European urban theory that any city has a measure of unity and intelligibility to its residents. ‘Place’ is Certeau’s term for that which was defined and solidified by the objectified orders of the city and the state; while ‘space’, in Certeau’s usage, is the less-defined interstitial and overarching connective tissue, neither entirely determined nor objectified, always pregnant with possibility. The latter is essentially the milieu of Certeau’s heroic pedestrian, an ordinary man, to be sure, who moves with confidence in the city, guided by his proletarian wits, carving out his own vernacular version of the city, just like his speech relies on his own imperfect Page 5 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City parole in inevitable defiance of la langue of the state (Certeau 1984). This is an essentially French and European vision of the city as a monolingual space that appears fully intelligible and navigable to its readily obstinate proletarian inhabitants. However, it is not clear that this applies to postcolonial urban spaces that were designed and systematically constructed to avoid and pre-empt any such popular flâneurism. The first principle in colonial urban planning was that every space was coded by race—from the initial dualism between the town proper and the black town, or native quarter, to much more complex patterns of residential segregation in housing colonies and distinct chawls in (p.26) colonial-industrial Bombay, defined and sometimes controlled by villages, or distinct communities of caste or religion based somewhere in the hinterland (Adarkar 2011; Chandavarkar 2009: 125–90). In short, Certeau’s notion of urban space as a vast field of underdetermined social relationships and sites of potential freedom did not really exist in the (post)colonial city. Here, everything was always/already overdetermined by epidermal schemas, and by minutely registered differentials of language, social status, religious, and ritual practices from where individual experience found it next to impossible to escape. As a result, most large urban areas in South Asia have possibly had many different and adjacent language and/or religious communities emerge side by side since the nineteenth century (see, for example, Rao 2013). As a consequence, whole neighbourhoods are marked by signs, languages, food, and practices that make them next to unintelligible to the majority of city dwellers. Thus understood, a defined ‘place’ is not unjustly objectifying the fluid popular world occupying the full space of the city, as Certeau would hold. A defined place, even the most unattractive or marginal place one can hang on to, is often regarded as a hard-won site of some security and social recognition—a site of some social and cultural cohesion from where one can make oneself, and be at home in the city’s endless flow. Moreover, for the same reasons, many city dwellers view most spaces within their own cities as not only unknowable but wholly undesirable and inappropriate locations to be in. Another consequence of this deep segmentation and cultural and social coding of space is the absence of what one could call ‘spatial aura’—the traces of past layers of urban life now lovingly preserved in industrial buildings, tenements, and public architecture. Unlike the drives to redevelop former industrial parts of many Western cities, the imagined life world of a now vanished industrial proletariat seems to command no auratic force in South Asia whatsoever, despite nostalgic celebrations of this now-vanished world [Adarkar 2011; and recent films like Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai (dir. Milan Luthria, 2010) or City of Gold (dir. Mahesh Manjrekar, 2010)]. In the ongoing gentrification of the mill lands of Mumbai and Ahmedabad, the old mills and tenement structures are invariably being completely removed, and all physical traces of a previously popular life systematically removed before new (p.27)

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City high-rises that resemble the suburban semi-gated communities are planted in the soil. In all these respects, the new love affair with the spirit of the urban, and the new civic activism among the middle classes in India (Baviskar and Ray 2011) signifies, in some respects, a reversal of the historical strangeness of the city. In these new claims to civic spirit (Gellner 2009), it is often implied that it was the untrammelled influx of migrants and the poor that transformed the earlier postcolonial ‘city of the masses’ into a strange and unfamiliar space, full of uncontrolled and unwanted proximities to alien bodies, smells, and sounds. This straightforward equation with the older and inner parts of most cities with the poor and with a Muslim popular culture anachronistically stuck in the past is a striking theme in recent semi-serious films [such as Dhobi Ghat (dir. Kiran Rao, 2010) or Delhi-6 (dir. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, 2009). The same theme emerges in the vigorous public debates on the lack of civic virtue in Indian cities, a theme with strong resonances in the recent mobilizations against corruption by Team Anna. In this rendition, the undesirable strangeness in the city is constituted by popular culture, popular politics, the minorities, and the poor that effortlessly, over decades and generations, have blended into the city, have provided its authentic texture and also dominated its institutions and everyday life for decades. Thus, reducing the middle class to squeamish and hesitant onlookers. All this has to be reversed or removed, if possible.1 The earlier ‘city of the masses’ must now be turned into a quaint representation of an innocent past—often an inner-city quaint Muslim inflected style, whose status as a superseded anachronism, allows for a nostalgic sharing of the innocent past that the not-yet-modern masses seem to permanently occupy. This set of circumstances and developments forces us to rethink and properly understand the tacit understandings and compromises that, for decades, enabled a routinized but deeply apprehensive coexistence in urban space.

Neighbours and Neighbourliness The idea that tolerance is an almost primordial virtue in India is close to a shared national creed, endlessly repeated in official discourse, from electoral platforms, and in academic writing. Tolerance as a (p.28) cultural-civilizational disposition also lies at the heart of popular understandings of what it means to be secular in India—a capacity to endure and accept differences in habits, creed, and self-presentation, among others. This acceptance is made possible not by a desire to mix freely or to suspend one’s own preference, but its exact opposite: codifying and maintaining one’s own habits and boundaries make it possible to recognize a similar desire for boundaries in others. Encounters with strangers or other communities are not enabled by assumptions about their open or nondefined character, but exactly the reverse: it is precisely the presence of a recognizable set of diacritical marks that place strangers in a known category and, thus, make it possible to place them in a hierarchy of social status and Page 7 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City appropriateness.2 Strangely enough, this much-developed cultural register of tacit recognition, avoidance, and boundary maintenance, described by anthropologists like Sylvia Vatuk (1973) for Meerut and, more recently, Kathinka Frøystad (2006) for Kanpur, has never translated itself into a more elaborated public ethics of neighbourliness or, at least, a set of techniques for how to manufacture neighbourhoods and ensure community coexistence. The capacity for coexistence, especially the famed ethics of Hindu–Muslim bhaibhai are almost always assumed to be a primordial quality persisting deep down in the well of goodness of the (poor) people. The work of social activism is often framed as removing the ideological obstacles for this natural and deep inclination of the Indian people towards peaceful coexistence to blossom. As is well known, during and after communal riots, newspapers (especially the English language ones) abound with reports on spontaneous acts of goodness and tolerance, eagerly reported in what appears as efforts to maintain this creed and to counter the overwhelming evidence that all is not always so well. I am not trying to belittle all the admirable efforts that go into relief work and the genuine commitments of thousands of activists working against communalism. All I want to point out is that an ethics of neighbourliness has no shared public language in modern India. Let me offer two examples. The first being, after the riots in Bombay in 1992–3, mohalla committees were formed in the so-called riot-prone areas, roughly coinciding with areas that had significant (p.29) populations of poor Muslims, and areas already more intensely policed than any other part of the city. Ostensibly, the idea was to bring the warring populations together in meetings mediated by people presenting themselves as ‘social workers’ (in itself a highly ambiguous term in India) and police officers. Apart from a few Gandhian-minded activists, some of whom were socially connected to high-ranking police officers, Hindu residents stayed away from these meetings. Most Hindu residents saw the Muslims as the offending party in the first place, while the militant Hindus outrightly refused to recognize the legitimacy of the committees. Instead, the committees became a meeting place where representatives of the Muslim communities discussed how to improve relations between the police force and the Muslim community. Those meetings were important in reopening channels of communication between local Muslim leaders and the Bombay Police at a tense time, but the committees were not places where neighbourliness was ever discussed or mobilized in a serious way (Hansen 2001: 121–59). Another example comes from some recent works by Matthew Hull, who has shown how the Ford Foundation in the 1950s mobilized American social scientists to develop plans on construction of what Hull calls ‘communities of place, not communities of kind’ in India’s new urban spaces. The idea was to generate a place-bound civic ethos implanted in socially and culturally mixed neighbourhoods and civic bodies that in time, it was believed, would supersede Page 8 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City the segmentation of sociality and solidarity along lines of caste, community, and class. As is only too well known, these experiments failed and instead neighbourhoods, and a large number of so-called civic and cultural associations were now, as before, divided along lines of class and community (Hull 2011). More recently, the report of the Sachar Committee documented the appalling conditions of Muslim communities in India (Sachar 2006). In the closing section of the report, the committee recommended in a similar vein that the official promotion of mixed neighbourhoods will be a major contribution towards reducing the social isolation of Muslims. However, this section of the report has been studiously ignored by both Hindus and Muslims in the vigorous debates that followed its publication. Advocating social mixing, or (p.30) just social proximity, is regarded by most political formations as less desirable, if not antithetical to, the unequivocal recognition of caste and community groups as discrete entities, bounded by history and circumstance. Tolerance, the capacity for enduring difference, and what is widely described as ‘cosmopolitanism’ was and remained a priori socially segmented. There is the cosmopolitanism of the upper-middle class neighbourhood, where well-paid and well-merited bureaucrats, officers, and business people meet, socialize, and exchange contacts and concerns. There is the cosmopolitanism of the bazaar where sharing and dependencies are based on concrete, and often unequal, exchange of goods, labour, and services. Finally, there is the cosmopolitanism of the slum world where needs and predicaments pertaining to public services, security, and other concerns often can be shared across linguistic and religious distinctions. What is transacted in such segmented spaces? What counts as cosmopolitan, or secular, or just a neighbourly behaviour that one may think of as a form of limited mutuality, or limited hospitality? In some cases, as is evident in Nikhil Rao’s historical work on Tamil and Telugu speakers in Matunga and Sion in Mumbai, it was the shared sense of being ‘southern’, even sharing in a certain southern cosmopolis (Rao 2007, 2013). In other cases, it is the brittle bonds growing out of the shared experience of slum dwellers and low-income groups of many backgrounds huddled together and rebuilding their lives in resettlement colonies on the outskirts of Delhi (Datta 2012). In a recent study, Ajay Gandhi (2011) demonstrates the brittle forms of sharing of broken dreams, old film songs, and ganja among casual labourers at a labour mandi (market) in Old Delhi, another example is that of the residents of Dharavi in Mumbai, who share silences and impossible knowledge of those who actually perpetrated violence during the 1992–3 riots (Mehta and Chatterji 2007). This amounts to very little, one may say, a flimsy and situational sense of sociality and sharing in one’s locality amidst a daily reality where the fraught loyalties of kin and community are continuously forced on people, with all the Page 9 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City senses of security, but also the betrayals and anxieties that accompany such ties. In the mainly Muslim neighbourhood I know well in Mumbai, sharing and neighbourliness (p.31) are mainly transacted on the basis of being a minority of sorts. The older residents are primarily Goan Christians, who still run many of the older institutions in the area. Many of the Muslim residents work with and trust south Indians. The well-known registers of jokes and occasional solidarity revolve around a shared alienation from many parts of the city, from the city authorities, the much-feared random violence of the police dominated by Marathi speakers, and the need to warn each other to avoid being fleeced by Gujarati merchants and landlords. Yet, despite a highly evolved language of metaphorical kinship that almost universally provides the familiar, and familial, language of trust and affection across the subcontinent, few of these modes of sharing in the street or workplaces ever translate into more intimate modalities of sharing, such as commensality and intimate friendships. All of these daily transactions of trust and evasion of danger are premised on what Simmel would call ‘urban intelligence’—the evolved capacity to read and predict the urban landscape: Metropolitan life, thus, underlies a heightened awareness and a predominance of intelligence in [the] metropolitan man. The reaction to metropolitan phenomena is shifted to that organ which is least sensitive and quite remote from the depth of the personality. Intellectuality is thus seen to preserve subjective life against the overwhelming power of metropolitan life, and intellectuality branches out in many directions and is integrated with numerous discrete phenomena. (1950: 410) However, in Mumbai, this capacity to decode the metropolitan world and to ‘preserve subjective life’ has relatively little to do with what Simmel called the ‘blasé attitude’ (Simmel 1950: 414) that characterizes urban life, or with Certeau’s heroic pedestrian traversing the full space of the city on his defiant feet. In India, fleeting encounters in the street cannot escape the deeply entrenched tendencies to minutely ‘read’ others and strangers, not as individuals but as parts of a social category. Essentially, someone to be either acknowledged or ignored on the basis of minutiae of comportment, appearance, accent, dress, etc. Simmel’s reflections on the stranger (1950: 140–8) and his fascinating observations on the face-to-face encounter and the eye (1950: 276– 81) presuppose a context of relative visual homogeneity and anonymity, in practice, a sea of taken-for-granted (p.32) whiteness. In urban India, strangers and presumed friends come in a range of already preformed categories and hierarchies, and the eye gets trained from childhood to determine and classify in order to protect oneself, as well as to observe the multiple rules of interpersonal conduct and spatial propriety. These rules, in turn, govern with whom one can talk (and in which tone and style), with whom one can share space and bodily proximity, with whom one can eat, flirt or fight, and in what language and modes Page 10 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City of address. This is not to say that anonymity and amorphous identities do not exist in India but, rather, that all interactions and encounters with strangers decidedly scrambles for marks and signs allowing for classification. It seems to me that insights from Clyde Mitchell’s classic work on the quick reading, stereotyping, and mutual joking in the 1940s boom towns of Zambia’s Copperbelt may be a more productive starting point for understanding this dynamic than the canonical dependence on the European city as a universal historical template for how to interpret modern urban life (Mitchell 1956). Richard Sennett’s essay, ‘Streets Full of Life’, has a wonderful section called ‘14th Street’ (1990: 163–8). It is a powerful and suggestive reflection on the pleasure of walking in the crowds in New York City, of the small miracles involved in meeting and acknowledging others in their full potential as human beings. It is, however, difficult to imagine anyone but a foreigner writing a Mumbai or Delhi version of this essay. Who would these strangers be? In such cities, the urban public is neither attractive nor welcoming as a screen upon which to express one’s individuality. It is a fundamental assumption in European urban theory and European urban planning that public spaces, such as parks, squaresm, and broad sidewalks, are both shareable and underdetermined. In places like Mumbai or Kolkata, social and ethno-racial categories and their practical corollaries are so strong and overdetermining that it is mainly, if not only, inside one’s own ‘place’—be it a slum, a colony, or a community space, even if only a row of hutments in a galli—that one’s public diacritical marks, or ‘categorical double’, can be somewhat reduced in importance, and one’s individuality be more fully expressed. Yet, even the wall or the gated community cannot shut out the unwanted presence of others, their sounds, and smells. The modern (p.33) South Asian city sees no fusion of sounds and signs and smells—that classical trope of the modern cosmopolitan city throughout the twentieth century—but a fragmentation of taste regimes. Sounds and smells of other ethnic or religious communities do not tend to generate warm feelings of multicultural enjoyment but, more often, of fear and apprehension. The repeated conflicts over the azaan in Indian cities is but one an example of such politicization of competing sensory regimes. Another example is the recent proliferation of so-called vegetarian housing colonies across urban India. Some are new and aggressively advertised as vegetarian and clean, while others are existing colonies where the resident’s associations vote to make a certain area or colony ‘100% vegetarian’. Ostensibly, these initiatives are based on religious injunctions and sensibilities but, obviously, also informed by deep-seated notions of disgust and class resentment.3 The eating of meat is clearly associated with Muslims and lowercaste communities, including Christians. Yet, it often goes further. In middle class and elite neighbourhoods in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and elsewhere, it is not uncommon that residents campaign against non-vegetarian restaurants located far from their own dwelling. The objective is to make them either change their Page 11 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City menu, or better still, to leave the area altogether so as to ‘upgrade’ the status of the entire neighbourhood. Left to its own devices in the name of a neoliberal valorization of civic selforganization, it seems obvious that neighbourliness will not thrive except in a most limited sense of recognizing myself in a very familiar stranger, almost identical in taste, body, and disposition. A deeper sense of coexistence seems to require somewhat stronger legal, moral, and political injunctions, if not direct regulation, in order to begin to address social prejudices. That inevitably turns our attention to the constitution of authority and regulation in an urban context.

Political Order and Intelligibility in the City For recent migrants and many other communities in South Asian cities, the experience of unintelligibility is foundational. The city is never one, never perceived as a unit, often experienced as a blur that is on the other side of the window of a bus or a taxi. The deep linguistic, social, and spatial divides of the city, and the colonial and postcolonial habit of governing the poorer communities at a distance have, in the (p.34) course of the twentieth century, given rise to a range of what I, in other contexts, have called ‘urban specialists’—mainly plebeian men and women whose full-time work and competence lies in being able to connect and translate disparate cultural, social, and spatial worlds. They call themselves social workers, some are local politicians, others gangsters but most are self-employed men and women, busybodies with a reputation of knowing places and people, of having connections and the ability to divine and understand the city, its administration, and its political landscape. This knowledge and mastery of the city, or a small part of it, imbues them with a measure of what Oskar Verkaaik and I called urban charisma (Hansen and Verkaaik 2009). It also makes them nodes in what we have called ‘urban infra power’ by which we mean an underlying, often tacit, set of informal networks and connectivities that make the large urban conurbations and disparate worlds of South Asian cities actually function. Even if the functioning is slightly different than one would expect, had one only adopted a planner’s view of the urban landscape. In Mumbai, movements like the Shiv Sena—and before them elements of the Left and trade union movement—were parts of such informal networks of brokerage, connection, and facilitation, providing what at times almost amounted to a parallel administration in parts of the city, as Dipankar Gupta noted in his pioneering study of the movement in the late 1970s (Gupta 1982). This world of informal connectivities has been famously called ‘political society’ by Partha Chatterjee (2004) because it is the scene of compromises, and forms of government worked out directly between popular communities and the city authorities outside the norms of civility and formal citizenship. However, the complex realities of urban politics most often defy such a distinction. Today, ‘political society’ is the scene of intense and defining electoral politics in many Page 12 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City cities. Across India, the urban poor are the most avid voters in municipal elections, while turnouts generally are low among the better-off communities. Many of the mediators between slum dwellers and urban authorities are, in fact, local councillors and aspiring politicians, often jockeying for space, voice, and legitimacy with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and self-styled social workers of the more dubious and ruthless kind. These networks and people are the actual (p.35) nodes of order, adjudication, and intelligibility for most urban dwellers, the first point of access and the main channel through which the municipality or the police can be accessed. These are the people who stepped forward to fill the mohalla committees that were formed in Mumbai after the riots in 1992–3; they bolster and update electoral rolls; sit on liaison committees, and civic and cultural associations of all kinds. This arrangement had, for a long time, been seen as both beneficial and rational by municipalities and police departments, who had ready-made counterparts and collaborators that were able to get things done in their neighbourhoods, that could provide information and, if needed, could help enforce certain policies and orders in their communities. These multiple and fluid networks are today the very target of the more recent civic activism among middle-class communities. Here, the world of municipal electoral politics and the political structures of the popular world are seen as intrinsically corrupt. Instead, most of the middle-class activists who ironically call themselves the aam admi (the common man), prefer to deal directly with technocrats in the urban administration—people assumed to be of their own class and inclination. They work mainly to improve conditions in their own neighbourhoods, often by reactivating arcane colonial ordinances and by-laws. Historically, urban governance in India was constructed so as to empower the city commissioner with all significant powers and to reduce the influence of native elected councillors to ceremonial functions. For decades, the Indian state saw no reason to change this structure of urban quasi-authoritarianism that gave the authorities and the central government wide discretionary powers. It is indeed paradoxical, and telling, that today major donors like the World Bank as well as middle-class activists are reviving the full potentials of this bureaucratic command structure in order to impress its own vision of modernity and civic order on urban spaces and neighbourhoods (Ghertner 2011). This is a version of political order that may be technically procedural, believed to be less corrupt, more modern, maybe even ‘cosmopolitan’ in its import of state-of-theart technologies of control and legibility from elsewhere, but not civil in any meaningful sense of democratic accountability or popular mandate. These policies are built on the assumption that proper, (p.36) active urban citizenship only is available to so-called ‘good people’, or simply barey log, that is, those with houses, jobs, plots of land, bank accounts, and credit cards.

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City The rest of the city is regarded as opacity, strangeness, and murkiness, a perverted image of the nations past, de-purified by too much politics of the wrong kind and now represented as a cesspool of corruption. By way of closing, let me repeat that the sheer force of this restricted sense of the ‘civic’ at the moment in the middle classes, indicates that the discussion of what urban coexistence and neighbourliness could mean actually stopped before it even began. It also seems that without determined political regulation, the neighbour in a more meaningful sense may be destined to remain the eternal stranger in the South Asian city. References Bibliography references: Adarkar, Neera (ed.). 2011. The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life. Mumbai: Imprint One. (p.37) Anand, Nikhil. 2011. ‘Pressure: The Polytechnics of Water Supply in Mumbai’, Cultural Anthropology, 26(4): 542–63. Banerjee-Guha, Swapna (ed.). 2010. Accumulation by Dispossession: Transformative Cities in the New Global Order. London: Sage Publications. Baviskar, Amita and Raka Ray (eds). 2011. Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes. New Delhi: Routledge. Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chandavarkar, Raj. 1998. Imperial Power and Popular Politics, Class: Resistance and the State in India, 1850–1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2009. History, Culture and the Indian City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chatterjee, Partha. 2004. Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press. Datta, Ayona. 2012. The Illegal City: Space, Law and Gender in a Delhi Squatter Settlement. Farnham: Ashgate. Feldhaus, Anne and Rajendra Vora. (eds). 2005. Region, Culture and Politics in India. Delhi: Manohar. Finkelstein, Maura. 2012. ‘Industrial Debris, Dwellings and Anachronistic Worlds in Contemporary Mumbai’, PhD dissertation. Stanford: Department of Anthropology, Stanford University. Page 14 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City Frøystad, Kathinka. 2006. Blended Boundaries: Caste, Class and the Changing Face of Hinduness. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gandhi, Ajay. 2011. ‘Crowds, Congestion, Conviviality: The Enduring Life in the Old City, in Isabelle Clark-Deces (ed.), A Companion to the Anthropology of India. London: Blackwell, pp. 202–22. Gellner, David (ed.). 2009. Ethnic Activism and Civil Society in South Asia. New Delhi and London: Sage Publications. Ghassem-Fachandi, Parvis. 2012. Pogrom in Gujarat. Hindu Nationalism and Anti-Muslim Violence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ghertner, Asher. 2011. ‘Rule by Aesthetics: World-class City Making in Delhi’, in Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong (eds), Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 279–306. Gupta, Dipankar. 1982. Nativism in a Metropolis: Shiv Sena in Bombay. Delhi: Manohar. Hansen, Thomas, B. 2001. Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2011. ‘Secular Speech and Popular Passion. Antinomies of Indian Secularism’, in Winnifred Sullivan and Mateo Taussig (eds), (p.38) The Law and the Secular/Sacred Divide. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 261–81. Hansen, T.B. and Oskar Verkaaik. 2009. ‘Urban Charisma: On Everyday Mythologies in the City’, Critique of Anthropology, 29(1, March): 5–26. Harvey, David. 2005. The New Imperialism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2006. ‘The Right to the City’, New Left Review, 53(September–October): 23–40. Hull, Matthew. 2011. ‘Communities of Place, Not Kind: American Technologies of Neighborhood in Postcolonial Delhi’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 53(4, October): 757–90. Kaur, Raminder. 2003. Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduism: Public Uses of Religion in Western India. Delhi: Permanent Black. Mehta, Deepak and Roma Chatterji. 2007. Living with Violence: An Anthropology of Events and Everyday Life. New Delhi: Routledge. Mitchell, Clyde. 1956. The Kalela Dance: Aspects of Social Relationships among Urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Page 15 of 17

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City Nuttall, Sarah and Achille Mbembe (eds). 2008. Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis. Durham: Duke University Press. Palshikar, Shreeyash. 2007. ‘Breaking Bombay, Making Maharashtra: Media, Identity Politics and State Formation in Modern India’, PhD dissertation. Chicago: University of Chicago. Phadke, Y.D. 1979. Politics and Language. Delhi: Himalaya Books. Prakash, Gyan (ed.). 2010. Noir Urbanism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rao, Nikhil. 2007. ‘House but No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay 1898– 1948’, PhD dissertation. Chicago: Department of History, University of Chicago. ———. 2013. House But No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay’s Suburbs 1898–1964. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sachar, Rajindar. 2006. Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community in India. The Prime Minister’s High-level Committee. New Delhi: Government of India. Sennett, Richard. 1990. The Conscience and the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Simmel, Georg. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. and trans. Kurt Wolf. New York: Free Press. Smith, Neil. 1996. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London: Routledge. (p.39) van Wersch, Hubert. 1992. The Bombay Textile Strike 1982–3. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Vatuk, Sylvia. 1973. Kinship and Urbanization: White Collar Migration in North India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Notes:

(1) . In the recent electoral campaigns for the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation, the press reported a large number of new independent and welleducated ‘citizen candidates’, several with ‘cosmopolitan background’. Many observers predicted that this would reverse the long-standing apathy in the middle class with regard to municipal elections. Some observers predicted a substantial growth in the turn put to become well above the modest 40 per cent in recent elections (DNA, Mumbai edition, 12 January 2012).

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Strangers, Neighbours, and Political Order in The South Asian City (2) . I have recently argued that when it comes to the secular as an everyday ethos, the most critical distinctions are between those who are educated (supposed to have a capacity for self-restraint) and those who are not. This maps historically on to a spurious but nonetheless effective distinction between two realms of public action and sentiment—one ‘political’ and oriented towards the nation and the more abstract common good, another ‘cultural’ and oriented towards one’s community and its more narrow but perfectly ‘natural’ prejudices (Hansen 2011). (3) . This issue was covered in some detail by the magazine Tehelka in 2007 and by various newspapers. Film-maker Paromita Vohra provides a humorous and ironic portrait in her film Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City (2006). For an incisive and critical exploration of the nexus between vegetarianism and intolerance in Gujarat, see Ghassem-Fachandi (2012).

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? Jonathan Parry

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords Based on his long drawn fieldwork, Parry shows how in the world of the regular company employees of the public sector Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) class have largely displaced caste as the dominant axis of stratification and determinant of life chances. The distinction between manual and non-manual labour is an ideologically less salient marker of class difference than the distinction between formal sector naukri and informal sector kaam. The aristocracy of BSP labour has increasingly become a (not unproblematically) self-reproducing stratum that should now be regarded as middle class. They increasingly have typically middle class lifestyles and consumption patterns as well as middle class values and orientations. To describe them as being in the same ‘class situation’ as those they refer to as ‘labour class’ would in their view of themselves be a travesty, and in that they are largely right. This has had profound consequences for the extension of citizenship rights to the overwhelming majority of the working population. Keywords:   Bhilai Steel Plant, middle class, labour class, clerks, affluence, proletarian vanguard, embourgeoisement

We (at least we of a certain age) are used to thinking of steelworkers and miners as the vanguard of the proletariat, though arguably those on whom this essay focuses are better called ‘middle class’. These are regular company employees of the public sector Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) and its mines, and are indisputably a local ‘aristocracy of labour’. But are they now so ‘aristocratic’ that it makes little sense to see them as proletarians with significant interests in common with the Page 1 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? unorganized sector workforce, those they label the ‘labour class’? Is the gap between them a gulf? What might that imply for citizenship rights? Citizenship and social stratification are themes on which Dipankar Gupta has written with distinction. This essay is offered in his honour.1 For Britain, the ‘embourgeoisement thesis’ was scrutinized, and found wanting by a number of sociologists (in particular, Goldthorpe and Lockwood 1963; and Goldthorpe et al. 1969) who showed that the convergence between ‘the affluent worker’ and the middle class was exaggerated by ignoring fringe benefits, promotion prospects, and differing degrees of financial security; that there was little evidence that such workers shared the values and behavioural standards of the middle class, or that they now interacted with them on equal terms. Even if the case for convergence in the sphere of consumption may look plausible, it does not when we focus on production. Though, for France, Mallet (1975 [1963]) discerned in production a new community of interests between workers in the most technologically advanced industries, and their supervisors and line managers, he saw in this the promise of a radical challenge to the way in which capitalist industry is organized rather than evidence of ‘embourgeoisement’.2 For India, the issues this literature raised have been little examined in the light of ethnographic evidence, though—even if these writers make little reference to it—there are a handful of notable exceptions like Holmström (1976, 1984) and Harriss (1986) who cover a good (p.41) deal of the same ground. In general terms, Béteille has also recently discussed the distinction between the most privileged segments of the blue-collar labour force and the middle classes. He has drawn attention to its particular stubbornness in the domain of work where manual and non-manual occupations are characterized by marked differences in esteem—partly because this division has historically been aligned with that between the unlettered and lettered. Work that was elsewhere regarded as merely degrading was in India seen as defiling (Béteille 2007a). Similarly, Rudra (1989), Bardhan (1989), and Sridharan (2011) identify the manual/non-manual distinction as a crucial cut-off point between classes. Béteille, however, acknowledges that it is not always easy to maintain (2002); that as technology makes work ‘less odious and less onerous’, and as workers get educated, it may lose much of its salience (2007a: 292, 2007b). He also concedes that there is a distinct section of industrial workers in the organised sector, the so-called labour aristocracy, whose incomes, life-styles and aspirations match those of the middle class, and whose offspring are entering that class in increasing numbers. In the last sixty years the boundaries between the small upper rank of the working class and the lower ranks of the middle class have become blurred, although they have not disappeared. (Béteille 2007c: 44; emphasis added)

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? As that has happened, however, the gap between this elite stratum of the manual labour force and the vast mass of workers in the informal sector has widened, with the result that the former ‘have more in common with the middle class than they have with other segments of the same class’ (2007a: 301; emphasis added). At variance with the findings of Goldthorpe and his collaborators on Britain, I suggest that in economic terms, and in terms of their aspirations for occupational mobility and situation at work, there are good grounds for regarding BSP workers as middle class. That is also increasingly true in terms of lifestyles and values, and I see no sharp distinction between their identities in the spheres of consumption and production. Further, ‘middle class’ is also how the majority think of themselves and are thought of by others. They are far from becoming Mallet’s radical working class vanguard. Though neither author is prepared to take them at their word, ‘middle class’ too is how the south Indian organized sector factory (p.42) workers studied by Holmström (1976: 137) regarded themselves, as did the government peons and police constables whom Sridharan (2011: 49) cites. Holmström’s Bangalore research was completed more than 20 years before my own in Bhilai had begun, and it could be the difference in time and place (or perhaps between the industries studied) that explains our difference. Though organized and unorganized sector workers were differentiated by income and by security, what struck Holmström was the lack of any clear distinction in lifestyles and attitudes, or any notion that their interests might be opposed. What strikes me is how marked the sense of distinction often is; how it is the line between the lifestyles and attitudes of BSP workers on the one hand, and of clerks, teachers, line managers, lower-level bureaucrats, and small business people on the other, that is often more difficult to draw, and how some uneasily perceive that their interests are not the same as those of unorganized sector labour. In trying to signal a clear direction of travel, I recognize the danger of overstating my case. Various caveats will be required. Even the original proponents of the thesis regarded embourgeoisement as an incipient trend (Goldthorpe et al. 1969: 30). Some BSP workers display more interest in the next drink than in a middle-class lifestyle and the education of their children. We are dealing, moreover, with a dynamic process. With the progressive eclipse of the public sector, it is possible to imagine that the trend may be slowed, halted, or even reversed. That raises the issue of class reproduction. Even those BSP households that appear to have merged most seamlessly with the middle classes are often unable to slot their sons into middle-class occupations (though that may also be true of white-collar workers). From some perspectives, then, the picture is muddier than the two previous paragraphs might suggest and Béteille’s cautiously equivocal characterization of it seems appropriate, even if I query what seems to be his final conclusion that—despite all the other evidence

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? —this kind of elite workforce ultimately belongs in ‘the same class’ as other manual workers. To put it more explicitly, what I question is the stress that he and others place on the manual/non-manual divide as the critical marker of class difference. Though it is true that Indian society has taken a particularly dim view of work that dirties the hands, my Bhilai (p.43) experience suggests that when the rewards are sufficient, this generalized disdain for manual labour may prove less deeply ingrained and cultural attitudes to work more malleable than we often assume. When Pocock started research in Gujarat in the early 1950s, he found Patidars ‘obsessed’ with white-collar employment for their sons; but by the time he went back in the mid-1960s they were pushing them into technical jobs in new industry. ‘I could not have thought it possible in 1952,’ he reports, ‘that the sons of men whom I knew would be encouraged to work manually in all those trades traditionally associated with low castes like those of ironsmith, mason, potter and carpenter’ (1968: 282). Many BSP workers perform dirty and physically demanding tasks, but that does not seem to much compromise their sense of self-worth or the esteem in which they are locally held. In terms of local understandings, a distinction that is far more heavily freighted than that between manual and non-manual work is between naukri (‘service’) and kaam (‘work’). Naukri is a permanent and regular job that generally attracts a monthly salary and is protected by legal guarantees against arbitrary termination. That is to say, it is employment in the organized sector. But pakki naukri—the ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’ version of it—is sarkari naukri (government employment), by comparison with which even a relatively secure and well-paying regular job with a private sector firm is kachchi (‘incomplete’ and ‘imperfect’). Old timers ruefully reflect on how the relative valuation encapsulated in the old saw, uttam kheti, madhyam vyavsay, nich naukri (‘highest agriculture, business middling, lowest naukri’) is now reversed. Long gone are the days when ‘service’ was tainted (at least in its ‘perfect’ form) by association with the servility of the ‘servant’ (naukar)—as it still was for Pocock’s Gujarati informants in East Africa in the 1950s (Pocock 1957). Naukri confers ijjat (‘honour’ or ‘respect’), whereas —for women especially—other kinds of employment outside the home detract from it. It raises the status of the family. It was because she was the daughter of a naukri-wala, Budhvantin3 explained, that her mother-in-law treated her with such kindness and consideration when, after their elopement, Bukhau eventually brought her back to his impoverished village home a few miles from Bhilai. Though, for the most part unrealistically, in the slum bastis (‘neighbourhoods’) on the periphery of the town, young (p.44) boys still learning their letters imagine themselves with a government job and their teenage sisters dream of a suitor who has one. Young men who have achieved the requisite educational qualifications, and have the means to do so, spend years in ‘time pass’ until their hopes of such an appointment are finally extinguished on reaching the age limit (Jeffrey 2010). To promote their prospects, parents often mortgage or sell fields Page 4 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? to pay private school fees or bribes to a middleman (dalal) who claims to be able to fix one. The supply of sarkari naukri is an index of vikas (of ‘progress’ or ‘development’), which is why many of my informants were hopeful when Chhattisgarh became a separate state. The government bureaucracy would expand. When contrasted with naukri, kaam—otherwise ‘work’ in general—signifies untenured casual employment. It generally implies a daily wage and always insecurity. It is of small account. Naukri is ‘a proper job’ and those who only have kaam are often described as berozgaar (‘unemployed’), even though they actually toil 12 hours a day on a construction site. The naukri/kaam distinction cuts across conventional class categories. Directly employed industrial workers in the public sector—like university professors, district collectors, and often their peons—have naukri, and when it comes to arranging a marriage, raising a loan or simply refusing to be intimidated by one’s boss, that is an asset of incalculable value. The social distance between the babu or the teacher and the worker or the peon with naukri, and the differential life chances of their children are, in general, less great than between workers in ‘service’ and labourers who ‘work’. At the least, the distinction marks a major division within ‘the working class’; though I believe that it is sharper and more socially salient than that between manual and non-manual labour and is in important respects, a more meaningful marker of class boundaries.4 The crux is the security that sarkari naukri provides, which makes it—as I will shortly suggest—a kind of quasi property right. If vulnerability to unemployment is, as has often been claimed (Lockwood 1958: 55), the hallmark of the proletarian condition and what most critically distinguishes the working from the middle class,5 most Indian public sector workers have ‘traditionally’ lived at some distance from it. From that perspective, Sridharan’s peons and policemen who say (p.45) that they are ‘middle class’ are talking better sociological sense about their objective situation than the sociologists. Organized sector employees are (at least theoretically) the beneficiaries of employment laws governing enforceable minimum wages, hours, and conditions of work, job security, safety, union recognition, and the like. Unorganized sector labour is unprotected. These naukri-wale, however, accounted for only 7 to 8 percent of the total workforce throughout the years between 1973 and 2000 (Sridharan 2011). Most work in state enterprises; and though the numbers of these are declining (Herring and Agarwala 2006), their political leverage remains significant. The Nehruvian planners supposed that they would provide a beacon in terms of pay and conditions for the industrial working class as a whole; the communists that they would carry the torch of history. Both were deluded. Others were left behind and the ‘vanguard’ were soon to become a complacently cocooned enclave of labour inhabiting a ‘citadel’ of state-

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? sponsored privilege, progressively protected against incursions by workers from outside. True, even in the original homelands of class theory many commentators have been more impressed by divisions within ‘the working class’ than by its unity. In India, however, it has above all been divided by state sponsorship of an ‘organized sector’, which has created a labour force with interests that are separate from those of unorganized sector workers; and with aspirations, lifestyles, and material means that are also distinct. The configuration invites comparison with many other parts of the postcolonial world; for example, with the pockets of privileged labour that the British created in the Mombasa docks (Cooper 1992) and in the Copperbelt mines [even if we know from Ferguson’s work (1999) how drastically the position of the latter was subsequently subverted]. Again, the divisions within China’s industrial workforce—between those with permanent rights of urban residence and those without, and between those employed in large state enterprises, in municipally managed industries and in factories backed by foreign finance (Pun 2005; Walder 1986)—are a direct creation of the state, and possibly support the view that the notion of a unitary ‘working class’ is as analytically obfuscating as it is politically unrealistic. In the Indian case, however, what is striking is that even non-Marxist writers—like Holmström (1984)—have (p.46) been reluctant to dispense with it, and have stressed the kinship and neighbourhood ties that unite organized and unorganized sector workers (Harriss 1986); have denied that they consider themselves different, and discounted the possibility that the former are privileged at the latter’s expense. My data put that in question. It is not only on account of its vision of society as progressively polarized between bourgeois and proletarians that the Marxian framework seems problematic in the present case. On the Indian public sector, in which many factories were allowed to run at a loss for decades, the concepts of surplus value and exploitation appear to provide little purchase. More importantly, a dichotomous model based on ownership of the means of production seems too blunt an instrument. Not only does it notoriously obliterate the distinction between workers and middle-class salary earners, but—as is equally relevant here—that between different kinds of manual workers. Nevertheless, property does have an important place in the situation I describe. No more than a minority of BSP workers are fully proletarianized. Most have peasant holdings, and many have acquired capital in the form of trucks, taxis, rental property, or the inventories of the shops they run as moonlighting enterprises—capital that is often key to the successful reproduction to their class privilege. All have quasi property rights in their jobs. For present purposes, Weber’s concept of class has the advantages of allowing for distinctions between those separated from the means of production; of not postulating the inevitable development of class consciousness or conflict, and of Page 6 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? focusing on life chances, which Weber saw as given not only by the ownership of property but also by the possession of marketable skills and attributes. A social class consists in ‘the plurality of class statuses between which an interchange of individuals on a personal basis or in the course of generations is readily possible and easily observable’ (Weber 1947: 424). As Lockwood (1958) deploys Weber, the ‘class situation’ of a group consists of its market situation (including the source and size of the purse, degree of job security, and chances of upward occupational mobility), its work situation (the working relationships of its members), and its status situation (its position in the hierarchy of prestige). Together, these three elements are the principal determinants of class consciousness. (p.47) I shall follow that scheme—though with reservations [which Lockwood clearly shares (1958: 82–3)] about speaking of the ‘market situation’ of workers in a context like this. This is, first, because access to jobs depends more on nepotism, bribery, and serendipity, than on the possession of marketable skills. By comparison with British working class traditions, for BSP workers skill is not a source of much pride or prestige, or a significant marker of distinction and, in terms of any measurable technical competence at the time of recruitment, those selected are generally indistinguishable from the hundreds of applicants who are not. Second, it is because the vast majority of workers never go back on the market once they have landed a regular job in the steel plant. The skills and experience they acquire are not readily transferable, no better jobs are locally available, and the ones they have are for life. They are treated as a kind of property. I know one family well in which the father endlessly rues the day that he sold his BSP post to a Telugu compatriot (with the same common surname) because he had what then seemed like better prospects. When land was requisitioned for the plant, each dispossessed peasant household was issued with a certificate that guaranteed one of their members a job in it. These certificates rapidly became a marketable commodity, with the result that I also know several BSP workers who have spent a whole career working under the name of the vendor. Though always resisted by senior management and the Steel Ministry, one persistent union demand has been that BSP jobs should be heritable, and that on a worker’s retirement one of his dependents should be taken on by right. Though in now more rigidly restricted circumstances there is still some recruitment of this kind, in the recent past far more liberal provision was made for the ‘compassionate appointment’ of a member of the family of a worker who died or was disabled during his period of service. It was not difficult for a father to secure a job for his son by getting himself made ‘medically unfit’. In some sarkari naukri, it is possible to in effect turn one’s post into a source of rental income. Mangalu and Dilip both have regular positions as ‘sweepers’ with the municipality. Mangalu is elderly and infirm and—at the suggestion of the sahib log (the ‘sirs’), his family reports—his duties are actually performed by his nephew for half his salary (while he Page 7 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? continues to (p.48) collect the rest). For a consideration of one-third of his pay, Dilip has a ‘setting’ with his supervisor who marks his daily attendance though he stays at home for weeks at a stretch. A BSP worker has to be absent from duty with true dedication, or to get persistently caught cheating on benefits and allowances, or pilfering plant property, to be in any danger of losing his job. The proviso, however, is that he should not arouse suspicion of being a political ‘agitator’ (which, in practice, means a far Left activist). BSP is an integrated plant and many tens of millions of rupees of damage to capital infrastructure can be caused by unscheduled shutdowns. Management has ways of weeding out ‘dangerous elements’, and most BSP workers are frightened to associate with such people. Naukri comes at a political price. That apart, however, it provides a degree of security that constitutes ‘a partial alternative to ownership’ (Lockwood 1958: 240), and provides a high degree of protection against the vagaries of the labour market and against vulnerability to unemployment. That must have weighed with Weber (1947: 427) when he included ‘workers with exceptional monopolistic assets or positions’ in the middle classes. A proper discussion of the relationship between caste and class is not possible here; but a couple of rather sweeping claims, more fully substantiated elsewhere, are necessary background to my picture. By comparison with the ‘traditional’ system, the morphology of caste has significantly mutated (Parry 1999b, 2001). In terms of lifestyle, life chances, and the values most people now share more in common with people of other castes from the same class or ‘class fraction’ as themselves than they share with caste fellows of different classes or ‘class fractions’. Though it is possible to argue about the degree to which, 100 years ago, caste constituted a ‘hegemonic’ or ‘totalizing’ framework that determined life chances and decisively shaped other aspects of social life, it is certainly less than it was. Other identity choices are more readily available and in many contexts have greater significance than caste (Parry 2007). In contemporary Bhilai, the most important of these is class, which—irrespective of how one is placed in the ‘caste’ hierarchy—is the major determinant of one’s children’s future (Parry 2005). Some sociologists of the West have (perhaps prematurely) announced ‘the death of class’, which they see as ‘an increasingly outmoded concept’ (Clark and Lipset 1996: 40); while (p.49) others suggest that it has merely ceased to be the dominant stratification pattern (Waters 1996). Though it is true that (for reasons to do with the way in which labour is recruited and disciplined) caste has a good deal more salience for workers in the private sector industry than in BSP (Parry 1999a, 1999b), in Bhilai it is broadly the case that—in the majority of everyday interactions—it is caste that has faded and class that has moved centre stage.6 In significant measure, I would argue, that is a product of the kind of place it is—a new company town built on a green field site into which workers from all corners of the country have flooded. Bhilai was, moreover, one of Nehru’s ‘temples’ to India’s industrial modernity, a ‘beacon’ to illuminate the path that the nation must tread to ‘catch up’ with the Page 8 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? ‘developed’ world. As an ideological project, it was as much about forging a new kind of man in a new kind of society as it was about forging steel; and this project included the erasure of caste identities. A comparable eclipsing of caste is also reported by Pocock (1968)—of all authors not one to downplay its significance—for the Tata Chemical Works township of Mithapur, where management policy shared the same social engineering objectives. More generally, this shift from caste to class is consistent with Weber’s (1968) observation that while social stability favours status groups, times of technological and economic transformation favour classes.

The Ethnographic Setting The BSP was built with Soviet collaboration in the late 1950s and the early 1960s in what was then the ‘backward’ and overwhelmingly rural region of Chhattisgarh. It is one of those managed by the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), though unlike the others, BSP has since the mid-1970s been consistently in profit. Originally designed to produce 1 million tonnes of steel, its current output of over 5 million tonnes is now being expanded to a capacity of 7 million —to be achieved on current levels of manning. By the late 1980s, the plant had around 65,000 workers on its direct payroll. By January 2011 that was down to 31,500. These reductions have been achieved through natural attrition and voluntary retirement. Neither were there any forced redundancies, nor has significant labour-saving technology been introduced. Output has been maintained—and, in fact, (p.50) enhanced—by some (not to be exaggerated) tightening of disciplinary control over the regular workforce, and by the deployment of much cheaper contract labour in the least skilled, but most physically taxing, production jobs. Such labour has long been engaged on construction, maintenance, and cleaning jobs—8,000–10,000 workers per day in the mid-1990s. Today there are probably more, though they do not show up in official statistics. Relative to them, regular BSP workers remain highly privileged, not only in terms of security, but also with regard to pay, perks, and conditions. These are sufficiently generous to make them the envy of all other workers in the area. The latter include employees in the large number of smaller-scale, private sector factories for which the plant provided a magnet. Some started as BSP ancillaries, but have grown into substantial concerns employing perhaps 6,000 workers in four or five separate units. Others are minnows with workforces of 15–20. Between these poles, pay and conditions vary considerably, though both technically belong to the organized sector. Even in the biggest and best-paying of these factories, however, no more than a third of workers are company employees with enforceable legal protection relating to such matters as job security, minimum wages, and union representation. The rest are contract labour liable to summary lay-off. It is a way of evading the law; and one consequence of it is the much greater significance of caste, kinship, and regional

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? ethnicity in the private sector. The contractors hire their own (Parry 1999a, 1999b). Aside from all these are the vast downtrodden army of informal unorganized sector labourers who eke out a meagre living from work on construction sites, loading and unloading trucks, peddling rickshaws, and the like. Bhilai’s industrial workforce is, thus, divided between relatively privileged workers in its organized sector factories and informal sector labour. The former are split between public and private sector factories, and in both of these there is a crucial distinction between secure company workers and insecure contract labour. As a consequence of the vast influx of outsiders of diverse origins who sought work in Bhilai in the pioneer days, the workforce is also divided by regional ethnicity and religion, as well as by caste. Adjacent to the plant is the BSP township, and surrounding that a mass of new middle-class housing colonies and a sea of slum-like (p.51) urban sprawl, some of which swallows up old peasant villages like Girvi and Patripar, where much of my research was done. The township accommodates around two-thirds of the regular workforce. Though assigned different grades of housing, officers and workers live in the same sectors and shop in the same markets, and are sometimes close neighbours. There are no caste, religious, or regional enclaves; and it is a world in which caste counts for little in most daily interactions. Many of the neighbours will come from other regions, and one is unlikely to have much idea of their precise caste status. Whether the main breadwinner is a Coke Oven charge man or a Transport and Diesel loco driver means much more than whether he is a Koli or Kanbi. In terms of employment, however, the township is homogeneous. The vast majority of its inhabitants have BSP naukri and extremely few are informal sector workers.7 The latter are also largely absent from the new middle-class colonies in which many BSP workers have constructed houses. Others have settled in one of the less salubrious ex-villages-cum-labour colonies like Girvi and Patripar, and will certainly have informal sector workers as neighbours. But their houses—now reconstructed in concrete—stand out in grandeur from the rest; and they usually try to police the contacts their children have with the children of ‘labour-class’ households, and constantly complain of the difficulty of maintaining ‘standards’ in such a neighbourhood. While even the mothers of BSP households of Untouchable caste may try to impose restrictions, I never heard a ‘labour class’ woman of upper caste object to her children associating with theirs. Partly at my instigation, Shalini set up a small afterschool school in Patripar. Her pupils drew and sang, and listened to stories; and she helped them with letters and language. There was no charge and any child from the neighbourhood could come. It was not long, however, before she received a delegation of BSP wives. They were prepared to pay for her services if she taught their kids separately, but they did not want them to associate with Page 10 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? those who went ragpicking. To escape the ‘bad atmosphere’—the violence, drinking, foul language, and uncouth ways—of such bastis, many such families aspire to move out. When the BSP complex was constructed, land was compulsorily purchased from 96 villages—not all at once, but in tranches. Each (p.52) household that had surrendered land was entitled to claim a plant job for one of its employable males; and a few canny villagers with intelligence about the next requisitions purchased miniscule plots to secure a second. Some households ended up with two or three BSP incomes; some with none at all. This, combined with a subsequent boom in the real estate value of any land they had left, resulted in rapid economic differentiation within caste and kinship groups, and—since the main beneficiaries were seldom its landed elite—a considerable churning of the old agrarian class structure. Over time, economic differentiation has inevitably turned into social distancing. When one brother has a BSP job while the other works for daily wages, they hardly ever maintain a joint household. The fortunate one, whose post may have been obtained in recompense for their ancestral land, has moved up in the world, married off his daughter to the son of a police inspector, and is putting his own boy through college. The other is intermittently employed as a contract worker in the plant and makes ends meet by petty pilferage from it. The first worries that the courtyard they share will be raided by Vigilance, that he will be accused of theft and (since this is not the first time) might even lose his job; and —now that he has a pukka house—feels shamed by his brother’s mud-brick cottage next door. The second resents these airs and graces, and resents even more the lottery of fate and his brother’s reluctance to recompense his involuntary sacrifice. As the years pass and the generations succeed each other, tolerance declines and the relationship may irremediably sour when the BSP branch of the family makes it plain that a kinsman in need is a bloody nuisance. I first met Suraj Bai in 2004 at a building site where she worked as a labourer for Rs 37 per day. Her husband, Prakash, was a truck driver who was recently disabled in a traffic accident. They had four children. Two years later, one of her daughters was diagnosed with leukaemia, the prognosis was poor and the household had already sold their small parcel of land in the village for her treatment. Prakash’s two brothers have BSP jobs, and one of them runs a couple of trucks as a side business. In Chhattisgarh, the mother’s brother’s/sister’s child relationship has enormous ideological significance, and the uncle owes his nephews and nieces elaborate formal (p.53) respect and unconditional succour. Prakash also has three mother’s brothers who are BSP workers, and the sons of two of them are also regular employees in the plant. His mother’s sister’s husband is a BSP officer and lives in a magnificent house in one of Bhilai’s most posh suburbs (though Suraj says that ‘he hates the poor and will not even recognize us’). Although there had not previously been any decisive breach with Page 11 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? these households, not one of them came forward to help at the time their daughter’s last illness, and the only material aid they received from kin came from two of Suraj’s siblings, both contract workers. None of the BSP households was represented at her funeral. Where Holmström (1984) and Harriss (1986) stress the kinship and neighbourhood ties that unite the two types of workers, my case history material strongly suggests that ‘the axiom of kinship amity’ and the spirit of neighbourliness are, in the long run, vulnerable to the corrosive effects of class differentiation.

The ‘Market Situation’ of BSP Workers With only 1,800 production operatives in 1960, 30,000 construction labourers were employed on the BSP site. The latter were drawn from several different states and predominantly came from the bottom of rural society. When largescale retrenchment later took place, many were assimilated (pace Crook 1993: 33) into the regular workforce in response to political pressure (Parry 2003). When, moreover, the dispossessed local peasantry came forward to claim jobs, it was those from the bottom of the caste and class hierarchies who generally came first. During the 1960s, then, the boundary between organized and unorganized sector labour was relatively permeable, and as plant jobs became progressively more remunerative from the 1970s onwards, BSP provided an avenue for considerable upward mobility. Things are now different. In the interim, competition for BSP employment intensified enormously, and in it the children of workers who did not already have well-paid organized sector employment stood less and less chance. There are two ways to get such a job, my informants insist: ‘brother-nephew-ism’ (bhaibhatijavaad) and bribery (ghus dena). Few contract workers can mobilize the social capital required for the first, and even fewer the economic capital needed for the second—a sum that might supposedly exceed the household’s (p.54) income for a decade. Though I don’t doubt that the recruitment procedure is sometimes bent, much circumstantial evidence suggests that is far less often than is generally supposed (Parry 2000). But the conviction that corruption is the only way into plant employment discourages those who do not already belong to the elect from imagining that they or their children might join it. On other grounds, however, that assessment is probably realistic. The minimum qualification now required is the successful completion of 10 years’ schooling. The prospects of achieving that in the state government school system—which is what the children of such workers are mostly condemned to—are poor. In the ‘labour class’ bastis I know best, some children are never enrolled in school; a significant proportion drop out before or immediately after completing the primary level, and of those who continue into middle school and are entered for the eighth class exams less than one in five pass the exams. For their employees’ children, however, and for some fee-paying outsiders, BSP runs its own schools in which standards are significantly higher. For that reason alone, BSP fathers Page 12 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? have tended to breed BSP sons. But there is another—the inflation in qualifications required. Over the past two decades, the majority of successful recruits have piled up certificates, diplomas, and degrees in the interval—of probably 10–12 years—between lodging their papers at the employment exchange after completing their Class X exams and receiving an interview call from the plant. The significant fact about what through the 1990s was the most popular of these—an Industrial Training Institute diploma—is not that it bore any relationship to the job done in the plant, but that it required a large ‘donation’ to get on the course. So large that no worker outside the aristocracy of labour could afford it. Data collected on new recruits to the plant workforce in 1997 confirmed a marked tendency for it to become a self-reproducing stratum (Parry 1999b). Since 1997–8, recruitment has run at a low ebb—an annual average of 297 appointments over the next 13 years to worker grades. Even if a disproportionate number of these went to the sons of existing workers, it is evident that many of them have had to look for employment elsewhere and not a few fail to find jobs commensurate with their expectations—which has much to do with the alarming suicide rates (p.55) from which Bhilai has recently suffered (Parry 2012). The other side of the coin, however, is that—rather than merely reproducing their father’s occupational status—a significant sprinkling of the children of BSP workers can realistically expect to outstrip it. Most conspicuously, these are those educated in one of the English-medium schools in the company system or in one of the better private schools. Daljit is a Sikh of artisan caste and a Coke Oven worker. His daughter attends the Bhilai branch of the elite Delhi Public School (at the concessionary fees offered for children of BSP employees). She is not, she admits, an assiduous student; not doctor or engineer material, so she plans to be a chartered accountant. Kurrey is a colleague in the same work group and a local Satnami, the largest Scheduled Caste (SC) in the region. His father was illiterate, but of his three sons two are pursuing engineering degrees locally, while the youngest—who studied in one of the flagship BSP English-medium schools and played chess for the Indian youth team in Spain—is now completing a degree in the high achiever’s heaven of an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).8 Kids of his kind no longer aspire to BSP jobs. They aim to become computer wizards in California, and often do. When in 2006 the then principal of that school, himself a former pupil whose father had begun his BSP career as an ordinary worker, tracked down around 200 of his old batchmates from the Class XII cohort of 1978, it turned out that over 70 were working abroad, mostly in the US. One had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics and one, a woman, was running her own radio station and was reputed to be a dollar-billionaire. Cases of this sort are, of course, exceptional, but more modest upward mobility is characteristic of those who have enjoyed such advantages; and as the majority of students in these top-rated company schools are children of BSP workers, it is often they who have risen. It is Page 13 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? consequently not uncommon to encounter plant operatives with relatives in management. BSP wages are supplemented by substantial bonuses and allowances, and by generous perks and benefits. These include company quarters at subsidized rates, easy credit for house construction, the performance of life-cycle rituals, or the purchase of consumer durables (now including cars for senior workers), free health care for the whole family in a company hospital that is one of the best in the region, and (p.56) free schools for the children. And every two years, free travel (first class by train) for the entire household, including aged parents and dependent siblings to any Indian destination—of which currently the most fashionable one is the Andaman Islands. The monetary value of fringe benefits must add at least 50 per cent to the wage. In 2006, a newly recruited plant attendant in the lowest grade was getting a gross salary of around Rs 10,000 per month, and would have received an additional Rs 11,609 as an annual ‘bonus’ for the previous year. A senior worker near the top of the scale was drawing around Rs 20,000-plus bonus, and their line manager Rs 30,000–35,000, a gap that has continued to widen in recent years. There has since been a pay revision and workers complain they were hard done by. Nevertheless, by 2011 Daljit—aged 47 and in Grade 8 on an 11-point scale—had a gross monthly salary of Rs 36,000. The 2006 figures invite comparison with Fernandes’ (2000) report that only a little while earlier, starting salaries in Mumbai multinationals for those with an MBA from one of the elite business schools were Rs 10,000–15,000, while those with qualifications from ‘average’ institutions could expect Rs 6,000–8,000. In Bhilai, of course, the cost of living is far lower. The gap between gross salary and what the worker gets in hand is extremely variable. Income Tax and Provident Fund contributions are deducted at source. Against the latter, the worker can take loans, which he is expected to pay off out of his salary. With no repayments to make, his take-home pay will probably amount to 70–80 per cent of his gross earnings. But at some stage most workers borrow and some get deeply into debt. In that case, their net pay may be just a small fraction of their theoretical salary. At the extreme, Bholenath’s payslip for August 2006 showed 17 days attendance, a gross salary of Rs 14,484, deductions of Rs 14,474, and net pay of Rs 10. For that he saw no point in going to work at all, and his wife appealed to BSP’s Family and Counselling Service in despair. More than 70 per cent of the deductions were for loan repayments and the premiums on life insurance policies that he had been cajoled into buying by fellow workers, who double as insurance salesmen. Most of these were now valueless as he had failed to keep up regular payments. In addition, he was in debt to moneylenders outside the plant to the (p.57) tune of Rs 1.5 lakhs, and his creditors had possession of his paybook and ATM card. Or take K.S. Rao, who had been drunk throughout April and worked on only two days, for which he Page 14 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? received a gross salary of Rs 1,416, which after deductions yielded an income of Rs 180. Those who have repaid their loans will retire with a substantial ‘final settlement’ from their Provident Funds. In 1993–4, a worker who had completed, say, 30 years service would have received Rs 2–3 lakhs, which then seemed munificent (even though it would soon disappear if he had still had dowries to provide for two daughters). By 2005–6, such a worker would probably come away with Rs 10–14 lakhs—enough to buy a plot and construct a respectable house in a new middle-class colony, and still have funds to invest in a son’s small business. By 2011, several workers I know had recently retired with payouts of Rs 25–30 lakhs. Sums like that would have seemed beyond the dreams of avarice 20 years back. Today they look less spectacular beside the even more dramatic inflation of property prices that has recently occurred. But it is, of course, those who were superannuated some time back who now feel impoverished, and that is especially so of the many who placed their money on deposit with the bank and have been living on interest. The rates have plummeted. Locating BSP workers within the income categories employed by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER)—which has published the most authoritative large-scale survey material that exists—is not straightforward.9 The figures I have provided relate only to the salary of the individual worker, which is often supplemented by some ‘side business’ and by incomes earned by other household members. NCAER data classify households according to their reported income from all sources. They are based on ‘perceived monetary income’ (Bery and Shukla 2003), which is acknowledged to be ‘invariably understated’, and it is uncertain whether respondents were estimating their gross or net receipts (though the second is more likely).10 Comparison is nonetheless illuminating. In terms of the five NCAER income bands (‘low’, ‘lower middle’, ‘middle’, ‘upper middle’, and ‘high’), the gross salary of a BSP worker near the top of the scale in 2006 would have placed his household in the highest category (those with annual incomes in excess of Rs 1.4 lakhs). A worker at the bottom would have belonged to the ‘upper (p.58) middle’ income group (those who got Rs 105,001–140,000). If we focus on net income instead, and assume that is 70 per cent of gross (which seems fair since those who get less have already taken the money as loans), the better paid workers are still ‘high’ earners even if the lowest paid are now merely ‘middle’ (those in the range between Rs 70,001 and Rs 105,000). That means that the households of the former belong in the most affluent 8 per cent of households in the country, and those of all BSP workers in the top 26 per cent. Given that this is now an ageing workforce in which probably more than half have crossed 45,11 a majority must be nearer the top of the scale than the bottom. Though class is not simply ‘the size of the purse’, it seems clear that in terms of income BSP workers comfortably qualify as ‘middle class’.

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? What these calculations do not take into account, moreover, is that some workers make an income ‘on top’ from various scams and rackets associated with plant property, and a more significant number do so from some moonlighting business to which they devote as much time as they do to their job in the plant. These range from running a buffalo herd, a shop, a taxi or truck, to a computer-training centre, property dealing, or money lending. Over the past 10 years, Daljit has tried his hand at pyramid marketing and gold trading, and is currently a commission agent for a Raipur-based stockbroker. Never in the plant without two mobile phones to keep abreast of his business, his colleague Ambrose stages son et lumière shows and runs a catering firm from which he must make at least as much as he does from his BSP job. Among the members of their work group (with a strength of about 200), I estimate that around one-third have developed a ‘side business’,12 even if the income that some of them generate is probably no more than pin money. As all this suggests, few have qualms about private property or the profit motive. Such enterprises often employ surplus family labour and, sometimes, workers from informal sector households, whose womenfolk may also work in BSP homes as part-time domestics. Out of their earnings, plant workers who originally came as long distance migrants have frequently added to their ancestral holding back home, and some have bought fields in the vicinity of Bhilai. They almost certainly employ agricultural labour. Even if organized and unorganized sector (p.59) labour may share kinship and neighbourhood ties, it is also the case that the relationship may be one of employer and employee. Loan repayments certainly reduce the gap between the cash-in-hand income received by BSP workers and those with informal sector jobs. Plainly, however, this ‘levelling’ is a consequence of the ability of the former to advance gratification. They have already purchased the fridge or drunk the whisky. In reality, it’s not levelling at all. A more serious case for that is evidence that the disparity between household incomes is narrower than that between individual earners (Holmström 1984: 10, 268f). This is, first, because organized sector workers are more likely to take in extraneous kin who come to town to complete their education or search for a job and, therefore, tend to live in larger households with more dependent members, which may include informal sector workers. Since their womenfolk are seldom employed, it is, second, because such households are less likely to have more than one income. Though my survey data from Girvi and Patripar do show that the households of BSP workers tend to be larger (by just over two members on average), I am not persuaded that this is evidence of significant redistribution or levelling. The issue merits more detailed consideration than I can give it here, but some brief observations are required. By now, hardly any of those who came as long distance migrants in the early years of the plant continue to send remittances back to their villages of origin, while many informal sector workers who cannot Page 16 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? afford to support extra dependents in town are making significant contributions to their subsistence at home. Larger urban households cannot, therefore, be taken as an index of proportionately more redistribution in favour of poorer kin. Nor do BSP households commonly include daily-wage workers (though it is true that many support unemployed sons who just roam). It is, in fact, rather more likely that a BSP worker will live jointly with a BSP father or brother—with the result that the differential between household incomes is even more dramatic than that between individual earnings. Even if, furthermore, his household may have a couple of extra mouths to feed, his pay packet will be perhaps 10 times fatter than that of the average informal sector labourer; and even if he may provide a temporary home for young rural kin, many (p.60) of them suffer the common fate of the ‘poor relation’ and are treated as unpaid domestic drudges. Though some workers may earn as much as some in the middle class, in general what is stressed is their greater liability to unemployment. As I have already emphasized, however, BSP jobs are remarkably secure. In 1997, just over 11 per cent of the roughly 3,000 workers in the Coke Ovens had been absent from duty for 50 or more working days in the year, and just over 7 per cent for 100 or more. Of the latter, it was only against those who had a similar record in previous years that the protracted termination proceedings were likely to be started. It is tighter today, but not greatly so. Not only secure, the workforce is also remarkably stable. Extremely few workers leave for other employment. Even in the early days, BSP recruited as workers a leavening of matriculates and graduates who were attracted by the security of sarkari naukri and hoped to climb into management. By today’s standards, their ascent could be meteoric. For the vast majority of poorly schooled workers, however, promotion was slow. It was ‘vacancy-based’ and a candidate was only promoted into a superior grade when a position requiring the skills it demanded became vacant. Today, perhaps 5 per cent of recruits to worker posts are graduate engineers, who are appointed at Grade 6 and can expect to become a manager within 15 years of joining. Those with science degrees or Industrial Training Institute diplomas generally start at Grade 3. Given the quasi-automatic ‘cluster system’ of promotion now in force, which was agreed upon with the unions in the early 1990s in exchange for ‘multi-skilling’, they will be at least eligible for promotion to executive grade before they retire. The prospects of those who join at the very bottom of the ladder are negligible. My best estimate is that about 10–12 per cent of all workers will be officers one day. For Backward Class candidates, it is a faster track. What is striking, however, is that a great many more aspire to enter management than will ever succeed and that this is a source of widespread resentment. To put the ‘market situation’ of BSP workers in perspective, and keeping in mind the 2006 minimum wage of Rs 10,000 for a new recruit on the lowest grade, one friend who was a junior clerk in the railways was, at that time, getting a gross Page 17 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? monthly salary of Rs 5,750; (p.61) another who worked in the Class 3 post of ‘surveyor’ for the municipality was receiving Rs 7,200 after 20 years service, and a third who is the principal of a government middle school was earning just a little less than our neophyte BSP worker. All these have regular sarkari naukri; and by contrast Gopal—who also works for the municipality as an ‘office assistant’ but is on the Non-Muster Roll (and, therefore, not permanent)—was paid a mere Rs 2,600. None of them enjoyed anything like such generous fringe benefits, and Gopal got nothing. In private sector industry, a permanent worker in one of the biggest and best-paying engineering companies would have received Rs 4,000–5,000 for an eight-hour shift (throughout which he would, unlike his BSP counterpart, have been required to work continuously). But business was booming and six days a week he would put in a further four hours’ compulsory overtime that doubled his pay. With a schedule like that, there was no chance of moonlighting, the company would advance him only very limited credit, the benefits and bonuses were far less valuable, and he had no prospect of ever becoming a manager. Compared with a contract or a supply worker in the same company, however, or even a regular one in a smaller concern, he was privileged and his job was fairly secure. At the bottom of the heap, a coolie who had the unusual good fortune to be employed throughout the month would earn about Rs 1,560; a reja (his female counterpart) about Rs 1,300.

The ‘Work Situation’ of BSP Workers When I first spent time on the BSP shop floor in the mid-1990s, time keeping and labour discipline were remarkably relaxed.13 In ‘hard shops’ like the Coke Ovens, it is true, some jobs are extremely tough and often quite dangerous, and the physical conditions are sometimes appalling. But workers worked only in fairly short bursts, and those with the most taxing tasks—like the oven doormen who, in air temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius and in billowing acrid fumes, clean up spillages and scrape burning cinders off the 10-metre doors of the open ovens—were not required to do more than four hours in a shift. Many workers with much more tolerable jobs worked a great deal less. The task completed, they would wander, drink tea, play pasa (dice) or tash (cards), socialize with (p. 62) mates or read the newspaper. Some would leave after a couple of hours; some would just appear to sign in at the start of their shift and then go home, and some wouldn’t come at all. If the shift was short-handed, as might happen on nights or at festival times when absenteeism rockets, the shift-in-charge would have to persuade some key operatives to work beyond customary norms. An oven doorman who was asked to perform his duties throughout the eight hours, would be given two ‘see offs’—an unofficial arrangement by which he would be marked present on two subsequent shifts when in fact he was not. When manning was tight, the officer might—without demeaning himself—lend a hand, taking over the controls of the pushing car while the tired operator took a tea break. Partly because of the leverage of shop floor union leaders at that time and partly because of the weight of the company rule book, the power of Page 18 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? ordinary line managers was severely circumscribed, and the whole operation basically ran on a tacit agreement that the workers would work when it was necessary, as long as middle management would turn a blind eye to them going home when it was not. Since manning levels were then very generous, there was usually plenty of slack and workers organized their own duty rosters and decided who would work when. They had, in short, the kind of autonomy and discretion about time keeping that we normally associate with paradigmatically middle-class occupations like university teaching. By the time I was next in the Coke Ovens in 2006, there had been major reductions in its permanent workforce and I heard much grumbling about how strict the regime had become. In the previous year, senior management had introduced a requirement that workers sign out at the end of their shift as well as in at the beginning—an attempt to get them to stay throughout it. Output slumped dramatically. Rollers got jammed, fuses blew, and workers rapidly discovered how the new system could eat up production time. It was soon abandoned. It was, however, now rather more difficult for workers to come and go as they chose; persistent absenteeism was more likely to be sanctioned, and the authority of line managers had been somewhat enhanced—largely because the union had imploded as a result factional in-fighting and has remained suspended ever since (Parry 2009). The impact of these changes should not, however, be overestimated and the working (p.63) day was still punctuated by long periods of leisure. Though there was certainly more grousing about management ‘autocracy’ than before, I would hesitate to interpret this as a symptom of a sharper ‘class consciousness’. For obvious reasons, BSP workers have some difficulty in identifying a clear class antagonist, and most of the time most of them do not cast management in that role. More importantly, what was new was that, in apparent defiance of labour legislation that requires workers who perform tasks for which there is ‘a permanent and perennial need’ to be regular company employees,14 BSP was putting out an increasing number of its unskilled and most gruelling production jobs to contractors. As we have seen, the oven doorman’s job was regarded as so tough that no BSP worker was normally expected to do it for more than four hours in a shift. For that, the contract worker was credited with one hazri (attendance), for which he was paid Rs 55–60, that is, roughly one-seventh of the basic rate that the BSP worker would get for doing exactly the same job, but without any of the same allowances and benefits, or any entitlement to holiday or sick pay. In reality, however, the contractors required workers to do two hazris per shift—that is, to work the full eight hours. Most of them come from outlying villages and cycle an hour or so each way to the plant. Not a few have another after-hours job. Some were doing two shifts back-to-back, working continuously for 16 hours. For four times the BSP employee’s maximum workload, they stood to earn a little over half his salary, and there was a high probability that the contractor would not actually pay them on time. It is not just Page 19 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? low pay and job insecurity with which the general run of unorganized sector workers must contend, but also insecurity about when, and even whether, they will get paid at all. In their world, insecurity really is the hallmark of the proletarian condition. In terms of caste, religion, and regional ethnicity, BSP workgroups are extremely heterogeneous. They are also remarkably stable, and strong bonds of solidarity develop within them. Their members have plenty of time to socialize; they cover for each other when unofficially absent; in a dangerous working environment they put their lives in each other’s hands, and they regularly socialize outside the plant. Regardless of caste, during their shift they eat together, sharing (p. 64) preparations brought from home. With contract labourers, however, they neither fraternize nor eat. When I was first in the Coke Ovens, after a tea-break everybody would wash their own glass, even an officer if he joined the group. Nobody was expected to handle anybody else’s saliva-polluted utensils. By 2006, it was usual to get contract workers to make the tea and wash the glasses, as well as perform other personal services—Dalit workers, no less than others, unselfconsciously barking peremptory orders at contract labourers who were often their caste superiors. With increasing reliance on contract workers, more and more of the BSP workforce is spending increasing amounts of time overseeing their labour. In construction, maintenance, and now, in production, it is tending to become a supervisory staff. Even for those to whom this does not apply (or apply yet), contract labour mitigates the unpleasantness of manual labour. It is not new technology that makes it less onerous and odious, but the fact that the most onerous and odious bits of it are hived off to others. Though many BSP workers may sympathize with the conditions of contract labour, they do not see them as natural allies. This is not only because of differences in ‘culture’ and lifestyle, or because they fear that they might put their naukri in jeopardy by supporting their cause, but also because at least some sense their interests are different, perhaps even opposed. With the liberalization of the Indian economy, and the pressure on BSP to compete in a globalized market for steel, it is only so long as many of the most back-breaking tasks are given on contract to workers whose labour is dirt cheap that regular jobs in the plant are likely to remain so remunerative, and the pace of work so relaxed.

The ‘Status Situation’ of BSP Workers Between BSP white- and blue-collar workers the gap in status has narrowed considerably since the early years of the plant. No doubt reinforced by the Soviet legacy, management rhetoric has always stressed the dignity of manual labour, and exemplary ‘Stakhanovite’ workers have regularly won national awards and been lionized in public relations materials. Though in the light of much subsequent skiving, it is hard not to be cynical, in the pioneer days this rhetoric did probably influence the company ethos. I certainly heard of older (p. Page 20 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? 65) workers who had got themselves transferred from an office to a shop-floor job, where the prospects of advancement were judged to be better. Though, now, most would consider it crazy to voluntarily spend one’s working life in an environment as harsh as the Coke Ovens, nobody suggested they had stepped down in the world. In large private sector factories, the clerks are ‘staff’ and a discernibly different breed. In BSP, they are ‘workers’ represented (if, now, only notionally) by the same ‘recognized’ union. They are on exactly the same pay scales, are eligible for the same benefits, and have identical conditions of employment. On account of production bonuses, shop floor workers earn slightly more than clerks, and their promotion prospects are marginally better. In terms of surveillance at work, and of the extent to which time keeping is monitored, clerks are again worse off. Most shop floors are so labyrinthine that it is easy to disappear from supervisory view, whereas most clerks work with a manager next door who is constantly calling for files. It is true that a sense of distinction remains between those who push paper in the less dingy offices of the principal administrative buildings outside the main gate and those who push coke in the dust and fumes of the batteries. The physical conditions of work are very different and so are its dangers. Clerks, moreover, often have access to the files on workers in their department and more contact with officers. Even so, workers show them little deference and do not acknowledge them as superiors. For that the most important reason, I judge, is that the operatives are now as well-educated as the clerks, and no longer rely on them to explain leave entitlements or draft pleas for clemency in disciplinary proceedings.15 The line between the lettered and unlettered is no longer between white- and blue-collar BSP labour, but between both of these and most contract workers. Though ‘middle class’ may mean nothing to now-retired old-timers from Girvi and Patripar who got jobs for their land, it is as middle class that most BSP workers today unhesitatingly identify themselves. If I ask them straight out what they are, they either pity my stupidity or suspect a trick question. ‘We are “middle class”, of course. What else?’ they say, using the English term more spontaneously than its Hindi equivalent, madhyam varg. As to their placement within it—‘lower middle’, ‘middle middle’, ‘upper middle’—they are less categorical, and the answer seems (p.66) to depend on a variety of considerations, including the affluence of the neighbourhood in which they live, and on whether other household members have sarkari naukri as well. What is unequivocal, however, is that they are entirely distinct from the ‘labour class’ who work on daily wages and live in jhuggi-jhopris (hutments).

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? Who believes them? Though I cannot say for the higher echelons of the professionally qualified or seriously rich business people, the answer is almost everybody else in Bhilai. When with a couple of (middle class) friends I discussed the relative class status of three mutual acquaintances—a middle-of-the-scale BSP worker, the previously mentioned ‘surveyor’ in the Municipal Corporation, and a senior teacher in a government high school—there was no question but that all are ‘middle class’. When we then got on to the finer gradations, and talked about their relative ‘prestige’ (pratishtha) and the ‘respect’ (samman) they are accorded by others, the teacher clearly came off worst. Between the other two, precedence shifts with context. Materially, the BSP worker is undoubtedly better off, but the surveyor has more power and would be treated more deferentially than even a senior BSP officer in Patripar market because everybody is in breach of some building regulation. Once he enters the BSP township, however, he is nobody and the BSP worker commands more respect. Most people, however, operate with a simple ‘pecuniary model’ of class. Being ‘middle class’ means having the income to sustain a middle-class lifestyle and consumption pattern. Even if you do not sustain it—if you squander your money on drink or satta (a numbers racket) or are just to mean to spend it—the majority view is that you are still ‘middle class’. It is the income that counts; consumption is merely its sign. ‘Pecuniary model’ is borrowed from Lockwood (1966), who correlated this image of society with a productive system based on repetitive mass production in which there is little solidarity between workers. That is not the case here, and it is tempting to associate the hold that this image has on the social imagination of BSP workers with the brute fact that it is a reliably large income that fundamentally separates them from the chronic destitution with the ‘labour class’ households must always contend. What, in this context, is a ‘suitably modern’ (Liechty 2003) middle class lifestyle? Conceptions vary considerably—between generations (p.67) and, to some degree, between different regional ethnicities. While fathers complain of the profligacy of the young, their children complain of their parsimony. Local Chhattisgarhis of the senior generation are probably more likely to be content with old village styles and their resources more likely to be depleted by mehmanbaji (‘the diversion of guests’, the propensity of rural relatives to keep showing up). ‘Biharis’ (as all from the ‘cow-belt’ are collectively known) have a reputation for tightfistedness. Much depends on whether the worker plans to stay in Bhilai or return to his place of origin on retirement. What passes muster in ex-villagescum-labour colonies like Girvi and Patripar will not do in the township, where nobody goes out in an old kurta-pyjama and boys need designer jeans. There is, it must be admitted, a dwindling minority of BSP workers who spend their money on darubaji (drinking), juabaji (gambling), and randibaji (womanizing), whose attendance in the plant is sporadic, and whose standard of living is not

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? conspicuously higher than that of many in the ‘labour class’—except in so far as they can afford more alcohol. This notwithstanding, and especially in the township and the mushrooming modern housing colonies, new and more uniform middle-class consumption styles have taken firm root over the past 15 years. Almost every household has a colour television set, VCR player, refrigerator, and washing machine. Several of its members will have their own mobile phones and probably their own motorbike or scooter. Some families now have cars. Daljit recently purchased a prestigious new Tata Indigo Magnum and added a carport to his quarter. Some workers, and many of their children, have hobbies that cost, and many now go on family holidays and tourist trips. Much more significant sums are spent on house construction and house improvements, including marble floors and even air-conditioning; and on the private education of their children, which also requires an educated wife to help with homework and dispatch them in good uniformed order to school, and to tuition classes. Though superior educational attainments are an index of social mobility, and valued even more as a middleclass job-ticket, learning for its own sake is not prized. There is little respect for the old ideal of ‘high thinking, low living’, and my informants refuse to concede that in the absence of naukri even a double MA makes a person ‘middle class’. (p.68) Informal sector workers live in another—increasingly divergent— world,16 both in terms of what they can afford to consume, and in terms of social mores and values. Their children are significantly more likely to die in infancy, the age of marriage is significantly lower, family planning much less probable, the incidence of marital breakdown and subsequent remarriage a lot higher, and as a consequence, the composition of households is characteristically different. So, too, is the ideology and morality surrounding conjugality, and the whole texture of gender relations. While the wives of BSP workers are largely withdrawn from the labour market, ‘labour class’ women are commonly forced to find paid work. They are consequently more independent of men and will abandon feckless and incessantly inebriated husbands without much compunction or without suffering much stigma, though they are vulnerable to the sexual predation of the labour aristocracy. While it is very unusual for the wives of BSP workers to touch alcohol, I know several ‘labour class’ women who are serious alcoholics. When I was last in the Coke Ovens, I was one day accosted by Mr Deshpande, a retired BSP worker who was now acting as an overseer for a company rebuilding one of the batteries. I was talking with a group of rejas and coolies, and he demanded to know what I might learn from such ‘low-class people’ (niman varg log)? Our conversation took a philosophical turn.

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? ‘Look,’ he said, ‘at how happy these people are, even if they earn very little. But we middle-class people are always anxious … anxious about tomorrow … about our children’s exams, about the dowry we will have to provide for our daughters, about our son’s career prospects, about what we will do when we retire. But they just earn and eat, and if one of these rejas doesn’t like her husband, she just makes a new man … another and another and another.’ Though I found his homily jarring, I think it encapsulated two important sociological truths. The first relates to the sharp sense of distinction between the (ex-)BSP worker and the ‘labour class’; the second to their very different orientations to time. The lives of the aristocracy of labour are characteristically geared to the future, to the education of children, to their chances on the job and marriage markets, to the construction of a house for retirement. ‘Labour class’ people characteristically live for the day, in the here and now (compare (p.69) with Day et al. 1999). They have no alternative. They must live hand to mouth.

Class Reproduction, Consciousness, and Citizenship I have suggested then, that in contemporary Bhilai, class has displaced caste as the dominant axis of stratification and is the most significant determinant of life chances. The distinction between manual and non-manual labour is an ideologically less salient marker of class difference than the distinction between formal sector naukri and informal sector kaam. This is a product of state legislation and policies that have created a structural divide within the industrial labour force that makes it unrealistic to see the two types of workers as members of the same social class. The most privileged segments of the organized sector labour force, as exemplified by the BSP aristocracy of labour, have increasingly become a self-reproducing stratum that should now be regarded as middle class. In terms of their ‘market situation’, that is what they unquestionably are. At work, they enjoy a degree of autonomy and freedom from the tyranny of the clock that makes them more like proverbial bankers or professors than assembly-line car workers in Ford. Though their tasks are mainly manual, today many of them merely oversee the contract labour that actually carries them out and hardly any are required to perform the worst ones themselves. In terms of their status, there is little to choose between BSP workers and clerks. They increasingly have typically middle-class lifestyles and consumption patterns, as well as middle-class values and orientations. Unlike the (‘non-embourgeosified’) affluent workers in the Luton study from which I took off, but like its control group of white-collar workers, a great many more BSP workers than should be expected—in the light of their chances of success— aspire to ‘get on’ by getting promoted into management positions. By contrast with the ‘traditional working-class perspective’ that includes ‘living in and for the present’, they have a characteristically middle-class ‘orientation to the future’ (Goldthorpe et al. 1969: 72–3, 119–20). Above all, ‘middle class’ is what BSP workers regard themselves as being and how others unhesitatingly rate them. To describe them as being in (p.70) the same ‘class situation’ as informal Page 24 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? sector workers would be, in their view of themselves, a travesty. In that, they are largely right. The equivocation implied by ‘largely’ is partly because—as I have tried to make clear—a small but discernible minority fail, or refuse, to live up to middle-class standards of respectability, most commonly because they are drunk for days at a stretch and get badly in debt. More importantly, my picture must be tempered by acknowledging that even if the BSP worker himself may appear to have made it into the middle classes, it is far from certain that his sons will manage to stay there. In recent years, recruitment to the regular labour force has dried to a trickle, while the pool of eligible candidates has exponentially expanded with the recent ruling that the plant is no longer required to limit itself to those registered at local employment exchanges. Further, it is not only the BSP workforce but the whole public sector that has been downsized. Even if they have an edge in the competition, it is clear that the majority of sons of BSP employees will never get BSP jobs nor, probably, any other sort of sarkari naukri. At the time of my household census in 1994, Girvi had a population of approximately 3,000, and 28 per cent of its 555 households were supported by a BSP income. Many of these workers have since retired but in the years between 1995 and 2010, only three young men from the basti have been taken on (though 28 others got some other less desirable government job). What happens to the rest? When I spend time with current Coke Oven workers who live in the township or in one of the new housing colonies, the overwhelming impression I get is that their children have every prospect of at least securing the class position of the household, if not continuing its upward trajectory. Daljit’s daughter will probably be a chartered accountant, Kurrey’s IIT son may well get to Silicon Valley, and Tiwari’s eldest has a degree from Amherst. Though these are hardly typical, they provide a sense of the possibilities; and the children of a large proportion of getahead workers have the educational advantages that make middle-class employment seem likely. From the perspective of Girvi and Patripar, however, the situation looks less rosy. Though I have yet to process more recent data that should shed light on the problem, the occupations in 2005 of 178 BSP sons aged over 18 from Patripar are indicative. All had fathers who were either currently (p.71) employed in the plant at the time of my 1994 survey of the basti, or who were already retired from it. Eight of these sons were BSP workers, 12 had other government jobs, and 20 were regular employees of private sector firms. That is, 22.4 per cent had naukri (equally divided between pakki/sarkari naukri and kachchi). Thereafter, the categories are more blurred, but in broad terms, around 16 per cent were running some small-scale businesses (like a shop or workshop) and nearly 20 per cent were notionally still ‘students’ or were unemployed (some on a long-term basis). However, 35–40 per cent were doing characteristically ‘working class’ jobs (ranging from skilled artisanal work to driving, house painting, and day labour). Clearly, the reproduction of class Page 25 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? privilege is far from unproblematic, and, clearly, there is a disparity between what I observe of my Coke Oven informants and what I find in places like Patripar. What explains it? Why are some more likely to succeed than others? Again, more confident answers will hopefully emerge from the recent data and my brief comments here are of provisional nature. What partly explains the disparity is that my Coke Oven informants are current employees, while a significant proportion of the Patripar fathers had been retired for some years. They are two different age cohorts. My generalizations about the former are, moreover, likely to be biased by the work group I know best (the Heating Group), which has a higher proportion of well-educated workers than, say, Battery Operations; and I would certainly say that in terms of lifestyle, the first of these groups is more uniformly, and convincingly, ‘middle class’ than the second. Much also depends on residence. True, Girvi has its Tarlok, whom I first met in 1993 when he was a recent school-leaver teaching tuition and who—with start-up capital from his father’s Provident Fund—is now a property dealer with a portfolio of housing plots worth more than Rs 1 crore. For every Tarlok, however, there must be a dozen others of whom their fathers complain that they ‘just wander like a wastrel’ (‘sirf laphut jainsa ghumta rahta hai’). Those brought up in the township, or one of the new colonies where aspirations are higher and the schools are better, have obvious advantages. Upwardly mobile parents tend to move out of bastis like Girvi and Patripar, which become a ‘sink’ for those less likely to succeed. (p.72) Much, too, is undoubtedly explained by individual personality. Some children meekly submit to a gruelling regime of tuition classes and dutifully achieve 94 per cent marks in all their exams; but I also know several young men who openly admit that with a father in BSP they reckoned they would always be provided for and felt no need to strive. As important as the temperament of the son, however, is the shrewdness with which the father has exploited the investment opportunities provided by his salary. Those who, during the course of their careers, have bought plots of urban and peri-urban land have made fortunes that will comfortably sustain a middle-class lifestyle for at least another generation. Those who, 20 years back, took voluntary retirement from the plant with a severance package of Rs 2 lakh, and have been living off the interest, are now sorely pinched. Partly on account of the superior business acumen and experience of the senior generation, the ‘outsiders’ seem to do better at reproducing their class standing than local Chhattisgarhis; but among the latter I find no evidence that caste, per se, is of much consequence. Though I know a number of Satnamis whose sons have hit snakes, I know others for whom the dice have landed on ladders. Holding other factors—like education and place of residence—constant, their proportion of successes and failures are not obviously different from the rest of the population. As far as sarkari naukri goes, ‘creamy

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? layer’ Satnamis are of course to some extent sheltered by the system of reservations. Since, as I have argued, BSP workers do not belong to the same class as the contract labour force, it is not surprising that they have never shown any serious interest in making common cause in industrial disputes, or in pursuing a common agenda in class politics. As I have described in detail elsewhere (Parry 2009), the now suspended Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) union that was ‘recognized’ by plant management has only ever shown interest in the permanent workforce. Though it maintained a cell to ‘look after’ the interests of contract workers, the officials who manned it are widely reputed to have looked after themselves by accepting tokens of the contractors’ gratitude for their willingness to avert their eyes. Most contract labour is not unionized; and when a union from the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI (M), has periodically taken up their cause, its (p.73) activists have been harassed by contractors, management, and the official union, with which violent confrontations have sometimes ensued. It is in the BSP mines, however, that the conflicts have historically been most protracted, bitter, and bloody; and the main battle lines have been between the union of the All India Trade Union Congress, (AITUC) affiliated to the Communist Party of India (CPI)—that represents the permanent workforce in the mechanized mines—and the more radical Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, which has organized contract labour in the much harsher conditions of the manual mines. In short, the history of union politics in Bhilai reflects, and has indeed exacerbated, the structural divisions within the workforce that are a, perhaps unintended, consequence of state policies and that have created two broad groups of workers with divergent interests. In Western countries, like Britain, miners and steelworkers have historically represented the militant vanguard of the working class. Their position in the industrial system gave them real political muscle, and that muscle was flexed to claim social citizenship rights—in the form of some modicum of welfare provision and social security—on behalf of the working class as a whole. In India, the aristocracy of public sector labour has never had to fight for relatively decent schools for their children or reasonably well-equipped and functioning hospitals. As part of the no doubt well-intentioned Nehruvian development package, they were handed to them on a plate. The consequence is that most workers are now left in the cold with only limited access to the risibly deficient state government provision. For the majority, then, many basic rights of citizenship do not exist in a meaningful form because those who might have had the leverage to claim them on behalf of all citizens had no incentive to do so. Citizenship and social class, as Marshall (1992 [1950]) famously pointed out, are conflicting principles. But while Marshall’s main interest was in the way in which the equal claims of citizenship mitigate the inequalities of class, we should not lose sight of the opposite process. Class undermines the equal claims of Page 27 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? citizens. It is a state that is supposedly the ultimate guarantor of the rights of the citizen that has paradoxically created a class division within the working population that ensures that citizenship rights for the many have remained a politically unachievable goal. That is arguably the most fundamental way in which the privileges (p.74) of a now middle-class labour aristocracy have been at the expense of ‘the working classes’. References Bibliography references: Bardhan, P. 1989. ‘The Third Dominant Class’, Economic and Political Weekly, 24(3): 155–6. Béteille, André 2002. ‘Hierarchical and Competitive Inequality’, in Equality and Universality: Essays in Social and Political Theory. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2007a. ‘The Description and Analysis of Classes’, in Marxism and Class Analysis. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 283–307. ———. 2007b. ‘Classes and Communities’ (A.K. Das Memorial Lecture) Kolkata: Bengal Economic Association. ———. 2007c. ‘The Middle Class’, in R. Sarkar and R. Mukerjee (eds), Freedom 60: Sixty Years after Indian Independence. Kolkata: Art and Heritage Foundation, pp. 25–51. Bery, S. and R.K. Shukla. 2003. ‘NCAER’s Market Information Survey of Households: Statistical Properties and Applications for Policy Analysis’, Economic and Political Weekly, 38(4): 350–4. (p.76) Braverman, H. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press. Clark, T. and S. Lipset. 1996. ‘Are Social Classes Dying?’ in D. Lee and B. Turner (eds), Conflicts about Class: Debating Inequality in Late Industrialism. London: Longman, pp. 42–8. Cooper, F. 1992. ‘Colonizing Time: Work Rhythms and Labour Conflict in Colonial Mombasa’, in N. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 209–45. Crook, N. 1993. India’s Industrial Cities: Essays in Economy and Demography. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Day, S, E. Papataxiarchis, and M. Stewart (eds). 1999. Lilies of the Field: Marginal People who Live for the Moment. Boulder: Westview Press. Page 28 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? Ferguson, J. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fernandes, L. 2000. ‘Restructuring the New Middle Class in Liberalizing India’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 20(1, 2): 88–104. ———. 2006. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gallie, D. 1978. In Search of the New Working Class: Automation and Social Integration within Capitalist Enterprise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goldthorpe, J.H. and D. Lockwood. 1963. ‘Affluence and the British Class Structure’, The Sociological Review, 11(2): 133–63. Goldthorpe. J.H., D. Lockwood, F. Bechhofer, and J. Platt. 1969. The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harriss, J. 1986. ‘The Working Poor and the Labour Aristocracy in a South Indian City: A Descriptive and Analytical Account’, Modern Asian Studies, 20(2): 231– 83. Herring, R.J. and R. Agarwala, 2006. ‘Restoring Agency to Class: Puzzles from the Subcontinent’, Critical Asian Studies, 34(4): 323–56. Holmström, M. 1976. South Indian Factory Workers: Their Life and Their World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1984. Industry and Inequality: The Social Anthropology of Indian Labour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jeffrey, C. 2010. Timepass: Youth, Class and the Politics of Waiting in India. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Liechty, M. 2003. Suitably Modern: Making Middle-class Culture in a New Consumer Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (p.77) Lockwood, D. 1958. The Blackcoated Worker: A Study in Class Consciousness. London: Unwin University Books. ———. 1966. ‘Sources of Variation in Working Class Images of Society’, The Sociological Review, 14(3): 249–67. Mallet, S. 1975 [1963]. The New Working Class, trans. A Shepherd and B. Shepherd. Nottingham: The Bertrand Russel Foundation (for Spokesman Books).

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? Marshall, T.H. 1992 [1950]. ‘Citizenship and Social Class’, in T.H. Marshall and T. Bottomore, Citizenship and Social Class. London: Pluto Press, pp. 3–51. Parry, J. 1999a. ‘Lords of Labour: Working and Shirking in Bhilai’, in J. Parry, J. Breman, and K. Kapadia (eds), The Worlds of Indian Industrial Labour: Contributions to Indian Sociology, NS, 33(1, 2): 107–40. ———. 1999b. ‘Two Cheers for Reservation: The Satnamis and the Steel Plant’, in R. Guha and J. Parry (eds), Institutions and Inequalities: Essays in Honour of André Béteille. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 129–69. ———. 2000. ‘“The Crisis of Corruption” and “the Idea of India”: A Worm’s Eye View’, in I. Pardo (ed.), The Morals of Legitimacy. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 27–55. ———. 2001. ‘Ankalu’s Errant Wife—Sex, Marriage and Industry in Contemporary Chhattisgarh’, Modern Asian Studies, 35(4): 783–820. ———. 2003. ‘Nehru’s Dream and the Village “Waiting Room”: Long Distance Labour Migrants to a Central Indian Steel Town’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 37(1, 2): 217–49. ———. 2005. ‘Changing Childhoods in Industrial Chhattisgarh’, in R. Chopra and P. Jeffery (eds), Educational Regimes in Contemporary India. New Delhi and London: Sage Publications, pp. 276–98. ———. 2007. ‘Afterword: A Note on the “Substantialisation” of Caste and Its “Hegemony”, in H. Ishii, D. Gellner and K. Nawa (eds), Northern South Asia: Political and Social Transformations. New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 479–95. ———. 2009. ‘Sociological Marxism in Central India: Polanyi, Gramsci and the Case of the Unions’, in C. Hann and K. Hart (eds), Market and Society: The Great Transformation Today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 175–202. ———. 2012. ‘Suicide in a Central Indian Steel Town’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 46(1, 2): 145–80. Pocock, D. 1957. ‘“Difference” in East Africa: A Study of Caste and Religion in Modern Indian Society’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 13(4): 289–300. (p.78) Pocock, D. 1968. ‘Social Anthropology: Its Contribution to Planning,’ in P. Streeten and M. Lipton (eds), The Crisis of Indian Planning: Economic Planning in the 1960s. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 271–89. Pun, Ngai. 2005. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. Durham: Duke University Press.

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? Rudra, A. 1989. ‘Emergence of the Intelligentsia as a Ruling Class in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 24(3): 142–50. Sridharan, E. 2011. ‘The Growth and Sectoral Composition of India’s Middle Classes: Their Impact on the Politics of Economic Liberalization’, in A. Baviskar and R. Ray (eds), Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes. New Delhi: Routledge, pp. 27–57. Walder, A. 1986. Communist Neo-traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry. Berkeley: University of California Press. Waters, M. 1996. ‘Succession in the Stratification System’, in D. Lee and B. Turner (eds), Conflicts about Class: Debating Inequality in Late Industrialism. London: Longman, pp. 71–83. Weber, M. 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. A. Henderson and T. Parsons. New York: The Free Press. ———. 1968. ‘Class, Status and Party’, in R. Bendix and S. Lipset (eds), Class, Status and Power. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 21–8. Notes:

(1) . Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Nuffield Foundation, London School of Economics and Leverhulme Trust, the fieldwork on which it is based has extended over approximately 30 months between 1993 and 2011. I am indebted to the incomparable research assistance of Ajay T.G. Variants on its argument have been rehearsed in several seminars and I am grateful for the many critical comments received. (2) . For a detailed critique, see Gallie 1978. It also owes much to conversations with André Béteille, as to various of his writings. (3) . I employ pseudonyms throughout, both for people and locations within Bhilai. (4) . I obviously cannot deny that even if the professor and the peon are alike in having a naukri, they are sharply differentiated in esteem. Their difference, however, is surely the product of a whole package of social and cultural capital in which whether or not one works with one’s hands may be a very small element. After all, experimental scientists and surgeons do that. (5) . Admittedly, this is probably less true of Western labour markets today than it was a generation ago; and for India, Fernandes (2000, 2006: Chapter 3) has tellingly made the point that the employment experience of a considerable segment of the ‘new middle class’ in Mumbai is not so dissimilar from that of contract labour in industry. In many companies, personnel turnover is high; many jobs are insecure, and in their performance employees have little Page 31 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’? autonomy and are subject to strict surveillance. Tasks are increasingly put out to tender; and a division has grown up between permanent and temporary employees. The latter not only receive significantly lower salaries and have no entitlement to valuable fringe benefits, but are subject to ‘rotation’ (that is, periodic temporary lay-offs). Though it goes well beyond both my competence and the scope of this essay, in the light of such evidence it clearly needs to be asked whether divisions based on vulnerability to unemployment have the same kind of social significance within the middle classes as I claim that they do within what is conventionally described as ‘the working class’. (6) . Liechty (2003) makes a similar case for Kathmandu. (7) . BSP has a housing stock of about 36,000 units, more than enough to accommodate its current workforce (though this was not so in the past). It lets out the surplus to other public sector employees, and many BSP workers illicitly sublet the quarters allocated to them. The rents they are able to charge, however, ensure that their subtenants have middle-class incomes. (8) . In 2002–3, the BSP school system produced 28 students who won such places. (9) . NCAER categories have been utilized and elucidated by a number of authors, including Fernandes (2006: Chapter 2) and Sridharan (2011). (10) . I am indebted to E. Sridharan for guidance on this point. (11) . This is based on a sample from October 2006 of the personnel files of 674 workers from two different work groups in the Coke Oven department; 53.1 per cent were aged 45 or over. (12) . This particular group is relatively highly educated with relatively light duties, and this proportion may be higher than in others. (13) . The regime at that time is more fully described in Parry (1999a, 1999b). The brief account that follows is a paraphrase. (14) . The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970. (15) . The erosion of the status gap can have little to do with the feminization of clerical work (so important in the West) because BSP offices are still overwhelmingly manned. Nor does Braverman’s (1974) argument that whitecollar work has been progressively de-skilled seem relevant. The gradual computerization of BSP office work has required the acquisition of new and valued skills. (16) . The generalizations that follow are substantiated in a number of previous articles (see, in particular, Parry 2001, 2005). Page 32 of 33

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The ‘Embourgeoisement’ of a ‘Proletarian Vanguard’?

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries?

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? André Béteille

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords The significance of the middle class in Indian social life has grown since the early 1990s, partly because of its demographic expansion. It has also become internally more diverse. However, despite growing differentiation and social diversity, entry into the middle class remains restrictive. For large sections of the Indian population it still remains difficult to find a foothold in this class. Those who find relatively easy entry into the ranks of the salaried middle class, mainly through the expansion of education, are the offspring of skilled manual workers in the organized sector, and also the offspring of relatively well-to-do peasants and farmers. Beyond them are the vast masses of agricultural labourers, sharecroppers, and labourers in the unorganized sector for whom offspring entry into even the lower ranks of the middle class still remains a distant prospect. Keywords:   middle class, social life, Marxist, jobs, class polarization, entry of offspring

Dipankar Gupta occupies a unique position among sociologists of his generation in the country. His work has had wide influence both within and outside the profession. He has shown great ingenuity in using the insights of sociology to throw light on issues of immediate public concern. Although he has written on a very wide range of topics, it is his work on social stratification (Gupta 1993) that has had the greatest influence on students and teachers of sociology. For this tribute to him I thought it appropriate to write an essay on a subject that has been of abiding interest to him as well as to me.

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? Many of the ideas discussed in it have been influenced by conversations with him over a period of close to two decades. The middle class has occupied a central place in the sociological imagination. Its importance lay in the fact that its study occupied the intersection between two major sociological approaches, which may be described as those of class theory and of stratification theory. For a long time these two approaches, and the theories from which they derived, tended to be mutually antagonistic. In its classical form the class approach was developed by Marx and his followers. Although it is no longer as prominent as it once was, it still has its adherents. This approach focuses on contradiction, conflict, and change. The contradictions inherent in society lead to the conflict of classes, and, through that conflict, to changes in the structure of society. Contradiction and conflict advance by way of the polarization of classes with the workers (together with the peasants) and the capitalists (together with the landowners) ranged against each other. Although the Marxian approach to society was often described as the class approach, one will have to look hard to find where the middle class figures in it. (p.80) From the Marxian point of view, the continued existence of the middle class, not to speak of its expansion, has been an anomaly. Although its existence could scarcely be denied, the middle class was never acknowledged as one of the basic classes, but at best as an ‘intermediate’ or a ‘transitional’ class (Bukharin 1969: 282–4). In the Soviet Union, its presence and importance were tacitly acknowledged; however, it was not designated by that term but as the ‘intelligentsia’ which, moreover, was treated not as a class, rather as a stratum. Today, Russian sociologists acknowledge that what was earlier called the intelligentsia was for all practical purposes a middle class. Given this historical background, it is not difficult to see why Indian Marxists have fought shy of the middle class. About 20 years ago, a distinguished Indian Marxist had pointed to the emergence of the intelligentsia as a ruling class (Rudra 1989). Marxists and others under their influence make a distinction between class and stratification (Dahrendorf 1959). For them, classes are conflict groups, and the conflicts between them lead to their polarization. The characteristic tendency of stratification is not polarization but gradation. The middle class, though called a class, fits more readily into a scheme of stratification than into one of polarization. Far from declining in numbers and vanishing from the social scene, the middle class has grown and expanded in many directions. When Eduard Bernstein (1909) drew attention to this tendency 100 ago, he was denounced as a revisionist. In expanding, the middle class has also become internally differentiated. It has become so large and so differentiated that it is now difficult Page 2 of 17

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? to define its identity or its boundaries, particularly in the advanced industrial societies. It is said that one can hardly define as a social class a spectrum of society that has to include both the managing director and his secretary. In these societies, the problem today is not what should be included in the middle class but what may reasonably be excluded from it. In the UK, the middle class occupied the foreground in sociological studies in the period immediately following World War II. A major issue was the distinction between manual and non-manual workers; and the black-coated or white-collar employee became the emblem of the middle class (Lockwood 1958; Mills 1951; Runciman 1966). These studies showed that the middle class could not be defined (p.81) solely in terms either of occupation, income, and education, or of employment status. The need to accommodate employers, employees, and self-employed persons required by the empirical material took something away from the conceptual unity of the middle class. The term itself came to be replaced by some with the more neutral phrase, the ‘intermediate classes’ (Goldthorpe 1987). Sociologists in the US have become even more sceptical about the utility of the concept of the middle class as an analytical tool. More and more of them seem to be saying that the American society is stratified but that it cannot be divided into distinct and identifiable social classes (Kingston 2000; Lareau 2007). Where class analysis itself is under question, it becomes difficult to sustain enthusiasm for the study of the middle class. It is an irony that the middle class began to attract the attention of students of society in India more or less at the same time as the spotlight was being turned away from it in those countries where its study first began and flourished. This does not reduce but only increases our responsibility to undertake a closer examination of the middle class and its place in the larger Indian society. The problem of the identity of the middle class is quite different here from what it is in Britain or the US, simply because the social matrix in which that class is embedded differs greatly in the two cases. There is a large working class in the unorganized sector and there are large numbers of sharecroppers and wage labourers in the agrarian sector from which the Indian middle class, no matter how we may wish to define it, can be clearly distinguished. In this country, the middle class continues to have the kind of distinctive social identity that it appears to have lost in the West. When the middle class expands to the extent that it becomes coterminous, or almost coterminous, with society, the concept itself becomes redundant. This is what is happening in the US and some other Western countries. It is not happening or likely to happen in India in the foreseeable future.

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? Many now say that the middle class in India has acquired its real significance in the last 15–20 years. Its rise to prominence is attributed to the changes in economic policy that began in 1991. This is only (p.82) part of the story. It had established itself in a position of prominence and influence politically and culturally by the time the country acquired independence in 1947. It was the middle class rather than the aristocracy or the workers and peasants that provided the leadership of the nationalist movement. Those who wrote the Constitution of India came mainly from the upper levels of the middle class, and this was even truer of those who later wrote the Five Year Plans. For a hundred years till the time of independence, the middle class was the main driving force behind the modernization of Indian society. This fact cannot be dismissed with the argument that it acted first and foremost in its own interest rather than in the larger interest of the country as a whole. What has happened in the last couple of decades is that, in addition to being politically and culturally pre-eminent, the middle class has also become demographically significant. Its rapid expansion has not only made it more visible but altered its character and composition in significant ways. The Indian middle class is much larger and more differentiated than it was over 60 years ago, and its boundaries with other social classes have also become blurred. The diversity and the fuzziness of the middle class is partly the result of its rapid expansion in recent years. There are wide, not to say wild, variations in estimates of the size of the middle class today—these range from under 100 million to over 300 million persons. Apart from the difficulty of getting accurate and reliable data, these variations follow from variations in the conception of class. Using figures for the sale and purchase of consumer items such as bicycles, scooters, transistor radios, television sets, and so on, is not a very satisfactory way of estimating the size of the middle class without first forming some idea of what that class is and how it may be differentiated in terms of some significant criteria from other social classes. The attempt to form a clear understanding of the middle class must begin with the recognition of its composite character, or the fact that it is made up of diverse components. The exclusion, by definition, of any of its principal components is likely to be misleading and counterproductive. Until the middle of the last century it was commonly agreed among sociologists to distinguish between the Old (p.83) Middle Class and the New Middle Class (Mills 1951). That distinction retains some validity, particularly in countries such as India, despite the fact that both components have changed continuously over time. The Old Middle Class was made up of self-employed persons in crafts, services, trade, and, some would say, even agriculture. Such persons were neither employers nor employees and, as such, were not included by Marx (1959: 885) Page 4 of 17

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? among the ‘three big classes of modern society based on the capitalist mode of production’. Even though artisans, traders, and peasants comprised the larger part of the population in most societies, including most European societies, until the middle of the nineteenth century, they were then not generally viewed as a class in the sense in which the term came to be used later. The term ‘Old Middle Class’ was, at least in the European context, applied to them retrospectively or when they appeared to be in retreat. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence and growth of the modern office in the countries that became the outposts of modern industrial society. It spread, thereafter, to other countries and is now a feature of modern societies throughout the world. The modern office became the characteristic site of the New Middle Class, just as the modern factory became the site of the working class—still relatively new in Marx’s time. Compared to his insight into the part the modern factory would play in the transformation of society, Marx showed little understanding of the future role of the modern office. Between them, the factory and the office witnessed the emergence of a new kind of occupational structure that drove a wedge within society that was based less on property rights than on education and occupation. No matter how important a place, employees in offices might have come to occupy in the middle class from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century, we cannot exclude self-employed persons from that class by definition. Our common sense tells us that independent professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, and even those who operate small businesses from the home or from a shop attached to the home should be included in the middle class. This segment of the middle class, having an undeniable continuity with the Old Middle Class, has shown a remarkable capacity for survival and even growth in the (p.84) face of the relentless advance of large-scale organizations in every part of the world, including India. Employment status is an important factor in defining the middle class, but it is not decisive. Occupation, independently of employment status, is of great importance. Some occupations are characteristic of the middle class and others are not, although the line of division between them is vague and shifting. A characteristic feature of the modern world is the continual emergence of new occupations and the displacement of old ones. The years since Independence have witnessed major changes in the occupational system in India. The growth of new occupations with the advance of information technology is only the most dramatic example of this. It does not appear sensible to place the doctor who treats his patients in his own clinic and the one who works in a large hospital in different social classes on the ground that the first is self-employed and the second an employee. The two may be members of the same household and related to each other as father and son Page 5 of 17

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? or as husband and wife. Indeed, the same doctor may set up his own clinic at home after being employed in a large public hospital for some time. It may be true that ‘independent professionals’ now work in larger numbers as employees in organizations than a hundred years ago, but there are still many who continue to be self-employed. In the age of large organizations, one can still make a good living from consultancy while working independently from one’s home in a whole range of professions, including some very new ones. The belief that was widely held till the middle of the last century that work would come to be organized so elaborately in offices and other establishments that independent professionals and other self-employed persons would lose their livelihood has proved to be false. Such persons continue to prosper, not only in India after decades of planning for industrial growth, but also in those advanced Western countries where the rationalization of work in offices and other establishments first began. They constitute an important component of the middle class everywhere. The independent professionals and other self-employed persons of today are different in many respects from the self-employed artisans, tradesmen, and peasants who comprised the core of the Old Middle (p.85) Class in the middle of the nineteenth century in Europe and elsewhere. Even if we confine ourselves to India, we will not fail to notice the changes that have taken place in the technology and organization of work since Independence. The displacement of old occupations and modes of work by new ones has been going on throughout this period, although in India, it has become particularly visible in the last couple of decades. All modern societies bear evidence of the tendency towards the proliferation and differentiation of occupations. This tendency emerged earlier and has gone further in some countries than in others. There are also important differences of initial social conditions between different countries. But the general tendency, to which India is not an exception, has been towards the proliferation of occupations rather than the polarization of classes. If we compare India today with what it was at the time of independence and further back into the nineteenth century, we will clearly see the tendency in operation. The new occupational system that provides the cornerstone of the middle class today is both more differentiated and more flexible than the old one, which was based on agriculture and the traditional crafts and services. The traditional occupational structure associated with caste was no doubt elaborate in its own way, but it was not nearly as elaborate as what we have today, and it lacked the flexibility characteristic of all modern occupational systems. In the past, one remained within the occupation with which one began, which was generally also the occupation of one’s forefathers. In the new system there is far greater movement, in aspiration if not in effect, from one occupation to another. Fidelity Page 6 of 17

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? to the occupation of one’s father is not necessarily a virtue any more. Further, even while individuals are moving between occupations in the course of a single lifetime, new occupations are coming into being all the time. Middle-class existence is set within an occupational framework, which is in a state of constant flux. Advancement and promotion are important preoccupations of that substantial segment of the middle class whose members are employed in offices and other establishments. Middle-class Indians are remarkably knowledgeable about career advancement and opportunities for promotion. This is true even of selfemployed professionals and (p.86) traders, who are likely to have close relatives or friends who have secured promotion or been denied promotion through ill luck or malice, but still have expectations of it. One of my former students from a remote part of the country once told me that she had a sister who was named ‘Promoshini’ because she arrived in the world when her father was given a long-awaited promotion. Popular discussion of the Indian middle class deals with it as if it exists in and by itself. There is hardly any attention paid in it to other social classes that exist along with it. This makes it possible to include or exclude any section of society in or from it, according to the turn the discussion takes, and leaves the concept of the middle class ill-defined, vague, and nebulous. From the sociological point of view, a class exists in a set or system of social classes. It is very difficult to form an exact idea of the place in society of any class unless we see it in relation to its counterparts. Americans often say that theirs is a middle-class society, that all Americans belong, in one sense or another, to the middle class. This is only another way of saying that there are no classes in the American society. Whatever the case may be in America, it would be highly misleading to say that the middle class is expanding so rapidly in India that other social classes do not count or will cease to count sooner or later. Marx famously observed that the working class or proletariat was the Siamese twin of the bourgeoisie, and his account of the working class derived much of its richness and depth from the way in which he related it, since the time of its origin, to the capitalist class. Does the Indian middle class today have a Siamese twin? Although it does not exist in isolation but has links with various other social classes, these links are too complex and too diffuse for the metaphor of the Siamese twins to do justice to the relationship between the middle class and any other social class. Where there is a middle class, the popular conception presumes that there must also be a lower class and an upper class. This way of thinking is encouraged by the use of income and expenditure as the defining features of classes. It is mechanical, and it goes against contemporary sociological usage. The argument Page 7 of 17

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? against defining social classes by income—‘the size of the purse’—was first formulated by (p.87) Marx and remains valid to a large extent. The distribution of income does not show any significant discontinuities. Hence, using the criterion of income will make the separation of the middle class from classes above or below it a subjective and arbitrary exercise, since what is a high income from one point of view may appear as a low one from another. In India it has become common of late to characterize the middle class in terms of consumer expenditure. There are many socio-economic surveys by organizations various kinds of that give information on expenditure on a whole range of consumer items. These surveys invariably show an upward trend in expenditure—gradual and slow at first, and sharp and escalating in the last 15 years. It is mainly on the basis of these data that the Indian middle class is shown to be growing by leaps and bounds. But the surveys tell us more about the performance of the economy than about the changing boundaries between significant social divisions. The class with which the middle class has been compared and contrasted most extensively in the sociological literature is the working class (Lockwood 1958). These two classes and their mutual relations have received the widest attention from students of class and stratification in industrial societies (Goldthorpe 1987; Runciman 1966). As a result of the comparisons and contrasts made between them, we now know a great deal about both social classes. Systematic empirical studies of the kind that have been made in Britain and other Western countries are not available for India. Yet, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is India and not Britain that provides the most fertile field for such investigations. We can adapt the insights gained from those studies to our present purpose without losing sight of the distinctive features of Indian society and history. The distinction between the working class and the middle class is based not so much on the ownership of property or employment status as on the nature of work. Workers engage in manual occupations and members of the middle class, including the lowliest, in non-manual ones. Having said this, I must point out that there are enormous variations in work practices and norms within each of these two major segments of the population (Béteille 2002). What is more, work practices and norms, and the very organization of work, (p.88) including the differentiation between manual and non-manual work, have changed continuously with changes in technology and economic organization. This can be easily seen by comparing India today with the India that was over 60 years ago. The social evaluation of different sorts of work depends upon a variety of factors —technological, economic, political, cultural, and historical. One thing is clear: there is no society in which work of every kind enjoys equal esteem. As work becomes more differentiated, the social gradation of occupations becomes more elaborate and more complex, and different principles of ranking begin to operate Page 8 of 17

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? simultaneously. Since the social grading of occupations is governed by different, not to say divergent, principles, it is impossible to place all the occupations in a country in a single linear order. In general, manual occupations rank lower than non-manual ones although there are exceptions. What is more, there are ambiguities in the definition of ‘manual’ and ‘non-manual’, and these ambiguities have increased in the years since Independence. Education is a necessary requirement of most if not all middle-class occupations, and that is why such work is sometimes described as ‘mental’ as against ‘manual’ work. The lawyer, the doctor, the accountant, the schoolteacher and the clerk have to have some formal education to do their work adequately. This is not required for manual occupations in general. The growth of the New Middle Class was linked not only with the emergence of a new occupational system but also with the rapid expansion of formal education. In India, much of the pressure for the expansion of education has come from the demands of the middle class or aspirants for entry into that class. When they emerged side by side, the difference between office employees and factory workers lay not only in different work situations, but also in the fact that the former needed a certain amount of schooling, while the latter were largely unlettered. The difference between the educated and the uneducated was a matter not only of income but also of status. It is a very important difference in any society where the educated are few in number and the masses of people are largely unlettered. The distinction is very vividly portrayed in the nineteenthcentury European novel from Balzac to Dickens. With (p.89) the spread of education across all classes in Western countries, it has now become muted. In India, education has not spread as widely as in the advanced industrial countries or even China, but it has definitely advanced in the years since Independence, and is on course for advancing further. Sixty years ago, when the Indian middle class was quite small, it maintained its distinction from the class of manual workers easily and effortlessly. It had a virtual monopoly of formal education. It was distinct in speech, manner, and deportment from manual workers, although this was more true of certain parts of the country than of others. In the earlier period, even where some manual workers had received a little education, competence in English was rare if not absent among them, whereas some competence in it was present even among the lower grades of office employees. Today, formal education is no longer a monopoly of the middle class. It is widespread among industrial workers in the organized sector, although beyond that, there is a vast unorganized sector whose world is very different from the social world of the middle class. I have said enough to make it clear that the middle class is, and has been from the beginning, economically and socially heterogeneous. Even if we leave aside the differences of employment status to which I have already alluded as being Page 9 of 17

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? the basis of the distinction between the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’ Middle Class, many other differences remain. I will, in what follows, speak largely of differences of occupation, education, and income, which are substantial. It is the presence of these differences that leads people to speak about the ‘lower’ and the ‘upper’ middle classes, although such distinctions have generally an ad hoc character. Even in a small office not all employees do the same work; nor do they all have the same income, the same status or the same authority even though we say, and they feel, that they all belong to the middle class. I have already spoken of the changes in technology and economic organization that have taken place continuously in India during the years since Independence and with increasing pace in the last two decades. Even if we confine ourselves to non-manual occupations that require some basic educational competence, their number today is (p.90) legion. These occupations are not only differentiated from each other, they are also ranked. The fact that rank and status are constant preoccupations of the Indian middle class does not mean that there is consensus about the order of ranks; on the contrary, the ranks are frequently in dispute. Sociologists who have conducted large surveys to investigate the subject in Western countries have found it convenient to use occupation as a proxy for social status. They are well aware that other, less tangible elements such as speech, dress, and deportment are also important. Even the ranking of occupations has to confront many ambiguities. Different segments of the middle class, such as civil servants, company managers, lawyers, doctors, and journalists, do not all use the same criterion of ranking (Goldthorpe and Hope 1974). Occupations are no doubt ranked, but their ranking does not follow the clear and inflexible order ascribed to the traditional ranking of varnas. The complexity and ambiguity characteristic of the ranking of modern occupations should not lead to the argument that such ranking is socially unimportant or trivial. It may be difficult to get a judge and a surgeon to agree about their mutual ranks, but they will both agree that clerks and school teachers rank below them. There are differences not only of income but of style of life between the different ranks, no matter how vaguely demarcated, within the middle class. One may well ask why sociologists who specialize in the study of social stratification invest so much labour in determining the finer points of occupational ranking. Their effort is, in large part, a response to the wide interest in democratic societies in social mobility, the movement upwards—or downwards—of individuals and households within society. Sociologists have come to believe that the best way of studying social mobility, both within a single lifetime and between successive generations, is by tracking the passage of individuals within the occupational system (Goldthorpe 1987; Halsey et al. 1980). Page 10 of 17

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? Studies of social stratification and social mobility have advanced side by side. We have very little systematic material on the subject for India, although one can say that there is growing evidence of individual mobility within the middle class, and into it from other social classes. As the middle class grows in size, opportunities for individual mobility also increase. However, the increase can never be so large as (p.91) to satisfy all aspirants for upward mobility. It is clear that the expansion of the Indian middle class in the last 60 years and above has not been due only to a natural increase in the population. There have been important changes in the occupational system. Mobility into the middle class and upward along its different ranks has increased at an accelerating rate due to the expansion of both education and employment, particularly employment outside agriculture. In the early decades of independence, public sector was the driving force behind the expansion. Since then, the private sector has taken the lead in creating new opportunities for entry into the middle class and advancement within it. However, opportunities for mobility are limited in India as compared to the advanced industrial societies. For large sections of the Indian population it is still difficult to find a foothold in the middle class. Those who find a relatively easy entry into the ranks of the salaried middle class, mainly through the expansion of education, are the offspring of skilled manual workers in the organized sector, and also the offspring of relatively well-to-do peasants and farmers. Beyond them are the vast masses of agricultural labourers, sharecroppers, and labourers in the unorganized sector for whose offspring entry into even the lower ranks of the middle class still remains a distant prospect. It is their continued existence that marks the middle class off from the rest of Indian society, despite the many internal divisions within the former. The trouble with using a loose and elastic conception of the middle class is that it makes entry into the middle class appear easy. In India, it is not easy for the millions or even hundreds of millions of people who live in abject poverty, or with their heads just above the water. The barriers against entry into the middle class are still very strong even though they may not be visible or tangible. They are much stronger in India than in the US and Europe, or even China. It will be a serious mistake to ignore or underplay the constraints that continue to exist in contemporary India against entry into the middle class and the movement upward within it. These constraints remain particularly strong despite the fact that India had an early start in creating modern institutions based on open and secular principles that have been the breeding ground of the middle class in all parts of the world. The clue to this may lie in the continuing hold of hierarchical (p.92) values that proliferated to an unusual degree in traditional Indian society and remained in place for a very long stretch of time. It is tempting to view the peculiar preoccupation with distinctions of status within Page 11 of 17

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? the Indian middle class as a carry-over from the meticulous attention paid to hierarchical distinctions among Indians for centuries. The middle class is still in the process of formation and expansion in India. There are large sections of the population that remain without the benefit of the kind of education that is essential for entry into the salaried and professional middle class. They are also without the resources to set themselves up as independent tradesmen. At the same time, there is a distinct section of industrial workers in the organized sector, the so-called labour aristocracy, whose incomes, lifestyles, and aspirations match those of the middle class, and whose offspring are entering that class in increasing numbers. Since Independence, the boundaries between the small upper rank of the working class and the lower ranks of the middle class have become blurred, although they have not disappeared. I have already alluded to the polymorphous character that the middle class has everywhere on account of its differentiation by employment status and by income, occupation, and education. In India, there is another factor that contributes as much to its polymorphous character, if not more, and that is its differentiation by language, religion, and caste. All things considered, India has probably the most polymorphous middle class in the world. While the middle class is internally differentiated and stratified everywhere, the nature and extent of social gradation within it varies from one country to another. These variations depend upon demographic, technological, and economic factors. They depend also upon cultural values and social traditions, which do not emphasize hierarchical distinctions to the same extent everywhere. The emphasis on such distinctions acts, to some extent, independently of variations in economic organization, and changes in the latter do not necessarily lead to corresponding changes in the former. The Indian population is very large and very diverse. Regional variations in social gradations within the middle class may sometimes be as great as the variations between different European countries. (p.93) Some regions have long traditions of trade and commerce; the occupations that are associated with business and its management tend to be ranked highly. They are not ranked as highly in other regions where independent professions such as law and medicine, and administration, hold pride of place. Here, the contrast between, say, Gujarat and West Bengal will reveal interesting differences in even the conception of what constitutes the core of the middle class. There are variations of subculture also between Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, and other religious communities. These variations are important because differentiation and gradation within the middle class are not simply matters of occupation and employment status but, in a more general sense, of style of life. I have already pointed out that education has played a crucial part Page 12 of 17

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? in the emergence and consolidation of the middle class. Attitudes towards education and the value placed on it, particularly women’s education, vary significantly between different communities, to some extent independently of income and wealth. It is not at all my intention to suggest that the subcultures to which I have drawn attention are impervious to demographic, technological, and economic change. The emergence and consolidation of the middle class in the last 150 years, which is the subject of this essay, brought about continuous changes in work practices and norms as well as in lifestyles. The ways in which the members of the Indian middle class live today are significantly different from the ways in which their forebears lived 100 years ago. The forces of change have acted continuously, but they have been refracted by the divisions of language and religion that have survived the changes to a remarkable degree. It is important to keep in mind the peculiar fragmentation of the Indian middle class, as a whole and in each of its several layers. There are many reasons for this, but by far the most important one is to be found in the deeply conservative marriage practices of most Indians, including those who belong to the middle class. The modernization of Indian society, of which the emergence of a new middle class was a part, did not bring about much immediate change in marriage practices. Till the time of independence, the age at marriage for women remained very low, particularly among well-to-do Hindus who constituted the vanguard of the new middle class. The (p.94) vast majority of marriages were arranged by the family, and looking for a spouse outside the religious or linguistic community was virtually ruled out. There may have been some exceptions even before independence, particularly among Christians, but they did not make a very large difference. The growth of an educated middle class has been accompanied by changes in marriage practices throughout the world. Such changes have also been taking place in India, but at a snail’s pace. I have repeatedly stressed the part played by higher education in the emergence of the new middle class through its close association with a new kind of occupational system. There has been a secular trend of increase in the age of marriage for women to which college and university education has contributed substantially. But, even now, higher education among women is spread unevenly within the middle class. As more and more women secure employment in profession like administration and management, changes in middle class ways of life will become inevitable. Late marriages and marriages of choice are indeed becoming common among educated professional women, but there is as yet no clear evidence that they are leading to an effacement of the boundaries between different linguistic or religious communities.

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? The Indian middle class is fragmented not only by language and religion, but also by caste. Indeed, its fragmentation by caste is what makes it distinctive among the various middle classes that exist in the contemporary world. The divisions of language and religion were not set in a hierarchical framework, whereas those of caste were and still are. I have pointed out that a class, such as the middle class, is a unit in a system of classes. Its internal divisions as well as its relations with other social classes have to be understood in relation to that system. Likewise, no caste can be understood by itself; it has to be understood in relation to the other castes which exist along with it as part of a larger system. Now, the hierarchy of castes is different from the stratification of classes, the two being governed by different principles. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the universities and their colleges were producing increasing numbers of graduates in the arts and sciences, law, medicine, and engineering, who began to enter and (p.95) enlarge the new middle class. That class was initially concentrated in the larger towns and cities, and especially in the presidency capitals of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras (now Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai, respectively). It played an important part in developing the new open and secular institutions that were to provide the basis of democracy in the years to come. The Indian National Congress (INC) was largely the creation of the upper ranks of the emerging middle class. Well into the twentieth century, the clerks, schoolteachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, civil servants, and managers, who made up the educated middle class, were almost all men. The women who were in that class were there mainly as daughters or wives of its male members. Just as a woman belonged to her father’s or her husband’s caste, so too did she find a place in his class. This has been changing steadily since Independence, mainly as a result of the spread of higher education and the postponement of marriage among women. Now, an increasing number of women are, in their own right and mainly through their own efforts, teachers, doctors, lawyers, civil servants, engineers, and bankers. The caste composition of the middle class does not correspond very closely with the caste composition of the population as a whole. Although no caste or community is excluded from it, the upper castes are much better represented in it than the lower ones. I have already said that the middle class is itself stratified, with many grades and layers in it. Whether in the public or in the private sector, the highest grades and ranks in the middle class show a marked preponderance of the castes at the top of the traditional hierarchy, while the castes at its bottom are poorly represented in it and found generally at its lower levels. There are important regional variations in this, but the extent to which the gradations in the middle class continue to reflect the traditional hierarchy of caste is remarkable.

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? It will be wrong to maintain that there has been no incorporation of persons from the lower- or middle-level castes into the middle class or even into its upper ranks in the last 100 years. But this incorporation has been the outcome of diverse processes, and it has not followed the same trajectory in every part of the country. An important factor behind the incorporation has been the policy of caste-based reservations in education and employment, but the policy has had varied (p.96) applications in the different states. Some states have pursued a policy of caste quotas much longer, and more actively, than others. Here one may contrast the southern with the northern states, or, if one wants to make the contrast more pointed, the state of Karnataka, which has had extensive caste quotas for more than 80 years, with the state of West Bengal, which is only now beginning to grapple with the pressure for quotas for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). For 50 or 60 years after they had been set up, the graduates of the first universities in the presidency capitals of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras were predominantly from the top castes just as they were predominantly male. As a consequence, until World War I, the salaried and professional middle class was made up largely of the upper castes. There were various historical and cultural reasons for this, among which social prejudice was one. But it will be difficult to contend that that the social prejudice against members of the cultivating and artisan castes in higher education and salaried employment was stronger than the prejudice against women. The colonial government took a more active interest in maintaining a balance between the various castes and communities than in creating parity between men and women. It began introducing quotas in education and employment in favour of the backward castes and religious minorities. The quotas for religious minorities were abandoned after the partition of the country in 1947, but those for the backward castes, which had been first introduced in peninsular India, continued and came to be more extensively adopted. The British introduced caste quotas on a limited scale and only in public institutions. It was not their aim to bring about a transformation in the structure of Indian society or even to radically alter the social composition of the Indian middle class. After independence, salaried employment in the public sector expanded substantially, giving a great spurt to the enlargement of the middle class. In the 1950s and 1960s, the typical middle-class man was someone who held a job in an office or some other establishment funded wholly or mainly by the government. It is now easily forgotten that the initial impetus for the expansion of the middle class after independence came from the public and not the private sector.

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? Where there were caste quotas, members of the cultivating, artisan, and other intermediate castes found their way into the middle class (p.97) through that route in increasing numbers. Until the 1990s, developments were somewhat different between south India, where there were quotas for the backward castes, and north India, where there were not. Things began to change in the early 1990s when the Supreme Court upheld the recommendations of the Mandal Commission for a uniform pattern of caste quotas in public employment. It is not unlikely that the public sector may lose its advantage to the private sector as the driving force behind the expansion of the middle class. It is partly the apprehension of this that is now leading to the demand for caste quotas in the private sector even as quotas are being introduced into the elite academic institutions, such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) (Thorat et al. 2005). Today, Indians are sharply divided between supporters and opponents of caste quotas. It must be recognized that this is a division mainly within the middle class. The opponents as well as the supporters are members of the educated middle class and, as such, adept at using the rhetoric of equality and social justice in promoting their respective causes. Here it is useful to remember the observation made 70 years ago by K.B. Krishna, himself a non-Brahmin, about the non-Brahmin movement that was the forerunner of the backward classes movement: ‘The Non-Brahmin professional classes are no more champions of social justice than the Brahmin professional classes.… The Non-Brahmin movement of Madras Presidency is no other than the movement of the later educated middle classes who happen to be Non-Brahmins against the earlier educated middle classes who happened to be Brahmins’ (1939: 154–5). There can be no doubt that in the years since Independence, the Indian middle class has not only grown very much in size, but also become socially more diverse. It is not surprising that the internal strains within it have become more acute and more open. References Bibliography references: Bernstein, Eduard. 1909. Evolutionary Socialism. London: Independent Labour Party. Béteille, André. 2002. Work Practices and Norms: A Comparative and Historical Perspective. Geneva: International Institute of Labour Studies. Bukharin, N.V. 1969. Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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Does the Middle Class Have Boundaries? (p.98) Dahrendorf, Ralf. 1959. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Goldthorpe, John H. 1987. Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Goldthorpe, John H. and Keith Hope. 1974. The Social Grading of Occupations. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gupta, Dipankar (ed.). 1993. Social Stratification. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Halsey, A.H., A.F. Heath, and J.M. Ridge. 1980. Origins and Destinations: Family, Class, and Education in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kingston, Paul W. 2000. The Classless Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Krishna, K.B. 1939. The Problem of Minorities: Or Communal Representation in India. London: Allen and Unwin. Lareau, Annette. 2007. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lockwood, David. 1958. The Blackcoated Worker. London: Allen and Unwin. Marx, Karl. 1959. Capital. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Mills, C. Wright. 1951. White Collar: The American Middle Classes. London: Oxford University Press. Rudra, Ashok. 1989. ‘The Intelligentsia as a Ruling Class’, Economic and Political Weekly, 24(3): 142–50. Runciman, W. G. 1966. Relative Deprivation and Social Justice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Thorat, Sukhadeo, Aryama, and Prashant Negi (eds). 2005. Reservation and Private Sector. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Old Differences and New Hierarchies The Trouble with Tribes in Contemporary India Kriti Kapila

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords The essay focuses on the constitutive nature of the category of ‘tribe’ in India and discusses the kinds of difficulties posed by the culture-question in relation to national society. Attending to the distinction made by Dipankar Gupta between hierarchy and difference, the essay explores the reasons for and implications of neglecting the place of heteronomous as opposed to scalar difference in our understanding of contemporary Indian sociality. Examining the discussion on tribes in the Constitutional Assembly Debates from the standpoint of hierarchy and difference, the essay addresses the reasons why the debate on the future of tribes came to be formulated as a problem of potential for modernity and therefore became hostage to the (false) binary between the assimilationists and the isolationists. Keywords:   tribe, culture, hierarchy, difference, Dipankar Gupta, assimilation, isolation, Constitutional Assembly Debates, modernity

The desire for fusion or the desire to murder constitute the double modality of an essential trouble that agitates us in our finitude. To swallow, or to annihilate others—and yet at the same time wanting to maintain them as others, because we also sense the horror of solitude (which is properly the exit from sense, if sense is essentially exchanged or shared). —Nancy (2007: 12)

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies It may even have been at the very first lecture that I ever attended for my Master’s at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) that Dipankar Gupta drew our attention to the distinction between difference and hierarchy, and its purchase for understanding the structures of stratification in any society and of Indian society in particular. His argument regarding the salience of this distinction, which he first made in 1991 (Gupta 1991a, 1991b), and then on at least two further occasions (Gupta 2004, 2005), is perhaps the most important and productive intervention in understanding the mutability of caste hierarchy in contemporary India, even though it has seldom been taken up beyond the context of caste in politics. Hierarchy, according to Gupta, is but just one principle, and not the essence, of social stratification. This is as true for India as it is for other societies. The trouble is, he says, that in our analysis of stratification in Indian society, we have paid too much attention to hierarchy and that too as it is represented in the Brahminical world view (1991a: 11). It is when we take the concept of difference seriously, or the principle of making qualitative (as opposed to scalar) distinctions can we begin to understand not only non-Brahminical world views as competing hierarchies but, more importantly, how other modalities of difference are mobilized to constitute new hierarchies (Gupta 1991a; see also Gupta 2005). In this essay, I examine (p.100) the reasons and the implications of placing an overwhelming weight of scholarly attention on hierarchy for understanding the multiplex of social formations in contemporary India. In particular, I focus on the category of tribe to unpick the difficulties in broaching the question of difference, and to understand the mutability of the category in recent years. It is not without reason that hierarchy has remained a dominant trope for understanding the morphology of Indian society. Caste dominates the way we think of Indian society and its basis of differentiation. In scholarship, this owes a great deal to the centrality of Louis Dumont’s seminal Homo Hierarchicus (1998 [1970]). Even though today the Dumontian model is discounted enough so as to not dominate explanations of the caste system, hierarchy remains the dominant trope for thinking and writing about the Indian society. The reasoning for this seems to be that caste after all is the dominant reality of the vast majority of Indians, whilst some argue its force seems to be now waning in organizing everyday life (Béteille 2012). However, what cannot be discounted is that caste and its effects cannot be understood in isolation from the scholarship about it, especially insofar as this scholarship has historically informed and continues to inform spectacular as well as innocuous state practices. A significant body of work has highlighted the significance of governmental technologies such as the decennial census and policies of positive discrimination based on these enumerative exercises in bestowing a systemic quality to caste as a language with which to interlocute with the state (Appadurai 1993; Cohn 1996; Chakrabarty 2002; Dirks 2001). Such an intermeshing of knowledge production and the political pursuit of caste as the grammar for conducting democratic Page 2 of 16

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies politics has, thus, only calcified the dominance of the trope of hierarchy. As a result, other techniques of collective differentiation have come to remain outside, or at least marginal, to commonsensical understandings of Indian society. Until recently, when other social formations began to assert their own politics of recognition, scholarship replicated the public marginality rendered to those enumerated as statistically insignificant. The ‘tribe question’, for example, received little attention in any mainstream discussion (scholarly or otherwise)— on social stratification, (p.101) electoral democracy, or identity politics. Intellectual agreements and disagreements, social solidarity and unrest, and state making and unmaking have pretty much gone about sidestepping the question of the existence of communities in Indian society that cannot be encompassed within either the framework of ritual hierarchy or then under the arc of world religions. This could not simply have been salutary neglect in the Burkean sense. Béteille had once argued that in India, it is extremely difficult to disaggregate the agenda of government from that of anthropology, so that none of these categories of social distinction are available to study outside of technologies of government (1991: 59). I take Béteille’s insight further to suggest that the enumerative techniques of government are just one of the many reasons why the marginality of tribes was until recently mimicked or repeated in their discursive obscurity. The greater difficulty is the one presented by the question of culture, in large part because there has been little systematic and/or extensive discussion of the place of cultural difference (as opposed sociological differences of caste, class, gender) in relation to either state policy or indeed everyday social life. Moreover, for reasons that have to do with the birth of the postcolonial nation state, recognition of difference in contemporary India has been underpinned by the discussion on secularism, where religion is seen at once to be the primary and the maximal marker of categorical or heteronomous difference. Apart from religion, categorical difference (or culture) finds no basis for recognition within the constitutional framework because the question of difference has been colonized by sociological modalities such as caste, ethnicity, and gender, not in the least because they form important vectors for guaranteeing equality in postcolonial Indian law. I am not suggesting that there exists in contemporary India a purist separation between cultural and sociological differences. Rather, I believe that cultural and sociological differences are distinct assemblages that mobilize specific qualities which are not reducible to each other. For instance, religion as a sociological category encompasses its ability to produce a scalar difference in relation to others (majority/minority), whereas the cultural category of religion encompasses its theology, belief structures, ritual practices, etc. The sociological and the cultural overlap impinge on one another but, nevertheless, are involved in distinct fields of production. Discussions of (p.102) contemporary Indian sociality have been overwhelmed by sociological readings of difference as inequality, among other Page 3 of 16

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies things, because of a nationalist commitment to social reform, including and especially that directed at caste. Whilst social reform against caste was unquestionably necessary, its force, combined with its historical pre-eminence, led to a neglect—in scholarship as well as in public discourse—of forms of difference that are not based in or around a scalar logic. At the same time, as this essay shows, through several processes of translation entailed in creating a coherent agenda of postcolonial social reform, differences that were not necessarily hierarchical in form, too, were incorporated within a scalar logic. Specifically for the question of tribe, even though scalarity is not constitutive of the category, through official processes of social identification and enumeration, it too is now encompassed within a scalar logic of social difference, as I discuss later. The material presented here shows that, ironically, in the attempts to recalibrate difference in postcolonial national society through the pursuit of policies of equity and equality, the logic of hierarchy has only become further entrenched. In the rest of this essay, I focus on the constitutive nature of the category of tribes in India and discuss the kinds of difficulties posed by, what I call here, the culture question in relation to that of national society. I examine the discussions by, or on behalf of the tribal people at the eve of independence on their place in the postcolonial nation-state, with a view to excavating the genealogy of their current relationship with the state. The nature and language of the claims made by tribal members of the Constituent Assembly brings to light the difficulties in staking a role in the emergent multicultural nation state from the standpoint of heteronomous (as opposed to scalar) difference, that could neither be incorporated within the discussion on social reform nor secularism. Examining the discussion on tribes in the Constitutional Assembly Debates (CAD) from the standpoint of hierarchy and difference, I address the reasons why the debate on the future of tribes came to be formulated as a problem of potential for modernity and, therefore, became hostage to the (false) binary between the assimilationists and the isolationists. Within anthropology and beyond, the Ghurye–Elwin debate about whether or not tribes should become incorporated within the national mainstream (p.103) or, in some ways, be protected from the advent of modernity is well-documented (Guha 1999; Kapila 2008; Skaria 1997; Srivatsan 2005). What has remained obscured from view is why the debate on tribes came to be framed in these very terms in the first instance. Contemporaneous discussions on the upliftment of Dalits, whether in their selfrepresentation or in official and legal discourse, were never posited in terms of their potential for modernity, and/or in terms of choice regarding opting in or out of its welfare corollary of ‘development’. Instead, the ordinal disadvantage of Dalits was framed within an injury discourse, and in terms of historical harm inflicted through ritual hierarchy and its attendant practices that purported to produce species-like distinction between the twice-born and the Dalit castes. Positive discrimination was, thus, cast within a compensatory logic through Page 4 of 16

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies which this historic injury exacted by ritual discrimination was to be redressed. Whether or not this was an adequate or even effective measure for dealing with the question of ritual hierarchy is not within the scope of this essay. What is pertinent to our discussion is that in the normative conceptualization of national society that took place through the discussions on stratification and modes of redress, not only were all forms of difference translated into scalar difference but that their redress, too, was framed within a compensatory logic. If compensatory discrimination for Scheduled Castes (SCs) hinged on the configuration of untouchability as ‘bad tradition’, then state welfare for Scheduled Tribes (STs) emerged from a particular understanding of civilizational progress, or modernity of and for the new nation. Thus, the state identified caste with society and state welfare measures were put in place that aimed to address the institutional and structural working of society. Tribes, on the other hand, were seen as a matter of ‘culture’—not institutionally integrated with the wider society, even discursively. The unity of the nation state necessitated encompassment, but their separation through location, exchange, and cosmology came to be constituted as a problem of modernity, and not its effect. Further, unlike caste where the villain was a historical harm, in the case of tribe the object of reform was a lack or a deficit (as opposed to an injury). But, not all politics of recognition at the eve of Independence, however, was constituted or through an injury (p.104) claim. Those who represented either tribal people or tribal areas in the Constituent Assembly insisted on a recognition of their contribution to national life, but their claims for recognition were not embedded in, or did not emanate from, a cognizance of a historical wrong or a historical injury.1 Even though the object of welfare was conceptualized as a lack in the case of tribal populations, the only way their existence could be recognized was possible through the encompassment of their claim to difference within the compensatory principle of positive discrimination. The birth of the false debate for tribes has its birth in this encompassment or indeed this misrecognition. This collapsing of ‘difference as in equality’ and ‘difference as not same’ in the policies of redistribution in India as the self-similar subject of justice and welfare in postcolonial India become evident in the CAD (as has been discussed later) and has had profound implications to the status of tribes, their relationship to the state, and their politics.

Debating Tribes in the Constituent Assembly The Constituent Assembly (1946–9) is aptly described as ‘an island of calm deliberation amid the historical currents that swirled through the country’ (Khilnani 1997: 33). Its constitution, jurisdiction, and character (that is, whether public, private, or secret) were themselves matters of much deliberation (Rau 1960: xxxiv), as was its representativeness (Bajpai 2011: 46). Though these debates have been studied to understand the legal framework of the new nation and its democratic and multicultural character (Ambagudia 2011; Bajpai 2011; Khilnani 1997), most discussions have side-stepped an engagement Page 5 of 16

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies with the question of tribe with respect to collective and community rights and principles of positive discrimination, even when the question of difference has been of central concern (for example, Ambagudia 2011; Bajpai 2011: 126–8; Mukherjee 2010). As a result, the deliberations in and around the classificatory and enumerative exercises such as the census, or then early ethnological accounts continue to remain the baseline discussion on the category tribe. This has meant that self and relational understandings of people classified and identified as tribes have remained obscured, or have been matters of conjecture at best in discussions on postcolonial state policies of multiculturalism (p.105) in India. It is with a view to address this significant gap that I focus particularly on the interventions made by representative of tribal India in the Constituent Assembly. I especially attend to the interventions made by the spokesman and the sole tribal member of the Constituent Assembly, Jaipal Singh Munda. In doing so, my aim is to delineate the discrepancy between the self-representation of tribal interests in the Constituent Assembly and the terms of their ultimate translation in public policy, especially in their constitution as a subject of welfare through the Sixth Schedule. Diversity was imagined as the starting point for the formation of national society in the Constituent Assembly, thus making the project of Indian multiculturalism already different from other democratic multicultural states, where diversity and difference have tested the robustness of the liberal principles of these polities (Kapila 2008). A complex interlocking of the history of enumeration, the entrenchment of the ethnological imagination, and the contours of the anticolonial struggle, had paved the way for the not only the pursuit of equality, the cornerstone of policy, but also the recognition of only certain forms of difference. In brief, for reasons that lay in the very birth of the nation state, religion came to be the only and the maximal categorical difference in Indian society to be recognized by the Constitution, which led to the eventual promulgation of personal codes. Simultaneously, the recognition of the violence of historical ritual discrimination led to the strident pursuit of equality and parity of status in law. While religious difference found recognition through the conceptual arc of minority, the difference of ritual status was seen to be based in inequality and, therefore, sought to be erased from society through legislation (criminalizing untouchability) and active state intervention through policies of positive discrimination. Social formations such as tribes, that should have belonged to the realm of categorical difference, or even classified as minorities since they were statistically marginal, were instead constituted as objects of welfare reform directed as those who fell under the rubric of ‘difference as inequality’. The nonrecognition of tribes as categorically different groups had echoes of the historic Poona Pact of 1935, where the demand for separate electorates for tribal members and populations had found no favour with B.R. Ambedkar in Poona in 1935 or, indeed, (p.106) others such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel in Page 6 of 16

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies the Constituent Assembly (Ambagudia 2011: 35). Instead, the category of tribes in India came to be simultaneously marked by both categorical difference (quasistatistical minority) and inequality (through the status of backwardness). Hence, it became subject to the twin directives of integration in the national community as minority and development as backward groups. Whereas, the category became the purview of the tussle between the assimilationists and isolationists, within the Constituent Assembly. However, the question of tribes became part of the wider negotiations between the integrationists and the multinationalists, even though the exact nature of social formation of the tribes remained a subject of contention. This fuzziness was raised through the issue of nomenclature by Jaipal Singh: For the first time in the history of India I find the adibasis are now ‘aboriginal’ and ‘hill tribes’. I would urge the hon. Minister not to indulge in such disruptive language. Is a man tribal or not? Has to be up in the hills before he can be a tribal? What is this new language he is trying to introduce in Republican India?2 The question of integration of tribes into the national mainstream was of a qualitatively different kind from that of either princely states or, indeed, religious minorities. Whilst princely states were integral to the discussions on the nature of sovereignty and its connection with territorial integrity, the same could not be said for tribal kingdoms. Tribal kingdoms and other polities were never recognized as distinct political formations but were subsumed under the wider territory they were part of. Alfred Gell has argued that while tribal polities, such as those in colonial central India, had highly elaborate form of kingship, they nevertheless eschewed state practices of rent and revenue extraction, prevalent in the surrounding Hindu, Muslim or British rule. It was precisely their inability to develop an elaborate rent-and-revenue function that distinguished tribal polities from princely India (Gell 1997: 433; Grigson 1944: 33). At the time when the Constitution was framed, these factors played a crucial role in the kind of political recognition that was accorded to tribes. The non-recognition of tribal polities, either by the British or then by the national leadership, was part of a wider disposition towards the question of difference. Unlike religious minorities whose life-ways (p.107) and belief systems had gained at least a nominal recognition in law through personal codes, tribal religion and life-ways did not find any support or recognition in law. The question of minorities, thus, was neither accurate, nor indeed acceptable to them: I do not consider the Adibasis are a minority. I have always held that a group of people who are the original owners of this country, even if they are only a few, can never be considered a minority. They have prescriptive rights. We want to be treated like anybody else. In the past, thanks to the Page 7 of 16

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies major political parties, thanks to the British Government and thanks to every enlightened Indian citizen, we have been isolated and kept, as it were in a zoo. That has been the attitude of all people in the past. Our point now is that you have got to mix with us. We are willing to mix with you and it is for that reason, because we shall compel you to come near us, because we must get near you, that we have insisted on a reservation of seats as far as the Legislatures are concerned.3 The above was the contribution of Jaipal Singh to the debate on the Report on Minority Rights tabled by Vallabhai Patel in the Constituent Assembly in August 1947. The Munda leader from Chhota Nagpur had been campaigning for the recognition of the rights of the tribal people in the region for some time. Earlier, Singh had mobilized the tribal peoples of the Chhota Nagpur region to form the Adivasi Mahasabha in 1938, which was later renamed as the Jharkhand Party.4 Even though tribal interests were picked up and represented by other members such as A.V. Thakkar (Bihar) and J.J.M. Nicholas Roy (Assam), Singh was as such the sole tribal member in the Constituent Assembly, and took his representational position both in the Assembly and beyond very seriously.5 For example, he wrote several missives to Dr Rajendra Prasad, as the senior-most Congress figure from Bihar, reminding him about the inadequacies of the statistical method for understanding the tribal question: Aboriginal identity must be preserved at any cost. Immediate measures should be adopted to promote aboriginal culture. The statistical confusion that exists in respect of [sic] the numerical strength of the aborigines should be removed. An aborigine by embracing Hinduism, Islam or any other religion does not cease to be an Adibasi. Census data are inaccurate.6 As is evident from the quote, Singh considered the tribal recognition neither as a matter of being conceptualized as a statistical minority (p.108) nor on the basis of scalar inequality. In his understanding, the claim was based in a rather different premise—one that was never fully picked up by the political leadership at the time, and which did not come in the language of deficit or lack, or indeed backwardness. The claim Jaipal Singh made repeatedly pertained to matters of origins, property, and ownership. Consider the very first intervention in the Constituent Assembly made by Singh: Thank you [Sir], for giving me the opportunity to speak as the representative of the aboriginal tribes of Nagpur … so far as I have been able to count, we are here only five [members representing tribes or tribal areas]. But we are millions and millions and we are the real owners of India. It has recently become fashion to talk of Quit India. I do hope that

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies this is only a stage for the real rehabilitation and resettlement of the original people of India.7 Asserting themselves as the original inhabitants of India and to generalize the anticolonial call, ‘Quit India’, to the wider Indian population was a radical and bold move indeed, but it did not evoke a sustained rebuttal or response from other members of the Constituent Assembly on the day. Its non-cognizance spoke of the deep opposition to the very idea of primordiality. The claim to ownership of property was premised on an originary identification with the territory in question. Singh did not make these claims unaware of the opposition that confronted him, nor the perceived anachronism of these claims: [W]herever we have been it has been urged upon us that for several years to come, the aboriginals’ land must be inalienable. If I were to fight for that particular, shall we say protection, most members would laugh. A friend of mine, only this morning when I was talking to him, said, ‘Do you want for eternity that aboriginal land should remain inalienable?’ [T]hat is how some of the demands vital to Adibasis are ridiculed. We have been talking about equality. Equality sounds well; but I do demand discrimination when it comes to holdings of aboriginal land.8 As is clear from these passages, there was a lack of fit between the terms in which tribes were being incorporated within the postcolonial state and its polity, and their self-representation. The discrepancies between the two representations show the underlying difficulties faced by law and lawmakers on the question of difference. Postcolonial law in India, it seems, was unable or unwilling to recognize difference as discreteness. Even religion—the marker of categorical, heteronomous (p.109) difference—had to be converted into the statistical model of minorities and majority and only, thence, through an operative notion of scalarity guaranteed equality. The reasons necessitating the recognition of religion through the trope of majority/minority, and the repercussions for religion itself, are not within the scope of this essay. My focus here is the discursive moves through which tribes were incorporated within a singular logic of scalarity. I want to suggest that the recognition of the categorical difference being claimed by tribes for themselves was transmuted into a scalar one as a result of three distinct, but overlapping, sets of misrecognition. We did not go to London for negotiations [sic]. We did not go to meet the Cabinet Mission for provisions for our rights. We look only to our countrymen to give us a fair and equitable deal. For the last six thousand years, we have been shabbily treated.… Six thousand years … that is the time you non-Adibasis have been in this country.… Number for number, the Sikhs, the Christians, the Anglo Indians, and the Parsis have been given

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies more than their due, whereas when we come to my own people, the real and most ancient people of this country, the position is different.9 Three key elements constituted the core of the claims made here by Singh: one, about origins and time; second, ownership claims over territory through primordiality, and finally, and most importantly, the subsequent misappropriation of their property by others. Time and territory as anchors of collective selfidentification chimed with prevalent anthropological framing of culture as originary and boundary-making.10 It was, however, the third element that marked Singh’s claim on behalf of the tribal populations of India as radical. Singh did not characterize, or consider, tribes as a people who had suffered an injury or harm. Instead, by positioning tribes as the original inhabitants of the land, and by further claiming their inalienable rights of ownership in it, he constituted their claim in terms of property rights, and the subsequent demand in terms of recovery of debt owed by others. In other words, this was not a claim of injury that demanded compensation. This was a claim about title and unpaid debt that demanded recovery and restitution of ownership. A robust corpus of scholarship exists on the usurpation of land and title through the doctrine of terra nullius and its effects for settler–colonial contexts (Borrows 2010; Povinelli 2003; Tully 2002). However, unlike aboriginal property (p.110) claims in settler colonies, Singh had not suggested a comprehensive usurpation or occupation of territory by the non-adivasis, but had gestured more in the direction of what may be called squatting. This move allowed for a discursive fragmentation of his claim to title and a partial recognition of tribal interests, as I elaborate later.11 Nevertheless, this was an altogether different kind of claim that could not and did not find a ready fit with the current (or even subsequent) thinking on the framework for social welfare and reform. Distinct from the conceptualization of the claim as an injury or harm whose locus was corporeal (as in the case of caste), the locus of the claim by tribes lay in the land and the materiality of territory. The state, on its part, reduced the largest claim made by Singh on behalf of the tribal populations of inalienable ownership of territory to its partial, or rather elementary, form—as property claim to resources, that is, qualified rights of ownership to elements that may reside in that territory but not to territory itself. This move disaggregated the main claim for title into its elemental parts and further reduced the temporal claim of origins to merely an affective link to these elemental aspects of territory, for example, forests, produce, etc. In a recent review essay, Francesca Merlan has argued that ‘[i]n many instances, including those of the “classical”, or early-accepted indigenous groups, the introduction in some countries of frameworks that rest on traditionalist assumptions of the centrality of territorial connection have been seen as effectively having a dispossessory effect’ (2009: 306). A serious and substantial political claim, and the terms through which tribal selfhood was understood, shifted registers and came to be recognized through the narrow lens of political economy. Tribes were divested of their claim to ownership of Page 10 of 16

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies property in the absolute, or even substantial, sense and placed at a distinct remove from their claim to heterenomous difference. Thus, in these inaugural moments of the new nation state, divested of their property rights, tribes came to be constituted as subjects of welfare and development, profoundly defining not only the politics of development in postcolonial India with respect to tribes, but also their own pursuit for recognition and future claim-making.

New Hierarchies People identified as STs today are an ever more diverse set with very different social formations, politics, nomenclature, and economic (p.111) realities. For example, the political exigencies faced by adivasis, janjatis, vanvasis, mool bharatiyas, etc., are not the same, nor do they speak from similar political concerns (see Baviskar 2007; Karlsson 2003). This was not the case in the Constituent Assembly. Spokespersons of the tribal communities within the Constituent Assembly were categorical about their self-perception as the original inhabitants of India, who should have inalienable rights in land. Singh’s disapproval of the descriptor ‘aboriginal’ of course gestured to the negative anthropological baggage of the appellation. But it also signalled the eschewing of any nomenclature that inserted tribal peoples in a hierarchical framework. To date, terminology remains a vexed issue, especially because the words tribal, aboriginal, indigenous, and ST correspond neatly with neither each other nor, indeed, with their vernacular terms or with the people, thus, classified. What we now have by way of the policies redistributive justice for tribal populations in India is an unstable mix of three positions—of formal equality, of protectionist policies, and of politics of developmentalism and indigeneity. There has been a proliferation of populations demanding ST status, especially in the wake of the economic restructuring of the past 20 years. The state is forced into the recognition of evermore forms of difference in order to remain true to its policies of redistributive justice, and, of course, the arithmetic of electoral democracy. The officio-legal measure of tribal-ness continues to follow by-now outmoded anthropological understandings of group-boundedness—that is, of separate and separated beliefs and life ways, while the reality on the ground remains muddy and much more dynamic (Kapila 2008). In its 60-year career, thus far, affirmative action has produced its own new inequalities, including among the tribal populations of India. The ‘creamy layer’, which refers to the tiny section of the community that continues to amass benefit opportunities for itself over time, thereby, retaining the baggage of discrimination only through nomenclature or classification, there is another kind of differentiation that is being given political articulation in recent years. This has to do with the growth in the politics of indigeneity and indigenous status that has given new life to categories such as adivasi, mool bharatiya, and vanvasi, which are born out of, and address, different political persuasions. In their becoming they have also called into being new interlocutors to arbitrate on their status that go beyond the Indian (p.112) state. These include the United Page 11 of 16

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies Nations’ International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs. In moving the register of their struggle away from the local and the national to include the global, this politics has produced a new axis of inequality that pertains not to ritual rank, nor to civilizational progress, nor indeed to class, but to new formulations of scale. Within the tribal populations, access to such global platforms is neither evenly distributed either currently or, indeed, in the potential future. This then is the new creamy layer of the tribal population that has scaled up its politics beyond the state, but nevertheless remains rooted in the idea of compensatory discrimination, not for historical injury, but for the discursive wrongs committed against its constituents. *** In the unexamined life of the postcolonial Indian state, tribes must form an important blind spot, which came into common view only when an extreme version of their politics posed a serious challenge to state authority, and the legitimacy of the prevalent models of development. It may not be hypothetical to propose that had it not been for the Maoist movements in the so-called Red Corridor in central and eastern India, the political marginality and discursive obscurity would have long continued. The reason for tribes being part of the unexamined life of the postcolonial Indian state is because culture, or heteronomous difference, remains a blind spot. With respect to the question of tribes, the unexamined nature of the place of culture and a recognition of cultural difference in India that does not hinge on a pre-theoretical commitment to scalarity, has had grave implications. The most serious of these has been the erasure of title, and the inversion of their self-image as propertied subjects and the scaling down of their ownership claims to elementary forms. Their positioning of non-tribal populations essentially as debtors never became embedded in public debate. Instead, tribes have come to be constituted as those who have been found lacking in modernity or civilizational content and, therefore, as prime objects of welfare measure of a paternalistic state. The odds with which their self-image rests with respect to their current status as recipients of welfare and as impediments to state development, and capital has given rise to two distinct developments: violent forms of protest, but also to a new politics of scale, as evident (p.113) in the transnationalization of their politics of recognition. Until the question of recognizing cultural difference in postcolonial India for what it is remains unaddressed, new mutations will arise in diverse spheres. It is for anthropology to take up the culture question seriously for the study of contemporary India, so as to put hierarchy in its place, and not leave it once again for either administrative, judiciary, or policymakers to bring it in through the proverbial back door. (p.114) References

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies Bibliography references: Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1991. ‘Writing against Culture’, in R. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. Santa Fe: School of American Research, pp. 137–54. Ambagudia, Jagannath. 2011. ‘Scheduled Tribes and the Politics of Inclusion in India’, Asian Social Work and Policy Review, 5(1): 33–43. Appadurai, Arjun. 1993. ‘Number in the Colonial Imagination’, in C.A. Breckenridge and P. van der Veer (eds), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 314–40. Bajpai, Rochana. 2011. Debating Difference: Group Rights and Liberal Democracy in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Baviskar, Amita. 2007. ‘Indian Indigeneities: Adivasi Engagements with Hindu Nationalism in India’, in M. de la Cadena and O. Starn (eds), Indigenous Experience Today. Oxford: Berg. Béteille, André. 1991 ‘The Concept of Tribe with Special Reference to India’, in Society and Politics in India: Essays in a Comparative Perspective. London: Athalone Press, pp. 57–78. ———. 2012. ‘The Peculiar Tenacity of Caste’, Economic and Political Weekly, 47(13, 31 March): 41–8. Borrows, John. 2010. Canada’s Indigenous Constitution. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Brown, Wendy. 1995. States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2002. ‘Governmental Roots of Modern Ethnicity’, in Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. 80–99. Cohn, Bernard. 1996. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Dirks, Nicholas. 2001. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of India. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Dumont, Louis. 1998 [1970]. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies Fabian, Johanes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Fischer, Michael J. 2009. Anthropological Futures. Durham: Duke University Press. Gell, Alfred. 1997. ‘Exalting the King, Obstructing the State: A Political Interpretation of Royal Ritual in Bastar District, Central India’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society, 3(33): 433–50. (p.115) Grigson, W.V. 1944. ‘The Aboriginal in the Future India’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 74(1/2): 33–41. Guha, Ramachandra. 1999. Savaging the Civilised: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, and India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Guha, Ranajit (ed.). 1983. ‘The Prose of Counter-insurgency’, in Subaltern Studies II. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–42. Gupta, Akhil and J. Ferguson. 1992. ‘Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference’, Cultural Anthropology, 7(1): 6–23. Gupta, Dipankar (ed.). 1991a. ‘Hierarchy and Difference: An Introduction’, in Social Stratification. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–21. ———. 1991b. ‘Continuous Hierarchies and Discrete Castes, in D. Gupta (ed.), Social Stratification. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 110–41. ——— (ed.). 2004. Caste in Question: Identity or Hierarchy? New Delhi: Sage Publications. ———. 2005. ‘Caste and Politics: Identity Over System’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 34: 409–25. Hannerz, Ulf. 2010. ‘Diversity is Our Business’, American Anthropologist, 112(4): 539–51. Jain, Sarah L. 2005. Injury: The Politics of Product Design and Safety Law in the United States. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Kapila, K. 2008. ‘The Measure of a Tribe: The Cultural Politics of Constitutional Reclassification in North India’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14(1): 117–34. Karlsson, Beppe. 2003. ‘Anthropology and the Indigenous Slot’, Critique of Anthropology, 23(4): 403–23. Khilnani, Sunil. 1997. The Idea of India. London: Hamish Hamilton. Page 14 of 16

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies Kuper, Adam. 2003. ‘The Return of the Native’, Current Anthropology, 44(3): 389–402. Merlan, Francesca. 2009. ‘Indigeneity: Global and Local’, Current Anthropology, 50(3): 303–333. Mukherjee, Mithi. 2010. India in the Shadow of Empire: A Legal and Political History 1774–1950. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2007. ‘Church, State, Resistance’, Journal of Law and Society, 34(1): 3–13. Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2003. The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Politics and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Rau, B.N. 1960. India’s Constitution in the Making. Mumbai: Orient Longman. (p.116) Sharma, K.L. 1976. ‘Jharkhand Movement in Bihar’, Economic and Political Weekly, 11(1/2): 37–43. Skaria, Ajay. 1997. ‘Shades of Wildness: Tribe, Caste and Gender in Western India’, Journal of Asian Studies, 56(3): 726–45. Srivatsan, R. 2005. ‘Native Noses and Nationalist Zoos: Debates in Colonial and Early Nationalist Anthropology of Castes and Tribes’, Economic and Political Weekly, 40(19): 1986–98. Tully, James. 2002. ‘The Unfreedoms of the Moderns in Comparison to Their Ideals of Constitutional Democracy’, Modern Law Review, 65(2): 204–28. Turner, Terence. 1993. ‘Anthropology and Multiculturalism: What Is Anthropology That Multiculturalism Should Be Mindful of It?’, Cultural Anthropology, 8(4): 411–29. Notes:

(1) . For a philosophical discussion on injury and identity, see Brown (1995). For injury and compensation, see Jain (2005). (2) . Jaipal Singh, Parliamentary Debates, 18 April 1950, part I, vol. III, 1601. (3) . Jaipal Singh, Constituent Assembly Debates (hereafter CAD), 27 August 1947, vol. V, no. 8. New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, p. 226, emphasis added. (4) . He later spearheaded the formation of the Jharkhand Party in the early 1950s, which was the first political association to petition the States Reorganisation Committee in 1955 for a separate state of Jharkhand. Singh and

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Old Differences and New Hierarchies his party soon withdrew their petition and movement following a merger with the Congress party (Sharma 1976: 38). (5) . Jaipal Singh was a Munda from present-day Jharkhand Party, and was educated in Oxford. For a brief biographical account of Jaipal Singh in relation to tribal uprisings and movements in Jharjhand, see Sharma (1976). On the history of tribal insurrection in Jharkhand, see Guha (1983). (6) . Letter No. 112. From Jaipal Singh to Dr Rajendra Prasad, 24 May 1939, Ranchi. Dr Rajendra Prasad: Correspondence and Select Documents, ed.V. Choudhary, 3(January–July 1939). New Delhi: Allied Publishers, p. 96. I thank Rohit De for pointing me to this reference. (7) . Jaipal Singh, CAD, 11 December 1946, vol. 1, p. 46. (8) . Jaipal Singh, CAD, 30 April 1947, vol. 3, no. 3, p. 449. (9) . Jaipal Singh, CAD, 24 January 1947, vol. 2, no. 4, p. 316. (10) . Such a bounded nature of the culture-concept has, of course, long since been discarded within anthropology (Abu-Lughod 1991; Fabian 1983; Fischer 2009; Gupta and Ferguson 1992), though anthropologists of varying persuasions have alerted the ‘return’ of precisely such a bounded concept in public life in recent years (compare Kuper 2003; see Hannerz 2010; Turner 1993). (11) . Over the years, J.S. Munda’s claim to primordial ownership of land by tribals became first weak and then altogether abandoned, as his own politics became more proximate to the Congress party.

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? Reflections on Contemporary India Gurpreet Mahajan

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords This essay seeks to explore the notion of ‘civil society’. The context to the essay is provided by its frequent invocation in the recent movement against corruption. The popular media has tended to propagate the view that civil society is somehow a more authentic representative of the common people than those elected to the formal institutions of democracy, like Parliament. However, the Campaign against Corruption—of which Anna Hazare was a prominent figure—was more like a movement than an institution of civil society. The essay argues for reconsidering the line that separates civil society from movements because the new social movements that are emerging all over the democratic world are very different from the movements of the past that were seeking fundamental changes in the social and political structure. Keywords:   civil society, uncivil society, anti-corruption movement, democracy, Campaign against Corruption, Anna Hazare

This essay seeks to explore the notion of civil, and correspondingly uncivil, which informs the concept of civil society. The need to revisit this distinction has been occasioned by recent events in the country, in particular the ‘Campaign against Corruption’, which asked for a strong anti-graft legislation and the creation of the office of the Lokpal (an ombudsman, in a manner of speaking). The Campaign was marked by indefinite fasts on two occasions by one of its

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? prominent voices, Anna Hazare, and it received overwhelming support of people of different classes in Delhi and across the country. The media, both print and electronic, represented the campaign as an expression of civil society,1 suggesting at least implicitly that this was the voice of the people, perhaps more authentic than that represented by the formal institutions of democracy, like Parliament. The members of the Anna Hazare team (the name by which the core group2 was frequently addressed in the public domain) also tended to identify themselves as civil society. Responding to the claim that lawmaking is the task of Parliament, members of the Anna team, for instance, defended their intervention with statements like ‘Civil society should take part in policy making to fight corruption’.3 Even the government tended to accept this frame of reference. The newspapers also reported a senior minister as saying, ‘Civil Society leaders are behaving like legislators’.4 In representing themselves as civil society, the Anna Hazare group tended to pit themselves against the government. Civil society was presented as the antithesis of state authorities: if the former was associated with weakening democracy through such practices as corruption and pursuit of self-interest or partisan agendas, civil society was presented as speaking in a cohesive voice and sharing a common concern for the (p.118) welfare of the citizens—something that would deepen democracy. The government challenged this representation of the civil society. While they did not question the designation of the Anna Hazare team as civil society, they claimed that the elected representatives were the true nominees of the people. In this contestation, the relationship between civil society and democratic state remained unexamined—with both claiming to express the voice of the people. There were a few dissenting voices outside the government—voices that came from society and other associations that also saw themselves as civil society. Some of these critics expressed their differences on the chosen modality of protest: they questioned the use of fast (hunger strike) as a method of putting pressure on the elected government. Others expressed their differences on the draft of the Jan Lokpal Bill that had been prepared by the Anna Hazare team. But this set of detractors by and large accepted the prevalent framework. They neither questioned the designation of the campaigners as civil society nor challenged the presumed proximity of the designated civil society to the people or the grass roots. The only difference was that they spoke of civil society in the plural and wanted other voices to be included in the discussion along with the Anna Hazare team. There were, however, some individuals who steered away from naming the Anna Hazare team as civil society. They spoke variously of the ‘Anna Hazare Roadshow’ (Jayal 2011) or ‘Tamasha’. Yet, others labelled it as ‘fascist’ (Appadurai 2011),5 manipulated by and carrying forward the agenda of Page 2 of 16

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? some ‘foreign agencies’ like the World Bank and the Ford Foundation (Roy 2011). These identifications reflected specific assessments of the agenda of the Campaign against Corruption; they also hinted at the uncivility of the protests, even though few offered good reasons for arriving at this conclusion. For the most part anxieties were expressed about the people heading the campaign: their social position, credibility, and personal agendas (Guha 2011). These assertions, or condemnations, bypassed the question of civil society. They focused on the intentions of individuals and their social positions to question the sincerity of the top leadership and, by implication, the desirability of accommodating their voices. Not all critics questioned the representation of the Campaign organizers as civil society on grounds of the nature of the leadership (p.119) or their supposed social base. Some in fact identified the Campaign as a movement, others questioned the mode of protest chosen by the Campaign. They maintained that the Campaign bypassed formal institutions of democracy. It wanted legislation in response to popular pressure, and this had the potential of subverting democracy or transforming it into the tyranny of the majority, of the coherent and assertive minority. Each of these criticisms need to be examined separately. In case of the former (that is, which alludes to the intentions of the participants), it must be said that the actions of individuals who occupy political office or a position of leadership must certainly be open to public scrutiny, but it is questionable whether these can be the basis of distinguishing the civil and the uncivil. As the German philosopher Hegel pointed out, rather perceptively, in the modern age, when people are relatively less influenced by authority or reliance upon others, they participate in the social and political arena with different interests, beliefs, and intentions. But, eventually, what happens is something that no one had intended. The contingencies of interests is but an instrument for bringing people together to realize an object, and it is the necessity of the latter for that society that makes the former insignificant (Hegel 2001 [1837]: 35–47). For this reason, it is unhelpful, if not also erroneous, to understand a phenomenon merely in terms of the intentions of the actors or their subjective location. Just as the truth of a scientific theory is not judged in terms of the subjective state of the scientist whose idea it is (Popper 1968: 31–4), so must we guard against the tendency to reduce social concepts to the state of being of particular individuals. However, other criticisms that differentiate civil society and a movement, or speak of the threat that such campaigns hold for democracy, need to be considered carefully. In every democracy we need, as André Béteille points out, some institutions that mediate between the state and the individual (Béteille 1996, 1999). If we accept and agree that a democracy cannot function effectively without strong and autonomous associations in society, then it remains to be seen just which of these associations can be identified as civil society. Further, if Page 3 of 16

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? democratic governments are expected to respond to the demands that come from society, then again we need to consider just why are (p.120) some pressures identified as the expressions of civil society that must be attended to? In sum, how do we draw the line that separates the civil and the uncivil? These questions have resurfaced sharply in the course of the Campaign against Corruption. But the present course of the event has only underlined the necessity to revisit the idea of civil society and, in the context of the present historical context, reflect upon the purported distinction between civil society and movement. Whether it is the debate around the Campaign or the existing literature on civil society, the latter is almost always associated with the deepening of democracy. Just what does this imply? In what way is civil society linked with democracy? The following pages reflect on these questions in the hope of sifting between the prevailing, and often contradictory, representations of civil society that are employed in contemporary public discourse.

The Context Over the last three decades, corruption in ‘high places’ has been a matter of considerable concern in India. In recent times, particularly since the 2010 Commonwealth Games (CWG) in Delhi, this subject has been the main point of discussion in the media and the public domain. In fact, 2011 began with large rallies being organized in Delhi and other parts of the country on 30 January and 27 February 2011 to put pressure on the government to take action against those accused of corruption. Events took on a new and far more dramatic turn in the months that followed. Unlike previous occasions, when a public meeting marked a day of protest, bringing together several concerned citizens and social activists on the same platform, April saw a different mode of protest. Anna Hazare—a person who had undertaken campaigns against corruption on previous occasions in the state of Maharashtra, and more importantly, played a critical role in making the village Ralegan Siddhi, an economically prosperous and self-sufficient village—announced his decision to go on ‘fast unto death’ from 5 April if the government did not take the necessary action to draft an effective Lokpal Bill, in consultation with the members of the ‘civil society’. Although, a subcommittee was formed by the government to initiate consultations on this proposed legislation, the (p.121) discussions remained inconclusive, and Anna Hazare went on fast on the announced date at Jantar Mantar in Delhi. He ended his fast five days later when the government agreed to form a Joint Committee, comprising the members of the government and the Anna Hazare team, to draft the Lokpal Bill (which would create an office like that of the Ombudsman), but the matter did not end there. When the discussions broke down, with the government rejecting suggestions that the Anna Hazare team considered to be extremely critical for creating a strong Lokpal, Hazare announced that he would go on an indefinite fast from 16 August. His arrest on the morning of that date, and his release within 24 hours, added further momentum to the protests with people pouring into the Ramlila Grounds in Page 4 of 16

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? Delhi (the venue of his fast), and many more supporting him all over the country. Amid the government’s wavering positions and the growing concern over the health of the 74-year-old Hazare, appeals were made to the latter to end his fast. It was eventually on the morning of 28 August that he ended his fast after the Parliament agreed, in principle, to consider the three key demands of the Anna Hazare team and forward them, along with suggestions that came from other individuals and groups, to the Parliamentary Standing Committee deliberating on this issue. It is not my intention here to analyse the issues raised by the Anna Hazare team, or to examine the viability of the proposals submitted by them, or to comment on the probability of curbing corruption by the creation of the office of the Lokpal. Instead, I want to use this occasion to reflect on the concept of civil society in a democratic polity. In his writings on this theme, Dipankar Gupta defined civil society in terms of those practices that deepen democratic citizenship (1999). This is an idea that has to be placed at the centre of any discussion on civil society, but one can understand the significance of this statement only by engaging with the different meanings that have come to be associated with this concept over the centuries.

The Idea of the Civil Over the last four centuries, the concept of civil society has been represented in many different ways. But most of these descriptions of civil society emerged in response to the question: what sustains civility in society? Although this is a question that rarely figures in (p.122) contemporary discussions on this theme, one needs, nevertheless, to return to it to sift through the many different ways in which the term civil society is used in our society. In the early seventeenth century, political theorists like Hobbes and Locke argued that the presence of a recognized legal authority that can implement the law and punish the offenders is the condition of civility. Without law, or what came subsequently to be read as the ‘rule of law’, there would only be disorder, chaos, insecurity—that is, conditions of incivility and not civility. The creation of a sovereign state marked the emergence of civil society as against the state of nature. Since then, respect for law and acting in a way that is mindful of the supremacy of law are ideas that have been closely associated with civil society. Today, even the critics of civil society, like Partha Chatterjee, take this to be an essential attribute of civil society, albeit one that limits its capacity to act as an agent of transformative politics.6 To a considerable extent, the critics of Hazare’s Campaign against Corruption also understand civil society in a like manner. They represent the Campaign as an expression of civil society as it does not challenge the law and even as it speaks of the power of the people, it views popular mandate to be the basis of formal legal authority.

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? Acknowledging and respecting the sovereignty of law is an important attribute of civil society, but it is by no means the only, or the distinguishing, attribute of what is civil. Law is valuable, but as many theorists of Enlightenment argued, it is positively weighted because it is a means of protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual. Hence, the critical variable is enhancing freedom and it is this that must define civil society. To put it in another way, it is not merely the presence of rule of law but the emergence of a sphere of free and ‘uncoerced human associations’ (Walzer 1991: 293), in which individuals participate as autonomous selves that characterizes the existence of civil society. In societies dominated by the monarch, on the one hand, and the church, on the other, it is places like the salons and coffee houses, where the literati expressed their opinions independently of the palace and the church, which came to signify the civil society. Along with it, specific modalities for the exchange of views, such as letters and newspapers, were privileged for the role they played in creating (p.123) public opinion that was not shaped by the authority of the king or religion. These sites and spaces themselves came to be identified with civil society. Indeed, the presence of rich associational life became a symbol of civil society. The Enlightenment had identified the presence of salons and coffee houses with civil society, but were these the only spaces where individuals entered freely of their own choice? Could not the idea of civil society be extended to include other kinds of associations and non-state organizations that expanded the sphere of individual liberty? In the late eighteenth century, some theorists argued that the free market was also a domain that functioned on the principle of free choice, so it, too, could be identified as civil society. People came to the market as individuals, consumers, and producers pursuing and seeking to maximize their own interests. Since the market has no political boundaries and often functions in a way that destabilizes operating principles of social status and class, it was seen as a form of free associational activity that offered choices and, through this, contributed to the expansion of freedom. Perhaps the strongest expression of this idea of civil society surfaced in the writings of Adam Smith, and its significance was that it offered the possibility of considering different kinds of non-state- and nonreligion-dominated spheres of human associational life as being a part of civil society. Did this mean that all forms of association—from bowling alleys to choir groups and educational institutions—constituted civil society? Was the free market the prototype of civil society? These questions have in recent times dominated the discourse of civil society in democratic societies. In India, Béteille argued that it is only secular mediating institutions like schools or banks that can be identified as civil society (1996:17, 2000:187). Other forms of associational activities, such Page 6 of 16

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? as caste associations, may fulfil important needs of the individual or society, but they cannot be treated as civil society. The idea that institutions of civil society are not an extension of kinship networks and that they function within the framework of law, is important for differentiating different kinds of associations and institutions that exist in society. And this distinction can come into sharper focus when we add to it a dimension that Hegel had previously introduced in his writings on civil society. (p.124) For Hegel, the networks that constitute civil society exist to facilitate the realization of some essential right of the individual. The market may fulfil some economic needs of men but the ‘corporation’ begins to personify civil society when it exists, and functions to ensure that everyone has the right to work. The realization of this right places certain obligations upon others and it is only by this mutual recognition of the rights (and obligations) of each other that civil society comes into existence (Hegel 1953 [1821]: 152–5). To put it another way, the institutions or networks of civil society have certain obligations towards society; they exist to fulfil or promote some basic rights of individuals, so all forms of associational life cannot be identified as civil society. Besides, the important element is not whether the institution is aligned with, or linked to, the state. As the police and the courts were needed to see that the right to work became a reality, Hegel placed them within the realm of civil society. Whether we continue to identify the state apparatuses in this way or not, what is relevant, nevertheless, is to recognize that in modern democracies civil society cannot be defined merely in opposition to the state. If anything, it supplements the democratic state; when members of civil society are envisaged as being bound together by a system of rights and mutual obligations, rather than kinship ties or identities, civil society becomes an expression of, or a moment of, democratic life. Implicit in the Hegelian framework was the belief that people form associations with different interests. We need to look beyond the particular needs and wants of individual participants and focus, on the end that the institution serves and the manner in which it functions. When the association formed acts in a way that respects the rights of others, it represents the civil society. In other words, not all associations can be identified as civil society. Associations, whose agenda is to target or vilify some groups, cannot be designated as civil society; also associations like the bowling alley or the bridge club, which fulfil some individual needs or desires, need not be seen as civil society. These associations may not violate the rights of others, but they do not also exist to fulfil them either. It is perhaps this element that Dipankar Gupta has highlighted by linking civil society with citizenship. From the late 1970s and through the 1980s, political analysts in India underlined the role (p.125) of non-party, non-governmental bodies for deepening democracy. As is evident from the names by which they Page 7 of 16

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? were described, these organizations were differentiated from the institutions of the state. If the latter was associated with centralized authority, backed by force, and bureaucratic machinery indifferent to the concerns of citizens, nongovernmental bodies were depicted as representing the people’s voice and the interests of the grass roots. Not only were they said to be closer to the people, they were also considered the sites of popular engagement with politics and selfdetermination. Hence, the expansion of this sphere was viewed as the strengthening of democracy (Kothari 1988: 202). Against these viewpoints, Gupta argued that the purpose of civil society was to put pressure on the state, to hold it accountable, so that it can deliver on the promise that citizenship makes. Supplanting societal organizations for the state apparatus is not, therefore, the answer because this might, as is the case when hospitals work on market principles, allow individual gains to override the commitment to equal citizenship (Gupta 1997). The goal, for Gupta, was ensuring equal citizenship. Institutions formed through the coming together of individual on a voluntary basis may assist in the realization of that purpose. So, while all associations did not constitute civil society, those that furthered the possibility of ensuring equal citizenship could be identified as civil society. When civil society is defined in relation to the pursuit of the ideal of equal citizenship, or even when it is linked with the presence of secular institutions, the suggestion is that in democratic societies there can be a harmonious and mutually reinforcing relationship between the state and civil society.7 In fact, it is only when there is a supportive relationship between these two domains that democracy is strengthened. Both these conceptions of civil society also offer ways in which we might distinguish between associations, like book clubs and animal shelters, from civil society. In different ways, they tell us that rich associational life may not always translate into a strong civil society; and what is even more important, it may not even deepen democracy.

Civil Society and Associational Life If the free and voluntary coming together of individuals is only a condition of associational life, and is not what defines civil society, (p.126) the question is— what kind of uncoerced human associations qualify to be civil society? The debates on civil society give us some indication of how we might answer this question. They tell us, for instance, that institutions or associations that are an extension of the family or run on principles of kinship, do not constitute civil society. Typically, institutions like schools and universities epitomize civil society. But within this category, how might we designate something like unaided minority educational institutions in India that are set up and administered by a community primarily for its own members? If we identify civil society with institutions that exist independently of religion and state, then even the most obvious candidates of civil society, like educational institutions, may not qualify Page 8 of 16

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? as civil society in India. And, football clubs, which have no formal affiliation with either the state or religious institutions, would appear to be the mark of civil society. But it is educational institutions, and not football clubs, that have the potential of fulfilling the basic rights of individuals, along with preparing them as citizens of a democratic polity. For this reason, merely looking at the relationship of the institution with the state or religious institutions is not enough. At the same time, identifying some sites or associations as civil in advance is equally problematic. Before determining what constitutes civil society, one has to see just what purpose the given institution or association serves. Let me take the case of hospitals or groups like Help Age or Child Care. Unlike educational institutions, these associations are not directly involved in inculcating citizenship. Yet, in so far as they carry out functions which the state is expected to perform in order to ensure basic rights to all, they can be located in the arena of civil society. By the same reasoning, even temporarily constituted ‘mohalla committees’ (that function as a neighbourhood watch) may be identified as civil society. But bridge clubs or coffee houses, which contribute to rich associational life, may not be the appropriate members of civil society. There is no doubt that associations like the bridge club can, as Robert Putnam claims, contribute to the creation of trust and social capital. Members of a bridge club may look out for each other; they could check on your house when you are away on holiday. So they have the potential of contributing to the protection of your life and property. Likewise, coffee houses are (p.127) neutral arenas where individuals come of their own volition, and few would deny that such places probably help to nurture friendship—the relationship that typifies the bonds between citizens. Should we therefore accept that these, and other analogous associations, should also be identified as civil society? While dealing with the range of associational life that exists in contemporary societies, one has to recognize that many of them—whether it is going to bowling alleys or soccer practices, bhajan mandalis or yoga camps—can enrich social life and indirectly contribute to strengthening the ties that connect members of a polity. Yet, one must be cautious about characterizing them as civil society. The primary reason for this is that these associations do not exist to realize the basic rights of the individual. While they help to cement relationships between individuals who otherwise tend to lead isolated and atomized existence in modern cities, their purpose is not to nurture citizenship. The latter is, at best, an unintended consequence. Besides, the bonds of solidarity that emerge in these associations can serve a variety of different ends: they may be used to protect each other or to harass or poke fun at others, as, for instance, happens in the case of sports fans.

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? In a democracy, the mark of civility is respect for the basic rights of others; and to the extent that law in constitutional democracies is supposed to guarantee that, being a part of civil society also entails acting within the framework of the Constitution. But it is the former that is of the utmost importance, and it is with reference to it that we may draw the boundaries of what is or is not a part of civil society. It is the role that trade unions played in protecting the rights of the workers, or the role that political parties play in articulating the demands of the citizens, and in holding the government of the day responsible that makes them a part of civil society. And, it is by the same reasoning, that we might include within this rubric of civil society associations that monitor the functioning of legislative bodies and their members, or fight to bring in greater transparency or accountability. In different ways, each of them contributes to protecting the basic rights of individuals, while simultaneously enhancing our capacity to act as citizens of a democratic polity. The link between civil society and citizenship has, then, to be seen through the lens of protecting or ensuring the basic rights of individuals. Augmenting (p.128) our capacity to discharge the responsibilities that citizens have in a democracy is only an aspect of this larger concern.

Movements and Civil Society With this understanding of civil society, how can we identify the Campaign against Corruption that was led by the Anna Hazare team? The Campaign sought an anti-graft legislation and the creation of the office of the Lokpal along with similar bodies in all states. This did not, in any way, violate the spirit of the Constitution. If anything, it wanted to address existing gaps in legislation to ensure greater degree of accountability of the executive and the representatives of the people. Most of all, it aimed to minimize the harassment that citizens face even when they try to avail the services that the state provides, or is expected to provide, in a democracy. Even if one were to disagree with the legislative measures proposed by the Anna Hazare team, it does not detract from the fact that the issues raised aimed to strengthen citizenship and hold the state accountable. In almost all democracies this is seen as the primary task of civil society. It is, by now, well recognized that democracies make a lot of demands upon individual citizens. It expects their informed participation at various levels. However, the pressures of everyday life leave little time or inclination for day-to-day involvement with matters of governance, particularly when they require a great deal of perusal, follow up, and analysis. There is need, therefore, for associations that can, as it were, gather information on a sustained basis, scrutinize the actions of the representatives and functionaries of the government, hold them accountable, and put pressure upon governments to act in a particular way. The Campaign against Corruption did just this: in fact, it asked for a more permanent

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? institution for checking corruption and holding the government accountable. So why was there reluctance, if not resistance, to describing them as civil society? The most serious and well-considered dissent came from those who maintained that this was a movement, and movements are surely different from civil society. This argument raised, if only implicitly, three important issues. It suggested that (a) civil society comprises institutions and this is what makes them different from movements involving mass mobilization. The patterned regularity, the observance (p.129) of a set of systematic practices that define an institution were not in evidence here; (b) the Campaign employed tactics that have no place in a democracy. Mounting pressure through indefinite fasts (hunger strikes) sought to bypass the formal process of democratic legislation, or at least held them hostage to individual wills. Either way, it impeded the process of consultation, negotiation, and reflection that characterizes democratic decision making; and (c) movements seek to transform society; they use symbols and appeal to emotions to create a mass mobilization. Most of all, they hold a latent threat of violence and this can go in any direction. Whatever be its consequences in a given situation they make it difficult to build, nurture, and sustain institutions that are so necessary for the functioning of democracy. The idea that social and political change effected through mass mobilizations can yield disorder and anarchy was articulated most sharply after the French Revolution. In Germany, even those who wished to see transformations in their own society, people like Goethe, Kant, and Hegel, were wary of the path that France had followed in the name of freedom. Across the Channel, Edmund Burke cautioned that individual liberty cannot be protected by subverting the legal and constitutional structure. The attempt to use force, moral or political, to challenge existing political institutions could not create a system in which the liberty of the people was secure. In arguing that liberty could be safeguarded only when certain accompanying conditions were secure, Burke was suggesting that existing political institutions reflected the collective wisdom of society. They rested on ideas that had been arrived at over a period of time. We may need to change these institutions and make them better, but that is possible only by building upon the available foundations.8 The critics of the Anna Hazare camp (or at least some of them) were, to some extent, expressing concerns of a similar kind. In labelling the Campaign as a movement they were striking a note of caution, against those who were optimistic of effecting significant changes by mounting pressure through fasts and rallies. Since an indefinite hunger strike lends urgency to the situation, and gives little time to negotiate and reflect on the different dimensions of the issue, they saw the Campaign as being inimical to democracy and a constitutional order. Indeed, it is the possibility of such large mobilizations forcing their (p.

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? 130) will upon the rest of society that makes them, in their view, uncivil and therefore unsuitable candidates of civil society. The suggestion that what we have witnessed in the Campaign against Corruption is a movement needs to be considered seriously. There is no doubt that this is not an institution, and unlike the latter it innovated and modified its strategy as it went along. It may not also survive beyond the life of the individuals associated with it. The Campaign has also used strategies, such as rallies and indefinite fast, which are not typical of the institutions of civil society. So, in terms of the structure and form, there are several differences between the typical institutions of civil society and what we saw under the banner of Campaign against Corruption. But if one turns to the agenda of the Campaign against Corruption, then we get a different picture. Few would question that the issues it raised are central to the life of the citizen in a democracy. It also brought people together on a limited agenda of creating a new institutional structure. It asked to be a part of the committee that would draft the legislation, which would then be placed before Parliament. This was something new and not formally envisaged in the Constitution, but consultations with citizen groups can hardly ever be considered undemocratic. It was only its insistence, particularly at some stages of the negotiations, that its draft of the Lokpal Bill alone be placed before Parliament that raised concern. But this demand that became pronounced when the government prepared a draft that excluded (rather than modified) some key suggestions that were mooted by the Anna Hazare team, was subsequently withdrawn, or at least modified. Eventually, it was agreed that the recommendations that came from this team were only to be placed before the elected members for their consideration along with the suggestions that came from other organizations and individuals. As it became evident that the Anna Hazare team would not insist that its version alone be tabled before Parliament, the main point of anxiety that remained (and one which existed throughout the Campaign) was the implicit threat of violence that every mass mobilization holds. Since the rallying point was the figure of Anna Hazare, the 74-year-old crusader who was on an indefinite fast, there was a real concern that the protest may take an unexpected turn, and it may lead to a direct clash between the government machinery and the people (p.131) rallying at the Ramlila Ground. This is, of course, a danger that exists in all movements and no one understood this better than Mahatma Gandhi. This is one reason why he insisted on non-violence, so much so that he was willing to withdraw the movement when it turned violent. The Anna Hazare team did not have the Gandhian vision or its understanding of the value of non-violence as an ethical principle, but it did realize that the potential of violence must be checked. Hence, it made an appeal to the supporters to refrain from violence even if there was some provocation. It is this one element that made a crucial

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? difference—one that compels us also to reconsider the distinction that is frequently made between civil society and movements. In structure and form, the Campaign was more like a movement than an institution of civil society, but its mode of operation suggests that mass mobilizations can also be civil and treated as a part of civil society. The need to reconsider the line that separates civil society from movements becomes even more urgent when we see that the new social movements that are emerging all over the democratic world are very different from the movements of the past that were seeking fundamental changes in the social and political structure. Unlike the latter, new social movements, by and large, have a close relationship with organizations that are considered to be a part of civil society. Indeed, often the movement is but a moment in the life of the more permanent civil society institution; and vice versa, movements result in the creation of more enduring formations in the shape of associations of civil society. These then monitor the actions of state and society to ensure that the agenda that emerged in the course of the movement is sustained and carried forward. In the context of the Campaign against Corruption, it is the non-violent mode of protest that allows us to place it in the realm of the ‘civil’. Its agenda further reinforced its claim to be treated as a part of civil society. But when the agenda and mode of operation determine what is civil or uncivil, nothing can be placed permanently in the realm of civil society just as nothing can be excluded from it —even when it takes on the form of a movement. Civility requires respect for the basic rights of all, and this places some constraints on what mode of action is permissible in civil society. For this reason there are no fixed candidates who can be considered a priori as being a part of (p.132) civil society, and certainly no sites of action (be it resistance or negotiation) that can be designated in advance as the domain of civil society. References Bibliography references: Appadurai, Arjun. 2011. ‘Our Corruption Our Selves’. Available at http:// kafila.org/2011/08/30/our-corruption-our-selves-arjun-appadurai (accessed 2 September 2011). Béteille, André. 1996. ‘Civil Society and Its Institutions’, The First Fulbright Memorial Lecture. Kolkata: United States Educational Foundation in India. ———. 1999. ‘Citizenship, State and Civil Society’, Economic and Political Weekly, 34(36, 4–10 September 1999): 2588–91. ———. 2000. ‘Civil Society and Its Institutions’, in Antinomies of Society: Essays on Ideologies and Institutions. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 172–97. Page 13 of 16

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society?

Burke, Edmund. 1790. Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London. Pall-Mall: J. Dodsley. Second edition available at http://books.google.co.in/books? id=Vn0OAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=burke+edmund&hl=en&ei=pGJ7Tt6GMouGrAeC oCmDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f= Chatterjee, Partha. 2011. ‘Lineages of Political Society’, in Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy. Delhi: Permanent Black, pp. 1–26. Guha, Ramachandra. 2011. ‘A Patriarch for the Nation? The Nation’s Problems Cannot be Solved by a Supercop’, The Telegraph, 27 August. Gupta, Dipankar. 1997. ‘Civil Society in the Indian Context: Letting the State off the Hook’, Contemporary Sociology, 26(3): 305–7. ———. 1999. ‘Civil Society or the State: What happened to Citizenship’, in Ramachandra Guha and Jonathan Parry (eds), Institutions and Inequalities. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 234–58. Gupta, Smita. 2011. ‘Lokpal Bill: “No Precedent for a Joint Panel of Govt. and Civil Society Representatives”’, The Hindu, 31 March. Hegel, G.W.F. 1953 [1821]. Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 2001 (1837). The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree. Kitchener, Ontario: Batoche Books. (p.134) Hindustan Times. 2011. ‘Civil Society Leaders Behave Like Legislators’, Press Trust of India, Kolkata, 21 August. Jayal, Niraja G. 2011. ‘The People and the Lawmakers’, The Indian Express, 24 August. Kothari, Rajni. 1988. State against Democracy: In Search of a Humane Governance, Delhi: Ajanta. Mahajan, Gurpreet. 1999. ‘Civil Society and Its Avtars: What Happened to Freedom and Democracy?’ Economic and Political Weekly, 34(20): 1188–96. Popper, Karl. 1968. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson and Co. Roy, Arundhati. 2011. ‘Interview with Sagarika Ghosh’, 31 August. Available at http://ibnlive.in.com/news/jan-lokpal-bill-is-very-regressive-arundati-roy/ 179990-3.html (accessed 27 February 2013).

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? The Hindu. 2011. ‘Anna’s Lokpal Bill a Dangerous Proposition: Alternate Civil Society’, Staff Reporter, 29 August. Walzer, Michael. 1991. ‘The Idea of Civil Society: A Path to Social Reconstruction’, Dissent, 39(Spring): 293–304. Notes:

(1) . Sample the following: ‘Lokpal Bill: “No Precedent for a Joint Panel of Govt. and Civil Society Representatives”’ (Gupta 2011); ‘Civil Society Version Will Be Basis for Stringent Law’ (The Hindu, 11 April 2011); ‘Civil Society Group to Skip Lokpal Meet after Police Brutality’ (Tehelka, 5 June 2011); ‘Government and Civil Society Talks on Lokpal Bill Fail’ (Asian Age, 15 June 2011); ‘Government and Civil Society Members Differ on Selection and Removal of Lokpal Members’ (The Hindu, 21 June 2011); ‘Civil Society Can’t Take Full Credit for Anti-graft Fight’, (Tehelka, 25 June 2011); ‘Lokpal: Third Draft Emerging as Civil Society Debate Opens Up’ (The Indian Express, 7 July 2011); and ‘Civil Society Comes Out in Support of Anti-corruption Movement’ (Special Correspondent, The Hindu, Chennai, 17 August 2011). (2) . The core was not clearly identified, as some members that were seen as the core group got marginalized and others, who joined later, came to occupy greater centrality in the course of the protests between April–August 2011. (3) . Prashant Bhushan, quoted by Special Correspondent in The Hindu, ‘Civil Society Should Take Part in Policy Making to Fight Corruption’, 8 August 2011. (4) . Pranab Mukherjee, quoted in, ‘Civil Society Leaders Behave Like Legislators’, Hindustan Times, Press Trust of India, Kolkata, 21 August 2011. The term civil society was used for the campaign by many in the government and the Opposition. B.K. Hariprasad (All India Congress Committee general secretary) was quoted as saying: ‘Civil society is not above Constitution’ (The Hindu, 28 August 2011). (5.) Mahesh Bhatt, quoted in ‘Anna’s Lokpal Bill a Dangerous Proposition: Alternate Civil Society’, Staff Reporter, The Hindu, 29 August 2011. (6) . In civil society, members ‘abide by law’ and act in accordance with the law. In political society, individuals and groups occupy the site of ‘illegality’; they often transgress the law and then try and put pressure upon the government to treat this illegality as an exception. It is this difference in the mode of functioning that distinguishes, for Partha Chatterjee, civil society from political society (2011: 14–16). (7) . This essay does not explore the idea of civil society, particularly the relationship between civil society and state, which emerged in communist regimes. It attempts to understand how we might understand this concept in the Page 15 of 16

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What is Civil and Uncivil in Civil Society? context of democratic societies (for a discussion of other representations of civil society, see Mahajan 1999: 1191–2). (8) . ‘When ancient opinions and rule of life are taken away, the loss cannot be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us. Nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer’ (Burke 1790: 115).

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania A Comparative Framework Gurharpal Singh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords This essay provides a comparative historical understanding of the changing state–religion relationship in four countries of the South: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania. It attempts to assess the experience of religious actors— faith-based organizations, religious political parties, and religious communities— in shaping, and being influenced, by the changing patterns of governance and development. Most approaches to the interface of religion and politics focus on the constitutional relationship between the church [religion(s)] and the state. While this is an appropriate point of departure, it rarely provides a meaningful insight into how religions meet the state. In contrast, the underlying tensions between religion and the state, between their divergent claims to the temporal and the sacred spheres of life, can be better appreciated through the sociological principle of differentiation. Differentiation ranges from high (completely separated and autonomous) to low (where religion and state are integrated), and can be consensual or conflictual. Keywords:   religion, politics, governance in India, secular state, conflict, development, differentiation

In developed and developing societies alike, the last 30 years have witnessed the ‘return of religion’ to public life. This process is generally dated from the Iranian Revolution (1979), and has been distinguished by the mobilization of religionbased political identities, virulent anti-secularism, and vocal claims for a more Page 1 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania generous role for religions in the public sphere where, for the most part, the operative norm since 1945 has been the secular state (Casanova 1994; Habermas 2006; Juergensmeyer 2000). Today, radical political movements in the name of militant Islam have created a global security threat: in Afghanistan and Pakistan, militant Islam threatens to capture the state for a global jihad against the West; in Europe the call by some Muslim groups for sharia law has led to an anti-Islamic backlash; and in large parts of the Middle East and South East Asia, religious terrorism in the name of Islam has mobilized new political formations (Roy 2004). Fundamentalist Christianity has also been mobilized as never before. The presidency of George W. Bush was notable for its efforts to promote Christian values in public and international affairs, as the Christian Right was elevated to prominence that far exceeded its political constituency. In the UK, too, the leadership of Tony Blair was marked by a public profession of the Prime Minister’s Christian values which, his critics alleged, underpinned his support for the second Gulf War and the ‘war on terror’. Political Hinduism in India has also been resurgent: from a marginal force in the 1980s, it stormed the citadels of political power in the late 1990s and prosecuted its sectarian creed by unleashing state power against religious minorities. In short, since the late 1970s, religion-based political movements have emerged in most world religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, (p.136) and Sikhism) and, in seeking to redefine the secular public sphere, have created new dilemmas for public policy. Nowhere is this challenge more evident than in the South.1 This crisis of legitimacy, which pervades most low-income developing states, is in large measure rooted in what Appleby (2000) calls the ‘ambivalence of religion’: its dual potential as a democratizing as well as a revolutionary force for those disenchanted with modernity and the collapse of governance. Understanding the role of religion in politics in the South today is, therefore, central both to recognizing the dilemmas of governance and unlocking the potential for effecting ‘good governance’.2 Although there is increasing research on religion and politics in the South (cf. Deneulin and Bano 2009; Gupta 1996, 2011, Singh et al. 2007; UNDP 2004), very limited progress has been made in understanding the comparative experience of states in the South. It is almost 30 years since the World Development published a special issue on religious values and development, in which contributors argued that religion and the moral basis of societies should be integrated into development studies and public policy, but there has been precious little theoretical or conceptual innovation since (Deneulin and Rakodi 2011). At one end of the spectrum, there is still a dominant positivist paradigm that pervades the social sciences, especially economics and political science. At the other is the ‘constructivist turn’, in which meaning and language have become the main foci for a critical appraisal of Western modernity, as well as ‘deconstructions’ of such concepts as secularism, religion, and development itself (Nandy 1999). Page 2 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania Constructivist approaches have been especially popular since 9/11, most notably in efforts to unveil the secular ‘theology’ of political science (cf. Philpott 2002), but their utility in combining a new critical understanding with an ability to explain general change appears to be relatively limited. This essay reviews the findings of the religion, governance, and development research project of the Religions and Development Research Programme for the Department for International Development (DFID), UK, based at the University of Birmingham (2005–11).3 Its primary objective is to provide a comparativehistorical understanding of the changing state–religion relationship in the four project countries of India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania since independence, and to (p.137) assess the experience of religious actors—faith-based organizations (FBOs), religious political parties, and religious communities—in shaping, and being influenced, by the changing patterns of governance and development. For reasons of space, we shall focus primarily on the comparativehistorical dimension, though where relevant, references will be made to the experience of religious actors in the detailed case studies that were undertaken in the four countries.4

An Organizing Framework Most approaches to the interface of religion and politics focus on the constitutional relationship between the church [religion(s)] and the state (Singh et al. 2007). While this is an appropriate point of departure, it rarely provides a meaningful insight into ‘how religions meet the state’ (Philpott 2007: 506). In contrast, the underlying tensions between religion and the state, between their divergent claims to the temporal and the sacred spheres of life, can be better appreciated through the sociological principle of differentiation; that is, ‘the degree of mutual autonomy between religious bodies and state institutions in their foundational legal authority … the extent of each entity’s authority over the other’s basic prerogative to hold office, choose its officials, set its distinctive polices, carry out its activities, in short, govern itself’ (Philpott 2007: 507).5 Differentiation ranges from high (completely separated and autonomous) to low (where religion and state are integrated), and can be consensual or conflictual (both in conditions of high or low differentiation).6 Figure 6.1 outlines some of the examples of such differentiation. Differentiation and integration are, of course, not givens, but change over time.7 As will be seen from the four case studies that follow, economics and social conditions can affect the state’s relationship with religion. Conversely, changes in the ideas of religious actors can, over time, have a significant impact on their orientation towards the state. The third (‘Catholic’) wave of democratization in Latin America, for example, is normally associated with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) on human rights, which marked the ‘church’s withdrawal from temporal prerogatives—a definitive doctrinal embrace of

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania differentiation’ (Philpott 2007: 510). Similarly, Islamist ideas have incubated in statist regimes in Muslim countries that have traditionally (p.138) been characterized by authoritarian integration, for example, Egypt. In these examples, political Islam has been neutered, while the state has coopted moderate religious leaders and provides legal support for Islam. It is in these cases of low and conflictual integration that there has been a dramatic transformation from ‘religions of resistance’ to ‘religions of revolution’, underpinned by radical theologies that aim to establish a new form of Islamic integration.

Religious parties are often the main institutions that connect

Figure 6.1 Types of Differentiation and Examples Source: Adapted from Philpott (2007: 508). Note: *At independence.

religion and the state. But how this relationship works in practice is heavily mediated by whether the polity is differentiated or integrated. In a differentiated polity like India, for instance, the mobilization inspired by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)8 poses a major challenge to India’s secular democracy, but the structures of differentiation ensure that the challenge is undertaken in a politically competitive environment. For example, the 2004 elections marked a notable national reversal for the Hindutva (Hinduness, promotion of Hindu values) wave led by the BJP. In contrast, elections in an integrated polity, for example, Pakistan, often result in religious parties playing an (p.139) illiberal role because although they accept the principle of competition in the electoral sphere, they resolutely support strong constitutional integration that ‘promotes Islam’s place in society and allows little religious freedom’ (Philpott 2007: 518). Historically, radical religious parties in Pakistan have maintained an incestuous relationship with the statist military regimes against popular democratic forces (for example, the Pakistan People’s Party or PPP) and have only begun to directly oppose the state since the war on terror and the army’s campaign against the Pakistan Taliban since 2009. The distinction between differentiation and integration is also useful in recognizing how states address issues of religious freedom and religious, gender, or sexual discrimination. Thus, it is in the differentiated polities, such as those in the developed West, where principles of religious freedom are clearly entrenched, and the public right not to be discriminated against on grounds of Page 4 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania gender or sexuality has become a fundamental principle. In contrast, in integrated polities, while some minority religious communities might well be self-governing, as, for example, under the millet system of the Turkish Caliphate, the de jure recognition of civil rights is often heavily qualified, leading to asymmetrical conceptions of citizenship (cf. Parekh 2000). As we shall see in the case of Nigeria, the right to freedom of religion has been taken to mean diametrically opposite things by the Christian and Muslim communities, with the political representatives of the latter using it to justify the introduction of sharia law in the northern Nigerian states. But it would be inappropriate to suggest that differentiation and integration correspond only to a distinction between developed and developing nations: polities like India have managed to combine religious and civic rights, alongside some autonomy in personal religious law (for example, Muslim Personal Law), though as we shall see ahead, right-wing Hindu critics of this arrangement have long campaigned that it militates against the idea of common citizenship. Taking the framework outlined above, how does it help us to understand the encounter between religion and politics in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania since independence? In what sense, if any, does it explain the ‘return of religion’? And, what does it tell us about the place of religion and religious actors in contemporary governance in these (p.140) states? Drawing on the research findings, we first outline the demise of the secular state that is often associated with the ‘crisis of governance’ dating from the late 1970s. The rest of the essay then focuses on common dimensions of political mobilizations by religious actors and an assessment of these outcomes for the four polities.

The ‘Secular’ State at Independence It is generally recognized that the South has witnessed the ‘decline of the secular state’, the gradual erosion of the secular foundations of the nationalist movements that triumphed at independence, and the mobilization of religious actors and institutions (Haynes 2007: Chapters 10 and 12). But this assumption rarely examines the particular conditions that produced this arrangement or the historical statecraft of state–religion relationships that preceded it. In three of the four project countries (India, Nigeria, and Tanzania), there were specific considerations that made state secularism an attractive option. In the event, the nature of these country-specific secularisms was defined not ex nihilo, but was the product of historical and political compromises.9 In India, for instance, the post-1947 Gandhian–Nehruvian synthesis was shaped as much by traditional Hindu statecraft as Nehru’s commitment to the secular ideal, a commitment strengthened by the mass religious violence that accompanied the creation of Pakistan (Talbot and Singh 2009). The Indian Constitution of 1950, therefore, was very much an Indian compromise with the forces of religion. Secularism as an idea found no mention in the Constitution (it was inserted in 1976 as the result of a constitutional amendment), but neither Page 5 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania did the Constitution recognize an official religion. Individual and collective freedom to worship and propagate religion was guaranteed and the principle of non-discrimination on religious grounds established. Muslim fears were assuaged by the concession of Muslim Personal Law, though with a constitutional commitment to move eventually towards a unified civil code that would embrace all religious communities. Taken together, these provisions fulfilled at least three requirements of the secular state: religious equality, religious liberty, and state neutrality (Smith 1967: Chapter 4). And although no clear ‘wall of separation’ was established between religion and the state, Indian secularism came to be characterized by what Donald Eugene (p.141) Smith, the distinguished scholar of Indian secularism, called the ‘no-preference doctrine’, in which no ‘special privileges were to be granted to any one religion’ (1967: 381). The ‘non-preference doctrine’, or what Bhargava (1998) calls ‘principled distance’, ‘share the liberal imagination, even though the ideals cherished by liberals are realized somewhat differently in the Indian context’ (Mahajan and Jodhka 2009: 16). Yet, the Indian context has been defined primarily by a notion of Hindu tolerance, which has given Indian secularism its credo of ‘goodwill towards all religions’ (sarva dharma sambhava) —a credo that is also open to non-liberal constructions and illiberal imagination, as we shall discuss later (Singh 2000: Chapter 3). Nigerian state secularism also emerged out of a specific historical context and particular compromises. Foremost among these was the different traditions of governance under colonial rule in the North (mainly Islamic and ruled indirectly) and the South (indigenous African religions, Christian mission, and direct rule). In the North, which had been administered by religiously empowered emirs under British guidance, ‘Islam constituted the basis of local government, and Shari’a courts, which had existed before colonial rule, were integrated into the colonial state’ (Nolte et al. 2009: 5). Criminal laws were codified into secular law only prior to independence and a Sharia Court of Appeal continued to exist in the northern region after 1960. But secularism as a creed was championed in the South by the Christians, who were the socially mobilizing groups that had benefited from modern education and direct colonial governance. Thus, although secularism became the grundnorm of Nigerian politics after 1960, it was highly contested, required the accommodation of Muslim Personal Law, and would eventually lead to a legal bifurcation of the state. Similarly, Tanzanian state secularism after 1961 was integral to the nationalist movement’s civic-territorial conception of national identity that envisioned a form of social and economic development in which all religious groups and communities would benefit by, among other things, equal access to education. It was forged in opposition to tribal, ethnic, and religious identities previously mobilized by the colonial state. As in India, secularism was perceived as a solution to the underlying problems of managing diversity in a religiously polarized and divided society (Bakari 2008). But, like Nigeria, secularism was Page 6 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania also closely associated with the Christian community, which had been (p.142) the main beneficiary of British colonial rule. Thus, the crafting of Tanzanian state secularism had to make necessary accommodations of Muslim demands, especially the Muslim Personal Law; and this exceptionalism was reinforced by the merger with Zanzibar in 1964, which retained its modes of Islamic governance. Even in Pakistan, the creation of an Islamic Republic as a ‘homeland’ for Muslims initially did not lead to the integration of Islam and the state. The modernist leadership of the Pakistan movement led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah articulated an almost secularist position: ‘In the new state of Pakistan [Jinnah had declared] … everyone will be equal before the law, and people will cease to be Muslims and cease to be Hindus, in the eyes of the law’ (quoted in Malik 2002: 6). Although the retreat from this position to the first Constitution (1956) —which decreed that no laws repugnant to Islam would be passed—was inexorable, the ruling elite of Pakistan have always maintained a rearguard resistance to Islam’s encroachment into the realm of the state. In so doing, they have set up a conflictual relationship between the state and Islam, in which ‘religion seeks to define, understand and penetrate the state, while the latter attempts to make an instrument out of religion’ (Waseem and Mufti 2009: 9). Table 6.1 provides a schematic presentation of the state–religion relationship at independence in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania. It does not adequately capture the peculiarities of state secularisms in India, Nigeria, and Tanzania, or the statist accommodation of Islam in Pakistan, but it does underscore the argument that most nationalist leaders at independence foresaw a minimal role for religion in the public sphere—a perspective further reinforced by the intellectual and ideological investment in economic development that, for most nationalist leaders at the time, was to be the precursor of societal secularization, in which the secular state would play a pre-eminent role (Brass 1999). Indeed, in the first few decades after decolonization, it was ethnic- and regional-based movements, such as Biafra, East Pakistan/Bangladesh, and regional linguistic movements in India, that threatened to undermine the national integration efforts in the newly independent countries. It was only in the early 1980s, with the ‘crisis of governance’, that political mobilizations around religious identities began to seriously call into question the legitimacy of the secular state. (p.143) Table 6.1 State–religion Relationships at Independence in Tanzania, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania

Country Nature

Main Characteristics

Tanzania Secular

• Freedom of religion; religious equality; state neutrality; right to change one’s religion; ban on religious political parties

Political Forces Supporting the Arrangement • Tanganyika African National Union (TANU)

• Muslim and customary personal law India

Secular

• Sarva dharma sambhava; freedom of religion; religious equality; state neutrality • Muslim Personal Law

Nigeria

Secular

• Nigerian People’s Congress (NPC);

neutrality

National Council of Nigeria and the

sharia court of appeal in Northern Nigeria

republic

parties

• Freedom of religion; religious equality; state

• Muslim Personal Law;

Pakistan Islamic

• Indian National Congress (INC); Communist Party of India (CPI); some national and regional

Cameroons (NCNC)

• Islam is the state

• Bureaucratic-military

religion; no laws repugnant to Islam; Islamic Advisory Council

complex; religious and non-religious political parties

• But the body of common law is ‘essentially secular’ and based on the English Common Law Source: Author’s own.

From a ‘Crisis of Governance’ to New Roles for Religions in Public Life By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the postcolonial settlement in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania was under severe strain: internal and (p.144) external developments eroded confidence in the secular nationalist project, which had been so central to the legitimacy of secular elites, precipitating a series of crises

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania of governance that provided new opportunities and spaces for religion to enter public life. A major factor triggering this crisis was the decline in the coalition of political forces that had underpinned the postcolonial state. By the 1970s, if not earlier, the developmental claims of these states were looking threadbare: increasingly they came to resemble ‘chapatti-in-the-sky’ (Brass 1999: 36; Das et al. 1999). As a consequence, the populace turned to other visions. In India, the Congress party lost its hegemony in 1977; and in the 1980s and 1990s, the country witnessed the spectacular rise of the BJP against the background of rising Hindu–Muslim communal violence. In Tanzania, the secular civic–territorial model of national identity was challenged by social and political identities rooted in ethnicity and religion (Campbell and Stein 1991): deep resentment of TANU’s monopoly of political power and its ideology of ujamaa (self-reliance) ultimately led to the introduction of multiparty elections in 1992, though religious political parties continued to be banned. In Pakistan and Nigeria, on the other hand, although ethnic conflicts (Biafra and East Pakistan/Bangladesh) and problems of nation-building had thwarted the process of democratization with early military intervention, these were followed by phases of democratization (in Nigeria in 1974–83, and in Pakistan, 1971–7). In both countries, however, rapid disillusionment with populist politicians led to renewed bouts of military intervention (in Pakistan in 1977–88 and in Nigeria, 1983–99)10 that would subsequently usher in overt attempts to integrate religion and the state. The second contributory factor was the impact of externally imposed structural adjustment policies and the pursuit of economic liberalization (Mahajan and Jodhka 2009; Nolte et al. 2009; Nyirabu 2009; Waseem and Mufti 2009). These policies emphasized markets, deregulation, and downsizing of the state, with non-state actors and agencies (including FBOs) expected to play a greater role in service delivery. However, their immediate effect was to unravel the social formations that undergirded the postcolonial political formations. Thus, India’s pursuit of gradual economic liberalization from the early 1980s onwards spurned a consumerist middle-class at the expense of (p.145) the peasantry and the petit bourgeoisie, thereby unleashing the BJP’s project of ‘reinventing India’, which was imbued with religious nationalist fervour (Corbridge and Harris 2000). In Nigeria, the misuse of oil revenues, the crash in oil prices in 1981, and structural adjustment policies, with their austerity measures and subsequent military takeover, brought about far-reaching changes in the Nigerian society marked by ‘social decay, state failure, massive corruption, endemic graduate unemployment, environmental degradation of the Niger Delta region, unprecedented abuse of human rights and crippling poverty among the masses’ (Roberts 2007: 15). Successive military regimes in the 1980s and 1990s promoted incremental Islamization, and, in the process, created serious difficulties for the restoration of the status quo ante when democratic governance was re-established in 1999 (Roberts 2007). Similarly in Tanzania, the Page 9 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed structural adjustment in 1986, which had profound consequences for the alliance of social classes that depended on the social welfarism of ujamaa. These reforms made it necessary to ‘restructure political and social relations … creat[ing] the need to redefine the nature of the state and its relationship with society, [and] in the process, new social forces emerged, including some [that were] religiously inspired’ (Nyirabu 2009: 25). In Pakistan, too, though a structural adjustment programme was not externally imposed, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979) and the subsequent flow of American aid reinforced the precarious hold of the Zia regime on the state and encouraged it to pursue a course of Islamization (Waseem and Mufti 2009). Zia’s regime, as we shall see ahead, was to leave an enduring legacy, from which all subsequent regimes (military and civilian) have struggled to distance themselves. While the ‘crisis of governance’ in the four countries created new spaces for the ‘return of religion’ to the public sphere, how did this return manifest itself? In what ways did religion now encounter the state? Here we will focus on four dimensions: (a) the electoral mobilization of religious and non-religious demands by religious and non-religious parties; (b) statist cooption of religious demands; (c) the transformation of ‘religions of resistance’ into ‘religions of revolution’; and (d) post-9/11, the need to address religious discrimination and disadvantage.

(p.146) Electoral Mobilization of Religious Demands by Religious and Non-Religious Parties in Differentiated Regimes Religious and non-religious political parties have been the main institutions articulating and mobilizing religious demands. In India, the BJP grew from a minor national party, with only 2 seats and 7.7 per cent of the vote in the national parliamentary elections in 1984, to become the dominant party in the governing National Democratic Alliance (NDA), capturing 182 seats (25.5 per cent of the vote) in the 1999 national elections. The BJP’s meteoric rise is often ascribed to India’s ‘crisis of governability’ (Kohli 1990). The Party and its related organizations, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, or the World Council of Hindus), unleashed mass mobilizations centred on the demand to construct a Hindu temple on the site at the Ayodhya mosque. In a radical innovation, these mobilizations introduced new modes of political pilgrimage, in which the nation was reimagined in religious idioms, as well as remapped by cross-country marches, often leading to well-planned physical confrontations with minority Muslim communities (Corbridge and Harriss 2000: Chapter 8; Gupta 2007). These overt manifestations of Hindu pride gave vent to the long-repressed language of belonging, while simultaneously tapping into the heightened anxieties of upper- and middle-caste Hindus beset by threats of affirmative action (for the lower castes) and economic liberalization (Singh 2004). In power, the BJP-led NDA was able to steer a number of policy changes that sought to Page 10 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania embed Hindutva values within the Indian society. The school curriculum was revised in line with the more extreme elements of Hindutva thought; school textbooks were edited to promote Hinduism as the ‘essence of Indian culture’, and describe other religions as ‘alien or invading faiths’; and efforts were made to ‘Indianize, nationalize, and spiritualize’ higher education by seeking to impose the study of astrology and Vedic science on universities. The right to practise and propagate one’s faith was seriously eroded. Between 2002 and 2004, under the intentionally mistitled ‘Freedom of Religion Bills’, state governments in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Orissa introduced new legislation aimed primarily at the conversion of low-caste Hindus and tribes to Christianity, (p.147) Islam, and Buddhism. State neutrality in religious affairs was also compromised. Less serious contraventions included efforts to introduce a National Cow Protection Bill (2003) and replacement of the national anthem in state schools in India’s most populous state with religious songs. More serious was the role of the BJP and its sister organizations in organized pogroms against Muslims. In the state of Gujarat, governed by the party, in February 2002 almost 2,000 Muslims were killed and over 150,000 had to seek shelter in camps (Hasan 2007: 202). Despite the BJP’s political advance, the party was unable to restructure the state–religion relationship in India. Its three key election promises—to build a Hindu temple in place of the Ayodhya mosque, enact a uniform civil code (which would terminate Muslim Personal Law), and abolish Article 370 of the Constitution that grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir—remained unrealized because of opposition within the coalition. A constitutional commission set up to review the working of the Constitution proved to be a damp squib. The NDA’s defeat in the 2004 parliamentary elections, moreover, confirmed the view that on its own the BJP would struggle to secure more than 25 per cent of the national vote. In short, while the potential for a Hindu majoritarian party to capture the state through elections exists, in reality, social, linguistic, religious, ethnic, and caste divisions among Hindus operate to frustrate such an outcome. The appeal of religious parties has been undercut by a competitive democratic system that ensure that if such parties seek power at the national level they need to build coalitions beyond their religious constituencies (Mahajan and Jodhka 2009): centrist politics remains the natural ground of Indian politics (Rudolph and Rudolph 1987). In Nigeria and Tanzania, the mobilization of religious demands has taken a different dimension. In both states, religious parties are banned and electoral politics and social cleavages operate against the emergence of a majoritarian religious party—a la BJP—at least at the national level (Mukandala et al. 2006; Roberts 2007).11 Consequently, the politicization of religious identities in electoral competition has taken an intra-party form where, though national parties appeal to religious constituencies for electoral support, they deflect the resonance of this appeal in governance, which often requires consociational modes (p.148) of power sharing, such as the federal principle of Page 11 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania proportionality in Nigeria, and the balancing of religious representation in key appointments in Tanzania (Heilman and Kaiser 2002; Nolte et al. 2009). Thus in Nigeria, the use of religious symbols and identities in election campaigns has been common since the late 1970s as ‘politicians have urged their followers to vote along religious lines’ (Falola 1998: 38). This has been most explicit following episodes of communal violence, as for example, in Kaduna in 1987, when election campaigns had been ‘conducted more in the churches and mosques by pastors and malams than by the contestants’ (Roberts 2007: 29). In the northern states, especially during the third republic, elections were more of a religious exercise than a political one. During the 2003 general elections, for instance, Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), openly urged the Muslims to vote only for Muslim candidates, thereby stoking the ire of its rival the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Anglican bishops, who asked the federal government to intervene. The ‘politicization of religion’ in elections has been a slow but cumulative process, a process hastened by the rise of the petro-economy that centralized the country’s financial resources and the crisis of governance since the 1980s. Some analysts argue that politicians and political parties now not only articulate the religious demands of their constituents, but also have an incentive to amplify and exaggerate religious differences to provoke communal conflicts, in order to increase their chances of electoral success (Ibrahim 1997).12 Certainly the incidents of communal conflict that precede elections are indicative of growing polarization in certain localities (Best 2011). In Tanzania, the collapse of TANU’s ujamaa ideology has been followed by the rise of religious identities. As Luanda has noted that at the ‘heart of the reemergence of religion as an important factor in Tanzania politics is the struggle between the Muslim and Christian establishments for pre-eminence in national affairs … [and] for control of the secular state’ (1996: 168). This conflict centres on a Muslim critique of the post-independence secular state as representing a form of Christian ‘hegemonic control’13 that has produced discrimination and disadvantage for the Muslims. The Muslim critique is countered by Christian responses that Muslim organizations have sought to (p.149) promote separatism and covert Islamicization, especially over the issue of Zanzibar. However, this conflict has not really been translated into electoral competition as in India and Nigeria. To be sure, there is strong evidence that religious loyalties do, to some degree, influence voting patterns between the two major parties Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the Civic United Front (CUF), and the competition between them in Zanzibar, which is overwhelmingly Muslim, is very intense (Mallya 2006). Nonetheless, these patterns coexist with cross-cutting cleavages, the government’s promotion of the belief that there is parity in numbers of Muslims and Christians, and the lack of group consensus within

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania these communities—all the factors that contribute to the success of centrist catch-all parties like the CCM (Heilman and Kaiser 2002).

Statist C-Option of Religious Demands and Organizations by Integrationist Regimes Of the four case study countries, the integrationist impulses have been strongest in Pakistan and northern Nigeria. In the former, the modernist elite that led the movement for Pakistan, struggled to adequately define religion as a discourse of the state, thus, setting up a permanent conflictual relationship between the state and Islam. From independence to the mid-1970s, this relationship was managed by statism, co-option, and constitutional provisions that recognized the preeminence of Islam in Pakistani society, but skilfully skirted the need for an Islamic state (Waseem and Mufti 2009: 1–31). But from the late 1970s onwards, there was something of a qualitative transformation, as the crisis of governance identified above, was compounded by the military takeover (1977), Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979), and a legitimacy deficit resulting from the execution of the PPP leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. It was in these circumstances that the regime of general Zia-ul-Haq embarked on an ambitious programme of Islamization as the authentic national identity for Pakistan (Kennedy 1996). The process had two long-term consequences for the state–religion relationship in Pakistan. First, it permanently shifted the balance towards Islam, as Zia vainly pursued the normative ideal of ‘consensual integration’ (see Figure 6.1). Consequently, notwithstanding post-Zia democratization, and General Pervez Musharraf’s (p.150) ‘enlightened modernism’ (1999–2007), democratic and progressive military regimes have struggled to de-Islamize legislation and structures dating from this era: the terms of trade in political discourse in Pakistan have irreversibly shifted in favour of Islamization (Aziz 2008). Second, Islamization has also produced a well-entrenched Islamic establishment comprising religious parties, seminaries, transnational organizations, non-state actors, and jihadists, which has ‘one step in the system and the other out of it’ (Waseem and Mufti 2009: 7). Historically, religious parties and organizations in Pakistan were characterized by a Jacobean drive for state power, but successive periods of military rule have nurtured a mullah-military alliance (Haqqani 2005) that has led to the development of an Islamic establishment with a ‘structural presence of its own [with] multiple links with the state characterized by patronage, parallelism and hostility’ (Waseem and Mufti 2009: 11). This establishment has now produced a powerful counter-narrative to the idea of Pakistan, one that pushes it to its logical conclusion: as an Islamic state. The Islamic establishment is today a major player in Pakistani politics and operates in four settings: organizational, sectarian, educational, and iconoclastic (Waseem and Mufti 2009: 33–4). The success of religious parties in 2002 in electing a provincial government in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) marked a decisive breakthrough.14

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania Like Pakistan, integrationist pressures have also been present in Nigeria’s northern states, which have precolonial histories of Islamic polities and jurisprudence (Nolte et al. 2009). In some of these states, there have also been calculated efforts to turn the conflictual relationship between state and religion into a cooperative one (see Figure 6.1) by the introduction of the sharia law. This process began with the introduction in 1999 of sharia law in the state of Zamfara for civil and criminal cases. It was subsequently extended to 11 other Muslimmajority states, despite the opposition from southern politicians, non-Muslims in these states, and riots (for example, in Kano state in October 2001, which led to the deaths of 100 people). At the end of 2009, sharia law was still in force in many of the northern states and, despite some signs of declining support among Muslims, there is little indication that the state governments are likely to abolish it. (p.151) The introduction of sharia in these states has been accompanied by efforts to curtail the religious freedom, citizenship rights, and political activities of non-Muslims. As Nolte et al. (2009: 31) observe of Kano with reference to the state’s Christians: The state government is tightly controlled by Muslims, and there are currently no Christians in elected positions at state level and very few in high or mid-level administrative posts. Generally, the Christians in Kano are marginalized and do not take part in decision-making. Christian organizations are not subject to direct government control, but the government may request compliance with state policies and regulations from their schools and other institutions. [The] Kano state government has often prevented Christian groups from acquiring land for the building of churches or other buildings that might be put to religious use, and Christians are not only prevented from airing their programmes on statecontrolled television and radio stations, but also on private and federallyowned stations which broadcast in [the] Kano State. In addition to these formal and informal pressures, the non-Muslims are expected to observe the Islamic moral code, including the wearing of head scarves by Christian schoolgirls and to accept discriminatory practices, including penal taxation on the activities of Christian organization (Nolte et al. 2009). Needless to say, many critics of Nigerian secularism now argue that the introduction of sharia in northern Nigeria has created a divided polity that increasingly resembles a ‘Muslim North’ and ‘Christian South’ (Roberts 2007: 1– 18).

Transformation of Some ‘Religions of Resistance’ into ‘Religions of Revolution’ in both Differentiated and Integrationist Regimes Contemporary encounters between the state and religion go beyond merely electoral or statist responses: in both differentiated and integrated regimes, Page 14 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania changes in state policies (as a result of the ‘crisis of governance’, among other things), and changes in religious theologies and practices (as result of new ideas and outlooks, especially among transnational religious communities) have transformed ‘religions of resistance’ into ‘religions of revolution’.15 Some of these ‘revolutions’ or ‘revolts’ have been crushed with unremitting force (India and (p.152) Nigeria); others continue to threaten the very viability of the state (Pakistan and Tanzania).16 In differentiated regimes such as India, the radicalization of religion as an agent of revolutionary change has been most pronounced in ethno-religious movements in the country’s peripheral regions—Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and the Northeast—peopled by non-Hindu majorities such as Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and tribal groups (Bose 2003; Franke 2009; Gupta 1996; Singh 2000). In the 1980s, a militant secessionist movement among Sikhs in Punjab, India’s richest province, led to 25,000 deaths between 1984 and 1993 (Singh 2000: Chapter 10). This movement was ruthlessly crushed with overwhelming force that ‘restored normalcy’. Similarly, in the 1980s and 1990s, in Jammu and Kashmir the ethno-separatist movement, from the time of independence, assumed an increasingly Islamist colour as ex-Afghan mujahideen, jihadists, and Pakistani irregulars transformed a resistance movement into a full-scale uprising that resulted in the loss of 60,000 lives (Bose 2003). As in Punjab, this insurgency was contained by using overwhelming force—a strategy regularly used by the Indian state against Christian insurgents in the Northeastern states (Baruah 2010). In Pakistan, though the contemporary Islamist challenge to the state has an underlying regional dimension (the insurgency in Afghanistan), it also has two other aspects. First, the insurgency represents radical groupuscules within the Islamic establishment, which have been engaged in direct action since the army assault on the Red Mosque in Islamabad (2007), and which have historically nurtured the ‘Pakistan Taliban’. Second, the vertical divisions within the Islamic establishment are also, in some measure, being transformed into horizontal mobilizations, in which Islam serves as a radical ideology of revolt centred on traditional grievances that include discrimination, underdevelopment, and centuries of feudal oppression. Thus, it has been convincingly argued that one of the reasons why militants were able to make such impressive inroads into the Swat Valley was because of the cumulative failure of Pakistan to establish sound governance after the end of Wali’s rule. This failure had been so complete that the ‘Pakistan Taliban’-inspired movement had all the characteristics of a subaltern ‘uncivic rebellion’, in which Islamic radicalism functioned (p.153) as surrogate for more effective governance (Geiser 2010). The same development appears to be taking place in the districts of southern Punjab (for example, Dera Gazi Khan, Bahawalpur), where Islamic radicals are beginning to effectively mobilize the poor peasantry and agricultural labourers, who have traditionally existed within a feudal moral universe (Aziz 2010). In short, Islamic radicalism Page 15 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania ‘from below’, of the poor and oppressed who might be mobilized horizontally, potentially holds a far more serious existentialist threat to Pakistan statehood than a vertically organized Islamic establishment, which has demonstrated a propensity to accept state-led integration. In Nigeria, too, radical Islamist movements in the northern states have attempted to raise the banner of revolt by seeking to mobilize ‘from below’, while competing against the appropriation of their demands by the traditional aristocracy. The Maitatsine riots in Kano, for instance, were a peasants’ revolt against Muslim aristocrats that led to thousands of deaths between 1979 and 1985 (Roberts 2007: 22). According to Haynes, these riots were not simply an ‘outbreak of Islamic fundamentalism, but rather an eruption of the “have nots” against the “haves”’ (1995: 527). Most recently, the Boko Haram group, which supported direct action, was involved in a confrontation with security forces in which several hundred people were killed.17 As Nolte et al. (2009) have clearly demonstrated, in northern Nigeria, especially Kano, the process that led to the introduction of sharia has been undergirded by a class struggle between the traditional landed aristocracy, with its support for Sufi and indigenized Islam, on the one hand and, since the Iranian Revolution, the rise of Arabist scriptural Islam supported by transnational movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, on the other. The latter (Izala) has sought to outflank the former, with followers mainly from the poor or poorly represented groups of society—including students, women, and petty traders. These social differences, between Izala and Sufi groups, moreover, are evident in ‘their different approaches to religious and political practices, with the Izala’s strongly egalitarian ethos reflected in its consistent campaign for sharia law in order to address the ills perceived to be present in society’ (Nolte et al. 2009: 35). Overall, these social differences among the Muslim sects in northern Nigeria provide interesting clues as to why some have pursued the path of (p.154) direct action, others gradual mobilization by highlighting the idiom of equality, and still others, have sought to steal the clothes of the Islamists by advocating sharia law as a universal panacea.

Post-9/11, Religious Discrimination and Disadvantage in Differentiated and Integrated Regimes Finally, the consequences of the ‘return of religion’ in the four countries under study are also clear in the emergence, in both differentiated and integrated regimes, of discourses and policy responses to claims of religious discrimination and disadvantage. To some extent, this is the outcome of the human rights and ‘good governance’ agendas that have promoted religious, gender, and cultural liberties (UNDP 2004). At the same time, we need to acknowledge the impact of 9/11, which has led some of these states to reassess their policies towards religious minorities in order to better promote improvements in social integration and community cohesion. Both these developments have introduced

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania a greater sensitivity to the religious idiom as well as new innovations in how better to frame public policy to address religious discrimination.18 Since 2004, these changes are most apparent in India. The election of a Congress government was followed by the establishment of the Sachar Committee on the social, economic, and educational status of the Muslim community. The Committee’s findings provided the first systematic analysis of the significant under-representation of the Muslims in public life and government services, as well as their underachievement in such areas as education. It also highlights the Indian state’s failure to allocate adequate resources to achieve development objectives in localities of Muslim concentration, particularly in the rural areas (GoI 2006). As a consequence of the Sachar Committee Report (SCR), a range of policy initiatives have been developed to improve Muslim uptake of primary and secondary education, target development resources to Muslim majority districts, and develop equalities and anti-discrimination legislation that can create a framework for tackling religious marginalization and systemic discrimination (Mahajan and Jodhka 2010: Chapters 3 and 10). Despite the reservations of some who argue that these measures are (p.155) intended to rekindle Congress’ historic electoral relationship with the Indian Muslims, it is generally recognized that the initiatives mark a fundamental change in the Indian state’s policy framework towards religious minorities (Sáez and Singh 2011). There have been debates about Muslim socio-economic disadvantage since before independence in Tanzania, although the state has not undertaken a wholesale review a la Sachar Committee.19 Muslims have consistently argued ‘with evidence, that they [are] discriminated against’ (Njozi 2000: 7), particularly in terms of access to education, public sector employment, and political office. But as a result of gradual democratization, the war on terror and Islamic revivalism, especially in Zanzibar, their concerns are now being articulated in political discourses that are difficult to ignore. For example, the Muslim youth in Zanzibar is increasingly adopting the language of human rights in seeking to articulate an ‘alternative Islam’, one that is not controlled by the official religious establishment (Turner 2008). Muslims FBOs like Baraza Kuu, moreover, now openly argue that there is ‘a critical faith imbalance [in which] the country is ruled under a Christian hegemony which promotes Islamophobia’ (Bakari 2008: 12). And instead of perpetuating this hegemony, which regularly constructs all Muslim demands for reform as a threat to national integration, some Muslim organizations argue that there is need to accommodate religious difference ‘in the context of emerging realities of multiculturalism’. ‘In essence, what is required is the creation of new institutional arrangements and practices that would allow the accommodation of diverse interests, political accountability and good governance so as to ensure

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania equality and justice in a society [with] diverse identities, including religious ones’ (Bakari 2008: 33). There are also echoes of similar discourses and institutional innovations in Nigeria. Interestingly, competing constructions of the freedom of religion, particularly Article 38(1) of the 1999 Constitution, have been used to legitimize the introduction of sharia law in the 12 northern states on the grounds that this is a collective exercise of the right. Such an interpretation has been highly contested by non-Muslims, who have argued that sharia law inhibits their freedom of religion and compromises state secularism. Yet, these sharp differences belie balancing mechanisms between the communities, including (p. 156) the principle of religious proportionality that has been increasingly adopted at both local state and federal levels. In addition, there are innovations, mechanisms, and practices at federal, state, and local levels that aim to promote inter-religious cooperation as a palliative to endemic religious conflicts. In 2001, a federal Nigeria Inter-religious Council was established. In the south west, where ‘Muslim and Christian organizations closely engage and compete with each other’ (Nolte et al. 2009: 102), there have been inter-religious initiatives since the early twentieth century. ‘Nigeria’s current politics’, it has been observed, ‘illustrate fascinating social, political and theological processes that may help the state to develop a more satisfying form of multi-religious practice’ that are consistent with its broader claims of commitment to equity and justice (Nolte et al. 2009). Finally, in integrationist regimes such as Pakistan, since 9/11 external pressure has been exerted to arrest, if not reverse, the incremental Islamization of the polity. This pressure has been most evident in efforts to reform madrasa education, promote gender rights, and respect the rights of religious minorities (Bano 2007). Formally at least, the state has attempted to respond to these concerns from the donor agencies and multinational organizations. But these policy agendas have stoked the ire of the Islamic establishment and its allies as anti-Islamic, and not unexpectedly, in Pakistan (and northern Nigeria), the drive by development agencies and international organizations for gender equality is all too frequently understood as a conscious attempt to discredit Islam (cf. Waseem and Mufti 2009). *** Clearly, since independence, the relationship of religion, politics, and governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania has been radically transformed. The most striking change has been the erosion of the secularist hegemony that commanded the towering heights of the post-independence state. Fifty-to-sixty years on, the political formations that guided these states to independence no longer hold sway, or have been substantially reinvented; even the ‘robust’ secularist states such as India and Tanzania have faced formidable Page 18 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania challenges, and today, their continued commitment to sharing the ‘liberal imagination’ rests more on their internal social diversity—that militates against a (p.157) dominant, religiously homogenizing centre—than deeply entrenched secularist values among the citizenry. Of the other two countries, Nigeria remains a secular state in name only, and Pakistan’s ruling elite is engaged in a bitter civil war against Islamists for the survival of the state. Pakistan’s post-1947 history illustrates most dramatically the emergence of political and social formations that have rejected efforts to ‘privatize’ religion. However, as we have seen in Nigeria, India, and Tanzania, alternative forms of mobilization by religious actors—electoral, statist infiltration, politics of resistance, and demands for more equitable treatment by religious minorities— have also substantially undermined the post-independence civic conception of citizenship, as Islamization, sharia law, ‘freedom of religion’ legislation, customary laws, and proportionality have introduced asymmetric religious rights, often against bitter opposition. In short, the ‘return of religion’ in these four polities is much more than symbolic: it has permeated the body politic in which ideas, movements, and discourses about identity and disadvantage are now increasingly framed in a religious language, with substantial political constituencies behind them. The future direction of change in the four polities is presented in Figure 6.2. In India, although the challenge of Hindutva has been arrested, for the time being at least, it is likely that as long as the BJP remains as the major national party, it would be premature to rule out an electoral assertion against state secularism. Similarly, in Tanzania the process of democratization, if it takes hold, could undermine the one-party domination of the CCM, enabling the CUF to emerge as a potential alternative for those seeking more active engagement of faiths in governance—Muslim or otherwise. In Nigeria, the overall direction of change is more complex: on the one hand, the northern states have moved to a more consensual accommodation between religion and the state in conditions of low integration, while on the other, the non-sharia states retain a strong commitment to state secularism. In these conditions, we can neither rule out a greater polarization between these positions (with demands for sharia in other states and demands by non-Muslims for a more differentiated polity committed to state secularism), nor a gradual movement towards a conflictual differentiation (if support for sharia in the northern states wanes and (p.158)

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania non-Muslim political formations are more accommodative and pursue a less strident state secularism). Equally, in Pakistan today, while the momentum is with the mobilizing groups that demand consensual integration of the state and Islam, the Pakistani army and the civic state establishment may well succeed in defeating the Islamist challenge. Even such an outcome, however, is unlikely to provide an enduring solution: at best, it may restore the permanent antagonism between an increasingly Islamized society and a modernist state elite.

Lastly, probably because it was largely unanticipated, the ‘return of religion’ to public life in developing societies is yet to

Figure 6.2 Types of Differentiation and Examples: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania Today Source: Adapted from Philpott (2007: 508).

produce a systematic body of literature capable of understanding the manifold complexities of this phenomenon at various levels. It is perhaps a truism to say that in the South, ‘religion and politics are linked together in complex ways’ (Deneulin and Rakodi 2011: 52): the question, however, is how this complexity can be untangled. Comparatively, (p.159) one of the most promising ways to map this change is through the sociological principle of differentiation, which seeks to explore the extent to which state and religion are differentiated and integrated, and the processes that separate them and bring them together. This principle enables us to identify discrete areas in the interface between the state and religion that each influences, or seeks to influence, the way this change manifests itself, and the modes of accommodation between the two. As the post-independence review of our four project countries has demonstrated, it also provides an invaluable tool to understand the future direction of change. References Bibliography references: Appleby, R. Scott. 2000. The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence and the Sacred. Lanham: Rowan and Littlefield. Aziz, Faisal. 2010. ‘Punjabi Taliban a Growing Threat for Pakistan’, Reuters, 30 May. Available at http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100530/tts-uk-pakistanmilitants-punjab-ca02f96.html?printer=1 (accessed 30 May 2010).

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania Aziz, Mazhar, 2008. Military Control in Pakistan: The Parallel State. London: Routledge. Bakari, Mohammed A. 2008. ‘Religion, Governance and Development’, Unpublished paper prepared for the Religions and Development Research Programme. Bano, Masooda. 2007. ‘Contesting Ideologies and Struggle for Authority: State– Madrasa Engagement in Pakistan’, Religions and Development Working Paper 14. Birmingham. Best, Shedrack Gaya. 2011. ‘FBOs and Post-conflict Transformation and Development in Nigeria: A Research Report Based on Jos and Kano Cities’, Religions and Development Working Paper. Birmingham. Baruah, Sanjib (ed.). 2010. Ethnonationalism in India: A Reader. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bhargava, Rajiv (ed.). 1998. Secularism and Its Critics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bose, Sumantra. 2003. Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Path to Peace. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Brass, Paul R. 1999. ‘India: Democratic Progress and Problems’, in Selig S. Harrison, Paul H. Kreisberg, and Dennis Kux (eds), India and Pakistan: The First Fifty Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 23–44. (p.162) Campbell, Horace and Howard Stein (eds). 1991. The IMF and Tanzania. Harare: Sapes Books. Casanova, Jose. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Corbridge, Stuart and John Harriss. 2000. Reinventing India: Liberalisation, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Das, Veena, Dipankar Gupta, and Patricia Uberoi (eds). 1999. Tradition, Pluralism and Identity: Essays in Honour of T.N. Madan. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Deneulin, Séverine and Masooda Bano. 2009. Religion in Development: Rewriting the Secular Script. London: Zed Books. Deneulin, Séverine and Carole Rakodi. 2011. ‘Revisiting Religion: Development Studies Thirty Years On’, World Development, 39(1): 45–54.

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania Dinham, Adam, Robert Furby, and Vivien Lowndes. 2009. Faith in the Public Realm:Controversies, Policies and Practices. Bristol: Policy Press. Falola, Toyin. 1998. Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. Franke, Marcus. 2009. War and Nationalism in South Asia: The Indian State and the Nagas. London: Routledge. Geiser, Urs. 2010. ‘Subaltern Resistance, the Unruly Margin, Religious Fundamentalism? Multiple Readings of the Swat Conflict in North-West Pakistan —and Their Blurring’, Paper presented at the Pakistan Workshop on ‘Margins and Marginality: Pakistani State and Societies’, Pakistan workshop, Rook Howe, the Lake District, England, 7–9 May. Government of India (GoI). 2006. Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community in India: A Report (Sachar Committee Report). New Delhi: Government of India. Available at http://minorityaffairs.gov.in/newsite/sachar/ sachar_comm.pdf (accessed 30 April 2010). Gupta, Dipankar. 1996. The Context of Sikh Ethnicity: Sikh Identity in a Comparative Perspective. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2007. ‘Citizens versus People: The Politics of Majoritarianism and Marginalization in Democratic India’, Sociology of Religion, 68(1): 27–44. ———. 2011. Justice before Reconciliation: Negotiating a New Normal in Postriot Mumbai and Ahmedabad. New Delhi: Routledge. Habermas, Jurgen. 2006. ‘Religion in the Public Sphere’, European Journal of Philosophy, 4(1): 1–25. Haqqani, Husain. 2005. Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for Peace. Hasan, Zoya. 2007. ‘Mass Violence and the Wheels of Indian [In]justice’, in Amrita Basu and Srirup Roy (eds), Violence and Democracy in India. Oxford: Seagull Books, pp. 198–222. (p.163) Haynes, Jeffrey. 1995. ‘Review of Religion and National Integration in Africa: Islam, Christianity and Politics in the Sudan and Nigeria’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 33(3): 526–8. ———. 2007. An Introduction to International Relations and Religion. Essex: Pearson Education. Heilman, Bruce E. and Paul J. Kaiser. 2002. ‘Religion, Identity and Politics in Tanzania’, Third World Quarterly, 23(4): 691–709. Page 22 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania Ibrahim, Omar Farouk. 1997. ‘Religion and Politics: A View from the North’, in Larry Dimond, A. Kirke-Green, and Ogelege Ogediran (eds), Transition without End: Nigerian Politics and Civil Society under Babangida. Ibadan: Vantage Publishers, pp. 427–47. Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2000. Terror in the Mind of God: The Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kennedy, Charles. 1996. Islamization of Laws and Economy: Case Studies on Pakistan. Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies. Kohli, Atul. 1990. Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lincoln, Bruce. 2003. Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11th. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Luanda, N.N. 1996. ‘Christianity and Islam Contending for the Throne on the Tanzanian Mainland’, in Adebayo O. Olukoshi and Liisa Laakso (eds), Challenges to the Nation-State in Africa. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, pp. 168–82. Mahajan, Gurpreet and Surinder S. Jodhka. 2009. ‘Religion, Democracy and Governance: Spaces for the Marginalized in Contemporary India’, Religions and Development Working Paper 26. Birmingham. ——— (eds). 2010. Religion, Communities and Development:Changing Contours of Politics and Policy in India. New Delhi: Routledge. Malik, Iftikhar. 2002. Religious Minorities in Pakistan. London: Minorities Rights Group. Mallya, Ernest T. 2006. ‘Religion and Elections in Tanzania Mainland’, in Rwekaza Mukandala, Samwel S. Mushi, Laurian Ndumbaro, and Saida YahyaOthman (eds), Justice, Rights and Worship: Religion and Politics in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam: E&D, pp. 395–415. Mukandala, Rwekaza, Samwel S. Mushi, Laurian Ndumbaro, and Saida YahyaOthman (eds). 2006. Justice, Rights and Worship: Religion and Politics in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam: E&D. Nandy, Ashis. 1999. ‘The Twilight of Certitudes: Secularism, Hindu Nationalism and the Other Masks of Deculturalisations’, in Veena Das, Dipankar Gupta, and Patricia Uberoi (eds), Tradition, Pluralism and Identity. New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 401–19. (p.164) Njozi, Hamza M. 2000. Mwembechai Killings and the Political Future of Tanzania. Ottawa: Global Link Communications. Page 23 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania Nolte, Insa with Nathaniel Danjibo and Abubaker Oladeji. 2009. ‘Religion, Politics and Governance in Nigeria’, Religions and Development Working Paper 39. Birmingham. Nyirabu, Mohabe. 2009. ‘Religions, Governance and Politics in Tanzania’, Unpublished paper prepared for the Religions and Development Research Programme. O’Leary, Brendan and Paul Arthur. 1990. ‘Introduction’, in John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary (eds), The Future of Northern Ireland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 1–47. Parekh, Bhikhu. 2000. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. London: Macmillan Press. Pew Forum. 2010. Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Philpott, Daniel. 2002. ‘The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations’, World Politics, 55(1): 66–95. Philpott, Daniel. 2007. ‘Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion’, American Political Science Review, 101(3): 505–25. Roberts, F.O.N. 2007. ‘Religion, Governance and Development in Nigeria’, Unpublished paper prepared for the Religions and Development Research Programme. Roy, Olivier. 2004. Global Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. London: C. Hurst and Co. Rudolph, Lloyd I. and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph. 1987. In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sáez, Lawrence and Gurharpal Singh (eds). 2011. UPA in Power: New Dimensions of Indian Politics. London: Routledge. Singh, Gurharpal. 2011. ‘Religion, Politics and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Tanzania’, Religions and Development Working Paper 55. Birmingham. Singh, Gurharpal. 2000. Ethnic Conflict in India: A Case-Study of Punjab. Basingstoke: Macmillan. ———. 2004. ‘State and Religious Diversity: Reflections on Post-1947 India’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 5(2): 205–55.

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania Singh, Gurharpal, Namawu Alhassan Alolo, and Heather Marquette. 2007. ‘Political Science, Religion and Development: A Literature Review’, Religions and Development Working Paper 17. Birmingham. (p.165) Smith, Donald Eugene. 1967. India as a Secular State. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Talbot, Ian and Gurharpal Singh. 2009. The Partition of India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Simon. 2008. ‘“These Young Men Show No Respect for Local Customs”: Globalisation, Youth and Islamic Revival in Zanzibar’, Working Paper No. 2008/4. Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies. UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2004. Human Development Report 2004: Cultural Liberty in Today’s World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Waseem, Mohammed and Mariam Mufti. 2009. ‘Religion, Politics and Governance in Pakistan’, Religions and Development Working Paper 27. Birmingham. Wilkinson, Steve. 2006. Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Notes:

(1) . The term ‘South’ is used here to refer to low-income developing countries in Asia and Africa. (2) . The concept of governance is prone to multiple misconstructions and is often conflated with the normative ‘good governance agenda’. In this essay, it refers to the authoritative management of policies and practices by the state, parastate agencies and networks. Governance is, thus, distinct from, but overlaps with, the broader processes of politics. (3) . For more details of the research programme, see http:// www.religionsanddevelopment.org/index.php?section=1 (accessed 1 March 2013). (4) . The role of religious actors is discussed in more detail in Singh (2011). (5) . For Philpott (2007: 507), differentiation has four dimensions: (a) whether the state grants a single religion constitutional status as the official one; (b) whether the state exercises the prerogative to promote religious purpose through legislation and judicial powers; (c) whether the state restricts the freedom of religion from functioning; and (d) whether religious organizations hold constitutional prerogatives. Differentiation, he argues, should not be equated with establishment (for example, Iran and England) or the influence Page 25 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania that ‘religion or state exercise on one and another through persuasion, ideological influence, or electoral power’. (6) . A consensual arrangement is a stable one, where both parties are satisfied with the status quo. A conflictual arrangement is one that at least one party wants to revamp…. States where the authority of religion and state are mutually meshed … are ones where differentiation is low but consensual. In a final variant, where differentiation is low and conflictual, religious bodies are dominated and suppressed, against their own will, sometimes despite their resistance. This relationship, too, is integrationist in that the state has ‘integrated’ religion into its authority, as Communist Bulgaria and Romania did to the Orthodox Church, whose choice was to consent or to die. (Philpott 2007: 507) (7) . For some, like Casanova (1994), differentiation may or may not lead to ‘privatization of religion’, as is assumed in the model of highly differentiated societies. For Casanova, this outcome is possible because religious institutions and organisations refuse to restrict themselves to the pastoral care of individual souls and continue to raise questions about the interconnections of private and public morality and to challenge the claims of sub-systems, particularly states and markets, to be exempt from extraneous normative considerations. One of the results of this ongoing contestation is a dual, interrelated process of repoliticisation of the private religious and moral spheres and renormativisation of the public economic and political spheres. This is what I call, for the lack of a better term, the ‘deprivatisation’ of religion. (Casanova 1994: 5–6) (8) . Strictly speaking, the BJP is not a religious but a Hindu nationalist party. Its programme is often described as promoting Hindutva. The BJP operates alongside its sister organizations—the RSS, a paramilitary social organization, and the VHP, a religious body. (9) . It needs to be recognized that there is no ideal model of a secular state. Each state secularism has its own peculiarities. For a discussion of some of these variations, see Smith (1967). (10) . The period 1991–2 is often referred to as the Third Republic, when local and state elections were held, but the federal and presidential elections were annulled. (11) . Not only are different religions dominant in different regions, but also the religious demography inhibits outright dominance by one religion. Figures on the religious composition of both countries vary (and are contested), but one Page 26 of 27

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Religion, Politics, and Governance in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Tanzania recent estimate indicates that there are roughly 50 per cent Christians and 50 per cent Muslims in Nigeria, 60 per cent Christian, and a third Muslim in Tanzania (Pew Forum 2010: 64). Few in either country (particularly Nigeria) claim primary affiliation with African Traditional Religions (ATR). (12) . Wilkinson (2006), in a pioneering study of Indian elections, has demonstrated the direct connection between electoral competition and communal riots between the Hindus and the Muslims. (13) . According to O’Leary and Arthur, ‘hegemonic control’ exists where the main ethnic or religious group or groups ‘can effectively dominate through its political, economic and ideological resources and can extract what it requires from the subordinated’ (1990: 9). (14) . See Waseem and Mufti (2009) for a detailed evaluation of the record of the religious parties’ coalition in NWFP between 2002 and 2007 as a case study for this research project. (15) . These terms have been introduced by Bruce Lincoln (2003: 82–91). (16) . Due to operational difficulties, our Tanzania case study did not focus on the Islamist challenge. However, it is important to recognize that many of the dimensions of this challenge are similar to those in the other case study countries. (17) . See ‘Bauchi Crisis—FG in Control, Yar’Adua Assures’, Vanguard, Lagos, 28 July 2009. (18) . Unsurprisingly, following the War on Terror, the ‘Gulf War II’ and 7/7, these policy innovations have been most apparent in the UK. See Dinham et al. (2009), for an overview of public policy in these areas. (19) . See Mukandala et al. (2006), for an independent attempt to review existing literature and produce new evidence.

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics Jana Sangh, BJP, and the ‘Moderation Thesis’ Regarding the ‘Radical Parties’ Christophe Jaffrelot

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords Focusing on the ‘right-wing’ radical political formations in India, the essay examines how far their participation in electoral process has produced a process of moderation. As per the proposed ‘hypothesis’, when an extremist party contests elections in a democratic framework, it accepts institutions that are based on liberal principles and dilute its ideology to attract voters outside of its core constituency. When radical parties become power-driven, those who fail to win an absolute majority are likely to rely on alliances with parties that do not share its extremism. Though the extremist parties emerge from ideological movements displaying a deep sense of doctrinal purity, they gradually dilute their ideology in the process of transforming from niche into mass parties. The history of the right-wing radical parties in India shows that this process of moderation is not linear. There have been instances where while participating in the electoral process, religious political parties became even more radical. Keywords:   moderates, nationalists, right-wing radical parties, elections, government, voters, politics, coalition politics, Hindu nationalism

The literature supporting the moderation theory argues that inclusive regimes which incorporate radical parties in electoral games usually transform these parties into more moderate political actors. This moderation process may result from four factors that are likely to make cumulative impacts. First, when an extremist party contests elections in a democratic framework, it accepts Page 1 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics institutions that are based on liberal principles, including the rule of law. For instance, the extremist party qua participation bound to commit itself to political diversity (Schwedler 2006). Second, when a radical party contests elections, it is bound to dilute its ideology to attract voters outside of its core constituency. (Michels (1962 [1915]: 333–41) and Schumpeter (1975 [1950]: 283) were the first party theoreticians to assume that extremist parties had to downplay their exclusivism once they enter the electoral arena). Third, when radical parties are power-driven and aspire to govern, those who fail to win an absolute majority are likely to rely on alliances with parties that do not share their extremism. Fourth, while extremist parties emerge in most cases from ideological movements displaying a deep sense of doctrinal purity, they gradually emancipate themselves from them in the process of transforming from niche into mass parties (Clark 2006). The literature on the inclusion-moderation theory mostly deals with former extreme left parties adjusting to the fall of communist (p.167) regimes in the context of the democratization of European countries or with European religious parties such as the Catholic democrats (Kalyvas 1996, 2000). Here, I shall test the theory in the context of the Indian political system, which represents another institutionalized form of democracy, looking back today at over 60 years of democratic politics. Hindu nationalist parties were part of the Indian political system even before independence when the British introduced reforms allowing some electoral competition in the first decades of the twentieth century. The Hindu nationalist parties believed in democracy even then (Mitra and Mitra 1938: 420), largely because, considering that this regime relies on majority rule and that Hindus formed a majority in India, they expected that democracy should result, eventually, in the conquest of power by the Hindus. But the parties’ integration into the Indian democratic process did not result in their linear moderation. In fact, these parties have oscillated between a path of radicalization and one of moderation. When they followed the former, elections were a factor of radicalization as the parties’ mobilization strategy has aimed to polarize the electorate along religious lines. When the parties opted for moderation, it was to lead larger coalitions and rule the country. This dimension of the moderation thesis—the compulsions of coalition politics—has impacted the Hindu nationalist parties only when they have needed the support of other parties. Whether the Hindu nationalist parties opted for the path of radicalization or that of moderation has been a function of three variables: their relation with their mother organization, the RSS; their perception of Muslims and the correlative self-perception of the Hindus that prevail at any given time; and the strategies of the other political parties, be they in office or in the opposition.

The Jana Sangh Trajectory: From a Radical Niche Party to an Uncompromising Coalition Partner (1951–77) Page 2 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics In 1951, the Jana Sangh emerged from a Hindu nationalist movement that was much older. Hindu nationalism, as an ideology, crystallized in the 1920s when Hindu leaders of different backgrounds, including revolutionaries and members of the Congress party, reacted (p.168) similarly to the perceived threat of the Muslim minority (about 20 per cent of the population of the British Raj). The turning point was the Khilafat Movement that Indian Muslims organized in order to protest against the questioning of the Caliphate in Istanbul by the victors of World War I, including Britain. In India, demonstrations aimed at the British hit the Hindus, an easier target, and resulted in an unprecedented wave of riots in 1921–7 (Minault 1982). Some Hindu leaders then relaunched a rather dormant wing of the Congress, the Hindu Mahasabha, which became a radical Hindu nationalist party independent from the Congress in 1937. Others created Hindu defence movements, called ‘militias’ by the British. Among them, the best organized one was the RSS, which drew its ideology from the notion of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness, invented in 1923 by a revolutionary turned anti-Muslim, V.D. Savarkar. Savarkar argues that the Indian national identity is embodied in Hindu culture, which encompasses not only Hinduism as a religion, but also a language, Sanskrit (and its main vernacular derivative, Hindi), the worship of Hindustan as a sacred land, and the cult of the Vedic Golden Age. The importance of nonreligious elements such as language suggests that the Hindu nationalist movement was an ethno-religious movement right from the beginning. In line with his motto ‘Hindu, Hindi, Hindusthan!’ Savarkar demanded that the religious minorities pay allegiance to the dominant Hindu identity, and limit the manifestations of their faith to the private sphere (Savarkar 1969 [1923]). Indeed, the RSS refused non-Hindu members, even though it claimed to represent all the Indians. The RSS: A Sectarian and Authoritarian Hindu Nationalist Matrix

In contrast to most other ethno-nationalist movements, including fascist ones, the RSS did not identify with one leader1 and did not regard the conquest of state power as a priority. In fact, the movement preferred to remain aloof from the political arena. For its first supreme leader (sarsanghchalak), K.B. Hedgewar (1925–40) and his successor M.S. Golwalkar (1940–73), the priority task was to reform Hindu society from below—not from above through the state apparatus. They both looked at the Hindus as weak and vulnerable vis-à-vis the (p.169) Muslims, who were well-represented in commerce, military, academy, and administration. The two were also apprehensive of the new militancy of the lower castes and feared the growing appeal of Gandhi’s brand of Hinduism that emphasized non-violence. By contrast, the RSS aspired to restore a martial brand of Hinduism and reshape the mind and the body of the Hindus in order to make them warrior-like.

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics For decades, the main aim of the RSS was to expand the network of its branches where this training was imparted to (mostly young) Hindus. Hedgewar decided to train a special body of RSS cadres to this effect, the so-called pracharaks. The members of this avant-garde were supposed to dedicate their whole life to the RSS. Even though they were often well-educated, they gave up the idea of embracing a professional career. They did not marry either. Instead, the RSS became their family, a sort of ‘brotherhood in saffron’—the sacred colour of Hinduism and that of the RSS flag—as suggested by Walter Andersen and Shriddhar Damle (1987). In 2004, the RSS had 33,758 branches across India2 and probably 2–3 million members. Ideologically, the RSS is not democratic. Its ideology is based on a xenophobic brand of ethnic nationalism. In its view, non-Hindus can only be second-class citizens. If they do not give up their religious identity in the public sphere, they may even be looked at as fifth columnists of Pakistan (when they are Muslims) or the Pope (when they are Catholics). Second, the RSS does not organize internal elections. The organization has a quasi-representative body, the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS), which designates the organization’s general secretary. But there is never more than one candidate per post. Moreover, the ABPS is not in charge of appointing the more important post of the supreme leader. Most of the organization’s supreme leaders have been designated by their predecessor and/or by a very small clique of RSS leaders. Last but not least, the RSS cultivates a secretive modus operandi and forbids its members from taking part in public debates. Among the first components of the ‘Sangh family’ (or Sangh Parivar in Hindi) to be launched by the RSS were a student union in 1948, a labour union in 1955, and between the two, a political party in 1951—the Bharatiya Jana Sangh or BJS (Jaffrelot 2006a). Indeed, RSS leaders sought to create front organizations to reach out to domains in which they were not active. The RSS did not create (p. 170) its party alone, but co-founded it with Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the former president of the Hindu Mahasabha, who was more than happy to receive the support of the Sangh family for launching a more dynamic political organization. The Jana Sangh—as it came to be popularly called—was established just before the first general election in 1951. Mookerjee died in 1953 and the RSS leaders, who had been seconded to the party apparatus, immediately took over and marginalized the old lieutenants of Mookerjee. The Jana Sangh’s Sectarianism (1951–67): Rejection of Diversity and Radical Mobilizations

The Jana Sangh replicated the RSS structure under the aegis of its supreme leader M.S. Golwalkar, who had agreed to the creation of the party only reluctantly3 and who was keen not to let it acquire any significant autonomy. Most of the party cadres came from the RSS, including Deendayal Upadhyaya, who functioned as the party’s General Secretary until his mysterious death in Page 4 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics 1968 (Jaffrelot 1996: 89). The RSS cadres also occupied the positions of organizing secretaries who formed the party’s steel frame. The party-building pattern that crystallized under Upadhyaya, therefore, enabled the RSS to exert a strong influence over the Jana Sangh because of the relationship between the party cadres and their mother organization. As a result, the party tended to replicate the taste for ideological discourses and secrecy of its mother organization. Its leaders were eager to retain the ideological purity of the RSS and its upper caste, even Brahminical, ethos. Therefore, the attractiveness of the Jana Sangh as a political party was limited to traditional elites of north India since the southern provinces could not accept languages deriving from Sanskrit, including Hindi, as their idiom. The Jana Sangh remained a niche party for that reason (see Table 7.1) and contended itself with that status for 10 years. In fact, it was as much a niche party in the sense of Adams et al. (2006) as a ‘message seeker’ (Greene 2007) less interested in winning elections than in using electoral platforms to propagate its ideology. But the party was supposed to speak for all the Hindus and to influence the state. It was even supposed to capture power in order to correct the public policies which the ruling party, the Congress, had

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics

Table 7.1 Performance of the Jana Sangh in National Elections (seats won and percentage of valid votes) Year

1952

1957

1962

1967

1971

Seats

3

4

14

35

22

(%)

(3.1)

(5.9)

(6.4)

(9.4)

(7.4)

Source: Election Commission of India.

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics (p.171) designed and which, according to the followers of Hindutva, were detrimental to the Hindus. Among these were the recognition of English and regional languages at the expense of Hindi, the correlative creation of linguistic states in the framework of a federal union, institutions that the Hindu nationalists wanted to abolish because of ‘their dangerous potential for secession’;4 the granting of an autonomous status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir that Nehru had promoted to defuse the separatist tendencies in the province (something that in the eyes of the Hindu nationalists weakened national unity);5 the continuation of the sharia as personal law of the Muslims whereas the Hindu Personal Law was reformed according to Western principles; the freedom to convert to another religion; and last, but not least, the possibility of slaughtering cows.

Cows are sacred animals in Hinduism and many Hindu leaders, including traditionalist Congressmen, were in favour of a ban on cow slaughter, something the secular Indians (Congressmen and leftist leaders primarily) and the minorities, especially the Muslims, regarded as objectionable. The Jana Sangh decided to instrumentalize this symbol of identity in order to mobilize the majority community at the time of elections. A case in point was the 1967 election campaign.6 The party joined hands with another front organization of the RSS, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which was intended to federate all the Hindu sects and gather their representatives on the same platform. Some of the most prominent religious figures went on fast for weeks and, in the street, the Jana Sangh, with the support of the RSS, made unprecedented efforts to mobilize its supporters. In February 1967, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators rallied around the Indian Parliament and assaulted this temple of Indian democracy in order to force the Members of Parliament (MPs) to (p.172) pass a law prohibiting cow slaughter. No mass movement had been so popular since independence in 1947. As the activists were determined to storm the Parliament, the police intervened and killed eight of them, who, in turn, became the martyrs of this cause. The Jana Sangh made some progress during the general elections immediately thereafter, jumping from 6.4 to 9.4 per cent of the valid votes (see Table 7.1). But the cow protection movement failed to make a major impact for two reasons. First, the Hindus were not as responsive as the Jana Sangh party expected because cow slaughter was not an existential issue and many states had already passed prohibitive laws in that respect. Second, the government did not compromise with secularism. While India admitted religious parties, its Constitution committed the country to secularism, thereby, prohibiting the use of religion in the political sphere. Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru observed strict secular norms and fought the Hindu nationalists as his archenemies. He was very aware of the Hindu nationalists’ attempts to instrumentalize religion during election campaigns. In 1956, he ordered the imprisonment of activists who had reprinted a book titled Living Biographies of Religious Leaders of the World, whose provocative depiction of the Prophet Mohammad had resulted in violent Hindu/Muslim tensions in north India (Nehru Page 7 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics 1985: 436). Nehru was convinced that the riots had been masterminded by Hindu nationalist parties ‘to attracts votes in the forthcoming elections’ (Gupta 1965: 250) by polarizing the voters along religious lines. In 1959, RSS leader Golwalkar was sentenced to a fine of Rs 500 and six months’ imprisonment for a speech encouraging communal hatred. He was eventually acquitted on appeal,7 but the trial signalled that Hindu nationalist leaders could not articulate their most extreme views in public as long as Nehru was watching them. Press reports of that time suggest that, as a result of the state’s vigilance, the Hindu nationalists abstained from instrumentalizing religion openly: in ‘Lucknow [the capital city of Uttar Pradesh], the Jana Sangh is shy of parading itself as a Hindu party … the house to house propaganda is different from platform speeches’.8 Harold Gould’s study of the 1962 election campaign in Faizabad (Uttar Pradesh) confirms this disjunction between the public and the private discourses of the Hindu nationalists: ‘Privately, the Jana Sangh spokesmen were intimating to all who (p.173) should listen that all Muslims would be sent to Pakistan following a Jana Sangh victory at the polls’ (Gould 1966: 67). In 1965, even after Nehru’s death, RSS dignitaries considered that ‘direct participation in communal riots would result in a ban’, as it did in 1948–9, the darkest years of the RSS (Johnson 1970: 83). Undoubtedly, Nehru’s commitment to secularism contained the most extreme use of religion by Hindu nationalists in India’s political arena. Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, maintained the same line of conduct as her father. In 1967, she did not bow to any of the Hindu nationalists’ demands regarding cow slaughter and she justified continued police repression. She let one of the religious leaders die while on hunger strike; she refused to negotiate any interim ban on cow slaughter—a suggestion of some Jana Sangh leaders in order to break the stalemate—and she fired the then Home Minister who had failed to contain the demonstrations, allegedly because he somewhat sympathized with them. The Jana Sanghis’ Incomplete Moderation (1968–79)

The relative failure of the 1967 cow protection movement coincided with the change of strategy of the Jana Sangh, whose leaders had realized that a radical approach would confine the Jana Sangh to the same marginal role as the Hindu Mahasabha. The party tried to become acceptable to new voters in order to enlarge its electoral base in social and geographical terms. The most significant move in this direction was the way it watered down its Hindi-only policy in order to attract more supporters from South India. This change was consummated in December 1967, during its Calicut (now Kozhikode, in Kerala) plenary session— the first in south India—when the party declined to set a deadline for making Hindi the national language and admitted that the adoption of this idiom had to take place on a voluntary basis.9 Simultaneously, the Jana Sangh developed a new interest in socio-economic issues in a rather populist vein in order to speak

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics to ‘the common man’—a formula that party president A.B. Vajpayee used systematically. The Jana Sangh’s moderation was also partly due to the changing strategy of other opposition parties that were prepared to partner with it. Until the 1960s, the Jana Sangh was persona non grata (or ‘the (p.174) political untouchable’, as its leaders used to say) to most opposition parties, including the socialist groupings, which strongly criticized its communalism. In the early 1960s, socialist leader R.M. Lohia developed the notion of non-Congressism, which advocated the need, for the opposition parties, to join hands against the Congress. In 1967, this rapprochement resulted in the making of post-election coalitions in some states where the Jana Sangh became part of the governments. None of them lasted for long because of ideological differences that sometimes reflected the contrasting social basis of the allied parties. For instance, the Jana Sangh was very reluctant vis-à-vis the recognition of Urdu as an official language in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and vis-à-vis any land reform—two things the socialists and the communists who were part of the government of these states were keen to promote. By the late 1960s, the Congress was back in almost all the states but this episode of coalition politics had shown to the Jana Sangh leaders that they could be acceptable to other opposition parties even after a sectarian election campaign. Before the 1971 elections, the opponents to the Congress (including the Congress (Organisation) or Congress (O), a breakaway faction that had fought against Indira Gandhi’s new socialist agenda) formed a Grand Alliance. It did not make any impact because Indira Gandhi had become remarkably popular. But the Jana Sangh became even more familiar with coalition politics in this framework. It played a key role in the JP Movement, a movement named after Jayaprakash Narayan, a Gandhian veteran who led the opposition’s campaign against Prime Minister Gandhi’s authoritarianism and the corruption of the political class. The Prime Minister reacted to this movement by declaring the state of Emergency. Most of the opposition leaders, except the communists, were jailed. In jail, all the leaders of the opposition parties, including the Jana Sangh, the Socialist Party and the Congress (O) joined hands. Immediately after Indira Gandhi announced elections in 1977, they merged into a new party once out of jail. The new party, the Janata Party, won an overwhelming majority in March 1977. The Hindu nationalists had made themselves fully acceptable to their partners, especially to conservative leaders of the Congress (O) like Morarji Desai, the new Prime Minister, and those of the Lok Dal, a party of the (p.175) dominant peasantry, including its leader Charan Singh, the Deputy Prime Minister in 1977. President of the former Jana Sangh, A.B. Vajpayee, became the

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics Minister of Foreign Affairs, and L.K. Advani became the Information and Broadcasting Minister. The RSS had favoured the merger of the Jana Sangh in the Janata Party because its priority was to dislodge Indira Gandhi from power. She had become the bête noire of the RSS the moment she had decided to ban the organization—along with many others—calling to the mind of its leaders the dark years of 1948–9. During the Emergency, new RSS supreme leader Balasaheb Deoras wrote to Gandhi, pleading—in a not very dignified way—for the lifting of the ban in exchange of his putting the RSS at the service of the development work undertaken by the government (Dutt 1978: 138–48). After Mrs Gandhi ignored this plea, the RSS set out to fight the Emergency. The RSS was also in favour of the Janata Party because its rise to power resulted in the formation of a more friendly government and the appointment of Hindu nationalist ministers. This development allowed the RSS and its subsidiaries to expand their activities, including anti-Muslim provocations that resulted in an unprecedented number of communal riots.10 Indeed, coalition politics, once again, did not translate into any significant ideological and behavioral changes. The ex-Jana Sanghis had not given up their core doctrine, as evident from the three measures they promoted within the Janata Party government. First, they introduced in Parliament a Bill aiming to ban cow slaughter. Second, they argued that the history textbooks should be rewritten in such a way that the Muslim invasions be described as truly savage. Further, references to the notion of ‘Aryan invasions’ should be removed, since, for them, Hindus were the sons of the soil, while the minorities were latecomers in India (Rudolph and Rudolph 1984). Third, they advocated the passing of a law against ‘forced conversion’ and the wording of the Bill they introduced was likely to infringe upon freedom of religion. The socialists objected to these three measures, arguing that these were articles of faith of the RSS, not of the Janata Party. As a consequence, a ‘dual membership’ controversy unfolded during which the ex-Jana Sanghis were described by the socialists—and the (p.176) Congress—as pretending to be part and parcel of the Janata Party when, in fact, they were still paying allegiance to the RSS. Anticipating that the sectarian attitude of the RSS would be a problem for the Janata Party, the party asked the RSS to open itself to ‘followers of other religions, especially of those religions which were not born in Bharat [meaning the Indian homeland] such as Islam and Christianity, but are Bharatiya [belong to the homeland] in the same way as Hindus are’ (Narayan 1979: 1). But the RSS ignored this invitation, and when the ex-Jana Sanghis were compelled to choose between severing their links with the RSS or to leave the Janata Party, they opted for the latter.

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics The career of the Jana Sangh suggests that the moderation thesis may need to be amended in the case of Hindu nationalism. Certainly, the party diluted some aspects of its initial programme, such as the promotion of Hindi as a common language that could alienate the South Indian voters. In the late 1960s, these developments—including the recruitment of local notables and the socialization of the party leaders into the parliamentary system—led students of the party to anticipate an irreversible shift of the party towards moderation (Baxter 1971: 315–6; Davey 1969: 3, 16, and 209). But the democratic game, including elections failed to convert Hindu nationalists into supporters of the secular spirit of the Indian Constitution. In fact, electoral competition did not contradict the most radical dimension of the Jana Sangh’s favourite strategy, the manipulation of Hindu symbols (such as the sacred cow) in order to mobilize supporters in a strident way before the elections. On the contrary, the holding of elections made such campaigns more likely and predictable. What dissuaded the Jana Sangh to continue with such mobilization techniques was the non-compromising attitude of the Congress governments, which defended the constitutional rules. This push factor was complemented by a pull factor since, at the same time, other opposition parties were prepared to join hands with the Jana Sangh, even if it did not give up the Hindutva-oriented aspects of its program. As a result of these two facets of the political system—a secular government and an accommodating opposition—the Jana Sangh ‘mainstreamised’ itself in the 1970s, not because it became more moderate, but because the centre of gravity of Indian (p.177) politics shifted to more conservative, and even traditionalist, sectors of the political spectrum. The leading role played by the Congress (O) and Charan Singh in the Janata Party bore testimony of this evolution. But the most important variable in the life of the party, its organic relation with the RSS, prevented this evolution to reach its natural conclusion: the ex-Jana Sanghis were unable or unwilling to sever their links with the RSS in the late 1970s. As a result, their moderation turned out to be rather shallow, as evident from the Bills they introduced in Parliament.

The BJP Invert U Curve: A Repeated Pattern, the Other Way Around As a result of the ‘dual membership controversy’, most Jana Sanghis left the Janata Party in 1979, and the party largely disintegrated a year later. The exJana Sanghis then formed a new party called the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Its trajectory contrasted with its predecessor’s in the sense that it adopted a moderate agenda first, and then became radical—before becoming more moderate again at least at the national level, following an invert U curve that went on a par with its election results. Despite this variation, the factors accounting for the BJP’s changing approach to politics are surprisingly similar to those commanding the career of the Jana Sangh.

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics The BJP as a Moderate Party (1980–9)

After the demise of the Janata Party, the BJP leaders were apprehensive of returning to the niche status to which the Jana Sangh had been confined. Retaining the word ‘Janata’ (meaning people) in its name, the BJP aspired to keep some of the aura of the Janata Party, which had embodied a consensus force of the Opposition. The BJP president A.B. Vajpayee was keen to abandon most of the Hindutva-based identity of the Jana Sangh. He introduced two new articles of faith that did not echo the Hindu nationalist legacy: ‘Gandhian socialism’ and ‘positive secularism’. The former referred to the Gandhian development model, with its strong emphasis on the village as the basic unit of the Indian economy.11 The old social basis of the BJP, made of shopkeepers, artisans, and professionals (small-town lawyers, doctors, etc.), was likely to be responsive to the anti-capitalist (p.178) overtone of this motto, but not the new middle class emerging from the liberalization measures of Indira Gandhi, who was back in office in 1980. ‘Positive secularism’ was an implicit critique of the Congress’ ‘pseudo-secularism’ (a phrase coined by the Hindu nationalists to denounce the way the ruling party ‘pampered’ the minorities to get their votes). But it was also an explicit endorsement of the secular nature of the regime, something the core electorate of the Jana Sangh and the RSS had never reconciled themselves with. The moderate discourse of the BJP was intended to make electoral alliances easier. In 1984, the BJP formed a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) with Charan Singh’s party. But Singh withdrew from the NDA just before the December 1984 elections. The BJP leaders, therefore, made an ad hoc and limited electoral pact with what was left of the Janata Party. The RSS was explicitly displeased by the BJP’s strategy. RSS cadres were not asked to support the BJP during the 1984 elections. In fact, in some places like Delhi, they opted for the Congress and its new leader, Rajiv Gandhi. But that was an ephemeral tactical move. The new RSS strategy was different. It consisted in promoting a militant use of religious symbols in order to create a Hindu vote bank through which the Hindu demographic majority would be turned into a political majority. RSS supreme leader Deoras (who had succeeded Golwalkar in 1973) argued in 1979: Hindus must now awaken themselves to such an extent that even from the elections point of view the politicians will have to respect the Hindu sentiments and change their policy accordingly.… If others put up demands, they are accepted, but even genuine demands by Hindus are ignored. This is because Muslims and other minorities usually vote en bloc while Hindus are divided. Once Hindus get united, the government would [need to] start caring for them also.12

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics The RSS relied on the VHP, another offshoot of the Sangh Parivar, to achieve this end. In 1984, the RSS and VHP launched a new mobilization campaign that did not focus on the sacred cow, but on another powerful Hindu symbol, Lord Ram. They demanded that the temple that once allegedly stood above the supposed birthplace of the god Ram in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, should be rebuilt. The Hindu temple was said to have been replaced by a mosque in the sixteenth (p. 179) century after the (Muslim) Mughal dynasty rose to power. This issue was well chosen, given the popularity of Lord Ram among Hindus, particularly in the north of India. The VHP immediately rallied several religious figures whose prestige further amplified its capacity for mobilization. Together, they demanded that the current Babri mosque be replaced by a ‘rebuilt’ Ram temple. The central theme of the agitation was that Ram, by being figuratively ‘placed’ in a mosque, had been reduced to a ‘prisoner behind bars’ since the mosque had been sealed in 1949 as a disputed place of worship (Veer 1987). At the beginning, the BJP tried to abstain from this agitation, fearing it would not be in a position to make allies if it returned to extremist moves. Eventually, however, the party gave up its moderate line of conduct, for reasons that already played a decisive role in the trajectory of the Jana Sangh. First, the RSS requested the BJP to return to the doctrinal purity of Hindutva politics and warned the party that its network of volunteers would not canvass for its candidates if the party remained adamantly moderate. Second, the electoral context was conducive to Hindu nationalist radicalization. On the one hand, no significant opposition party had accepted to partner with the BJP in spite of its moderation. On the other hand, the ruling Congress had not maintained the impeccable secularism of the 1950s–70s. Rajiv Gandhi, far from following the examples of his mother and grandfather, communalized Indian politics. In 1985, he tried to woo the Muslim opinion leaders by reasserting the role of the sharia as the ‘personal law’ of their community in the Shah Bano affair, and four years later, he played the Hindu card by invoking the name of Ram in Faizabad (the headquarter of the district where Ayodhya is located), from where he launched his election campaign. The erosion of secularism as one of the key normative rules of the Indian polity legitimized the use of some religious language by the Hindu nationalists. Third, in the 1980s, Hindus felt vulnerable. On the one hand, minorities developed militant strategies: Sikh separatists attacked Hindus, Islamists were accused of converting Dalits (as in Meenakshipuram, Tamil Nadu, in 1981), and by the end of the decade, Kashmir had become the new battle ground for jihadists. On the other hand, the Congress government laid itself to the critique of ‘pseudo-secularism’ by cultivating (p.180) the Muslim vote bank like in the Shah Bano case, which prepared the ground for a Hindu backlash.

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics The Radical Phase of the BJP (1989–98): Elections Against Democracy or the Polarization of the Indian Voters Along Religious Lines

During the 1989 election campaign, RSS activists, VHP religious figures, and BJP candidates canvassed thousands of towns and villages to consecrate bricks stamped with Ram’s name and destined to be used to ‘rebuild’ the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The bricks were carried in processions imitating those organized for religious celebrations in which idols are carried along a precise itinerary.13 In several places, these processions resulted in riots following an identical scenario in each case: a procession in the form of a show of strength (sometimes including over 10,000 people) stretched along several kilometres; despite the local authorities’ recommendations or interdicts, they entered the Muslim neighbourhoods where they chanted slogans such as ‘there are only two places for Muslims, Pakistan and the cemetery’ (Pakistan aur Kabristan); these provocations prompted the inhabitants to throw stones from neighbouring homes, to which procession members, who often turned out to be well-armed, retaliated with bloody assaults. In Bhagalpur (Bihar) more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslim, died. This pre-electoral communal violence was a clear component of the strategy of the BJP, which wanted to polarize the electorate along religious lines of cleavage and, thus, deepening the Hindu group identity so that its members would end up ‘voting Hindu’, a scenario Steven Wilkinson (2004) observed in Uttar Pradesh. Recourse to so-called religious processions, thus, proved crucial for mobilizing people. The Ayodhya temple campaign contributed to bringing the score of the BJP from two seats (out of 543) in 1984 up to 85 seats in 1989 in the lower house of Parliament (see Table 7.2). Immediately after the elections, the BJP became part of a coalition that comprised many different parties, including the Janata Dal of the new Prime Minister, V.P. Singh. As in 1967, Hindu nationalists combined an ethno-religious, radical electoral campaign on the one hand with the making of a post-electoral coalition with parties

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics

Table 7.2 Performance of the BJP in National Elections (seats won and percentage of valid votes) Year

1984

1989

1991

1996

1998

1999

2004

2009

Seats

2

85

119

160

178

182

138

116

Percentage

(7.4)

(11.4)

(20.1)

(20.29)

(25.59)

(23.75)

(22.16)

(18.84)

Source: Election Commission of India.

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics (p.181) that did not share its ideology, on the other. And like in 1967, they proved the moderation thesis wrong because coalition politics did not lead them to dilute their ideology. In fact, in 1990, BJP President L.K. Advani launched a huge movement across India (the ‘Rath Yatra’), in order to mobilize support for building a Ram temple in Ayodhya. In many cities, Advani’s meetings were responsible for Hindu–Muslim riots. Advani was arrested before reaching Ayodhya, but activists stormed the Babri mosque and dozens of them were killed in police repression. The movement had its martyrs, whose ashes were taken all over India in processions that, in turn, became the root cause for a new wave of riots. In midst of the upheaval, the BJP withdrew its support to Singh’s government and the latter fell as a consequence. But when mid-term elections were held the following year (1991), the BJP jumped from 85 to 119 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.

This radical phase of the BJP culminated in the demolition of the Babri mosque by Hindu nationalists on 6 December 1992. This move was presented as a spontaneous upsurge of Hindu activists by the BJP leaders, who claimed that they had nothing to do with it. But the inquiry commission—whose conclusions were leaked in 2009—showed that the BJP had contributed to orchestrate the episode. The radicalization of the BJP in the late 1980s to early 1990s stemmed from the interplay of three variables. First, the RSS, whose leader had decided to promote the making of a Hindu vote bank through the instrumentalization of the Ayodhya issue, remote-controlled the party, whereas the VHP provided the party with religious leaders who gave an additional—sacred—legitimacy to the movement. Second, the BJP could cash-in on a deep sense of Hindu vulnerability, fostering a collective backlash. Third, the political context allowed (p.182) the party to pursue its radical agenda. On the one hand, its coalition partners of 1989 had not seriously objected to its political use of the Ayodhya issue during the election campaign, and the government of V.P. Singh waited until the last minute (till Advani was about to enter Uttar Pradesh) to the arrest of Advani’s Rath Yatra in 1990. On the other hand, the Congress, after it returned to power in 1991, did not prevent the Hindu nationalists from attacking the Babri mosque, and the organization that had been responsible for its demolition was never indicted. The RSS and the VHP (as well as the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the latter) were banned intermittently, but only for a few months and only on paper. The BJP eventually returned to the path of moderation in 1996, not because of the attitude of other parties, but because it realized that it had to woo potential allies to form a ruling coalition after it had become the largest Indian party with 160 seats in the 1996 elections. The Relative Moderation of a Coalition Leader—Except in Gujarat: The BJP in 1998– 2004

In 1998, after the BJP won a record 178 seats—a performance repeated in 1999 (182 seats)—party president Advani embarked on a moderate phase in the career of the BJP, as a learning experience from the debacle in 1996, when Prime Minister Vajpayee could not form a coalition government bar potential allies: Page 16 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics ‘Though we were the largest party, we failed to form a government. It was felt that on an ideological basis we couldn’t go further. So we embarked on the course of alliance-based coalitions.…’14 Advani explicitly established a relation between the way the BJP had diluted its Hindu nationalism and the making of alliances under its aegis. Both phenomena culminated in 1998 in the formation of the NDA. The BJP and its alliance partners evolved a ‘National Agenda for Government’ in March 1998 and Vajpayee formed his government on this basis.15 Mainstays of the Sangh Parivar’s programme—the Ram temple to be built in Ayodhya, the abolition of Article 370 of the Constitution granting some autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, and the establishment of a uniform civil code aiming to deprive the religious minorities of one feature of their particular juridical identity—were not included in this agenda because most BJP allies did (p.183) not appreciate their Hindu nationalist connotations. Not only did they not share the Hindutva ideology, but they were also keen not to alienate their Muslim voters. At that time, Advani started to evoke the need for a new BJP that would be a party of governance, not based on any precise ideology: [A] large area of governance has little to do with ideology—any ideology— except the overriding principle of national interests. Indeed, good governance in most spheres of national life becomes possible only when it is de-ideologized and de-politicized. Thus, if any issue, in spite of its inherent validity, acquires a strongly ideological character—in fact, so strong an ideological character as to make coalition governance, and hence stable governance, difficult—it is only proper to leave it out. This is precisely what we have done in the National Agenda. (Advani 1998: 7) In 1999, the BJP even gave up the very idea of having its own separate election manifesto. And the election manifesto of the NDA promised ‘a moratorium on contentious issues’ (NDA 1999: 1), a phrase which obviously referred to the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the abolition of Article 370 of the Constitution, and the imposition of a uniform civil code. The NDA also committed itself to ‘genuine [as opposed to “positive”] secularism’. Certainly, the compulsions of coalition politics prevented the BJP from organizing agitations and forced the party to moderate its discourse. But its leaders tacitly approved the anti-Muslim pogrom which took place in the BJPgoverned state of Gujarat in 2002. The violence, in which 2,000 people died, was of a magnitude India had not experimented since Partition. Not only does the course of these operations show carefully planned organization, but it also indicates at least indirect official state support. It would have been impossible to transport that many men (and gas cylinders) with that many trucks without the benefit of state logistic support or at least the state’s neutrality. Above all, the protected nature of the clashes over days, weeks, and even months can only be Page 17 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics explained by the government’s attitude. The administration was paralyzed. The standard response policemen gave to Muslims who called them to their rescue was: ‘We have no order to save you’ (Human Rights Watch 2003). No member of the NDA, including, non-BJP coalition leaders, did anything to support the Muslim victims who relied only on the support of local (p.184) nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). More importantly, no partner of the BJP, including former socialists like Defence Minister George Fernandes, criticized the way Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi (BJP) dealt with the situation. The BJP was not forced to behave in a moderate manner in the states it governed alone. Elections were not scheduled until 2003, but Modi—a staunch RSS member— tried to capitalize on the highly communalized atmosphere his government had helped to create. In order to provoke by-elections, he resigned from his post as Chief Minister and recommended that the governor should dissolve the Gujarat assembly, which the latter, an RSS leader, did on 19 July. The Chief Election Commissioner, who visited more than half of the state’s districts between 31 July and 4 August 2002, was reluctant to organize any poll, especially since thousands of voters, a vast majority of them Muslims, were still living far from their homes in refugee camps (Jaffrelot 2006b). Then the Modi government argued that, in accordance with Article 174 of the Constitution, the time between dissolving the assembly and holding new elections could not exceed six months. National BJP leaders, including Home Minister L.K. Advani, joined in the call for early elections. Given the objections of the Election Commission, the BJP brought the case before the Supreme Court. The Court refused to express an opinion, referring to the decision of the Election Commission. In early November, the Commission set a date for the Gujarat elections to begin on 12 December. The outcome was in Modi’s favour: the BJP garnered a majority of seats for the third time in a row with a record score of 126 seats out of 182. Only the pogroms made this landslide possible: the BJP won all the seats in the three districts most heavily affected by this extreme form of violence, which polarized the voters along religious lines. At the national level the RSS reconciled itself with the moderation of the BJP’s discourse insofar as it allowed the party to run the government. Such a position of power enabled the RSS to have many of its articles of faith implemented. Few weeks after taking over, the Vajpayee government organized the first nuclear test since 1974; RSS members and/or sympathizers were appointed at the helm of many institutions including the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR); the (p.185) rewriting of the history textbooks was initiated by the Minister of Human Resources Development, M.M. Joshi, a staunch RSS man; the BJP government in Gujarat was not held accountable for the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom. As long as the RSS found compensations to the moderation of the BJP, this strategy could

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics continue—coalition politics at the centre, extremism in the states the BJP ruled alone.

The BJP in Opposition, Searching for a Strategy On the basis of the BJP’s changing discourse in the late 1990s, scholars like Baldev Raj Nayar considered that the party was following a ‘centrist tendency’. According to him, there was ‘a uni-linear direction in change in party strategy towards moderation and coalition building’ (Nayar 1999). In fact, the moderation of the BJP’s discourse was due to the compulsions of coalition building. After returning to opposition in 2004, the BJP tried to continue with the NDA and resist the influence of the RSS. The latter attributed the party’s 2004 electoral defeat to the dilution of its ideology regarding mainstays of the Hindutva movement (like the Ram temple and the rejection of economic liberalization, which could only result in cultural globalization). BJP president Advani was openly criticized by RSS supreme leader K. Sudarshan. In an unprecedented move, the latter said, during a TV interview, that Advani and former Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee should make room for new faces. Advani, during the party’s National Executive meeting on 18 September 2005, declared that [an] impression has gained ground that no political or organizational decision can be taken without the consent of the RSS functionaries. This perception will do no good either to the Party or to the RSS.… [T]he BJP as a political party is accountable to the people, its performance being periodically put to test in elections. So in a democratic, multi-party polity, an ideologically driven party like the BJP has to function in a manner that enables it to keep its basic ideological stances intact and at the same time expand itself to reach the large sections of the people outside the layers of all ideology. This overall plea for the recognition of the party’s autonomy was not appreciated by new RSS leader Sudarshan. At the end of 2005, Advani was removed from the BJP’s presidency and Rajnath Singh took over from him. After the defeat of the BJP in the 2009 general (p.186) elections, when Advani had been projected by the party as its candidate for prime ministership, he was removed from the post of leader of the opposition in the lower house of Parliament and the RSS imposed a rather unknown figure at the helm of the party, Nitin Gadkari, a regional leader based in Maharashtra. As during the 1979 ‘dual membership’ controversy, coalition partners of the Hindu nationalists reacted negatively to this political role of the RSS. Some nonNDA allies of the BJP, like the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), whose leader worried about his Muslim voters, severed its links with the BJP. Others warned the BJP that they may leave the alliance if it bowed to the RSS. Right after the general election, the National Executive Committee of the Janata Dal (United), or JD (U), Page 19 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics one of the BJP’s coalition partners in the NDA, issued a resolution to this effect. It declared that: ‘We joined the National Democratic Alliance only after the three controversial issues (construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya, Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code) had been removed from the agenda of the NDA. If any effort is now made to revive them, we shall have to take another road.’16 The NDA, which—with its allies—comprised 18 parties in the late 1990s, has shrunk by more than half a decade later. The non-RSS leaders that the BJP had attracted (such as Jaswant Singh, former Foreign Affairs Minister, and Yashwant Sinha, former Finance Minister) have been marginalized and/or have left in reaction to the RSS’ attitude. As a result, some BJP leaders consider that the party no longer needs to betray its ideology if this does not bear fruits electorally. In fact, RSS leaders may persuade the party to return to its doctrinal roots in order to remobilize its cadres and its core supporters.

Conclusion: An Indian-Based New Moderation Thesis The case of the Hindu nationalist parties in India suggests significant amendments to the moderation theory. The thesis assumes that radical parties are likely to dilute their ideology if they become part of a democratic party system and that this process is more or less linear. In India, the inclusiveness of the political system has not been responsible for the moderation of the Hindu nationalist parties over the last 60 years. In fact, there is no linear trend in the career of these parties.17 They (p.187) have constantly oscillated between a radical ethno-religious strategy and phases of tactical moderation, which did not alter their core ideology. These oscillations may be explained by the interplay of three variables other than the ones proposed by the model (see Table 7.3). While the moderation thesis postulates that taking part in electoral competition leads political parties to adopt a less exclusivist agenda, this variable has played a very ambivalent role in India: on the one hand, the Jana Sangh has given up its Hindi-only approach of official languages to attract more voters, but, on the other, the Jana Sangh and the BJP have tried to build Hindu vote banks by polarizing the electorate through communal violence. Electoral competition has fostered ethno-religious conflicts in India. The moderation thesis assumes otherwise, because it has been primarily developed in relation to radical leftist parties which did not indulge in identity politics, and in relation to Catholic parties of European societies. In these societies, the moderation of these parties has resulted as much from the accommodation strategies of party leaders as from a deep secularization process. In India, religion remains a key identity marker that may be used in politics, especially in relation to majority communities like the Hindus at a national level, to the Sikhs in Punjab (the only state in India where they are in a majority), or the Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, the moderation thesis is more heuristic in India in the case of political parties that represent minorities, like the Jamaat-e-Islami which has renounced some of its fundamentalist articles of faith, such as the rejection of Page 20 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics democracy, in the course of its interaction with democratic practices (Ahmad 2010). Thus, the assumptions of the moderation thesis regarding the impact of electoral competition on radical religious parties need to be qualified: democratic elections may make religious parties even more radical, especially in non-secularized societies, and in the case of majority communities. The assumption of the moderation thesis regarding the role of coalitions needs to be refined too. The inclusion of a radical ethno-religious party like the Jana Sangh in 1967, or the BJP in 1989, in ruling coalitions at the state level or at the national level did not result in its moderation. Coalitions played a moderating role only when the partners of the Hindu nationalists made their association to the (p.188)

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics

Table 7.3 Variables Accounting for the Strategies of the Hindu Nationalist Parties Parties

Jana Sangh

BJP

Phases

Extremism 1951–67

Moderation 1967–77

Moderation 1980–9

Extremism 1989–98

Moderation 1998– 2004

Attitude of the RSS

Uncompromising

Accommodating

Uncompromising

Uncompromising

Accommodating

Hindu Sentiments

No sense of vulnerability

No sense of vulnerability

Rising sentiment of vulnerability

Sentiment of vulnerability and desire of selfassertion

No sense of vulnerability

Impact of the Coalitions on the Parties’ Strategies

No significant impact No significant impact No significant impact No significant impact Selectively moderating impact of the BJP-led NDA

Source: Author.

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics (p.189) new grouping conditional to a dilution of its ideology, and when the coalition was led by the BJP. Even then, the moderation effect needs to be qualified, since neither the BJP leaders nor their coalition partners reacted to the Gujarat pogroms.

Democratic elections and coalition politics are not panaceas in themselves. Their contributions to the moderation of radical religious parties depend upon several conditions. In the case of Hindu nationalism, three additional variables have accounted for the changing strategy of the Jana Sangh and the BJP: the attitude of its mother organization (the RSS), the self-perception of the Hindu community, and the line of conduct of the other parties, including those in government. The key role of the RSS shows that, contrary to the general assumption of the moderation thesis, political parties sometimes do not emancipate themselves from their mother organization—even in a democratic environment, and even when the latter are sectarian to the core. In the case of the Jana Sangh and the BJP, these parties depended upon the RSS not only because their leaders had been trained in this organization, but also because the local cadres remained close to their alma mater. The self-perception of the Hindus in relation to the other communities is the most elusive variable. It has played a determining role in the history of Hindu nationalism; the radical mobilization campaigns of the Jana Sangh and the BJP were only successful when Hindus, collectively, perceived themselves as vulnerable to the threat posed by other communities (including the Muslims) or the secular state. The 1989–92 Ayodhya affair is a case in point. Last, but not the least, the Hindu nationalist parties were forced to moderate when the ruling party made a point that the constitutional principles of the Indian Republic be observed. Nehru and Indira Gandhi (at least during the 1960s–70s) did not give the Jana Sangh any quarter for articulating communal discourses and strategies. Their successors, including Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao, were more accommodating and, therefore, undermined the rule of law. For the Indian state—including the judiciary—‘locking in’ moderation gains would require to implement the principles of the Constitution in an uncompromising way. The contrast between the moderation thesis and the trajectory of Hindu nationalism is summarized in Table 7.4. (p.190) Table 7.4 Moderation Thesis and the Hindu Nationalist Parties

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics

Impact on Radical Religious Parties of Democracy

Electoral Competition

Coalition Making

Moderation Thesis

Acceptance of diversity and emancipation from extremist movements

Dilution of the initial ideology in order to attract new voters

Partnering with non-radical parties results in moderation of sectarian parties

Trajectories of Hindu nationalist parties in India

Persisting xenophobia and allegiance to the RSS

Dilution of the Hindionly doctrine but instrumentalization of Hindu sentiments against religious minorities

Partnering with non-radical parties did not result in moderation, except to some extent when the BJP needed the support of allies to rule India

Source: Author. Indeed, the conclusion one may draw from the Indian case is not that democracy is not able to make radical parties more moderate, but that democracy cannot be reduced to elections. Democracy relies also on the rule of law. If this basic principle is not observed, electoral competition may result in ‘majoritarianism’ (Kaviraj 1996), with the religious majority becoming a permanently dominant political majority. Such an ethnicization of democracy would inevitably weaken the rights of the minorities (be they religious or linguistic), whereas these rights are supposed to be protected in a democratic regime. So far, the Indian political system has not shown the capacity to ‘lock in’ the BJP’s moderation process at the centre, mostly because the government— even when the Congress is at the helm—lacked the political will to enforce the principles of the Indian Constitution. References Bibliography references: Adams, James, Michael Clark, Lawrence Ezrow, and Garrett Glasgow. 2006. ‘Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Electoral Consequences of Western European Parties’ Policy Shifts, 1976–1998’, American Journal of Political Science, 50(3): 513–29. Advani, Lal Krishna. 1998. Inaugural Address by Shri L.K. Advani, President Bharatiya Janata Party, National Executive Meeting, New Delhi: 11 and 12 April 1998. New Delhi: BJP. Page 24 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics Ahmad, Irfan. 2010. Islamism and Democracy in India. The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami. Delhi: Permanent Black. Andersen, Walter, and Shriddhar Damle. 1987. The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism. New Delhi: Vistaar. Baxter, Craig. 1971. The Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political Party. Bombay: Oxford University Press. Clark, Janine. 2006. ‘The Conditions of Islamist Moderation: Unpacking Crossideological Cooperation in Jordan’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 38(4): 539–60. Davey, H.T. 1969. ‘The Transformation of an Ideological Movement into an Aggregative Party: A Case Study of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh’, PhD thesis. Los Angeles: University of California. Dutt, Prakash Brahm. 1978. Five Headed Monster—A Factual Narrative of the Genesis of the Janata Party. New Delhi: Surge Publications. Gould, Harold A. 1966. ‘Religion and Politics in a U.P. Constituency’, in Donald E. Smith (ed.), South Asian Politics and Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 51–73. Graham, Bruce. 1990. Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Greene, Kenneth. 2007. ‘Creating Competition: Patronage Politics and the PRI’s Demise’, Working Paper 345, December. Notre Dame: Kellogg Institute of International Studies, University of Notre Dame. Gupta, Nand Lal (ed.). 1965. Nehru on Communalism. New Delhi: Sampradayikta Virodhi Committee. (p.193) Human Rights Watch. 2003. ‘“We Have No Order to Save You”: State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat’, Report 14(3, C, April). Jaffrelot, Christophe. 1996. The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. (ed.). 2006a. The Sangh Parivar: A Reader. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2006b. ‘The 2002 Pogrom in Gujarat: The Post-9/11 Face of Hindu Nationalist Anti-Muslim Violence’, in J. Hinnels and R. King (eds), Religion and Violence in South Asia. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 166–82. Page 25 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics ———. (ed.). 2007. Hindu Nationalism: A Reader. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Johnson, E.W. 1970. ‘Comparative Approaches to the Study of the Hindu Communal Political Parties in Contemporary India: Some Limitations in the Applicability of (1) Systems Analysis and (2) Political Modernization and Development Theory’, PhD thesis. New York: New York University. Kalyvas, Stathis. 1996. The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 2000. ‘Commitment Problems in Emerging Democracies: The Case of Religious Parties’, Comparative Politics, 32(4): pp. 379–98. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 1996. ‘Démocratie et développement en Inde’, in J.F. Bayart (ed.), La Greffe de l’Etat. Paris: Karthala, pp. 147–89. Michels, Robert. 1962 [1915]. A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Free Press. Minault, Gail. 1982. The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India. New York: Columbia University Press. Mitra Nripendra Nath and H.N. Mitra (eds). 1938. Indian Annual Register, no. 2. Calcutta. Narayan, Jayaprakash. 1979. JP’s Call to RSS. Bangalore: Jagarana Prakashana. National Democratic Alliance (NDA). 1999. For a Proud, Prosperous India—An Agenda. Election Manifesto, LokSabha Election. New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party, for and on behalf of the NDA. Nayar, Baldev Raj. 1999. ‘The Limits of Economic Nationalism: Economic Policy Reforms under the BJP-led Government’, Paper presented at the conference on ‘India and the Politics of Developing Countries: Essays in Honor of Myron Weiner’, 24–6 September. Notre Dame: Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame. Nehru, Jawaharlal. 1985. Letters to Chief Ministers 1947–1964. No. 4. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. (p.194) Rudolph, Lloyd and Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph (eds). 1984. ‘Rethinking Secularism: Genesis and Implications of the Next Text-book Controversy, 1977– 79’, in Cultural Policy in India. Delhi: Chanakya, pp. 13–41. Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. 1969 [1923]. Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? Mumbai: S.S. Savarkar.

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics Schumpeter, Joseph. 1975 [1950]. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper Perennia. Schwedler, Jillian. 2006. Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Veer, Peter van der. 1987. ‘God Must Be Liberated! A Hindu Liberation Movement in Ayodhya’, Modern Asian Studies, 21(2), pp. 283–301. Wilkinson, Steven. 2004. Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Notes: †

This text draws from a paper presented at the American Political Science Association (APSA) Conference of Washington in September 2010. The author is most grateful to Mirjam Künkler, the panel organizer, for her comments on an earlier draft. (1) . Six leaders have successively occupied the post of supreme leader of the RSS: K.B. Hedgewar (1925–40), M.S. Golwalkar (1940–73), Babasaheb Deoras (1973–94), Rajendra Singh (1994–2000), K.S. Sudarshan (2000–09), and Mohan Bhagwat (since 2009). (2) . See The Hindu, 13 March 2004. (3) . See The Organizer, 25 June 1956, p. 5. (4) . See The Organizer, 24 January 1956, p. 5. (5) . The importance of the Kashmir issue for the Jana Sangh was evident from the personal involvement of its first president, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who took part in the Kashmir andolan (agitation) in 1953 and died in jail in the state (probably of heart attack) after he had been arrested for taking part in this movement. (6) . For a detailed account on this episode of the Jana Sangh’s career, see Jaffrelot (1996: 204–9). (7) . See The Organizer, 16 November 1961, p. 7. (8) . See National Herald, 8 January 1962, p. 1. (9) . For a synthetic view of the Jana Sangh’s resolutions regarding the language issue, see Jaffrelot (2007: Chapter 12). (10) . The number of Hindu–Muslim riots rose from 169 in 1976 to 188 in 1977, 230 in 1978, and 304 in 1979 (Jaffrelot 1996: 301). Among them, the riots of Aligarh (1978) and Jamshedpur (1979) were investigated by independent Page 27 of 28

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Between Hindu Nationalism and Coalition Politics commissions, which concluded that Hindu nationalist activists had been involved (First Annual Report of the Minorities Commission, 1973, and Report of the Three-Member Commission of Inquiry Headed by Shri Jitendra Narain former Judge of Patna High Court, 1981). (11) . See Graham (1990) for a detailed analysis of the social basis of the Jana Sangh. (12) . See Hindu Vishva, no. 14, 7–8 March 1979, p. 92. (13) . For a detailed report on a Mahayajna, see, for example, the one on Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh Chronicle, 11 November 1989, p. 9, and Dainik Bhaskar, 11 November 1989, p. 3. (14) . Interview with L.K. Advani in Outlook, 25 October 1999, p. 38. (15) . See Organiser, Varsha Pratipada Special, 29 March 1998, pp. 27–30. (16) . See The Hindu, 2 August 2004. (17) . The variations of the Hindu nationalists’ strategies are not only observed in terms of time, but also in terms of space. This essay deals with the national leadership only. But state leaders have used their room of manoeuvre for shaping their own oscillations between moderate and radical strategies. Interestingly, the key variables mentioned about the Jana Sangh and the BJP at a national level remain relevant at the state level. The role of elections and coalition-making are cases in point. In Gujarat, the BJP of a Modi-polarized society through the 2002 pogrom and made sure that it drew its electoral benefits by holding elections a few months later. This extremist strategy was made easier by the fact that the BJP did not depend upon coalition partners and did not face strong secularist parties. In Bihar, by contrast, the BJP is associated with the JD (U) in the framework of a ruling coalition. The JD (U)—which is very critical of Modi’s policies—cultivates a Muslim electorate, and the local BJP has become so moderate that it has approved positive discrimination measures in favour of the Muslims.

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 A Reflexive Account Roger Jeffery

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords This essay is based on Jeffrey’s research on the health care systems in India since the 1970s. Since then India’s health services have been transformed in many respects, while also retaining many of its earlier features. Health systems are not immune from global pressures and opportunities, and over this period, India’s development strategies, economy, and position within global economic and social structures and processes have also changed dramatically. This essay considers how the interactions amongst Indian society, polity, and economy have impacted on the Indian health system. Using his reflection on his field research, Jeffrey spells out how the focus of his research shifted between micro- and macro-sociology and between the use of ethnographic fieldwork, policy review, and secondary analysis of large-scale datasets. These experiences show how the legacy of colonialism has been transformed as India’s health services are interpolated into networks of global assemblages. Keywords:   Indian health system, Indian society, polity, economy, micro- and macro-sociology, ethnography, colonialism, globality

I shall … try to show how both as description and as explanation sociology is always a critical activity.… The purpose of sociology is to achieve an understanding of social behaviour and social institutions which is different from that current among the people through whose conduct the institutions exist; an understanding which is not merely different but new

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 and better. The practice of sociology is … to conduct a critical debate with the public about its equipment of social institutions. (Burns 1967: 366–7) This statement by Tom Burns, the ‘father of Edinburgh sociology’, sets out his vision for sociology. Despite its apparent datedness, it remains highly relevant. As someone who has spent four decades in the Edinburgh Sociology Department, I have tried to reflect Burns’ approach in my own work. I have also contributed to critical debates about the nature, benefits, and challenges posed by how health services are provided, or the social institutions that constitute ‘modern’ health care in India.1 The critical debate—while it involves a global world of academia—is mostly carried on within India, and my contributions to these debates have inevitably been with an outsider’s perspective. My intellectual approach to, and research on, the patterns of health care provision in India from 1800 to the present day has taken various forms. In this essay, I am using my research as a window into changes in the relevant social theory, and how these can be used to understand the transformations in health care patterns in India over the past 40 years. I will return to issues raised by the idea of contributing to critical debates at the end.2 Writing reflexively offers a hostage to fortune (Woolgar and Ashmore 1988), it poses the question of how to acknowledge the significance of one’s individual and social location without being self-indulgent, individualistic, or narcissistic. Citing Lynch (2000), Maton says that: (p.196) the current condition of reflexivity within the social sciences represents a conundrum. On one hand, almost everyone agrees on the virtue of reflexivity in theory and research practice; the term has become part of the ‘bad faith’ of the social scientific field. On the other hand, there is little agreement as to what comprises reflexivity. Reflexivity has become, in other words, a hegemonic value of the social scientific field and a weapon in struggles over status and resources within the intellectual field. (2003: 54) In other words, as he suggests, there are many ways of claiming to be reflexive, and many claims to being reflexive that are more about seeking a moral high ground than about improving understandings of the social world.3 In this essay, however, by taking a ‘reflexive’ and subjective approach, I wish to highlight that research and writing comes from a personal engagement with issues and debates, and that they form part of an academic career. Inconsistencies and changes through time are part and parcel of such a trajectory, since one must always act on the basis of existing knowledge and theoretical approaches. But there is also some accumulation at work, despite the fact that many contemporary debates are conducted in apparent ignorance of earlier discussions. By showing that there is a logic of personal engagement that Page 2 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 runs through a series of projects, I hope to show the value of seeing social research as something that is both a product of personal and social contexts, as well as contributing to producing those contexts. Therefore, the structure of the essay follows a temporal sequence, highlighting a series of issues that have been the focus of my research on India’s health systems since 1970. In conclusion, I shall pull together the key issues that emerge from taking this approach.

Health Policy: Pakistan, Colonial and Postcolonial India In carrying out research, any social scientist is affected by—among many other things—what questions s/he frames, and what access s/he has to sources of data and insights, either publicly available but in need of alternative interpretations, or specially collected. The questions often come from comparisons: why are matters arranged differently in country or social group X compared with country or social group Y? As has been noted, social analysis—whether by Indian (p. 197) or other social scientists—has usually proceeded on the basis that the European or American experience is ‘normal’, and the variation from that pattern needs to be explained. For the study of health and medical services in India, the comparative framework has commonly been with the UK, and the rise of its National Health Service—rather than, for example, German or Scandinavian models of the ‘Welfare State’. This is probably due to the effects of an Anglophone education and the colonial legacy within India itself. The influence of American social science, often dominant in other respects, has been less marked since the American model of health service provision has been generally derided, until recently, as having little relevance for a developing country like India. In my own work, the UK has undoubtedly provided the main contrast, though not always explicitly so. But there is an additional comparative element. In 1970–1, I started to think about the wider context of health services in the Indian subcontinent while at the University of Bristol, where I carried out ethnographic fieldwork on hospital casualty departments in Bristol and in Lahore, Pakistan. Like Erving Goffman, and other medical sociologists and anthropologists before me, I wore a white coat, carried a small notebook, and wandered the wards before carrying out some semi-structured interviews with members of the medical and nursing staff. My fieldwork in Bristol yielded insights into the ‘sick role’ and provided a different way of approaching the work of Talcott Parsons (Jeffery 1979a). Unfortunately, my insights from the Lahore end of the comparison were not tremendously revealing—except for discovering the central role for the casualty department doctors of the documentation of injuries for ‘police cases.’ The doctors had to go regularly to court to describe where the knife wounds were, how wide and deep—not something done by the Bristol doctors.

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 My time in Lahore’s hospitals started me off in a different direction, in a quest to understand how the hospitals I studied in Pakistan had been established, what accounted for their particularities as institutions, and why Pakistan’s health services were so poorly suited to Pakistan’s health needs, despite many pious policy statements and five-year plans (Jeffery 1974). Although, relative to my work in India, my direct engagement with Pakistani health services since then has (p.198) been limited, the experience of working on Pakistan has provided a comparative framework for understanding India. Indian advocacy groups sometimes criticize the Indian situation without noticing how, in many respects, things are worse across its western borders, nor asking why this might be the case. Despite my scepticism about the claimed benefits of foreign aid, and my awareness of the ambiguous role played by external consultants, I undertook several consultancies in India. I worked briefly for the Overseas Development Administration (ODA), the forerunner of the Department for International Development (DFID), between 1979 and 1996, mostly on reproductive health services, especially in Orissa, and later in training workshops on health planning. Such visits provided insights and access to government facilities and procedures that are not usually available to independent researchers.4 As a visitor with the backing of a donor government, papers, reports, data, and visits to facilities were provided to me with little hesitation. Of course, such apparent openness is designed to showcase the ‘best’ provision, or to support a particular bid for external financing, but—even if only fleetingly—it provides an understanding of government processes that is hard to acquire in other ways. In retrospect, I realize, it also tends to privilege the official viewpoint. Undoubtedly, in my early work, I envisaged a future for India’s health services that would be based on some kind of public provision, in which the private sector would be squeezed into a marginal role. I could see that India was much better equipped to follow this route than Pakistan, both because of its stronger public health ideology and because it had a bureaucratic structure that was much better able to retain a space for some independent action beyond the interests of dominant propertied classes. Apart from the access to new sources of data and new understanding of bureaucratic processes, I found these consultancies unsatisfying. My utility to the advisory team came largely from my familiarity with Hindi and my understanding of Indian society, when the other members had generic skills (as economists or public health doctors), but with no Indian experience at all. The experience strengthened my scepticism about attempts to apply culture-neutral solutions to problems that are inevitably strongly embedded in local social, economic, and political contexts. Beyond that, I found it hard to link (p.199) my theoretical sociology to discussions about whether the family planning programme could be refashioned as reproductive and child health, and what

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 would be the implications for attempts to reduce maternal and child morbidity, and mortality. In the 1970s and 1980s, I had engaged with the contemporary currents in British sociology that required an academic interest in Marxism, an acknowledgement of the benefits of using more Weberian approaches to class, and an attempt to marry the two. I interpreted these approaches as a means to avoid a deterministic account of, for example, how health services developed, one that saw the limits that class interests placed on areas of social life without trying to explain everything in a structured way. When relating these concerns to India, I found the dependency theorists—especially Andre Gunder Frank, the popularizer of Latin American dependistas, and to a lesser extent the worldsystems theories of Immanuel Wallerstein—provided a useful overarching framework (Frank 1967; Wallerstein 1976). Neither of them, of course, carried out research on health services or medical care. Hamza Alavi, who wrote about the relative autonomy of the Indian state, provided me with an understanding of a quasi-stand-off between the three propertied classes of the feudal landlords, the big bourgeoisie, and the bureaucracy (Alavi 1972). To my mind, Alavi’s approach meant that it was not possible to explain its health system merely by reference to India’s class structure (Jeffery 1980). In my academic writings I developed the idea that in the 1970s, India’s medical and health services showed many characteristics similar to those described by ‘dependency’ theorists. Although these health and medical services were largely in the public sector, they seemed to function to extract surplus from India and transfer it to the West, mostly the US and the UK. In particular, the curriculum of India’s medical colleges was modelled on that of medical colleges in the UK, albeit an outdated version, focused on the diseases of affluence, and the graduates were better prepared for working abroad than to serve in the primary health centres that the Government of India (GoI) was busy establishing. PostIndependence, many new medical graduates went abroad for higher degrees, and few of them returned to work in the country that subsidized their study. Training of paramedical staff, whose skills would have been more appropriate to the most urgent (p.200) health needs generated by the diseases of poverty, had a very low priority. This, for example, gave India one of the worst nurse–doctor ratios in the world. Furthermore, the Indian market for pharmaceuticals was dominated by multinational companies, leaving the majority of the population with little access to modern medicines. But I was unhappy with the idea that this was all in the interests of dominant classes. In terms of public health provisions, and attempts to provide primary health care to the mass of the population, was the glass half empty or half full? Certainly, it was much fuller in India than in Pakistan, and within India, much fuller in Kerala or in Tamil Nadu than in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. I needed to understand these differences, as well as to get a closer grasp on the role of medical aid, the activities of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the public health movement—as represented in the Page 5 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 policies pursued by the Planning Commission (Jeffery 1986a), and more generally. To do so, I needed to engage with the work of those Marxists who were producing a more materialistic—and I thought, simplistic—critique of existing health services. Vicente Navarro, who had established the International Journal of Health Services as his personal fiefdom, was a prominent leader of this movement. In India, Navarro’s most prominent ally was Professor Debabar Banerji, the Founder-Chair of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Banerji published his account of the first national survey of conditions in India’s public health centres (PHCs) in 1974 (see Banerji 1974). India’s PHCs had been envisaged very much along the lines advocated by the League of Nations’ Health Organization in the 1930s, which, in its turn, drew on a report by Lord Dawson of Penn in 1920 (Jeffery 1988: 199). Designed to provide basic preventive and public health services, PHCs were key to the Indian model of primary health care for rural areas. What Banerji argued in this early work and developed further elsewhere was that, although the general policies established by independent India were well-intentioned, implementation was left in the hands of ‘Brown Englishmen’ (1974: 1333) who lacked the competence and the commitment to deliver on the promises of their political masters. While medical colleges and urban hospitals moved ahead, in rural areas large sums were tied up in ‘vertical campaigns’, against malaria, (p.201) for example, and in population control. All these had failed, so Banerji also argued that foreign social science consultants provided a defence for this failure, in arguing that the rural population ‘resisted Western medicine’. In his own research, Banerji showed there was a demand for curative and preventive health services, but that the available services were inadequate in scope, and were delivered in highly ineffective ways. He concluded that this was because of ‘alienation of the health workers … from the masses of the people’ (Banerji 1974: 1333). I was not convinced by this blanket character assassination of senior public health officials, and doctors in general, for which Banerji provided no evidence. Was it possible to go beyond his crude characterization of them as ‘Brown Englishmen’, and understand better the power they wielded or did not wield? Their social positions seemed both to give them the ability to dictate health policy, when it came to the priorities given to medical education and urban facilities, and to make them incapable of doing so, with respect to meeting public health priorities, or ensuring clinical autonomy. It has been too easy for social scientists to assume that medicine ‘is’ a profession, without making the effort to understand the political processes that make that either possible or impossible. In addressing this issue, I carried out some archival research on the origins of the Indian Medical Association, which was formed as an oppositional, nationalist grouping in the 1920s. As a result, and continuing into the postIndependence period, it had very weak representation among government Page 6 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 doctors at a time when most doctors were in the public sector (Jeffery 1977). When I looked at the Indian Medical Council (IMC), which morphed into the Medical Council of India (MCI) after Independence, it turned out that its role had been limited by its inability to prevent competition to qualified ‘allopathic’ doctors, not only from so-called ‘indigenous’ healers, but also from untrained practitioners—both of whom seemed to draw eclectically on a wide range of treatments, including those that the law reserved for those registered with the MCI. The IMC had been created in 1936 as part of an attempt to retain recognition by the General Medical Council (GMC) in Britain, and this remained one of its major concerns (Jeffery 1979b).5 In combination, these factors suggested that doctors in India had never been a full-fledged profession, were undergoing some (p.202) sliding back from even the autonomy they had achieved, and that researchers need to be cautious in assessing their power and influence in the contemporary scene. On the other hand, in The Politics of Health in India (Jeffery 1988) and elsewhere (Jeffery 1986b), I also became sceptical of the extent to which the problems of Indian health provision could be laid at the door of donor agencies. I was misunderstood to be arguing that donors were responsible for the more positive aspects of health services developments in India, but I actually wanted to demonstrate the very strong continuities from the colonial period through Independence in 1947 to the present day. My work in this field foreshadowed a more general argument that in the case of India, donor funding has been much less able to affect changes in policy than has been the case in other countries in the Global South. One criticism of the book was that I did not look closely enough at the emerging private sector (Crook 1989), and I return to this point later. But I was careful not to fall into the trap of assuming that dependency relationships were unchanging and unchangeable, as Frank had been accused of suggesting, and this also is an issue that I have returned to in later research and discuss ahead.

Ethnography and Health: The View from North Indian Villages From 1982 to 2002, my research took a different direction, in that I undertook ethnographic fieldwork in Bijnor district, western Uttar Pradesh.6 In part, this was a response to Banerji’s work described earlier, but also that of two Swedish sociologists, Goran Djurfeldt and Staffan Lindberg. They had combined detailed local ethnographic work on a Swedish-funded health centre in South India, with a sweeping (but also somewhat simplistic) Marxist analysis of the wider political and social context (Djurfeldt and Lindberg 1975). One of my purposes in pursuing ethnographic work myself was to investigate in north India and, in the context of government programmes, how health services had developed and were understood by the local population.

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 Research in Bijnor was carried out on four relatively extended occasions. In two of these (1982–3 and 1990–1), we were based (p.203) in a government dispensary on the edge of two villages about 6 km from Bijnor town, and investigated social aspects of childbearing. Inevitably, this included exploring a village eye view of health services. Government health services were predominant, and they showed all the characteristics identified by Banerji. The health centre doctor attended irregularly and for short periods. Junior staff were present, but focused their efforts on practising medicine privately. All staff expected payment for anything beyond the most trivial of treatments; and government staff in the district hospital were often abusive towards rural patients, especially the poor and the Muslims. This experience also provided me with a healthy scepticism about official health statistics: the local male health worker, who rarely if ever visited the Muslim villages, nonetheless claimed to have motivated substantial numbers for family planning. Underinvestment in rural services, poor management, staff uninterested in public health, a dominance of family planning to the exclusion of almost all other reproductive health services, and a growing role for unqualified practitioners to fill the gaps in medical provision—these were the main visible features of the health services of rural Uttar Pradesh. Between 1983 and 1990, there was little in the way of improvement despite new buildings and additional staff. I want to pick out two features of this research that generated insights into the health systems and led to further research. Although people’s own explanatory models for the causes of health and disease did show considerable variance from those of cosmopolitan medicine, in these villages, Indian systems of medicine were notable by their absence. Nevertheless, in childbirth, birth attendants played significant roles, though not in the form that was usually described internationally. The women who attended labouring women were usually old, poor, from very disadvantaged backgrounds, and often from the lowest castes. The training programmes that depended on such women to improve the conditions of childbirth seemed unlikely to succeed. Indeed, they involved the reinvention of schemes that could be traced back to the colonial period—and none of them had been particularly successful either (Jeffery et al. 1985). But the people who had not been noticed—by academic writers or by policymakers who regularly attended women in childbirth—were male (p.204) practitioners. They came in briefly, rarely assessed or monitored the state of the pregnancy, but nonetheless gave injections of oxytocin, a powerful medicine that can enhance or induce labour. The use of oxytocin grew rapidly over the 20-year period, from 14 per cent of births in 1983–7, to 48 per cent in 1998–2002. It is at least plausible that such high levels of unmonitored use of oxytocin contribute to the very slow decline in neonatal mortality, mostly linked to birth trauma of one kind or another (Jeffery et al. 2007).

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 A second, less prominent result of the Bijnor research was that even to understand health service provision in rural north India, it was necessary to engage with an international consensus about how to run health services, and how this interacted with Indian realities. I began to include ‘the global’ and its role in social change generally, but particularly with respect to health services in my thinking about India’s medical services. The key concept here was ‘global assemblages’, which alerts social analysts to ‘detect the global at sub-national levels’ (Sassen and Wennerhag 2006). For the political economist-cumsociologist Saskia Sassen, ‘global assemblages’ are essentially ‘bits of territory, authority, and rights that used to be part of more diffuse institutional domains within the nation-state or, at times, the supranational system’. They involve the undermining of nation states and the supranational system, and exist within the state apparatus, so that as governments become more privatized, legislatures have less and less to legislate (Sassen 2006). Sassen’s work tends to be at a level of abstraction, and is concerned with the big issues of the future of liberalism and liberal-democratic politics. Her work is nicely complemented by the anthropologists Stephen Collier and Aihwa Ong, and their colleagues. They set out to show how ‘global forms are articulated in specific situations—or territorialized in assemblages’ and constitute new relationships, crossing national and discursive boundaries (Collier and Ong 2005: 4; emphasis in the original). These two insights came together in an attempt to answer some questions about the village-level findings through new research. What might explain the widespread and unmonitored use of labour acceleration, and many other powerful drugs, in a society usually characterized as one where the problem was one of limited access to medicines? Why was so little known about how these drugs were (p.205) made available—from production through distribution, prescription, and consumption? And could these processes be understood by seeing pharmaceutical availability in India as part of a global assemblage, showing how producers, prescribers, regulators, and consumers played roles that were both global and local in their construction?

Pharmaceuticals as Global Assemblages In taking these ideas forward, I led a group in Edinburgh to explore how this was happening in three drugs we had separately come across in previous research in South Asia. In addition to the use of oxytocin in rural Uttar Pradesh, Stefan Ecks came with a particular interest in psycho-pharmaceuticals, especially Prozac, or fluoxetine, and Ian Harper brought a concern with antibiotics used to cure tuberculosis, particularly rifampicin. These were examples of what the WHO sees as a ‘global problem’: ‘worldwide … half of all medicines are inappropriately prescribed, dispensed or sold, and that … two thirds of global antibiotic sales occur without any prescription, and … the great majority—up to 90%—of injections are … unnecessary’ (2004: 80).

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 This is, of course, an example of the global assemblages we wanted to study: through publications like its Reports on the World Medicines Situation and the committee work that goes into producing them, the WHO sets a context for national policymaking on the subject of drugs, and how they should be regulated. Until recently, most attention with respect to regulation had been paid to only one part of the field of pharmaceuticals regulation—the approval of new drugs, and monitoring their effects. But the Edinburgh team took a ‘product-life’ approach to pharmaceuticals regulation, and looked at what happens to such approved drugs once they are formulated, distributed, marketed, prescribed, and consumed. In Europe and North America, there is an assumption—which may or may not be justified—that issues of prescriber and retailer regulation, ethical marketing, and so on, have been largely resolved. On the other hand, there is considerable concern about issues such as post-approval tracking and ‘pharmacovigilance’, to pick up adverse drug reactions (ADRs). But in the Indian system, these contextual issues remain open to serious question; the regulations that aim to minimize the inappropriate use of prescription drugs presume public sector competence and adequate infrastructure, despite (p. 206) evidence to the contrary. Much policymaking ignores the existence of massive informal systems of medicine distribution that bypass regulatory structures, and ADRs are unlikely to be discovered nor acted upon. In India, health activists, donors, international regulators, and the general public all have serious doubts over how far regulatory bodies are able to build public health concerns—especially those that affect the poor—into their deliberations. The easy lay explanations—of corruption, of the effects of a poorly educated population, or of Machiavellian drug companies—were all unsatisfactory in different ways, even though they all also might contribute to a more general understanding of what is going on. To take the drug companies first: from 1972 to the mid-1990s there was a radical and accelerating transformation in the Indian pharmaceuticals industry. At the end of the 1970s, roughly 40 per cent of all drug sales by value were accounted for by foreign-owned multinational companies, 43 per cent of the much more profitable formulations and only 22 per cent of bulk drug sales. The Hathi Committee Report of 1975 (see Hathi 1975), as well as the GoI’s response, focused on the social responsibilities of the industry—making cheap, goodquality drugs available in abundance for the masses through encouraging a domestic industry under the leadership of the public sector (Stoker and Jeffery 1988: 564). By 2010–1, only two of the 20 largest pharmaceuticals companies in India were foreign-owned. The largest company by sales, Ranbaxy, was an Indian company that was taken over by Daiichi Sankyo Co., the 3rd largest Japanese pharmaceutical company in 2008; and the 13th by sales was GlaxoSmithKline.7 The public sector contribution was minimal.

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 But in the mid-1980s, critics had suggested that there were limits to the implications of these changes in the pattern of ownership and the location of production facilities: ‘the product mix of both kinds of firms [local and foreign] tends not to reflect social priorities’ but to respond primarily to ‘market forces’ (UNCTC 1983: 891). Only since 2005 have there been serious attempts to integrate drugs policy with public health issues—though these have often been a part of struggles among pharmaceuticals companies. Ironically, these have been contests over the Indian Patents Rules of 2003, in which India implemented its Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (p.207) (TRIPS) obligations. The TRIPS, and World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations more generally, were widely predicted to lead to a weakening of the role of public health concerns. In practice, Article 92A of the revised Patents Rules explicitly introduced the notion that ‘public health problems’ could be a reason to make drugs available or reduce their prices. Patent applications can now be rejected in any case where public health can be shown to be at risk. Drug companies can apply for compulsory licences, to allow them to produce drugs that are patented by other companies elsewhere. The case of Glivec is well known: Novartis applied to patent in India a drug that had been patented and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but its application was rejected by the Madras High Court in 2007. The court cited two main grounds: that it was not a significant modification of a drug that was already available within India, and, furthermore, that granting the patent would infringe ‘the constitutional obligation of providing good health care to its citizens’ (Ecks 2008: 169). Novartis lost its case in March 2013. But already, Indian producers had successfully challenged patent applications in Indian courts. For example, in July 2011, Natco Pharma asked for a compulsory licence to allow them to produce Bayer’s anti-cancer drug Nexavar. Natco argued, inter alia, that Nexavar was too expensive for most patients, that Natco would provide it free to deserving cases, and that Nexavar was not being produced in sufficient quantity to meet Indian demand.8 What remains missing, and something which became clearer in the course of our research, is any mechanism to ensure that the benefits offered by any drug are real and substantial. In other words, the public and policymakers tend to assume that more, cheaper drugs are good for health. Yet, for each of the three drugs studied by the Edinburgh team, severe doubts were raised about such a claim. In the case of oxytocin, within India, international best practice was rarely followed. The drug should, according to the best available advice, be given only through a drip, in monitored settings so that the rate can be raised or lowered in reaction to the woman’s response, and with backup facilities in case a Caesarean section is required. Such conditions are neither found in any home deliveries, nor in many hospitals. But the international best practice turns out to be based (p.208) on very flimsy evidence: most doctors act on the basis of their own Page 11 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 clinical experience, despite growing evidence of the harm that can be caused to the mother and the baby (Jeffery et al. 2007). For rifampicin, there is little dispute about its effectiveness for treating tuberculosis. The issues are raised by how often the drug is prescribed or consumed in the ‘wrong’ ways. Rifampicin should be taken as part of a closely monitored regime and in combination with other drugs, especially isoniazid and pyrazinamide. But perhaps a half or more of rifampicin is sold outside the government free-supply programme in India, often in different combinations or on its own, increasing the risk of resistant strains of tuberculosis developing (Harper 2009). For fluoxetine, there are massive disputes over its efficacy against depression, and it should be prescribed by psychiatrically qualified staff. But in India, most fluoxetine is prescribed by others, who have picked up the use of the drug through prescriptions that ‘float’ from one prescriber and patient to others (Ecks and Basu 2009). In such haphazard ways, while not producing as much harm as the misuse of oxytocin and rifampicin, fluoxetine is over-prescribed, often for too short a period to have much effect, and for conditions other than depression, such as anxiety. What the research of the Edinburgh team showed, then, was that regulation—to ensure the drug was safely produced, stored, and prescribed —was missing many of the key issues. This perspective was not represented in the polarized views of the Indian pharmaceuticals industry that has emerged since 1971. The first celebrates its achievements, but fears these are at risk: The Indian pharmaceutical industry is a success story providing employment for millions and ensuring that essential drugs at affordable prices are available to the vast population of this sub-continent. However, the new ‘trade’ rules of the World Trade Organisation now pose a serious threat to the industry and to the millions who are dependent on it for their health and livelihood.9 The alternative view, from international pharmaceuticals companies, accuses the Indian industry of harbouring cheats and pirates: Today’s crowded Bhagirath Palace in Chandni Chowk, a bustling locality in Old Delhi, still has its soldiers of fortune. Mercenaries who make and sell fake drugs, copies of the most complex medicines, for any distributor and retailer who wants to make a quick buck or exporters who sell them to unsuspecting health administrators in Sub-Saharan Africa, who receive (p. 209) some of the millions in aid money that is trying to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis.10

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 As these quotes suggest, the dramatic shift in the significance of Indian pharmaceuticals since 1971 has set in train struggles over credibility that involve not only Indian protagonists but also international ones. Companies that want to export to the markets of developed countries—especially the US, where most pharmaceuticals profits are made—are in fierce battles over whether they can be trusted to meet stringent production standards. These are known as current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP), and they have had more effect on the scale of pharmaceuticals production in less developed countries than TRIPS, which has attracted much more attention (Brhlikova, Harper, Pollock et al. 2011). A complex set of overlapping international and national regulatory practices has emerged. In a cause célèbre, two of Ranbaxy’s plants were inspected by US officials, who decided that Ranbaxy had not met its standards.11 It issued letters identifying deviations from US cGMP requirements, as well as claiming that those who supposedly checked the cleaning of the equipment had not signed into the plant for that particular shift. The FDA followed up its ‘warning letters’ with an Application Integrity Policy (AIP) letter to Ranbaxy, which charged that: ‘These and other findings indicate a pattern and practice of submitting untrue statements of material fact and other wrongful conduct, which raise significant questions regarding the reliability of the data and information contained in applications (pending and approved) that your firm has filed with the Agency.’12 Such letters are not issued without follow-up, and in December 2011, Ranbaxy finally signed a ‘consent decree’ that allowed it to resume the export to the US of some 30 drugs from these two plants—at a cost of $ 500 million, profits warnings and the cutting of executive pay in the parent company.13 This example shows that the credibility of production and record-keeping standards at Indian factories are negotiated globally. In protecting US consumers and reestablishing trust in FDA’s regulatory processes there, the FDA also undermined trust in Indian producers within India. The Indian regulatory body was again portrayed as insufficiently stringent in monitoring production facilities under their jurisdiction. By 2010, (p.210) the FDA decided it needed to open offices in India to help it conduct regulatory visits.14 The Edinburgh team took several lessons from this example, as well as from the case studies of our selected drugs. Although there are many large and successful Indian generics producers, their reputations as ‘Robin Hood’ companies are largely misplaced: they are essentially capitalist operations for which profit is the underlying driver. But assessing their true value is additionally difficult. The larger companies are enthusiastic players in a global market where public health issues have low salience. They are also engaged in battles over credibility that draw them ever more closely into the pharmaceutical and regulatory ‘global assemblage’, which continues to leave the interests of the rural and urban poor within India as very much a second- or third-level priority. When it comes to international-quality regulation, the larger Indian companies are ambivalent: on the one hand, they Page 13 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 wish to show that they can meet the highest international standards, and to export their products to profitable overseas markets. They see the lax nature of Indian regulation—widely believed to be corrupt—as a barrier to their claims for respectability abroad, and wish to see the smaller Indian producers go to the wall, which they will if cGMP standards are rigorously applied in India. These issues of trust and credibility cut both ways. Overseas companies use their national regulatory bodies to hinder Indian companies’ access to overseas markets. As the chief executive of one Indian generics company told me on 2 November 2009: [D]e facto we could market our product in the UK in 2006. It is now 2009 and we don’t have permission. But they keep pointing out the deficiencies in the product and they keep asking us to do new things. It’s a question of delay. So if you are blocking us on patents you are also blocking us on regulations. By focusing on these issues of trust and mistrust, members of the Edinburgh team were able to highlight the global nature of these processes, and their local implications. Media reports of decisions such as the denial of recognition by the FDA of Ranbaxy’s products continue to undermine the credibility of all Indian producers, within the country and abroad. The circulation of accusations and rumours about production standards and regulatory failures leads to lack of trust in all Indian products abroad, complementing and reinforcing a lack of trust within the country as well (Brhlikova, Harper, (p.211) Jeffery et al. 2011). This research, from my perspective, illustrates some of the complexities of relationships within the Indian health system, and how rebuilding trust will need more agreement among producers, regulators, distributors, prescribers, and patients than is yet visible.

Clinical and Public Health Trials My most recent piece of research is to look at an additional element of the health system, one that has only become visible to any great extent since 2005. New social forms have been established to carry out clinical and other forms of experimental public health trials in India, and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in South Asia. Since the WTO and TRIPS had opened up services as well as manufacturing to the stiff winds of international competition—however haltingly —clinical research and development (R&D) activities in India (and possibly elsewhere in South Asia) had grown. Leading Indian companies expanded their R&D expenditure, estimated at around $ 250 million in 2007–8, to about $ 500 million by 2010 (Malhotra 2008). In 2008, Malhotra identified at least 40 molecules being developed by Indian firms, though none had at that stage reached phase III trials, whereas no indigenous firm was engaged in drug discovery in the 1990s.15

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 From 2005, the GoI also opened up the possibility of drugs being given Phase III testing on Indian subjects, even if they had not been developed or gone through Phase I and Phase II testing in India. In 2008, the government noted a dramatic growth in clinical trials over the preceding four years, from 100 approvals in 2005 to around 150 in 2006, 240 in 2007, and more than 450 in 2008 (Anon 2008). In May 2011, 670 trials registered with the Clinical Trials Register of India were open to recruiting patients (Borkar et al. 2011: 197). At least half of these studies involved foreign sponsorship, and the Indian trade press has been loud in its claims of the financial benefits to foreign innovator companies and contract research organizations (CROs) of the large clinically naïve population in India, the availability of high-quality hospitals, and researchers speaking good English, and the comparative cost advantages—supposedly around half those for equivalent trials in the USA (Yee 2012: 397; see also Petryna 2009). As an executive of one of the sponsor organizations put it, ‘there is great (p.212) expectation in terms of doing trials faster and having a cost benefit and of course, without compromising the quality of patients or the quality of data that is generated’.16 Few of the predictions for rapid growth and large profits seem likely to be accomplished. The sociological questions raised by these experimental trials are threefold: How are these new social forms established? What kinds of negotiations take place as norms and institutional forms developed in European countries, the US or Japan, are negotiated within Indian contexts? And, how far does this shift presage a transformation in the ownership of knowledge and knowledge flows? According to our research as it currently stands, some of the key normative expectations hinge around what is sometimes called a research culture. Thus, a senior executive in a foreign-owned company, responsible for managing in-house clinical trials and for outsourcing others to CROs expressed the problem with finding good teams to work with: Again the mindset needs to be changed. The investigator is interested but the people in his team have never done and they are telling, why these people are telling us what to do? ‘We know better because we are cardiologists and we are treating 80 patients in a day.’ So the mindset changing is a big challenge. [Mindset to?] Mindset to adhering to protocol, mindset to sending a blood sample in time, mindset to making sure that the tubes are appropriately labelled. So nothing is smaller or minor, in clinical trials. As long as they understand that every step in the trial is very important. That makes an investigator ideal.17 As far as this respondent is concerned, then, the appropriate mindset is one where orders are fulfilled punctiliously and care is taken with details. If this view is typical, there is little scope in India for knowledge creation in clinical trials beyond learning how to follow rules. It is not clear where participants will be able to understand the origins of these rules, or how to manipulate them to Page 15 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 create new knowledge. Far from leading to the creation of a knowledge economy in India, in this model, India provides the foot soldiers, while the generals remain far away. For some in the industry, this is a matter of economics: while the discovery of new molecules can be done cheaply in India, the costs of running clinical trials are enormous. These costs can only be borne by companies large enough to afford the insurance and other costs, and able to accept that only a few molecules will reach the market, of (p.213) which only an even smaller number will generate the hyper profits that have driven the industry so far. For others—including the GoI—it is only a matter of time before blockbuster drugs come out of Indian industry. My own view is that the barriers to such a breakthrough are both structural and social. The era of blockbuster drugs may be over: certainly many industry analysts believe so. In this sense, although Wallerstein’s prediction—that countries like India might move from the periphery to the semi-periphery or even the core of the world economy—may be correct, it seems unlikely that Indian capitalism will be able to garner the benefits won by those who got there first.

Looking Backwards and Forwards While much has changed in the Indian health services in the last 40 years, some things remain the same. In particular, the inadequacies of the public health services, when faced with the health needs of the poor—whether urban or rural —and the massive inequalities within the health system, seem to show very little sign of transformation. There are considerable regional variations—with Kerala and Tamil Nadu still way ahead, in health indicators, of the large north Indian states (Desai et al. 2010: 97). Major problems, such as the difficulties of introducing health insurance for those without steady sources of income, bedevil efforts to reduce the impact of illness on the poor. The Indian people and government are not facing a situation like that when welfare states were created in Germany, Scandinavia or Germany, over the course of the twentieth century. There is a long way to go before illness, whether of a breadwinner or a dependent, will no longer threaten an average Indian family with financial disaster (see, for example, the research of Krishna 2006). Health policymaking in the current situation is on a cusp. It may still be possible for the GoI to shift the balance back again towards social medicine and public health. Crude death rates, along with some age-specific mortality indicators, continue to fall. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has begun to improve the incomes of the poor, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)—and the forthcoming National Urban Health Mission (NUHM)—is beginning to deliver improved infrastructure and better delivery of services, at least in some parts of the country.18 A revitalized food (p.214) supply system is promised, to meet the needs of 75 per cent of the rural population and about half of the urban households. For most of these schemes, the jury is still out on whether these schemes are working to combat the ill effects of a market-driven economic transformation that has worked to concentrate income and wealth Page 16 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 disproportionately in the hands of the wealthy. But the signs are not good. Polio may indeed be eradicated, but children continue to suffer from acute flaccid paralysis, and the poor sanitary conditions that led to polio being so easily spread (Jeffery and Jeffery 2010). Throwing money at the problem of inadequate public health facilities is not enough. What are missing are realistic plans and a civil service that is capable of implementing them. At the other end of the spectrum, however, there is enthusiasm and growth. The ‘five-star’ hospitals that dominate some of the new colonies on the edges of all the metropolises and the Class I cities—which are making their appearance in more and more parts of India—are a social fact that represents the aspirations and purchasing power of the new middle classes. India is also located very differently today in the global health economy. In terms of drug production, for the foreseeable future, India will remain almost completely a provider of generic medicines, and this market is already vulnerable to competition from China and other rising powers, as well as to the efforts by many countries to provide for their own domestic markets by themselves. In the field of pharmaceutical knowledge production, although the opportunities offered by Indian patients and clinical trial organizations are considerable, the roles available to Indians remain those of handmaids, expected to deliver a quality product on time and at a good price, but not trusted with designing the trial or analysing its results. While doctors are beginning, in small numbers, to return to India to work, there is little chance that the Indian ‘health industry’ will be in a position to employ large numbers of returnee doctors for many years to come. And while there is much hype about ‘medical tourists’ coming to India for advanced surgical treatments, again the scale is not likely to be sufficient to employ large numbers of Indian doctors, let alone to have an impact on the availability of services for the Indian poor. The next 20 years may show shifts in these patterns, but the basic structure of the future seems to be set. (p.215) These transformations—leading to the contrasts between ‘The Republic of Illness’ and ‘India’s 5-star Hospitals’—offer many opportunities for sociological analysis. If sociologists, as Burns (1967) suggests, should ‘conduct a critical debate with the public about its equipment of social institutions’, I think that the issues of social inequality and the social origins of illness, the historical roots and the contemporary drivers of change in health services, and the mutual, interlocking, and conflicting influences of the local and the global in the health economy, need further analysis. My own work reflects a lifelong search for new interpretations of issues concerning health in its broadest sense in India. It, thus, contributes in a small way to help reduce the risk of lives cut short tragically early, of bodies maimed and weakened by unnecessary illness, and of poverty caused by avoidable diseases and expensive—and often unnecessary or inappropriate—treatments. References Page 17 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 Bibliography references: Alavi, Hamza. 1972. ‘The State in Post-colonial Societies’, New Left Review, 74: 59–81. Anonymous. 2008. ‘Indian CRO Biz Grows 5-fold in Three Years’, Pharmabiz. Available at http://www.pharmabiz.com/article/detnews.asp? articleid=47224§ionid=50. (accessed 28 September 2008). Banerji, Debabar. 1974. ‘Social and Cultural Foundations of Health Services Systems’, Economic and Political Weekly, Special Number, 9(32/34, August): 1333–46. Borkar, Chitra, Deapica Ravindran, and Vivian David Jacob. 2011. ‘Clinical Trials Watch’, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 8(3): 197. Brhlikova, Petra, Samita Bhattarai, Ian Harper, Allyson M. Pollock, Madhusudan Subedi, and Nabin Rawal. 2011. ‘Harmonisation, GMP and Local Pharmaceutical Production in Nepal’, Tracing Pharmaceuticals in South Asia Working Paper. Available at http://www.csas.ed.ac.uk/research_projects/tracing_phramaceuticals (accessed 10 May 2013). (p.218) Brhlikova, Petra, Ian Harper, Roger Jeffery, Nabin Rawal, M.R. Santhosh, and Madhusudhan Subedi. 2011. ‘Trust and the Regulation of Pharmaceuticals: South Asia in a Globalised World’, Globalisation and Health, 7(10): 1–13. Burns, Tom. 1967. ‘Sociological Explanation’, British Journal of Sociology, 18(4): 353–69. Collier, Stephen J. and Aihwa Ong. 2005. ‘Global Assemblages, Anthropological Problems’, in Aihwa Ong and Stephen J. Collier (eds), Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Malden and Carlton: Blackwell, pp. 3–21. Crook, Nigel. 1989. ‘Review of Roger Jeffery, The Politics of Health in India’, South Asia Research, 9(1): 88. Desai, Sonalde B., Amaresh Dubey, Brij Lal Joshi, Mitali Sen, Abusaleh Shariff, and Reeve Vanneman. 2010. India: Human Development Report. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Djurfeldt, Goran and Staffan Lindberg. 1975. Pills against Poverty: A Study of the Introduction of Western Medicine in a Tamil Village. London: Curzon Press. Ecks, Stefan. 2008. ‘Global Pharmaceutical Markets and Corporate Citizenship: The Case of Novartis’ Anti-cancer Drug Glivec’, BioSocieties, 3(2): 165–81. Page 18 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 Ecks, Stefan and Soumita Basu. 2009. ‘The Unlicensed Lives of Antidepressants in India: Generic Drugs, Unqualified Practitioners, and Floating Prescriptions’, Transcultural Psychiatry, 46(1): 86–106. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1967. ‘Sociology of Development and Underdevelopment of Sociology’, Catalyst, 3. Gupta, Dipankar. 2001. Mistaken Modernity: India between Worlds. New Delhi: HarperCollins. Harper, Ian. 2009. ‘National Tuberculosis Control Programmes of Nepal and India: Are They Using the Correct Treatment Regimens?’, Journal of Health Studies, 2(1, 2, and 3): 51–67. Hathi, Jaisukhlal. 1975. Report of the Committee on Drugs and Pharmaceutical Industry. New Delhi: Ministry of Petroleum and Chemicals. Jeffery, Roger. 1974. ‘The Health System of Pakistan’, in H. Dickinson (ed.), Appropriate Technology and Development. Edinburgh: Centre for African Studies, pp. 443–54. ———. 1977. ‘Allopathic Medicine in India: A Case of De-professionalisation?’, Social Science and Medicine, 11(10): 561–73. ———. 1979a. ‘Normal Rubbish: Deviant Patients in Casualty Departments’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 1(1): 90–107. ———. 1979b. ‘Recognising India’s Doctors: The Establishment of Medical Dependency, 1918–39’, Modern Asian Studies, 13(2): 301–26. (p.219) Jeffery, Roger. 1980. ‘Medical Policy-making in India: Out of Dependency?’, in Marc Gaborieau and Alice Thorner (eds), Asie du Sud, Paris: Ed. du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. ———. 1986a. ‘Health Planning in India: The Role of the Planning Commission’, Health Policy and Planning, 1(2): 127–37. Jeffery, Roger. 1986b. ‘New Patterns of Health Sector Aid to India’, International Journal of Health Services, 16(1): 121–39. ———. 1988. The Politics of Health in India. Berkeley and London: University of California Press; e-version. 2009. http://www.ideaindia.com/product_detail.php? pid=1863 (accessed on 5 March 2013). Jeffery, Patricia and Roger Jeffery. 2010. ‘Polio in North India: What Next?’ Economic and Political Weekly, 45(10): 23–6.

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 Jeffery, Patricia, Abhijit Das, Jashodhara Dasgupta, and Roger Jeffery. 2007. ‘Unmonitored Intrapartum Oxytocin Use in Home Deliveries: Evidence from Uttar Pradesh, India’, Reproductive Health Matters, 15(30): 172–8. Jeffery, Patricia, Roger Jeffery, and Andrew Lyon. 1985. Contaminating States and Women’s Status: Midwifery, Childbearing and the State in Rural North India. New Delhi: Indian Social Institute Monograph Series. Krishna, Anirudh. 2006. ‘Pathways Out of and Into Poverty in 36 Villages of Andhra Pradesh, India’, World Development, 34(2): 271–88. Lynch, Michael. 2000. ‘Against Reflexivity as an Academic Virtue and Source of Privileged Knowledge’, Theory, Culture & Society, 17(3): 26–54. Malhotra, P. 2008. ‘The Impact of TRIPS on Innovation and Exports: A Case Study of the Pharmaceutical Industry in India’, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 5(2): 61–5. Maton, Karl. 2003. ‘Reflexivity, Relationism, & Research’, Space and Culture, 6(1): 52–65. Nichter, Mark. 1990. ‘Book Review of The Politics of Health in India’, Social History of Medicine, 3(1): 133–4. Pandya, Sunil K. 2009. ‘Medical Council of India: The Rot within’, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 6(3): 125–31. Petryna, Adriana. 2009. When Experiments Travel: Clinical Trials and the Global Search for Human Subjects. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ramachandran, R. 2010. ‘Scandal: Doctor in the Dock’, Frontline, 27(11, 22 May–4 June). Available at http://www.frontline.in/navigation/? type=static&page=archiveSearch&aid=20100604271102700&ais=11&avol=27 (accessed 19 June 2013). Sassen, Saskia. 2006. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (p.220) Sassen, Saskia and Magnus Wennerhag. 2006. ‘Denationalized States and Global Assemblages: An Interview with Saskia Sassen’, Eurozine, 20 November. Available at http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-11-20-sassenen.html (accessed 24 October 2011). Stoker, Andrew and Roger Jeffery. 1988. ‘Pharmaceuticals and Health Policy: An Indian Example’, Social Science and Medicine, 27(5): 563–67.

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 UNCTC (United Nations Centre for Transnational Corporations). 1983. Transnational Corporations in the Pharmaceuticals Industry of Developing Countries. New York: UNCTC. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1976. The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press. Woolgar, Steve and Malcolm Ashmore. 1988. ‘The Next Step: An Introduction to the Reflexive Project’, in Steve Woolgar (ed.), Knowledge and Reflexivity: New Frontiers in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Sage Publications, pp. 1–11. WHO (World Health Organization). 2004. ‘The World Medicines Situation’. Available at http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Js6160e/10.html (accessed 10 May 2013). Yee, Amy. 2012. ‘Regulation Failing to Keep Up with India’s Trials Boom’, The Lancet, 379(9814): 397–8. Notes:

(1) . ‘Modern’ or ‘allopathic’ or ‘Western’ or, in Charles Leslie’s term, cosmopolitan medicine, is of course inflected within India by its engagement with Indian cultural and social presuppositions, as well as through its interactions with other medical traditions, native or imported. The ‘modern’, however, dominates expenditures, employment, as well as the imaginary present and futures when health and illness—and the institutional forms through which society engages with them—are considered. (2) . In what follows, I shall refer largely to research that I have carried out in South Asia since 1970. Since 1982, that has been increasingly in collaboration with other people: for work in Bijnor and on health services in Uttar Pradesh, with Patricia Jeffery; for work on pharmaceuticals supply chains in north India and Nepal, with Petra Brhlikova, Abhijit Das, Stefan Ecks, Ian Harper, Patricia Jeffery, and Allyson Pollock; and on clinical trials in India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, with Ian Harper, Amar Jesani, Anuj Kapilashrami, Salla Sariola, Jeevan Sharma, and Bob Simpson. I am solely responsible for the views expressed here. (3) . Mark Nichter (1990: 133), using ‘reflexive’ in one of these ways, suggested in a review of my The Politics of Health in India that strengths of the book were its careful attention to historical detail and my ‘reflexive attempt to maintain a balanced account of history without falling prey to the simplistic analyses afforded by either “state bureaucracy” or crude Marxists’. (4) . I also carried out some consultancies in Pakistan, for the World Bank and for the ODA, between 1989 and 1996, and these provided some continuing insights into changes there. Page 21 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 (5) . Derecognition was an issue in 1975, when I was carrying out research in Delhi, and again at various times since then. In retrospect, more attention should have been given to how far the MCI was being undermined also by the financial interests of the promoters of new medical colleges. By 2001, they had corrupted the senior officials of the MCI (Pandya 2009) leading eventually to a major scandal, and the complete reform of its structure (Ramachandran 2010). The issue of the gap between the appearance of ‘modern’ institutions, such as the medical council, or the drug regulatory bodies and their everyday practices, is one that Dipankar Gupta (2001) addresses. (6) . With Patricia Jeffery on both occasions, and with Andrew Lyon in the 1980s. (7) . See http://pharmabiz.com/Table/69837table.aspx (accessed 10 May 2013) for more details. (8) . See http://patentcircle.blogspot.com/2011/11/compulsory-licensing-ispresumptive.html (accessed 5 March 2013). (9) . See http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr120h.htm (accessed 5 March 2013). (10) . See http://www.livemint.com/2007/04/30000718/Fake-drug-industryoperates-op.html (accessed 5 March 2013). (11) . See drugs manufactured at the Dewas and Paonta Sahib Facilities of Ranbaxy Laboratories at http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/ GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/EnforcementActivitiesbyFDA/ ucm118442.htm (accessed 10 May 2013). (12) . See the memorandum available at http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/ GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/EnforcementActivitiesbyFDA/ ucm118418.pdf (accessed 5 March 2013). (13) . See http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Ranbaxy-topay-US-FDA-500m/articleshow/11198680.cms (accessed 5 March 2013). (14) . This section draws on (Brhlikova, Harper, Jeffery et al. 2011). On May 13, Ranbaxy pleaded guilty to seven federal criminal counts of selling adulterated drugs with intent to defraud, failing to report that its drugs didn’t meet specifications, and making intentionally false statements to the government. Ranbaxy agreed to pay $500 million in fines, forfeitures, and penalties.” http:// features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/15/ranbaxy-fraud-lipitor/ (accessed 19 June 2013). (15) . In Phase I—researchers test a new drug or treatment in a small group of people for the first time to evaluate its safety, determine a safe dosage range, and identify side effects; Phase II—the drug or treatment is given to a larger group of people to see if it is effective, and to further evaluate its safety; Phase Page 22 of 23

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Researching Health Care in India, 1970–2010 III—the drug or treatment is given to large groups of people to confirm its effectiveness, monitor side effects, compare it to commonly used treatments, and collect information that will allow the drug or treatment to be used safely; Phase IV—studies are done after the drug or treatment has been marketed to gather information on the drug’s effect in various populations and any side effects associated with long-term use. See http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/ ctphases.html (accessed 5 March 2013). (16) . As said during an interview in June 2011. (17) . Also as said in an interview held in June 2011. (18) . Unfortunately in Uttar Pradesh, the opportunities for graft seem to have overwhelmed the efforts of those tasked with implementing the scheme, and it is not clear what difference the NRHM will make in one of India’s poorest and least developed states. See http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/ OtherStories/NRHM-scam-UP-health-official-found-dead/Article1-812385.aspx and http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/article2820437.ece (accessed 5 March 2013).

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Remains of Difference

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Remains of Difference New Imaginaries of Otherness in Post-reform India Ravinder Kaur

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords This essay explores the changing self-identity of India as a nation state during the 1990s, after the introduction of neoliberal reforms. What is seen to be ‘new’ and how is it different from what was before? How is an optimistic narrative of a ‘new’ global self created within the terrain of inequity and inequality in postreform India? The essay argues that it is through a strategy of fracture—of deliberately created ruptures which compartmentalize and separate what is deemed of value to the global economic networks from all that is deemed waste —that the newness is constructed in the popular domain. Through an exploration of two cultural events in the recent past, the essay shows how the idea of the internal other in new India is produced and reiterated. Keywords:   post-reform India, neoliberal reforms, India’s self-identity, globalization, economy, inequity, strategy of fracture

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly how and when the notion of ‘new India’ became part of the language of neoliberal reforms initiated in 1991.1 But what is certain is that the new nomenclature gained currency sometimes in the 1990s with a clear discursive function to serve—to describe the difference between the nation formed during the decades of Nehruvian ‘mixed economy’ and the one which was said to be fast emerging after the liberalization of economy. The idea of new India at this stage was tinged with hope, and even untold possibilities, that tantalizingly promised to transform and finally realize the vast potential of the nation. It seemed as if the rapidly transforming social-political landscape could Page 1 of 19

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Remains of Difference only be described through a newly devised ‘language of difference’—woven around the slippery categories of identity, authority, belonging, development, progress, and modernity—that could, at once, capture the euphoria of reforms as well as the eagerness to distance the nation from its Nehruvian past. The function of the prefix ‘new’ precisely appeared to be to create that long sought difference—to stand in as an alluring sign that not only heralded a new temporality, but also a modus operandi through which new subjectivities were being formed. In this essay, the making of the new suggests the original moment which necessitates production and articulation of a new subject. Central to this production of new subjectivity is its inseparability to what was before as well as its simultaneous ability to break itself free from that before. It is this intimate and antagonistic relationship between the new and the remains of the past that this essay sets out to explore. I dwell upon a particular moment in the making of the new when the remains appear as distraction, a heavyweight that seems to slow down the progress and, at times, even threatens to entirely stall the project of ‘new India’. I engage with a specific cultural-historical aspect (p.222) of this still-unfolding moment: the representation of the undesirable remains in the production of ‘new’ India within the popular domain. What I attempt to show in this essay is how the left-over excess or the matter that is seen as ‘holding back the nation’ appears and shapes the very popular discourse of post-reform India. The essay is located within the wider discussions on the current moment of unrest, when the alluring promise of the globally franchised neoliberal formula for ‘lifting millions out of poverty’ has come under fresh scrutiny not only in India but in rest of the world too. Not only has the neoliberal economic model of growth revealed its limits, it has also disclosed its propensity to create geographies of inequality in the past decades too. After two decades of economic reforms in India, these uneven and unequal geographies are becoming more prominent and visible—for example, in the highly publicized debates around the fixing of the official line of poverty at unrealistically low levels; suicides among small farmers unable to pay expensive loans; increasing levels of corporate corruption; and unrest among the workers in the automobile industry struggling against low wages and oppressive work conditions—and are threatening to cast a shadow of doubt over the project of new India. We might ask, then, in what way is an optimistic narrative of newness created within this terrain of inequity and inequality in the popular domain? Or, put another way, what remains of the old difference in this twenty-first century imagination of a new nation? And in what ways do these remains, the left-over matter, continue to provoke anxiety and unsettle the imaginary of a post-reform India. I will argue that it is precisely through a strategy of fracture—of deliberately created ruptures that compartmentalize and separate what is deemed of value to the global economic networks from all that is deemed waste —that the newness is constructed. This double play of difference that, at once, Page 2 of 19

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Remains of Difference surfaces internal differences as well as vitalizes and elaborates a discernible global identity for India is implicit and implicated within this architecture of newness (Kaur 2012). Yet the difference—the leftover deemed inassimilable and undesirable—remains in some form, I further argue, even as it is detached from the body of the nation to create a new global self. In the following pages, I trace these new imaginaries of ‘otherness’ and difference that constitute and make the landscape of post-reform India. The (p.223) essay is broadly divided into two parts—part one, where I describe the new forms of otherness and its manufacture in the post-reform landscape, and part two, where I describe the procedure of rupture through which the nation is deliberately fractured to create the idea of newness. The mode of production and representation of rupture in the popular domain is based on two recent cultural events—first, the making of a widely popular corporate-sponsored ‘India Anthem’ video featuring the Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan as part of the sixtieth anniversary of independent India in 2007, and second, the cultural spectacle of the 2010 Commonwealth Games (CWG) in Delhi that disclosed the fractures and fault lines within the idea of new India. Thinking through these popular cultural moments of the making and unmaking of new India not only allows us to revisit the neoliberal project of ‘opening-up’ and re-forming nations, but also the work of the excess in shaping new imaginaries of self and other in a neoliberal context.

Outlining Difference A defining feature of contemporary India is its ‘rise’ as a global power said to be fuelled by the gains of neoliberal reforms. While India’s rise and its future has been a theme of intense speculation among global investors and strategic policymakers, both within India and outside, it has not yet been subjected to serious scholarly interrogations. Dipankar Gupta’s work, ‘Can India Fly’ (2009), remains one of the few important works in this direction where India’s ascendance together with the attendant paradoxes are explored, challenged, and deconstructed. It is here that we witness the problem of difference too—how to build a discernible national difference for outside consumption (global identity) as well as level and subordinate the differences inside the nation (the internal other). The double play of difference is already palpable to the readers here. Difference is both necessary for the production of meaning, the formation of identities, and a subjective sense of the self, and at the same time, it is threatening, a site of danger, of negative feelings, of splitting, hostility, and aggression towards the ‘Other’ (Hall 1997: 238). In other words, the production of the exterior is intimately connected to the subjugation of the internal alterity. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let us turn (p.224) to the question of the ‘internal other’, or rather, how such a category is even drawn within the current discourse of new India.

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Remains of Difference The category of the internal other in post-reform decades is increasingly constitutive of the human surplus—those in excess of techno-scientific futures of a liberalized economic structure—that cannot be incorporated productively within the new economy. Dipankar Gupta addresses the making of the new internal boundaries by questioning the inverse linkages between growth and development—or why does the phenomenal India growth story not translate into development? (2009: Front flap and p. 7). How did the socio-economic gaps increase rather than decrease in the post-reform period, thereby, creating fresh geographies of dis-connectedness? Or, put another way, in what ways do the post-reform policies produce the human surplus that is not easily absorbed within the new economic structures? These questions lie at the heart of the current debates that not only bring to the fore the inequities and inequalities in post-reform India, but the very nature of economic and political forces that seemingly underpin the ongoing transformations. Consider the following: While the past two decades have been defined by astounding high growth rates of economy—as high as 9 per cent in 2007–8 and 6–7 per cent even during the financial crisis—the social landscape has in the meantime become more unequal and inequitable in terms of wealth distribution. Far from realizing the tantalizing promise of liberalization of lifting people out of poverty, the past two decades have seen dramatic increase in income disparities and social inequities. The most recent available surveys suggest that the top 5 per cent of the Indian society possess 38 per cent of the total assets, in contrast to the bottom 60 per cent that possess merely 13 per cent of the assets collectively (IAMR 2011). Nearly half of India’s children are malnourished, which is worse than the condition of children in Sub-Saharan Africa. And more than 410 million live below the poverty line in eight Indian states—a statistic that equals, if not outnumbers, the poor people in 26 African nations put together (Alkire and Santos 2010). The UN Human Development Index 2011, similarly, shows that despite high growth rates, India has fallen to a low rank of 134 in terms of progress in health, education, income, and other quality-of-life indicators. This is below a war-torn country such as Iraq and even the occupied Palestinian territories, (p.225) which stand at 132 and 114, respectively (UNDP 2011). Woven in these statistics is the constituency of the ‘internal other’—the poor, the marginalized, and all the human excess alienated from the new economy—who do not fit the discourse of India’s rise, and, therefore, occupy a different place within the nation. What is noteworthy is that internal otherness, here, is not constituted between two readily discernible entities, each with a prior identity, instead it is mutually manufactured by the opposites. In this Deleuzian interplay, rather than building the ‘otherness’ upon contradictions and mutual negation of the two, the seemingly opposing entities become inseparable and indispensable in the creation of one another.2 This means moving beyond the identity of a given entity to look for the underlying processes that constitute the reasoning behind Page 4 of 19

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Remains of Difference empirical distinctions. Instead of locating the difference within a frame of dichotomies, the otherness can be viewed synoptically in its interwoven layers of multiplicity—linking seemingly disparate terrain, and revealing interconnections that make the inside and the outside of a nation. It is precisely this mutuality that Gupta emphasizes upon when laying out the terrain upon which growth, development, middle-class consumption, and poverty coexists. He establishes the mutuality from the very beginning by ascertaining that ‘growth… is not independent of the poverty that still characterizes a majority of our population’ (2009: 8). This mutuality is predicated, first, as he suggests, upon the dependence on cheap human labour that not only contributes to the profit margins of businesses, but also helps maintain the luxurious lifestyle of the rising middle class. And second, the deep-rooted belief in the trickle-down effect of free markets among the policymakers and urban middle-class professionals who assume that prosperity will eventually seep down to the bottom in due course. In this belief, the informal labour in farms and factories, who often work long hours on very low wages are expected to gradually transform into middleclass professionals in a generation or so. The account, precisely at this point, begins to look bleak as we search for evidence in support of these claims and projections in the two-decade-old history of economic reforms in India. The narrative that unfolds is not too dissimilar from other histories of neoliberal reforms around the world, as we will see.

(p.226) Ghost of Modernity The common script of reforms begins with ‘economic restructuring’ that is usually cited as a necessary measure to propel the nation into the orbit of free markets. This shift towards free markets has long been seen a step towards a modern future, through which the nations could connect to the world in a ‘grid of modernity’ (Ferguson 2002: 140). The process of restructuring is often prefaced with a discourse on austerity, or the proverbial ‘tightening of belt’, that includes the familiar recipe of cutting back on social services, outsourcing the functions of governance to the private sector for profit, removal of controls between society and market (euphemistically dubbed as ‘red-tape barriers’ to free trade), trading natural resources, and even culture and identity, into commodities whose exchange value can be extracted optimally. An integral part of the script is the hardship and suffering borne by ordinary people experiencing pay cuts and slashed social services—described as a necessary cure for the ‘ailing economies’—that a nation being restructured is expected to undergo in order to become market-worthy. Thus, the stage for reforms is set where experts, policymakers, and financial investors can intervene in a given locality to conjure neoliberal dreams of prosperity and wealth sited in a distant future. Yet, as we know from various neoliberal experiments around the world, this distant dream universe is more likely to be scarred and emptied out by the time the promised moment of realization arrives.

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Remains of Difference James Ferguson, in his memorable ethnography of the everyday life among the miners in the Copperbelt region of Zambia, shows how the economy collapsed under ‘declining terms of trade, increasingly worked-out mines, and the crushing burden of a debt crisis’ in this resource-rich area (2002: 137). While Zambia, after its independence in 1964, continued to grow as the strongest economy of all the newly independent African states, less than a quarter of century later, the country had become a tragic case with its productivity reduced to half. The structural adjustment programmes from the late 1970s onwards— coinciding with the falling commodity prices and a shift towards agricultural solutions to Africa’s problems—had caused havoc to an extent that transformed Zambia from a middle-income success story to one of Africa’s basket cases. The depleted copper mines not (p.227) only symbolize a sense of loss and abandonment, but also the declining terms of trade after the neoliberal restructuring. Rather than feel connected to the ‘world society’, the people who experienced this reverse trend of modernity feel an abject sense of ‘humiliating expulsion’ from the global community (Ferguson 2002: 140). This kind of disconnection in the shadow of neoliberal reforms—increasing marginalization of local communities, incessant extraction of natural resources, and privatization of public services—can be witnessed around the world. In Ecuador, for example, the excessive oil extraction in a newly restructured nation led to a surge in indigenous resistance movement (Sawyer 2004). Similarly in the Dominican Republic, when the state outsourced national electrical utility to a private company which started imposing blackouts on people to make them pay heavy bills, people took to mass unrelenting protests throughout the country (Gregory 2007). The tantalizing promises of modernity that restructuring offers, more often than not, turns out to be a mirage. Let us now turn to the conditions of work and employment in India outside the purview of the obvious prosperity of the technocratic middle class and wealthy entrepreneurs. The most notable fact that challenges the discourse of ‘India’s rise’ is the uneven conditions of work and employment where, in some cases, the sources of livelihood are disappearing. For instance, the number of workers in registered factories has decreased from 10.78 million in 1988 to 10.20 million in 2000, while the number of registered factories has also decreased significantly in the same period.3 What is significant about this downward trend is that this reduction of registered factories and organized labour took place in the first decade of the reforms which, following popular perceptions, has worked positively towards poverty reduction. One might ask then what kind work and employment opportunities the now redundant organized labour workforce might be engaged in. The clues lie in the well-known findings of Arjun Sengupta, who in his report on conditions of work and livelihood shows that nearly 92 per cent of the total workforce in India constitutes of informal labour (see Sengupta 2007). The informal labour is characterized as those who do not have regular employment and social security, but subsist on daily wage labour in a variety of Page 6 of 19

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Remains of Difference sectors. He shows that there is high congruence between informal labour and the group identified (p.228) as ‘poor and vulnerable’—around 836 million Indians, or 77 per cent of the total population—who live on a per capita consumption of less than Rs 20 a day. In fact, the number of persons belonging to this group has increased from 811 million in 1999–2000 to 836 million in 2004–5. These bleak figures showing the conditions under which a large part of Indian population lives is incidentally based upon official data from 1993–4 till 2004–5, a period that is considered the most productive in terms of economic growth rates. The confidence in the ‘India growth story’, as it is popularly called, had increased to such an extent in this period that following the 8.2 per cent economic growth in 2003–4, the government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) even launched the ill-fated ‘India Shining’ campaign that produced and circulated images of growth and prosperity that reforms were supposed to have brought in.4 The gaps in reality and perception persist also because of the new associations India has achieved in the past years with the IT industry, call centres, backroom operations, professional and transnational middle class, and the growth in the service sector industry. While the service sector and IT industry have become the new clichés that define India, this form of work accounts for only three million jobs through direct employment.5 This is a minuscule proportion in a population size of 1.18 billion in terms of actual jobs, while the contribution of the IT sector to India’s gross domestic product (GDP) is a mere 4.8 per cent.6 However, the dazzling effect of the IT industry over the changing fortunes of the nation is such that it hides the inconvenient facts of slow agricultural production, and that organized labour is fast turning into unorganized labour thereby creating less-than-optimal conditions for work. The cheerful associations with IT professionals also counters the current debates about poverty in a way so that poverty is reduced to a trivial issue invoked by those intent upon denting the image of ‘new’ India. The picture that emerges is that of patchwork growth where some sectors of economy are growing phenomenally, while others are either in a state of stagnation or even loss. Similarly, society itself is divided in internal zones where some sections prosper while others remain in a state of deprivation. It is noteworthy that this internal zoning has almost become a matter of common sense where the people inhabiting (p.229) the zone on the path to progress holds the other zone responsible for holding the rate of progress down. In the following sections I will elaborate how the idea of internal split is produced and circulated in the popular and public domain.

Two Indias On the occasion of India’s 60th anniversary of Independence, a glossily produced short video was released by the Times media group. The 2.14-minuteslong video features Amitabh Bachchan, the Bollywood superstar, who recites a Page 7 of 19

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Remains of Difference poem that has popularly been named the ‘India anthem’. The poem begins as follows: There are two Indias in this country. One India is straining at the leash, eager to spring forth and live up to all the adjectives the world has been recently showering upon us. The other India is the leash. One India says ‘give me a chance, and I’ll prove myself’. The other India says ‘prove yourself first, and maybe then, you will have a chance’ One lives in the optimism of our hearts. The other India lurks in the skepticism of our minds. One India wants. The other India hopes. One India leads. The other India follows.

In this rendition, the theme of a split nation is laid out very clearly for the audience. To begin with, the moment of rupture is located within the moment of reforms when the image of India itself began changing within international opinion. A reformed India was undergoing not only transformations at the sociopolitical level, it was also transitioning in terms of its age-old image and perception held by the outside world. After the reforms, it was no longer positioned as a recipient of development aid from the Western donors, instead it was being reimagined as a land of investment opportunities where open markets and over a billion consumers made it an attractive destination. This change of perception was palpable in the international press reportage that described India’s potential and market worthiness capable of transforming it into a powerhouse. An example of such reporting is a feature article published in The New York Times by a (p.230) journalist covering President Bill Clinton’s state visit to India. The article titled ‘India’s High-tech, and Sheepish, Capitalism’ described the nascent IT industry that had surged after the reforms. The reporter described the shift through a portrait of N.R. Narayan Murthy ‘the new archetype of a wildly successful Indian entrepreneur’ who was ‘boldly steering his country away from decades of state-dominated, bureaucratic socialism, and into a new era of capitalist growth’.7 The article glowingly described the IT sector that is all set to change the face of India and ends on a high note of a promising future. This kind of reportage stands in stark contrast to earlier writings where India is chronically described as an unproductive and overpopulated place that somehow needs to get its act together. It is this eventful moment constitutive of ‘all the adjectives the world has been recently showering upon us’ that Amitabh Bachchan invokes when he begins laying out the idea of a nation caught up in a schismatic state. The mascot of this ‘new’ India that the The New York Times reporter refers to is an IT entrepreneur who is able to build up a successful global business in a context where excessive government control is said to have discouraged enterprise and free markets. In a way, he is portrayed as a courageous pioneer in the American tradition for Page 8 of 19

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Remains of Difference having paved way in rough conditions for others to follow suit. This new nation in the making is, thus, poetically depicted as ‘straining at the leash’, while the ‘old’ nation is located as ‘the leash’. In other words, India’s potential and its realization are attributed to the new nation, whereas the old nation in opposition constitutes its limits. Two noteworthy aspects of the video which are as important as the message must be mentioned here. First, consider the choice of Amitabh Bachchan as the mediator of the proverbial ‘wake-up call’ to the people of India to seize their destiny. He is often described as the greatest superstar of Bollywood who has continuously reinvented his persona to keep up with the changing times. His rise to stardom and fame is inextricably connected to his portrayal of the ‘angry young man’ persona in the early 1970s, which successfully conveyed and popularized the disaffections of the youth and their impatience with ‘the system’ that stifled any potential and aspirations. His subversive resistance—sometimes from outside the system and sometimes from within—came to symbolize the battles of the ‘ordinary’ people who (p.231) were dealt with a rough hand by the elite in everyday life. In later years, even as the degree of anger had subsided in his screen persona, he continued to enact roles that pitted him against the powerful. In recent years, coinciding with the economic reforms, the angry young man of 1970s and 80s effortlessly transformed into the role of the nation’s patriarch when he took upon the role of anchor of the popular game show Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who Wants To Be a Millionaire) on prime television. This programme, too, came to be seen as a vehicle for social mobility where ordinary people from big and small towns could hope to earn fame, wealth, and recognition based on their hard work and knowledge. He presided over this magical transition—where success could be gained if one tried enough —of ordinary people into national celebrities for nearly five years. In the process, he also created an example of how the anger of youth (or, is it now folly in the teleology of new India) could be channelled in the advanced years by facilitating the aspirations of others in a new neoliberal context. It is no coincidence, then, that the figure deemed most persuasive to mediate this message is not only of national importance, but is also well-recognized far beyond the national borders in as different contexts as Africa, Middle East, South East Asia, besides the Indian diaspora in Europe and the USA. In this video, the celebrated and authoritative voice of Bachchan that is recognized by millions who have followed his on-screen journey for justice and change over the decades, very clearly lays out the problems of the nation which, he informs the audience, is ruptured from within even when it looks unified from the outside. It is, as if, the patriarch of the nation sounds the warning signal of impending dangers if the people do not come together to change the course. The effect of the video is palpable not only in the number of versions it is available on YouTube and other websites, and how many times it has been viewed, but also the comments which viewers are allowed to leave below the video link. Most Page 9 of 19

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Remains of Difference viewers comment on the ‘superb voice’ and find it ‘inspiring’, and Indian viewers, in particular, often remark that the video ‘filled them with pride’ for being an Indian. Clearly, the angry-young-man-turned-patriarch—who incidentally has kept up with technologies of mass communication such as blogs, Twitter, etc.—is able to reach out effectively and empathize with a new generation through such a video. (p.232) Second, an important aspect of the video is the location where it is shot. The black-and-white background shows a silhouette of construction work and watery outlines of a fishing boat anchored in the sea. The construction project is the Bandra–Worli Sea Link considered an engineering feat that connected the suburban districts of Mumbai through a cable-supported bridge with pre-stressed concrete-steel on either side. The bridge was designed and executed solely by Indian engineers and construction firms, which is a matter of national pride. At the time of shooting, the bridge was under construction, and it somehow symbolizes the renewed indigenous efforts towards nation-making.8 The figure of Amitabh Bachchan against this background having an open conversation with his fellow citizens makes for a compelling site. The video is shot in black and white in the mould of great classic films, where the play of light and darkness is woven into the narration. The moods of pessimism and optimism are signified in this play along with the background music that turns from sombre to more energetic, and from dark to light. In the final part of the video, the sombre message of internal conflict turns more hopeful, and at times, even prophetic: With each passing day, more and more people from the other India are coming over to this side. And quietly, while the world is not looking, a pulsating, dynamic India is emerging. An India whose faith in success is far greater than its fear of failure. An India that no longer boycotts foreign made goods, but buys out the companies that makes them instead. […] This is that rarely-ever moment. History is turning its page. The divide between the old and the new nation, though deep and destabilizing, is, however, not deemed beyond repair. It is suggested that the wound of division is healing, and that people from the ‘other’ side are transcending the barriers. What is important is that the vantage point from where the speaker gives voice to this collective sentiment is seen as the mainstream—the legitimate sphere of authority—against which the ‘other’ exists. The power of the speaker’s argument is such that people from the other side are finally persuaded to consider another way of life. As is clear from the previous discussions that the divide between the new and the old nation is largely (p.233) drawn around the concepts of ‘value’ and ‘waste’—material that is of value or made valuable is produced so through Page 10 of 19

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Remains of Difference its market worthiness and potential of exchange, while waste matter is something that cannot be utilized in any way in a market society. The new nation is one that is prosperous, productive, and upwardly mobile, whereas the old nation is still shackled not only in bureaucratic control, but also in poverty and deprivation, with which India has long been associated. Since the production of wealth in neoliberal context is often seen as a result of individual enterprise, rather than a result of access to resources and opportunities, the division between the rich and the poor is sometimes understood as an individual failure to act for oneself. It is, as if, poverty was a matter of personal choice rather than the effect of systematic and historical deprivation that keeps groups and communities outside the zone of prosperity.9 This kind of an approach towards deprivation explains the almost paternalistic tone of the video where the poor are not directly named but are euphemistically invoked as the ‘other’ India, which acts as the leash, or the limit of India’s realization of its otherwise endless potential as a great nation. The ‘other’ India is expected to be motivated by the enterprise shown by the new India, which no longer buys foreign made goods, and instead, buys companies that make those goods. The event of Tata’s purchase of Rolls-Royce and Mittal Steel’s takeover of the French steel manufacturer Arcelor was, in fact, celebrated nationally as a sign of India having made it in the global market. It is this aspect of new India that is meant to inspire the other half which, according to the video, dreams but never acts upon its dreams.

Subverting the New This well-entrenched theme of the old and the new nation gained widespread popularity when it appeared as part of the dominant narrative of failure when India’s image as a global player was said to be in the course of unravelling during the 2010 CWG. The most explicit description of this idea was articulated by a well-known weekly newspaper columnist, Vir Sanghvi, as the negative news coverage of the Games had begun gathering ground. Perhaps, a note on the corrosive scandals contaminating the image of new India is necessary here in order to understand the popularity of this theme. (p.234) When the city of Delhi became host to the 2010 CWG, it was expected to follow the Chinese precedence of hosting flawless Olympics Games in Beijing two years before. The spectacular cultural extravaganza was not merely a mega gathering of sportsmen, rather it’s carefully choreographed show was read worldwide as a memorable debut of China as a great power on the global stage. The CWG though less prominent in scale, nevertheless, offered an international backdrop against which India could showcase its post-reform achievements, and built its global brand—world-class infrastructure of roads, airports, public transport facilities, fresh modes of governance based on public-private partnerships, and well-behaved citizens who were especially asked to politely observe rules during the Games period. In short, Delhi was to emerge as a world-class city at par with other mega cities in the rich industrialized world. Page 11 of 19

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Remains of Difference However, these ambitions were dented a few months before the CWG was to begin as the Commonwealth Federation expressed its doubts about the readiness of sports infrastructure. In the following weeks, the images that began circulating in the global media were in deep contrast to the image world of Brand India.10 Not only were the sporting and housing facilities for the athletes found to be in a semi-finished state, they were declared ‘unfit for human habitation’ as images of filth and animal excreta in the apartments were circulated widely around the world.11 While the Games officials tried to explain this criticism as ‘differences in standards of our hygiene from theirs’,12 the strategic brand image-makers interpreted this visible depiction of shame to India’s new global face as ‘essentially as saying that we are not world class yet, we are still a third world country … we are not your level yet’.13 In short, India’s brand image was said to be in jeopardy and at the risk of unravelling precisely at the moment when the global gaze was upon the nation. If the hope of the Games officials and Delhi state government was that the moment of shame would disappear once the actual Games had been concluded successfully, then that was clearly undone in the avalanche of bad publicity that followed. On one hand, the social activists were drawing attention to the exploitation of labour and bad conditions under which the CWG construction workers lived and worked, on the other hand, the Games officials had come (p. 235) under scrutiny for taking bribes and corrupt practices in handing out building contracts. The poor quality of construction work was revealed in plain sight as an overhead bridge collapsed days before the Games inauguration, while a part of the ceiling in a newly built stadium fell down on the spectators. In the subsequent weeks, the allegations of corruption had compounded to such an extent that the CWG scandal, estimated at £ 2.5 billion, came to be regarded as one of the largest financial scams in India of all time. The image of a corrupt India governed by inefficient bureaucrats was further entrenched in 2011, when corruption became a rallying ground for mass mobilization following revelations of financial worth scores of billions. The domain of the political was now defined by spectacular scandals and the failure of an unworthy political class to govern the nation efficiently as such. It is against this background that the idea of a split nation began gaining wider currency within the public domain. In a widely circulated article called ‘Old India vs New India’, the author voiced public anger and frustration at the national shame that had to be endured because of corrupt, incompetent Games officials.14 The crux of the analysis was pegged around the essential and unbridgeable distinctions between the old and the new. The ‘old’ was described as ‘corrupt, slothful, incompetent, chaotic, unconcerned with the pursuit of excellence, and unwilling to benchmark global standards’, whereas the ‘new’ was the emerging superpower ‘that can do things to global standards, whose competences and intelligence are highly regarded all over the world, an India where people work hard, where there are high levels of accountability and Page 12 of 19

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Remains of Difference where commitments are treated as sacred’. It is hardly surprising, then, that the failure of the games’ organizers to create an enviable spectacle like China was explained as ‘old India having failed the new India’, which had made the nation ‘in eyes of the world … a laughing stock’. This invocation of the nation’s two bodies, as is evident, is quite different from the one described earlier where Amitabh Bachchan uses a stern tone to admonish those seen to be lagging behind, yet does so in a gentle manner. The newspaper article, on the other hand, not only displays impatience but also plain disgust at the prospect of being left behind in the race to become a global superpower. The first key (p.236) idea in this discourse is that of global standards, according to which, nations can be benchmarked, measured, and rated vis-à-vis other nations. The use of global scales to measure a given nation’s wealth, human development, freedoms, levels of corruption, and competitiveness in global markets, has by now become a standard practice. It is now possible to find scales that measure nearly all aspects of a nation in relation to other nations in the world. What is significant in the measurement that the writer deploys is that the Indian nation is not plotted and measured in its entirety, rather it is split into two where each half seems to be oblivious of the other. While one half (old) of the nation seems unable and ‘unwilling’ to keep up with the global standards, the other half (new) appears more in tune with world and ‘can do things to global standards’. This is an unusual way of plotting nations upon the global scales where one imagined half succeeds, while the other fails. Yet, it seems to have permeated the popular consciousness to an extent that the idea of a split nation creates a specific world of meaning within which to construct the idea of a new India. The second key aspect of this old/new distinction is that it clearly does not pertain to time and space differences. Rather, it reveals two distinct nations under the sign of India as fetishized embodiment of opposing personal attributes, and a web of associations. In fact, these two figurative imaginaries of India seem to have become autonomous subjects in their own right displaying affective relationships with other subjects (state, investors, and citizens) directly. The personalization of the nation easily translates to a larger public the current antagonistic discourse of a split body, where each part appears as a sovereign subject capable of independent action and designs for the future. The third, and the most important, aspect is that the idea of a nation in internal conflict is produced both as a fact as well as an explanation towards India’s perceived failures in reaching its potential. The failure to progress at a faster rate deemed appropriate to the nation’s potentiality is attributed to the ‘weight’ of the unchanging, unmoving body part that slows the pace of growth. The explanations for India’s inability, for example, to create as impressive a global spectacle during the CWG, as China did during the Olympic Games, is attributed to this internal split that continues abated. In other words, the limits to progress, development, and transformation of the nation into a great power (p. Page 13 of 19

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Remains of Difference 237) commanding awe and respect are seen as marked from within. And unless this internal saboteur is controlled, it is believed that India’s ambitions and potential can never be fully realized.

Fracture as Strategy In the previous two descriptions, we witness the making of the internal boundaries which rearrange the insides of the nation. Central to the procedure of drawing and redrawing of internal boundaries is the privilege to arbitrate and re/imagine the dangers that can be countered in new battlegrounds. Who holds the privilege to mediate and speak for the nation and redraw its internal constitution? The two voices that we heard easily align with the part that imagines itself as the motor driving the idea of a new India forward. What is noteworthy is that these voices are heard and read by millions of middle-class Indians located in metropolitan cities of India. Incidentally, the language in which new India and its ruptured self is articulated is English—a language spoken and understood by the upwardly mobile sections of the society. If medium is the message as Marshall McLuhan told us, then the video and blog writings in English—which are largely available on the Internet—signal the connections of new India with a teleconnected urban demography. These articulations also help reveal the self-making position against which the self/ other is constituted—self as a productive force that creates value, whereas the other signifies the mutually created opposite of value: waste. This kind of positioning discursively places the other in the wastelands, and which is then exhorted to ‘cross over’ and join India on the march to progress. The making of difference as alterity, here, seems to be an elite project where the power to arbitrate and create boundaries lies with the dominant groups within the society. The other significant feature of the assertion of alterity can be witnessed in the double-edged exclusionary mechanisms it sets in motion. This includes both the processes of marginalization, where the other is pushed to the limit, and the processes of abandonment, where the privileged retreat to their securitized exclusive zones beyond the reach of the dangerous, contaminating other. These dual mechanisms can be seen in motion in the earlier examples. First, the other is separated and revealed in the public, and circumscribed within a border that (p.238) excludes it, and second, an emancipatory space is thus created where the self can retreat if the other fails to discipline itself. What becomes visible is a tenuous relationship that keeps the internally produced fragments in place beneath the exterior. The strategy to deliberately fracture the nation, thus, lies at the heart of the making of a new India through which human subjects can be sorted out to separate matters of waste from value. In this modus operandi, the new subjectivities are constituted by articulating and vitalizing this fracture. The articulation of this discourse itself becomes an essential tool in the process of subject formation—the proper subjects are also those who have the privilege to Page 14 of 19

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Remains of Difference arbitrate the boundaries, and measure and order people within those newly etched internal boundaries. In short, a different ‘new’ India cannot be made possible without making visible the differences within and then distancing it from that freshly revealed internal other. What is also obvious is that while differences can be ordered and disclosed, the nature of difference that will be left within the publicity and memory cannot be predetermined. The case of the CWG is a ready example where the difference one was left with was the unintended one—the ill-prepared infrastructure reeking of unhygienic conditions charged with stories of high-level corruption. It is the vision and remains of such differences that inhabit the insides of a ‘different India’ that the elite want to portray to the external audience. *** As a way of conclusion, let us revert to the question of how the disconnection between economic growth and development—that has become emblematic of post-reform India—is popularly perceived. What is clear from the examples discussed in this essay is that far from confronting the challenges of inequity and inequality in society, the schism opened by growing socio-economic gaps is itself seen as an explanation for India’s failure to fully realize its potentialities. The idea of a ruptured body of the nation has become a matter of common sense that is routinely invoked to explain the failures of India. This is a convenient explanation, on the one hand, through which the ‘rising’ middle class and the ruling elite can withdraw themselves from the messy realities of an unequal society, and on the other, it (p.239) shifts the responsibility upon the individuals rather than society for having failed to transition across the internal divide. In short, the idea of rupture in contemporary India is an affective symbol of the neoliberal idea of autonomy and individual responsibility. This question of autonomy and responsibility needs some elaboration. While neoliberalism in its most common sense is associated with privatization and liberalization of economic activities, its other sense is that of creating autonomous subjects who take responsibility for their own actions. Thus, the production of ‘freedoms’, particularly in the economic sphere, eventually also translates into modes of self-governance and self-reliance on the part of the subjects (Rose 1999). This means that as individuals gain more autonomy in a context of ‘more market, less government’, they also assume responsibility for themselves rather than depending on the government or society. Their success as well as failure becomes an individual outcome based on rational actions undertaken by the subject. In this context, success or failure becomes a matter of personal choice rather than being contingent upon the structural barriers such as access to resources and opportunities. The poor, as a consequence, are seen as those who have failed to reach their potential unlike the wealthy who worked hard to get there.

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Remains of Difference The two halves of the ruptured body then represent, on the one hand, the part that took responsibility for itself and displayed enterprise to enjoy the fruits of liberalization, and on the other, the body part that remained static and fixed, unable to take control of its destiny. The part that ‘weighs’ the rest of the body down is seen as irresponsible and its failure, then, is not that of the society but individual failure. This way the elite can not only extricate themselves from the web of failures that constitute the ‘other’ India, but also secede to exclusive zones of prosperity without any moral disquiet. This affective compartmentalization is also what makes it possible for extreme wealth and poverty coexist in India. The main argument I proposed is that the very idea of a new India is shaped by an imaginary of a ruptured body of the nation—a ‘new’ India that is in sync with the neoliberal dream of free markets and structural adjustments and an ‘old’ India that not only fails to ‘catch-up’ but also wrests the pace of ongoing progress the nation is (p.240) witnessing. This internal fracture, on the one hand, has become a well-rehearsed explanation for the slow growth of the nation’s economy as compared to China’s stupendous economic gains, and on the other, a much-feared potential risk that threatens to unravel the unified fabric of the nation. The notion of a deep-rooted schism within the nation is so well-entrenched, that it is produced reflexively and routinely in debates, newspaper columns, popular songs, and online campaigns. What I have shown in this essay is that far from ignoring or overlooking the dark sides of India after reforms, as is popularly believed, the elite do engage with disparity and deprivation precisely by producing the imaginary of two nations in varied degrees of emotions. While sometimes the fracture is treated with plain disgust and loathsomeness, at others, it is approached with caution and even paternalistic concern for a child who has seemingly lost its way in a crowded, difficult world. The fracture is both invoked as a malady and a diagnostic technique that is usually deployed to describe the shortcomings of a dazzling India fast unfolding in front of the world. References Bibliography references: Alkire, Sabina and Maria Emma Santos. 2010. ‘Multidimensional Poverty Index’, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. Available at http:// www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/OPHI-MPI-Brief.pdf?9700ef (accessed 20 May 2013). Deleuze, Gilles. 2009. Difference and Repetition. London: Continuum. Ferguson, James. 2002. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Remains of Difference GoI (Government of India). 2006. Economic Survey of India 2005–6. New Delhi: Ministry of Finance, Economic Division, GoI. ———. 2007. Economic Survey of India 2006–7. New Delhi: Ministry of Finance, Economic Division, GoI. Gregory, Steven. 2007. The Devil behind the Mirror: Globalization and Politics in the Dominican Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press. (p.242) Gupta, Dipankar. 2009. The Caged Phoenix: Can India Fly? New Delhi: Penguin. Hall, Stuart (ed.). 1997. ‘The Spectacle of the “Other”’, in Representations: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage Publications and The Open University, pp. 223–79. IAMR (Institute of Applied Manpower Research). 2006. Manpower Profile in India Yearbook, 2005. New Delhi: Concept Publishing House. ———. 2011. India Development Report 2011, Planning Commission, Government of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kaur, Ravinder. 2012. ‘Nation’s Two, Bodies: Rethinking the Idea of ‘New’ India and its Other’, Third World Quarterly, 33(4): 603–621. Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sawyer, Suzana. 2004. Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador. Durham: Duke University Press. Sengupta, Arjun. 2007. Reports on Condition of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in Unorganised Sector, National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, Government of India. New Delhi: Academic Foundation. Tata Services Limited. 2007. Statistical Outline of India 2006–07. Mumbai: Department of Economics and Statistics, Tata Services Limited. UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2011. Human Development Report 2011, Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All. UNDP. Notes:

(1) . This work is part of a collective research project ‘Nation in Motion: Globalization, Development, Governance in New India’ funded by the Danish Social Sciences Research Council. (2) . Deleuze (2009) makes a critique of the Hegelian approach and argues that difference should be an object of affirmation rather than negation. Page 17 of 19

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Remains of Difference (3) . Data calculated from IAMR (2006: 174), and Tata Services Limited (2007: 7). See also Gupta (2009). (4) . The 2004 India Shining campaign was meant to highlight the achievements of the BJP-led Indian government as the facilitator of economic reforms and, thereby, the mediator of prosperity and wealth. The campaign was launched as a final clincher with the national elections under way. However, when the BJP lost the elections, it was the India Shining campaign that was blamed for circulating false images of prosperity and well-being when a bulk of its citizens were living in conditions of deprivation. (5) . According to estimates, assuming optimistically that each IT service sector employee provides additional employment to four more, even then the figure does not go beyond 12 million. The additional employments are, of course, not as well paid as the IT sector. See GoI 2007: 147, in Gupta 2009. (6) . The IT sector has grown in terms of its GDP share—from 1.2 per cent in 1989–9 to 4.8 per cent in 2005–6 (GoI 2006: 146). (7) . Celia W. Dugger, ‘India’s High-tech, and Sheepish, Capitalism’, New York Times, 16 December 1999. (8) . The Sea Link was opened in 2009. (9) . The case of Dalits in South Asia and Blacks in the USA are a case in point. (10) . See ‘CWG Mess and Brand India’, CNBC-TV18. Available at http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XE2WPzM-sA&feature=related (accessed 5 December 2011). (11) . ‘Commonwealth Games Village Is “Unfit for Human Habitation”’, The Guardian, 21 September 2010. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/ 2010/sep/21/commonwealth-games-unfit-human-habitation (accessed 5 February 2012). (12) . Lalit Bhanot, Secretary, Commonwealth Games Organising Committee, in ‘Games Village World Class’, NDTV, 21 September 2010. Available at http:// www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/games-village-world-class-lalit-bhanot/164966 (accessed 15 February 2012). (13) . Santosh Desai, CEO, Future Brands, in ‘Can India Be Found Among the Rubble?’ CNBC-TV18, 18 October 2010. (14) . VirSanghvi, ‘Old India Has Failed New India Again’, Hindustan Times, 25 September 2010. A longer version of the article is ‘Old India vs New India’.

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Remains of Difference Available at www.virsanghvi.com/CounterPoint-ArticleDetail.aspx?ID=552 (accessed 15 February 2012).

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Violence of Law and Citizenship

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Violence of Law and Citizenship Conundrum of Democracy under Nationalist Ethos A. Bimol Akoijam

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0011

Abstract and Keywords The essay critically interrogates the idea and concept of citizenship as it has come to be understood within the liberal–statist framework. The figure of the citizen is often called upon to justify modern polity of the nation state, which is rooted in the classical-liberal view on citizenship as a matter of treating people as individuals who have equal rights under the law. The essay develops a critique of this liberal view and shows limitations of the idea of citizenship as a redressal strategy while seeking justice. Akoijam does this through a discussion of the violence of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a law which effects deployment of the military as a regular part of administering the affairs of the state by bestowing the armed forces certain ‘special powers’, including the power to shoot and to kill on basis of suspicion. Keywords:   citizenship, liberal–statist framework, justice, Armed Forces Special Powers Act, violence, law

The figure of the citizen is often called upon to justify modern polity. While many asked it to stand testimony to the defense of democracy and justice, two ‘fundamental normative concepts’ of modern polity, some other insist on its promotion as a ‘virtue’, a central concern for public policy (Kymlicka and Norman 1994). Take for instance, speaking of the post-riot or, as some call it, ‘pogrom’ against the Muslim minority in Gujarat in 2002, well-known sociologist Dipankar Gupta calls for the need to reclaim citizenship as central in delivering justice to the victims of that communal violence and insists on the capacity to Page 1 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship deliver justice as critical for the affirmation of a democratic polity (Gupta 2011). Such invocation comes from a liberal perspective which holds the citizen as someone who has democratic rights and claims justice. Inversely, it holds that a democratic polity is the one which is effective, perhaps more than any other forms of polity, in delivering justice to the individuals as right bearing human beings. This seeks to engage with such liberal invocations in order to deepen our understanding of the citizen and its experiences of justice under the liberal polity of the modern nation state. While invoking the need to reclaim citizenship as a way to deliver justice and enhance democratic polity, Gupta makes a striking observation: while the perpetrators of the violence against the Muslim minority in Gujarat often articulate their action as a ‘reaction’ of the ‘people’, which, in turn, has been articulated by appropriating the ‘nation’ as ‘we, the people’ in a majoritarian sense, the minority respond to the violence in terms of their being ‘citizens’ of the land. A familiar liberal response to such a situation is to deem, and also counter, the majoritarian appropriation of the ‘nation’ as a danger to the democratic fabric of a multicultural polity. For, such an appropriation tends to reduce the idea of the people into an ‘organic’ rather than a ‘stratified’ entity.1 (p.244) Thus, the liberals reiterate the importance of instituting ‘citizenship’ as the basic organizing principle which unifies the stratified population or building block of the democratic republic. In fact, such a sensibility even pleads that the familiar expression in the Constitution, ‘We, the people’ should have been rather ‘We, the citizens’.

Problematizing Citizenship as Redressal Strategy The invocation of ‘citizenship’ is rooted in the orthodox take of the liberals on citizenship as a matter of treating people as individuals who have equal rights under the law. Such a position also conveys a familiar apprehension that discarding this liberal conception of citizenship may jeopardize attempts to cultivate a common fraternity with a common sense of purpose. The underlying idea of ‘universal citizenship’, which is implicated in such liberal responses, has been challenged (for example, Young 1989). Here, I do not intend to repeat those familiar criticisms. Instead, what I intend to do in this essay is to discuss a paradox which seems to set limits to the invocation of the citizen as a redressal strategy while seeking justice. When the minority community invokes the idea of citizenship as a way of seeking justice against violence inflicted upon them, they reiterate the primacy of the established normative and institutional mechanisms of the ‘rule of law’. It must be noted that such an invocation of the citizen in order to seek justice from ‘law’ makes sense insofar as the violence in question emanates from a non-state entity (for example, community or private individuals) and is ‘illegal’. But this premise of seeking justice gets complicated when the violence emanates from the ‘law’ itself and is not ‘illegal’ (insofar as the said violence is based on due procedures Page 2 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship established by law and has the stamp of approval of the three crucial institutions —the executive, the legislatures, and the judiciary—of the modern state). When the violence against a segment of the population comes from the ‘law’ of the land itself, what sense does it make to invoke the citizen as a way of seeking redressal from the ‘law’? This easy is an exploration of this question. And seeking answers to this question brings out, as we shall see here, certain limitations to the understanding of citizenship within the liberal framework of what Giorgio Agamben (1998) calls (p.245) the ‘juridico-political model of power’.2 As such, in general reconciling liberalism and nationalism has been a critical challenge for the liberal theorists and they do face a genuine difficulty in addressing the reality of the propensity to conceptualize ‘We, the people’ as an ‘organic’ entity due to the conflation between the ‘nation’ and the ‘state’ in modern times.3 Incidentally, as Agamben (1998) alludes, this difficulty of the liberals is historically embedded in French Declaration of 1889 itself, wherein the ‘openness’ of its first article (‘Men are born free and remain free and equal in rights’) finds a paradoxical ‘closure’ in the third article itself (‘The sources of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation; no body, no individual can exercise authority that does not proceed from it in plain terms’). Contemporary debates on ‘differentiated citizenship’ between liberals and communitarians have critical bearing on the life of this ‘nation’. For instance, the demand for ‘selfgovernment’ of a community of citizens in a given state, when being pushed to ‘right to self-determination’ as a ‘right to secession’, could pose a threat to the very existence of the national community. In this chapter, I shall explore these issues around the violence of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a law which effects deployment of the military as a regular part of administering the affairs of the state by bestowing the armed forces certain ‘special powers’, including the power to shoot and to kill on the basis of suspicion. Such powers, which negate, among others, the basic norms and practices of criminal jurisprudence (such as ‘assumption of innocence’) was promulgated as a Presidential Ordinance on 22 May 1958.4 Later, it was introduced as a Bill and passed by Parliament on 18 August of the same year, and became a ‘law’ with the President giving his assent to the same on 9 September 1958. The constitutionality of the law was challenged in the court by human rights groups, but was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1997. Historically speaking, this law which unleashes the violence of the military forces was launched to ‘institute the order’ of the postcolonial Indian state among the Naga tribes in the then Naga Hills of Assam; and it continues to be a weapon of the state to institute its order where ‘Indianness’ among the people becomes problematic (for example, the Northeast states, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir). (p.246) It is this nature of the violence of the law (as a violence to institute order), which alludes to the limit of invoking citizen as a redressal Page 3 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship strategy precisely because it is a situation in which the very status of citizenship of a segment of the population is contested. The discussion on this law and its violence entails us to understand the text and context of the dynamic mediation between democracy as a polity and the ‘cultural’ underpinnings of nationalism as a state ideology. And this reading demands our attention to the convergence between two models of power as suggested by Agamben (1998), namely, the ‘juridico-political model of power’ and ‘bio-political model of power’, in order to understand the production of ‘differentiated citizenship’ and the violence of law, as well as locate spaces to engage with the same for justice. In short, deploying such analysis will show why the minority under the democratic polity of the country tends to be at the receiving end of violence (both from the majority community and the law), and how redressal will entail political acts (for example, political mobilization and decision of the legislature) rather than merely legal means.

Creating and Governing the Other: Political Psychology of a Liberal Democracy Understanding AFSPA requires us to look at the coercive moorings of state, in general, and the postcolonial Indian state, in particular. Most democracies have, in their statute books, ‘special’ or ‘extraordinary’ laws that are enacted to deal with ‘contingencies’. As instruments of the state, these laws seek to restrict or suspend or deny, ostensibly as temporary measures, the civil liberty of the individual citizens. These laws are against the spirit and principles of democracy given the idea of the individual’s dignity and his or her civil liberty is central to the ideals of democracy. But the undemocratic spirit of these laws is sought to be justified by claiming that these laws are ‘temporary measures’ to deal with certain ‘extraordinary’ situations, and paradoxically, to ensure rights of the individual by securing the normal order. And often such ‘temporary’ measures tend to become ‘permanent’ features of the polity—a sort of ‘exception’ becoming the ‘norm’ (Agamben 2005; see also Singh 2004, 2007). In principle, the transformation of the ‘extraordinary’ into the ‘ordinary’ is often seen as a contradiction of democracy. However, (p.247) principles and ideals of democracy do not exist or operate in a vacuum; it basically operates and gets realized as a polity of a state. In this context, what could be considered a prophetic articulation—that anticipated all the rationales behind these ‘special’ or ‘extraordinary’ laws, which postcolonial India would enact as a part of its democratic polity—Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra, a member of the Constituent Assembly, put forth an argument on what he called ‘high reasons of state’. While seeking to retain the provision on ‘preventive detention’, he had this to say: Preventive detention … is a very important question involving an important principle…. I am one of those who have systematically opposed the preventive detention in any shape or form in the past … [but] the situation Page 4 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship is now completely changed … we are going to start a new state of our own, an absolutely independent State, and … the Union Government must be armed with certain powers which can be used by it … for the interests of the State itself … now we have got our own State, our own Government elected by the people…. There is no danger of civil liberties being trampled under ruthlessly and carelessly as it has been done in the past under the British Rule. If … some persons were found by the Government, on reliable information, out to create mischief that would … be detrimental to the best interests of the Dominion … do you think that the Government should sit quiet and not move in the matter, simply because there has been no overt act on their behalf which would bring them under the clutches of the law? There may be fifth columnists who may be secretly working … they may be in pay of a foreign Government … therefore it is not a question of civil liberties being in danger; it is a question of high reasons of State, and reasons of State should take precedence over everything.5 It was indeed a remarkable statement that signified the psychology that was to inhabit the postcolonial state in South Asia: a persecuted self, assuring itself that it would be different from its former malevolent colonial masters; a promised benevolent self, that felt the need to assert its newfound power after years of slavery under the colonial rule, to act against the enemy, the ‘fifth columnists’. It was the psychology that would be played out time and again in the postcolonial period. Over a period of time—as it inhabits the body politics of the state which was inherited from the colonial masters—the psychology gradually acquires aspects of paranoia: a grandeur sense of self with its corresponding persecutory thoughts (Robins and Post 1997). (p.248) Thus, the ‘fifth columnists’ have become the insidious ‘enemy within’, primarily in the form of the ‘suspected community’ (Singh 2004) and the ‘foreign government’ has become the ‘foreign hand’. Free from the wretched colonial dispensation, postcolonial India has become mahan (great)—as in the slogan of ‘Mera Bharat Mahan’ (My India Is Great); an India that asserts itself as a power that can and must play significant role in the global arena. Yet, it is also simultaneously an India that is sensed as the ‘“besieged” us’.6 With a paranoid theme—a self being persecuted because others are jealous of its greatness— India simply cannot ‘sit quiet’; it has to be constantly on the alert against the ‘enemies’ even if there has been ‘no overt act on their behalf’. Further in this chapter, we would like to investigate how the very formative years of Indian nation state and nation-building as a liberal democratic project is already indicative of—in the name of ‘high reason of the state’, ‘security’, and ‘integration’—the coercive apparatus of the state travelling from the extreme pole of ‘extra-ordinary’ situations to ‘ordinary’ as a response to ‘suspected others’. In other words, the coercive apparatus of the state has to do with, or have critical bearings on, the multiplicity of selves that constitute the Indian Page 5 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship nation, particularly on the ‘others’ who are marked out from the national ‘mainstream’. The Indian self has been negotiating vulnerability, if not a liability, of the multiplicity of selves during the anti-colonial nationalist struggle as well as throughout its postcolonial project of ‘nation-building’, a euphemism for homogenizing a population within the territory of the modern ‘nation-state’. The wish to have a commonality among these diverse elements of its persona (for example, such as the spirit expressed in the Constitutional Directive of Article 351 of making Hindi ‘as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture’) has been in direct conflict with the heterogeneity of its reality. In this struggle, the selves that marked the sectarian and communal tensions/conflicts of its present, understandably, come as reminders of the hurdles this nationalist self has been confronting all along. In fact, the multiple selves of the estranged present are threats that re-enact the vulnerability of the multiple selves that were implicated in the ‘predisposition’ of ‘the country’ to become ‘an easy prey’ to foreign subjugation in the past. (p.249) A persecutory theme enables the Indian self to negotiate with this basic vulnerability from a safer distance through a familiar psychological process of ‘projection’, that is, a process of expelling feelings and unconscious wishes from the self and attributing them to another person or object. At one level, the self seeks to lessen the impact of the intrinsic vulnerability by locating its source to something that lies outside of itself, that is, the source of the tension is ‘projected’ onto something that is external. It produces a psychologically significant effect for the self: what is basically an innercontradiction becomes a contradiction between the self and the other, and, thereby, an inner coherence is sought to be created and maintained. And the ‘projection’ that energizes the persecutory theme (located in the external sources) provides the affective base for such an attempt. But such attempts cannot do away with the reality of the multiple selves. Since this reality remains an inescapable and tangible fact, it becomes the site wherein the self ‘introjects’ (that is, aspects that belong to an external object are internalized or absorbed and unconsciously regarded as belonging to the self) and reproduces the dynamics of the (externally located) relationship between the self and the other in its inner domain. This means, the heightened persecutory theme has also been re-introjected by the self. This process of introjection has produced two significant implications for the self. First, there has been a process of creating an ‘other’ out of its multiple selves by superimposing the external other to these multiple selves (for example, Muslims as the Pakistani ‘other’, ‘Northeasterners’ as the Chinese or the ‘South East Asians’, Christians as the white men as derivative of the colonial British). In some sense, the production or creation of these ‘others’ is through a process of, to invoke Homi Bhabha, mimicry that ‘emerges as the representation of a Page 6 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship difference that is itself a process of disavowal’.7 Second, as the intensity of the persecutory theme gets heightened, the ‘enemy within’ becomes more and more real to the self. Thus, the introjection and reproduction of the dynamics of the external relations as internal relations has not only marked but also aggravated the selfestrangement or the identity crisis of the Indian self today. This crisis is reflected in the postcolonial cynicism about the political class,8 and the disillusionment implicated in the rebellions (p.250) and insurrections (for example, the leftist armed movements). Indeed, the assertions of right wing politics, religious fundamentalism, caste-based politics, and the concrete reality of identity-based movements and insurgencies in Assam, Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland, and Punjab, etc., underscore the crisis of the mainstream ‘secular nationalism’ (Nigam 2006). And the ‘defensive’ response of the self—particularly those characterized by ‘internalized aggression’ (aggression against itself) exemplified by the ‘special’ or ‘extraordinary’ laws that implicitly and explicitly invoke a ‘state of exception’ (Akoijam 2006a; see also Akoijam 2006b; for the idea of ‘state of exception’, see Agamben 2005)—in search of its, to use Eriksonian expressions, ‘integrity’ (‘national integrity’) only reaffirms the ‘despair’ implicated in the ongoing crisis of the self (Erikson 1968). In fact, this crisis, which implicates the figure of the citizen and the ways in which the state deals with the same, runs deeper than the ‘material domain’. For, it invariably exposes the self to the latent conflicts of its inner ‘spiritual domain’.9 ‘Unity in diversity’, an idea that inhabits an overlapping stratum of the ‘material domain’ and the ‘spiritual domain’, enabling (or seeking to enable) a peaceful coexistence among the heterogeneous cultures, comes under stress. Particularly, with the idea of ‘enemy within’, the ‘suspected communities’, the ‘nation’ becomes a schizophrenic self. Incidentally, most of these ‘suspected communities’ are the religiously construed Muslim ‘other’, and the racially construed people in the east whom Sardar Patel, one of the founding fathers of modern India, once insinuated as the people with ‘pro-Mongoloid prejudices’ who have ‘no firm loyalty and devotion to India’ (Das 1974).10 In such a scenario, ‘whose nation’ is being defended against whom becomes an inevitable question. And an effort to answer such a question tends to bring up the subconscious or unconscious ‘religious’ and ‘racial’ underpinnings of the narrative, that has hitherto made the self-intelligible at a conscious level.11 In other words, such a question forces the self to confront the historicity of its cherished ‘naturalized’ (insofar as it is an anachronistically imagined) and ‘nationalized’ selfhood (as a product of anti-colonial nationalist struggle). Consequently, a process of becoming conscious of the unconscious unfolds, and the self gets access to the historicity and dynamics of the conflation between ‘Indica’ as a (p.251) cultural-civilizational idea (‘Indic civilization’ and its cultural derivatives or derivative cultures), and ‘Bharat’ as a political idea Page 7 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship palpable in the form of ‘India’ of the colonial British Indian Empire.12 And its formative experiences and present predicaments converse with each other, the Indian self becomes more than what one gets to know hitherto through its conscious articulation or awareness. Indeed, the Indian self is an ‘oriental’ self that has been crafted in the image of the ‘occident’ through the ‘mirroring’ process between the British colonizer and the colonized South Asian. It is through this process that the self-validates as to what it is and also affirms its worth. It was no accident that Jawaharlal Nehru, undoubtedly the most important architect of modern India, also discovered his ‘India’ within the dynamics of that ‘mirroring’ process. His magnum opus, The Discovery of India, registers the traces of that dynamics (Nehru 1982 [1946]). He wrote, ‘…before the future came there was the present, and behind the present lay the long and tangled past, out of which the present had grown. So to the past I look for understanding’ (Nehru 1982 [1946]: 50). And the past of ‘five thousand years’ through which he sought his understanding of ‘India’ was not very different from the one that the Europeans had already encountered and narrated with a sense of wonderment and admiration for themselves and the South Asians. Conveying such a shared world, he wrote: ‘The Indus civilization’, writes Professor Childe, ‘represents a very prefect adjustment of human life to a specific environment that can only have resulted from years of patient effort. And it has endured; it is already specifically Indian and forms the basis of modern Indian culture.’ Astonishing thought: that any culture or civilization should have this continuity for five or six thousand years or more; and not in a static, unchanging sense, for India was changing and progressing all the time. She was coming into intimate contact with the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Arabs, the Central Asians, and the people in the Mediterranean. But though she influenced them and was influenced by them, her cultural basis was strong enough to endure. (Nehru 1982 [1946]: 50) These lines underscore the psychological reality of the ‘mirroring’ process that goes into the making of the Indian self: the empathic responsiveness of the colonial Europeans to the developing grandiose, exhibitionistic needs of the Indian self, and their responses to (p.252) the activities of the self that signal which of its potential qualities are most highly esteemed and valued—a process that validates what the Indian self is and also affirms its worth. Besides, these lines also convey a crucial idea about the enduring civilization that Nehru acknowledges with a sense of astonishment and admiration. Here, he implicitly, if not explicitly, registers a notion of the ‘core’ (an originally given) nature of the civilization, which remains ‘strong enough to endure’ despite having come ‘into intimate contact’ with, and ‘influenced’ by, other cultures and Page 8 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship civilizations (for example, the Persians, the Greeks, the Chinese, etc.) over the years. This implicit or explicit idea of a ‘core’ positions the singularity of the idea of the ‘Indic Civilization’ with a specific spatial location. Moreover, the transition from the ‘Indus’ to ‘India’, in Nehru’s observation, also signals the nationalist reckoning on this civilization to further the agenda of the independent political selfhood in South Asia. Such a reckoning is not without reason; for, the totalizing impulse of the modern state, which the nationalists in South Asia aspired then and still seeks to consolidate now, finds its legitimacy in the form of a spirit of nationhood. And such a spirit is—and during the colonial period, was required to be—articulated as a given ‘cultural’ (as against, ‘political’) fact, and, that too, as an entity rather than disparate elements. And the national history has been constantly reproducing the singularity and spatiality of the civilization which, in turn, provide legitimacy to the totalizing impulse of the postcolonial Indian state as a modern ‘nation-state’. However, the most significant aspect that the Indian self has imbibed through the interaction with the colonial other is ‘modernity’. The moorings of this modernity and the kind of transformative impacts it shall have on the self is amply registered when Nehru says: India was in my blood … yet I approached her almost as an alien critic, full of dislike for the present as well as for many of the relics of the past that I saw. To some extent I came to her via the West, and looked at her as a friendly westerner might have done. I was eager and anxious to change her outlook and appearance and give her the grab of modernity. (Nehru 1982 [1946]: 50) Although the attempt to give the self ‘the grab of modernity’ is still arguably an ongoing process, it has already marked its stamp on many crucial facets of the self. Among those facets are the familiar (p.253) imprints of historiography that enable the self to make sense of itself as a ‘nation’ and appreciate its Indic civilization, and the postcolonial Indian state that has been largely inherited from the preceding colonial state in South Asia (see Chatterjee 1993). Life in South Asia, when immersed amid unfolding modernity, also looked back into ‘the long and tangled past’. And what emerged from such exercise of looking back into the past was not always marked with clarity and certitude. Certain kind of a ‘presence of a cultural unconscious’, that is, ‘a liminal uncertain state of cultural belief when the archaic emerges in the midst or margins of modernity’ (Bhabha 1990: 295), emerged in the nationalists’ ‘anxious’ effort ‘to change … [the] outlook and appearance’ of the Indian self. The issues around ‘religion’ and ‘race’, which affect people in the way they experience life,13 are aspects that mark this uncertain state of cultural belief. We can address this issue of ‘cultural unconscious’ by asking a simple, straightforward Page 9 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship question: does the Indian self have religious and racial inflections? Partition, perhaps, stands out in order to reflect back on this question. One must situate ‘partition’, the violence and tragedy of the ‘invisible holocaust’, in religious affiliation of the people, and the need to reemphasize the origins of ‘communalism’ and its reciprocity with nationalism (see Pandey 1992). This being the case, we can look at the past and seek answers to our question on whether the Indian self has religious and racial inflections. A crucial entry point for such an attempt to decode the ‘religious’ inflection is to engage with the name Bharat, a name that came to represent the Indian ‘nation’ during the colonial days, and also become a desi (indigenous or local) name for the postcolonial Indian ‘nation state’. Perhaps, in a sense, the historicity of the condition under which name was chosen to represent the ‘nation’ will also point to the past moorings of the persecutory theme (as in, a perception of threat to the very being of the self) that tends to bring the ‘secular’ nationalists and the Hindu rights together. A retrospective identification of the present India with the Puranic Bharat14 has been a product of the choice made under the imperatives of the colonial condition in South Asia. For instance, obviously responding to the colonial insinuation of India being a ‘mere (p.254) geographical expression’, nationalist Bipin Chandra Pal asserted that ‘while the stranger called her India, or the lands of the Indus, thus emphasizing only her strange physical features, her own children, from the old, have known and loved her by another name … that name is Bharatvarsa’ (Bose and Jalal 2004: 1). From the idea of a ‘mother’, Bharat became the ‘people’.15 But this people could not be at the level of community; the modernist underpinning of the individual implicated in the liberal and democratic impulse of Indian nationalism demanded that it had to go beyond the community. Thus, the argument went from saying, ‘you are “parts” of this Bharat’ to eventually ‘you are in a manner yourselves Bharat Mata’ (see Nehru 1982 [1946]: 60–1). Indeed, as a name that represents the self in one word, Bharat is a potent emblem that carries the inscriptions of the ‘cultural unconscious’. Therefore, the arresting character of the anachronistically imagined self, marked by the singularity of the Indic civilization, is not confined to the crass or jingoistic expression of Akhand Bharat, often accompanied by crude attempts at historicizing certain mythical pasts, by the ‘extreme rights’. The idea also slips through, with certain subtleness (or surreptitiousness), in the discourses that arguably belong to the critical postcolonial consciousness. For instance, in the discourses on ‘Partition’, the nostalgia of an ‘undivided India’ runs as a critical subtext in the narratives of the violent recent past (or its preceding ‘pristine’, ‘harmonious’, or ‘ambivalent’ times) of the present Indian self. ‘Partition’, Page 10 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship incidentally a term most likely to be used by the Indians rather than the Pakistanis while referring to the creation of the two Dominions of India and Pakistan in South Asia in 1947, is, in effect, premised on the idea of a unified whole, an ‘undivided India’. The postcolonial theorists have critically engaged with the hegemonic and homogenizing tendency of the postcolonial Indian state or the singularity of the national history of India. However, these engagements will remain incomplete if one does not bring in a critical interrogation of the singularity of the Indic civilization. Therefore, the question here is not merely of the artefacts of the magical narrative of this civilization that weave Indica, Bharat, and India together to produce both the ideas of ‘India, that is Bharat’, and the nostalgia of (p.255) an ‘undivided India’. It is also critically about, on the one hand, how it invariably makes ‘other’ out of many people who are otherwise claimed to be parts of the self, and obfuscates or legitimizes the assaults on the selfhood of those ‘others’ in the guise ‘national integration’ and ‘national security’. Indeed, it is no accident that the familiar debate on Urdu versus Hindi, or as in Alok Rai’s (2001) ‘Hindi’ versus Hindi, underscores the ‘alien’ tenor of the Muslims selfhood in India. In fact, right from the time of the nationalist awakening in South Asia, the effort to establish continuity between the ‘ancient’ or ‘classical’ precolonial past and the colonial present (or the nationalist present) had been problematic for the Muslims in South Asia (see Chatterjee 1993). In the eyes of some, they are seen as ‘adopted children’ of Bharat Mata, and, in contrast, ‘Hindus’ are seen as those children who were ‘born from her womb’ (cited by Chatterjee 1993: 111).16 Such predicament of the Muslims, including the propensity to treat them as a ‘suspected community’ or the retorts of recovering the authentic indigenous or native character of the Muslims by construing them as ‘converted Hindus’, are not unrelated to the above cultural inflections of the Indian self. The problematic part of the singularity of the Indic civilization is not only about ‘religion’ or ‘culture’; it is also about its civilizing tenor that invariably carries the racial inflection of the civilization. For instance, the story of the spread of the civilization in South Asia tells us the story of the interaction between the ‘autochthones’ and the Aryans, with the implicit tenor of Aryan cultural diffusion among the former. With the old faith and philosophy as a marker of that cultural diffusion, the narrative of the spread of this civilization across South Asia and beyond carries an undercurrent of the ‘cultural’ and ‘racial’ divide among the people. For instance, the divide between the north and the south of the Vindhyas is coterminous with a cultural and racial divide between the ‘Aryans’ and the ‘Dravidians’.17 Another racial divide that ultimately brings in a notion of a civilizational divide comes when the story tells its movement from the west to the east. For instance, a nationalist like Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, while acknowledging the late arrival of the Aryans in Bengal and arguing for a claim of Page 11 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship the Bengali upon the classical heritage of the Aryans, talked about ‘non-Aryan Bengalis’ or ‘Mixed-Aryan Bengalis’ (see Chatterjee 1993: 113–15). (p.256) The racial inflection of this narrative of the civilization becomes conspicuous once the movement is further pushed towards the eastern part of Bengal and to the present ‘Northeast India’. The Northeast is not merely the other but an outside other to the self. Its peripherality, or the invisibility, stands in stark contrast to the presence of the Muslim or Dalits (or even Christians) issues to the rashtra chetna (the national consciousness) of the self. Although, the discourses of colonial modernity have produced the reality of the others for the self, it is arguably only in the production of the Northeast other that those past moorings of the self come out largely in unmediated forms and tenors. Its exclusion from the ‘national’ that inhabits the ‘empty homogeneous time’ is in a critical sense more or less complete. In fact, given that the Northeast has been more or less ‘removed from history’ or it is ‘no way a subject of history’, the exclusion of the Northeast borders on the exclusion of the kind is what Albert Memmi talks about.18 Incidentally, the exclusion of the Northeast is sought to be explained by a popular myth of the assumed political or otherwise insignificance of the region. It is not uncommon for one to hear the number of central legislatures from the region as a reason for the lack of interest in the Northeast. But a crucial question that we need to ask here is: can the Indian self afford to politically acknowledge the otherness and the assumed insignificance of the Northeast? Ironically, contrary to its conscious sense of the insignificance of the Northeast, there is a deep-rooted significance of the region to the Indian self. Acknowledging the otherness in real political terms would mean inviting an erosion of the seductive spell of the hymn or mantra of ‘Unity in Diversity’ that not only holds its multiple selves—the inherent others—together (Hindu and Muslim, or Sikhs and Hindus, or Dalits, etc.), but also cements the fault lines (for example, the South and North divide). In short, politically admitting the otherness of the Northeast in its real term would mean inviting the self’s own death. Therefore, it has to reclaim the Northeast as a part of itself—politically or otherwise. In fact, the genesis of conflicts that has come to mark the Northeast is a testimony of that reality. Now, given these conflicting needs or predicaments of the self, the question is how does it seek to reclaim this Northeast other? I (p.257) suspect the answer lies in the basic nature of the specie of the self as a ‘state’. As a sovereign entity, it invokes the principle of the ‘state of exception’ through which the exceptional status of the Northeast as the other is, to borrow the words of the Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben, ‘included (in the self) solely through its exclusion’ (1998: 18). Indeed, dealing with an ‘entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated’, the ‘state of exception’ has become a ‘paradigm of government’ (Agamben 2005) in the region. An unparallel epitome of that Page 12 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship invocation, and the policy that the self follows towards the Northeast, is the notorious special law, the AFSPA, 1958, which has been specifically envisaged, enacted, and imposed in the Northeast for almost half a century now.19 This piece of legislation, arguably one of the rarest among rare ones of its kind in the contemporary world, stands as a testimony of what Agamben calls ‘the voluntary creation of a permanent state of emergency (though … not declared in the technical sense)’, something that ‘has become one of the essential practices of contemporary states, including so-called democratic ones’ (2005: 2).20 It is under such a ‘state of exception’, that the Indian self seeks to rescue or protect the Northeast as a part of itself from the Northeast as the suspected enemy other (Agamben 2005: 2). But as the schizophrenic framing of the Northeast (simultaneously as enemy other and as a part of the self), tends to break through the conscious realm of the self, the immanent uncanny sense is met by the twin fantasies of the self: imageries of its benevolence and persecution. To the benevolent self, the Northeast comes as a backward but pristine and exotic virgin (as seen in folk and handicraft festivals or tableau in national festivals like Republic Day), and it believes in nurturing the Northeast other though monetary and other ‘development’ responses.21 And to the persecuted self, the Northeast comes as the intransigent and violent insurgents and terrorists, the proverbial ‘head hunters’, who are trying to maim Bharat Mata, and accordingly it directs its violence against them by sending more troops to the region. Incidentally, these fantasies and the invocation of the ‘state of exception’ are not Northeast-specific, but inherent in the very being of the self, albeit the Northeast only manages to bring out these aspects more vividly than the others. ‘State of exception’ is an invocation that entails the ‘high reason of state’ to take decision by constantly (p.258) seeking to distinguish the ‘friend’ from the ‘enemy’, a loyal citizen from a suspected enemy of the nation. The benevolent and persecutory themes are a concomitant part of the same psychology of the modern state. This is arguably a rudimentary knowledge among the students of state and nationalism. But the hold of the colonial discourse and the preponderance of the nationalist credo that excludes the Northeast seem to have obfuscated such a reality. Consequently, the ‘state of exception’, the ‘right of belligerency’, and the ‘violence to institute order’ invoked by the AFSPA, 1958, to deploy the military within the domestic sphere of the country has remained more or less unnoticed for decades. The state invokes the ‘state of exception’ again decades later to enact two poor cousins of the AFSPA, but by no means healthy for a democratic polity and ethos: Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA) and Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).22 However, it must be noted that unlike AFSPA,23 these two legislations, which do not implicate the military or give similar unbridled power for the security forces to exercise over the people. And ironically, these later laws have hurt the liberal Page 13 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship conscience and, subsequently, the students of democracy and activities started noticing the transforming face of the state through the two (see Singh 2003). Consequently, while these two draconian legislations have faced the intellectual and liberal might of the self, and, thereby, has eroded the legitimacy of the two to some extent, AFSPA continues to be in force—more or less unscathed till date. On the other hand, as ironic as it could get, the students of democracy and political theory in South Asia might begin to discover the danger of the ‘state of exception’ to democracy, or the notion of democratic and republican control over the modern state in the global order of post-9/11 2001, albeit way back on 9/11 1958, when the President of the Indian democratic republic had already invoked the ‘state of exception’ in the form of AFSPA and initiated it as a ‘paradigm of government’ (see Akoijam 2005). The deepening of the political and the paradigm that was inaugurated in the ‘distant’ Northeast, more of a psychological than physical sense, was merely hinted by TADA and POTA to the ‘national’. But as time passes, the process threatens to be more real than a mere hint as the provisions and spirit of the AFSPA creep deeper into the ‘national mainstream’. For instance, while the provisions of the (p.259) AFSPA, which hitherto have been used against the ‘enemy within’ in the Northeast (and Kashmir), have been reportedly recommended for application all across the country, some of the provisions of the Act are also sought to be incorporated to fight communalism as well.24

AFSPA: A Symptom of a Militaristic Ethos of a Liberal Democracy In 1931, when Gandhi was en route to the Round Table Conference in London, a reporter from The Guardian asked him, ‘What is your programme?’ He responded by writing out a short statement called ‘The India of My Dreams’. He said that the India of his dreams would be an India, among others, with ‘the smallest army imaginable’. Incidentally, India today has one of the largest armies in the world. Removed from of M.K. Gandhi’s ‘India of My Dreams’, the Indian nation state is one that dreams of becoming a superpower that entails to augment its military might. The issue here that we must note is not a question of whether a ‘nation-state’ can defend itself with the smallest or the biggest army. Gandhi’s wish for the ‘smallest army imaginable’ comes from his—and Rabindranath Tagore’s as well (incidentally one called the ‘father of the nation’ and another, the ‘national poet of India’)—reservation about modern ‘nation state’ as a monstrous impersonal machine, with a propensity or capability to commit enormous violence. Their reservations, particularly Gandhi’s, are understandable because both of them are aware of the fact that state as an institution ‘claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force’ (see Nandy 1994). Besides, they have seen the empirics of violence that states have committed and their consequences have far exceeded those of the individual violence or the communal violence.

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Violence of Law and Citizenship The rejection of Gandhi, particularly, the India of his dream, alludes us to the violent moorings of the Indian nation state. In fact, contrary to the popular narrative of non-violent moorings of the Indian nation state, that is, a nation that came into being though a non-violent movement, its birth was marked by bloodshed and deployment of physical force (represented by military might) to constitute the ‘nation state’. The violence of Partition, which marked the birth of the Indian nation state in mid-twentieth century, was a product of a politics of (p.260) communalism, which, in turn, was a product of, as noted historians have pointed out, the sectarian character of Indian nationalism (see Pandey 1992). Besides, there were clear cases in which violence and intimidation were deployed in order to constitute the nation state. The ‘police action’ in Hyderabad or the military unit that landed up and took position in Imphal on 12 October 1949, days before the Merger Agreement was to be effected on 15 October 1949, or the conflict in Kashmir that followed the independence of the country from the colonial yoke were classic examples of the violent moorings in the making of the Indian nation state (Menon 1985 [1956]; see also Akoijam 2005). In short, what Walter Benjamin (1999) calls ‘violence to institute order’ was invoked while constituting the Indian nation state. AFSPA is born out of the same violence. Starting with its deployment against Naga nationalist rebellion, this Act has been deployed in places where the Indian state needs to be instituted and consolidated. In that, AFSPA is no ordinary ‘extraordinary law’. Far from being informed by the principles of the normal civil and criminal jurisprudence, its premise is based on the principles of war. Section 3 of AFSPA—which introduces the Act as an instrument that allows the ‘military forces’ to enter the domestic space ‘in aid of civil power’—is only a thinly disguised legal fiction that seeks to obfuscate the real nature of the Act. A cursory reading, leave alone a perusal, of the Act will unmistakably show that the AFSPA seeks to supplant rather than supplement the civil authority by an illicit military ethos and regime. It is this character that sets AFSPA apart from the rest of all other notorious ‘special’ or ‘extraordinary’ laws in India. For the AFSPA to come into force, all that is required is that a territory (a state of the Indian Union, a centrally administered territory, or any part thereof) be described as ‘disturbed’—or in other words, a declaration by the sovereign, that is, the state, to declare a territory to be in ‘state of exception’, henceforth,‘disturbed’. Subsequent amendments to the Act have expanded the scope of the AFSPA to its application in any location, anywhere in India. This has led to its being invoked in Punjab in the 1980s, and in Kashmir, where it has been in operation from the early 1990s till today. Under the AFSPA, as in declaring a war, once an area is declared as ‘disturbed’, the personnel of the armed forces simultaneously acquire (p.261) powers to use ‘force as may be necessary’, based on their ‘opinion’ and ‘suspicion’, to effect Page 15 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship ‘arrest without warrant’ or ‘fire upon or otherwise use force, even to causing death’ (Section 4) within that area. Given the hierarchical command structure of the military, and simultaneity of acquiring these powers with the declaration of the area as ‘disturbed’, a power that can only be exercised by the personnel under their commanding officers, to say that the Act is ‘in aid of civil power’ makes no theoretical or practical sense. The nature of these powers conferred upon the armed forces is quite in tune with the military paradigm and business of war. For instance, unlike the assumption of innocence of an ‘accused’ or ‘suspect’ (until he or she is proved guilty) in normal criminal law, a significant measure that protects a citizen, the hostile intention of the inhabitants of the space that is rendered ‘disturbed’ by the simple fact of the declaration of the AFSPA is taken for granted by the military personnel. As the Act does not derive its rationale from the principles of normal criminal and civil jurisprudence, one does not need separate bodies or agencies to take decision and execute those decisions. Thus, as in war, the ‘opinion’ and ‘suspicion’ of the commanding officer of a military formation (commissioned, junior commissioned, or non-commissioned officer (NCO) in the military) serves as the basis for exercising the powers to ‘fire upon or otherwise use force’, which he thinks is ‘necessary’. Correspondingly, these powers can also be exercised for acts that ‘likely to be made’ or ‘about to [be] commit[ted]’ (Section 4). This obfuscation of the real nature of the AFSPA circumvents people from interrogating the crucial issues on moral, political, economic, and sociopsychological aspects of the war. Indeed, right from its inception in 1958, the disguised character of the war declared under AFSPA was meant to circumvent any form of democratic accountability from within and without. Unfortunately, it has been fairly successful in that endeavour. For instance, the Government of India (GoI) has been able to go on waging a war for decades on a section of its own population without drawing the attention of the citizens from the rest of the country as well as from the international community. If it were to invoke the ‘emergency’ provisions of the Indian Constitution by saying that the ‘national integrity’ of the Indian state is under threat and, therefore, the military have to be called in, it would have (p.262) meant political and democratic accountability to the whole process. Indeed, such a prospect would have forced the Indian population to understand the nature of the situation that remains ‘extraordinary’ for decades, and also the real nature of this ‘special’ or ‘extraordinary’ law beyond its stated claim as a legitimate response to a situation whose temporally specific qualities, by definition, make it an ‘extraordinary situation’. In short, the disguised war encourages the majority of the democrats and citizens to remain innocent (or to fake innocence) about the decades-old embedded disorder implicated in the war, which the military engages with its own citizens branded as ‘enemy within’, and the casualties of war that go hand-in-hand with the democratic facade represented by elections to Page 16 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship constitute legislative organs of the state, and the judiciary that performs its democratic task—albeit its impotency to act independently against the executive arm, the armed forces of the state under AFSPA! The Act elevates the military arm of the executive above judicial and legislative scrutiny in a way that gives complete carte blanche to the state vis-à-vis a population that can have no legal protection, recourse, or relief against the armed forces. It makes it impossible even for the regional government to initiate any action against anything done under AFSPA, and reduces it to nothing other than ‘proconsuls’ of the tyranny of indirect central rule. Not only does Section 6 of the AFSPA subvert the principles of judicial remedy and independence, but it also echoes the convenient legal fiction of the ‘extraterritoriality’ (see Johnson 2004) principle that imperial powers invoke when they seek to protect their soldiers fighting wars on their behalf in distant lands.25 In effect, it brings to bear one legal regime for people in the states and territories affected by AFSPA, and another for the rest of India. The consequent legal inequalities that obtain between an Indian ‘citizen’ who happens to live in Manipur and a ‘citizen’ who happens to live in, say, New Delhi, amount to a chasm so wide as to render the concepts of ‘Indian citizenship’ or ‘equality before the law’ devoid of substance. Indeed, the differential mapping of the territory and its inhabitants is crucial in understanding the political assumptions that gave birth to and nurture the AFSPA. It reproduces and re-enforces the divisive character of ‘imagining’ [in Anderson’s (1983) sense of the expression] the ‘Indian nation’. These implications shall begin to (p.263) unfold when we look at the way the modern state maps its spaces and rationalizes its violence within those spaces. By legitimizing the use of military force in the internal affairs of the state beyond what is already provided in the Criminal Procedure Code and the provisions of emergency in the constitution, AFSPA seeks to supplant, rather than supplement, the civil authority with a military authority in the administration of everyday life for almost half a century. Indeed, the AFSPA has acted as a catalyst that has put into motion the process of reproduction and appropriation of the military structure and ethos by other instruments of the state (the paramilitary and police) as well as civil society itself. With the blurring of the necessary distinctions between the police and the military, between the civilian and the combatant, and between ‘domestic’ and ‘alien’ space, the AFSPA has led to a complete subversion of the basic foundation of society and polity in those areas that have been under the spell of the Act for years. This is what has happened in the Northeast, particularly in Manipur under the AFSPA. Another important aspect of APSFA, with respect to democracy and governance, is of justification of use violence to institute order. It is a violence that has been invoked in order to institute the order of the Indian state in those areas where Page 17 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship the Indian state has not been a secured order. It is violence to make ‘subjectpeople’ into ‘politico-legal citizens’ of the Indian nation state in those places wherein the postcolonial Indian state confronts unresolved ‘nationality questions’ and people demanding ‘right to self-determination’. That is why this Act only been invoked in places wherein Indian nation state has not been firmly instituted (such as the Northeast and Kashmir). Although the Naxalite movements also seek to overthrow the present constitutional order, and hence threaten ‘national security’, the assumption is that Naxalites are ‘Indians’ who have ideological and programmatic differences with the government and those Indians who are being governed. While people in the Northeast and Kashmir are either those who refuse to consider themselves as ‘Indians’, or people who Indian nationalists suspect of being disloyal to ‘India’, or people who, as Sardar Patel once said, ‘do not have firm loyalty to India’. Indeed, had AFSPA been a measure that seeks to preserve or maintain order (law and order or public order) that is being ‘disturbed’ by (p.264) ‘internal security threats’, it would have been invoked in those places where the Naxalite movements are active. After all, no less than the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has described the Naxals as the ‘biggest’ or ‘gravest internal security threat’ to the nation.26 In short, the issues of places and their people who are not suspected of their loyalty to the nation are ‘internal’ matters that cannot be dealt with the military; they have to be dealt with the police. But the issues concerning those places and their people who refuse to consider themselves as Indians or those who are suspected of their national loyalty to India are as good as matters that pertain to an alien, or external people and spaces; therefore, it cannot be dealt with police action; it has to be military. Indeed, as in war, AFSPA introduces a ‘state of exception’, wherein the decision on somebody’s life and death rests with the military personnel. Indeed, a NCO is last among a series of people who exercise the executive power by re-enacting the sovereign, the one, in the words of Carl Schmitt, ‘who decides on the (state of) exception’ (2005 [1922]: 5). In this sense, the regime that AFSPA stands for is a process that goes beyond the idea of military or use of military, per se; it is part of a militarism, a ‘phenomenon by which a nation’s armed services come to put their institutional preservation ahead of achieving national security or even commitment to the integrity of the government structure of which they are a part…. One sign of the advent of militarism is the assumption by a nation’s armed forces of numerous tasks that should be reserved for civilians’ (Johnson 2004: 23–4). Such aspects of militarism have already been noted in areas where the military has been involved in the internal administrative duties under special laws like the AFSPA.

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Violence of Law and Citizenship Over the years, with a dream of becoming a global power, a militaristic thinking has been increasingly legitimized in India. Besides the AFSPA and its legitimacy, as represented by its continuous invocation and silences that acknowledge the assertions of military bosses on the matter, there are other signs of militarization of the Indian state such as the Indian state becoming a ‘nuclear power’ (see Kazi 2009). Besides, India has police system that is rooted in ruler-appointed and ruler-serving gendarmerie (Dhillon 2005) with a legacy of having been modelled on the Royal Irish Constabulary, a police force that was (p.265) serving another British colony, right at the time of its inception in the mid-nineteenth century (Dhillon 2005). Today, it is a force that is marked by a significant section of ‘armed police’, which is larger than the ‘civil police’ in some the states, and various paramilitary forces. Given these legacies and structures, and some strand of ‘nation security’ discourse that tends to override civil liberty considerations, such a militaristic ethos is bound to get strengthened. And, as a consequence, threat to the democratic and republican character the Indian state is more real than what the silences on the issue tends to convey. Indeed, given the diversity of cultures and peoples, poverty, and the culture of using military and a militarized police force against itself, the largest democracy in the world has more to lose than to gain from such militaristic ethos.

Towards a Dialogue on the Models of Power for Justice Max Weber (1946) defines state as a community that has the ‘monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force’. In this sense, the modern state is the sole institution which can employ violence or physical force legitimately. The legitimacy of the sovereign as having monopoly over use of violence is obviously flowing from the very constitutional-juridical model of liberal democracy. However, the above the realities of the Indian nation state, as reflected through its moorings and practices, imply that the tendency to consider liberal democratic state with respect to the juridico-political model of power has its limitations. The idea of rule of law, as ‘institutional restraints on power’, must take into account of the fact that on the question of sovereignty, the bio-political model of power intersects with the juridico-political model of power. For, as it has been shown above, the ‘special’ laws are the sites where the sovereign declares a state of exception and exercises the specific power over life and death, something that Michel Foucault has shown to us quite persistently. The liberal democracy is enshrined on the very spirit of ‘accountability’. It flows from the procedural, substantive, and deliberative aspects of democracy. It is believed that the state—by accepting the principle of equality, and right of the citizens and private associations—is a site for responsible accountable governance. (p.266) ‘Accountability’ in this model is theoretically secured by the principles of ‘rule of law’ and also the principles of popular sovereignty. However, literature pertaining to ‘rule of law’ and, in specific, in the context of the Asian model of democracy has been indicating towards a peculiar, whereby, the principle of ‘rule of law’ has been subverted and transformed into ‘rule by Page 19 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship law’ (Carothers 1998). On the other hand, Foucault (1998), in his analysis, has shown that how ‘people’ as a citizen has been rendered into a population to be governed. And in this phase of ‘governmentality’, what comes to procure paramount importance is the regime of ‘security’ (Foucault 1998). A population which is to be governed is, therefore, no longer merely constitutive of rightbearing citizens; but they are part and parcel of a minute detailed cost/benefit analysis in the regime of ‘security’. However, what is to be emphasized here is that this regime of ‘security’ and ‘governmentality’ is also a model of exercising power — bio-political model of power. Henceforth, for Foucault (1990), the liberal democracy is a site of bio-politics. However, the Italian philosopher Georgio Agamben argues that bio-politics is not a specific character of modern nation state; it is inscribed in the very notion of politics around the figure of sovereign and ‘bare life’—with respect to whom everybody is sovereign (see Agamben 1998). He alludes that in modern era rather a perfect interface of juridico-political and bio-political model of power has given rise to what he terms—‘state of exception as paradigm of governance’ (see Agamben 1998, 2005). It is under this paradigm that the very act of constituting the citizen (as full member of the nation state) involves some form of deprivation of rights (which is guaranteed by law to the full members of the nation state) precisely because the individual is exposed the violence that emanates from the (partial) withdrawal of Constitutional norms which the state invokes. In a sense, the State mimics or enacts the Sovereign by placing itself, as Agamben (1998) suggests, both ‘inside and outside of law’ to constitute (or to fully institute itself) through an act of creating political subjects called citizens. Given this, invoking the citizen to seek justice with respect to violence from the established juridical norms and practices of the state is to obfuscate this premise of the violence that rests on the withdrawal of norms; justice must be sought through a political engagement with this premise by exposing (p.267) the legal fiction which camouflages a ‘rule of political (sovereign/executive) decision’ as a ‘rule of law’. In other words, it is important to grapple with the nature of Indian state beyond the constitutional-juridico framework of liberal democracy. Perhaps, a healthy dialogue between Weber—or even Bodin, a fifteenth-century French political philosopher, for whom sovereignty signifies, ‘power over citizens and subjects, unrestrained by the laws’—(Dunning 1896) and theorists articulating on biopolitical model of power in order to grasp complex situation in postcolonial states like India. For exercise, ‘power of sovereign over life and death of its subjects’ is no longer mere constitutional; it is ‘exceptional’ however to institute the very constitutional order. Only when we sense this truth will the Indian State be accurately captured and understood by looking at the dynamics through which the ‘others’ are being pushed to a space of ‘exception’ through a process of ‘inclusion by exclusion’ (for example, people in the Northeast) and ‘exclusion Page 20 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship by inclusion’ (for example, Dalits) and governed through a ‘state of exception’ by the Indian nation state. And seeking justice for these ‘others’ must be founded on such an understanding. References Bibliography references: Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. California: Stanford University Press. ———. 2005. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Akoijam, A.B. 2005. ‘Another 9/11, Another Terror: The Embedded Disorder of the AFSPA’, in Bare Act, Sarai Reader 05. Delhi: Sarai-CSDS, pp. 481–91. ———. 2006a. ‘Demos and High Reason of State: A Social Psychology of the Political’, Paper presented at the International Conference on ‘State and Democracy in India: Critical Reflections’ held at the Centre for Political Studies (CPS), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 23–24 March, mimeo. ———. 2006b. ‘Ghost of Colonial Modernity: On Identity and Conflict in the Eastern Frontiers of South Asia’, in Prasenjit Biswas and C.J. Thomas (eds), Peace in India’s North-East: Meaning, Metaphor and Method. New Delhi: Regency. Amin, Shahid. 1989. ‘The Musalman as the Other: Images, Belief, History’, in P.C. Chatterjee (ed.), Self-Images, Identity and Nationality. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, pp. 112–18. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Benjamin, Walter. 1999. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 1, eds Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Bhabha, Homi. 1984. ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, October, Discipleship: A special issue on psychoanalysis, 28: 125–33. (p.271) ——— (ed.). 1990. ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narration and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, in Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, pp. 291–322. Bose, Sugata and Ayesha Jalal. 2004. Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Carothers, Thomas. 1998. ‘The Rule of Law Revival’, Foreign Affairs, 77(2): 95– 106.

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Violence of Law and Citizenship Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2002. ‘On Civil Society and Political Society in Postcolonial Democracies’, in Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds), Civil Society: History and Possibilities. New Delhi: Foundation Books, pp. 165–78. Das, Durga (ed.). 1974. Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, 1945–50, vol. 10. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Dhillon, Kirpal. 2005. Police and Politics in India. New Delhi: Manohar. Dunning, W.A. 1896. ‘Jean Bodin on Sovereignty’, Political Science Quarterly, 11(1): 82–104. Erikson, Erik H. 1968. Identity Youth and Crisis. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company. Foucault, Michel. 1990. History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage. ———. 1998. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College De France1977–78, trans. Graham Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gupta, Dipankar. 2011. Justice before Reconciliation: Negotiating a ‘New Normal’ in Post-riot Mumbai and Ahmedabad. New Delhi: Routledge. Johnson, Chalmers. 2004. The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. New York: Metropolitan Books. Kakar, Sudhir. 1989. Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality. New Delhi: Viking. ———. 2003. Culture and Psyche: Selected Essays. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kazi, Seema. 2009. Between Democracy and Nation. New Delhi: Women Unlimited. Kymlicka, Will and Wayne Norman. 1994. ‘Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory’, Ethics, 104(2): 352–81. Maan, Michael. 2004. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McAdams, Dan P. 1996. ‘Personality, Modernity, and the Storied Self: A Contemporary Framework for Studying Persons’, Psychological Inquiry, 7(4): 295–321. Page 22 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship (p.272) Memmi, Albert. 1965. The Colonizer and the Colonized. New York: Orion Press. Menon, V.P. 1985 [1956]. Integration of the Indian States. Madras: Orient Longman. Previously published in 1956 as ‘The Story of the Integration of the Indian States’. Nandy, Ashis. 1994. Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nehru, Jawaharlal. 1982 [1946]. The Discovery of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nigam, Aditya. 2006. The Insurrection of Little Selves: The Crisis of Secularnationalism in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pandey, Gyanendra. 1992. The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pinto, Ambrose. 2009. ‘Manmahon Singh and Naxal-Maoist Upsurge: Clash of Models of Development’, Mainstream, XLVII(37, 29 August). Available at http:// www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1596.html (accessed 30 September 2011). Rai, Alok. 2001. Hindi Nationalism. Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Ray, Rajat K. 1980. ‘Three Interpretations of Indian Nationalism’, in B.R. Nanda (ed.), Essays in Modern Indian History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–41. Robins, Robert S. and Jerrold M. Post. 1997. Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred. New Haven: Yale University Press. Roy, Anupama. 2010. Mapping Citizenship in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Schmitt, Carl. 2005 [1922]. Political Theology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Singh, K.S. 1992. People of India: An Introduction. Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India. Singh, U. Kumar. 2001. Political Prisoner in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2003. ‘Democratic Dilemmas: Can Democracy Do Without Extraordinary Laws?’Available at http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php? root=2003&leaf=02&filename=5443&filetype (accessed 18 February 2005).

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Violence of Law and Citizenship Singh, U. Kumar. 2004. ‘State and Emerging Interlocking Legal Systems: Permanence of the Temporary’. Available at http://www.epw.org.in/ showArticles.php?root=2004&leaf=01&filename=60700&filetype (accessed 18 February 2005). (p.273) Singh, U. Kumar. 2007. The State, Democracy and Anti-Terror Laws in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Weber, Max. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, eds H.H. Gerth and C. Wrights Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. Young, Iris Marion. 1989. ‘Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship’, Ethics, 99: 250–74. Notes:

(1) . For the two versions of the expression ‘We, the people’, see Maan (2004). (2) . For an invocation of a ‘decent and blood ties’ in the conception of citizenship within the perspective of juridico-political model of power, see Roy (2010). However, the creation of the ‘other’ that haunts the idea of citizen can be fully captured through the dynamics between state and nation, between democracy and cultural underpinnings of nationalist ideology which entails, as we shall see later, a dialogue between the two models of power. (3) . This conflation is indicated by the nomenclature of the global organization, ‘United Nations’, which assumes the member states as nation states. Besides, for many of the states, particularly those states that appeared in mid-twentieth century nationalism, it becomes the legitimizing ideology of the state. (4) . Incidentally this ordinance was derived from a similar one promulgated by the then British Government in India to deal with the Quit India Movement in 1942. (5) . Constituent Assembly Debate, Parliament of India, 1947, vol. V, pp. 114–5. (6) . A theme often repeated while justifying the ‘extraordinary laws’. See Singh (2003, 2004, 2007). (7) . For mimicry in the creation of the Muslim ‘other’ in a postcolonial campaign for ‘national integrity’, see Bhabha (1984) and Amin (1989). (8) . I suspect that such cynicism has something to do with, on the one hand, the undermining of, as Partha Chatterjee points out, ‘the emancipatory aspects of nationalism’ by the ‘countless (postcolonial) revelations of secret deals, manipulations, and the cynical pursuit of private interests’ (1993: 3), and on the other, the new political culture of the postcolonial generation of politicians, who only come from different socio-economic background but also experience power Page 24 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship struggle in an increasingly democratized polity (that is, power is experienced in terms of the struggle among the emerging and increasingly localized competing sections/interests) of the postcolonial state, which implicates multiple interests all of which the people cannot identify. (9) . Just as the boundary between the inner and outer world of an individual is neither temporally nor psychically fixed, it is neither impermeable (see Kakar 1989, 2003). For a description of ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ domains, see Chatterjee (1993). (10) . This letter was a part of the exchanges between Jawaharlal Nehru and Sadar Patel on the question of India’s relationship with China. Patel’s choice of the expression, ‘pro-Mongoloid’ instead of ‘pro-Chinese’, shows the underlying racial inflection in his scheme of things. (11) . Self can be construed as a narrative that one tells in order makes oneself intelligible by coherently mapping or organizing the experiences and events in a temporal order. For the ‘storied’ nature of self, see McAdams (1996). (12) . There is a general agreement among commentators on Indian nationalism, cutting across different theoretical orientations, is that India as a ‘national’ entity was not there before the arrival of the colonial rule in South Asia. See, for instance, Ray (1980). (13) . ‘Experience’, in terms of our cognitive, affective, behavioural, and relational matrix. (14) . According to the Vishnu Puran, ‘the country that lies north of the ocean, and south of the snowy mountains, is called Bharata, for there dwelt the descendants of Bharata. It is nine thousand leagues in extent, and is the land of works, in consequence of which men go to heaven, or obtain emancipation’ (cited by Singh 1992: 17). It is no accident that postcolonial enterprise of mapping the ‘People of India’ by the Anthropological Survey of India begins its ‘conceptual framework’ of the project by quoting these lines from the Vishnu Puran (see Singh 1992: 17). (15) . At one level, this is a critical conceptual shift brought about by modernity in South Asia. ‘Millions of people’ refer to a population, which is ‘differentiated but classifiable, describable, and enumerable’, as ‘the targets of “policy”’. It fulfils a crucial imperative of governance under the modern state. See Chatterjee (2002: 173). (16) . Incidentally, Nehru (1982 [1946]: 76) also talked about Muslims, not ‘Hindus’, who did ‘adapt’ to the ‘Indian way of life and culture’ to become ‘Indianized’. (17) . These categories have both linguistic and racial connotations. Page 25 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship (18) . Under the colonial situation, the ‘colonized’ has been removed from history and community (Memmi 1965: 90–118). In a sense, the exclusion of the Northeast comes as an uncanny reminder of the legacy of the colonial continuity in South Asia. This exclusion is also reflected in the manner in which the people in Northeast, like Manipur, lack being a ‘representative’ character of Indian ‘nation’ (see Singh 2001: 69). (19) . The Act has been adapted and invoked in Jammu and Kashmir since 1990 as well. A similar invocation was also carried out briefly in the 1980s in Punjab. (20) . For more on such issues pertaining to the AFSPA, see Akoijam (2005). (21) . Whether such ‘development’ responses pertain to the issue of ‘development’, per se, or married to the strategic thinking and counterinsurgency has been of some debates among some scholars in the region. See Eastern Quarterly, 3(III, 2005). (22) . TADA, was enacted in 1987, and the POTA, in 2002. (23) . The AFSPA has primarily been a Northeast-specific Act, though it had been invoked in Punjab for a short period in the 1980s, and also in Kashmir since the 1990s. (24) . See ‘Scrap Armed Forces Law but Retain Bite’, Indian Express, 29 June 2005, pp. 1, 2, and ‘UPA Answer to Communal Violence: Army Rule, Delhi Rule’, Indian Express, 23 April 2005, pp. 1–2. (25) . Incidentally, the idea of patriotic soldiers fighting in the ‘distant land’, and the need to protect their ‘morale’, reverberated in the parliamentary discussions on the recent agitation against AFSPA by the people of Manipur, following the custodial killing of a woman by the armed forces operating under the Act on the intervening night of 10 and 11 July 2004. Speaking on the floor of the Upper House on 18 September 2004, the Union home minister shared his concerns for the ‘morale’ of ‘our brothers, men and officers of the Armed Forces’ who ‘are living thousands of miles away from their homes and their places and exposing themselves to all kinds of dangers that are involved in countering insurgency’. The irony is that most ‘men and officers’ of the Indian military who come from any part of the country, including Manipur, are mostly, if not always, ‘miles away’ from their homes in course of their military service. Perhaps, there is something about these places that are ‘miles away’ in the minister’s remark. However, nothing could be as remarkable as grating ‘extraterritorial’ protection to ‘our … men and officers’ from the laws of the land, which are legally and politically operational in these ‘miles away’ lands as the Section 6 seeks to do. (26) . The Indian Express, ‘Naxalism Gravest Internal Security Threat, 15 September 2009; see also Pinto 2009. Page 26 of 27

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Violence of Law and Citizenship

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Democracy in India

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

Democracy in India Of, By, and for Whom? Sumanta Banerjee DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0012

Abstract and Keywords The author argues that democracy can work in contradictory ways. It can help in bringing about socio-economic transformation towards equitable distribution. It can also be manipulated by vested interests to perpetuate economic inequity and social injustice. The essay provides a critical assessment of India’s experiment with democracy. Though the concept was imported from the West, it has over the year acquired a local flavour. The Indian politics evolved local-level responses, such the system of reservation to deal with the prevailing inequalities and prepare ground for growth of democracy. However, over the years, reservations have also created new sets of problems. The essay also develops a critique of the manner in which representative democracy works in India. The Indian state often applies repressive methods to deal with all kinds of dissent. The neoliberal reforms have further worked towards the subversion of democracy in India. Keywords:   neoliberal, subversion, democracy, West, politics, India, Indian politics, democracy

Democracy, both as concept and praxis, is in a sense double-edged. It is capable of bringing about socio-economic transformation towards equitable redistribution of resources and income, and at the same time it can render itself vulnerable to manipulation by vested interests for perpetuating an order of economic inequity and social injustice. In the West, there is a normative dimension to the concept of democracy, which lays stress on political norms like individual freedom, human rights, peaceful reconciliation of conflicts, and a multiparty system with free and fair elections, among other things. These Page 1 of 18

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Democracy in India political norms, which certainly need to be adhered to, are quite often emphasized by theorists of Western democracy, over the basic need of economic norms in South Asia—the need for resource distribution and social welfare among the masses. These priorities invest democracy in developing countries with far-reaching responsibilities. Let us remember that the establishment of the political norms and forms of democracy that we see in the West today, was made possible because of a long history of working-class struggles and bourgeois democratic reforms, and the creation of prerequisite conditions of socio-economic benefits that were introduced in Western countries in the post-World War II period. Social democratic parties in these countries played a major role in establishing welfare states which devised social systems that sustained political democracy. Such systems have provided minimum welfare (for example, housing, medical facilities, education) and economic support—however limited—to the poorer classes. Once assured of these basic necessities, they enjoy the freedom to make political choices and exercise their formal democratic rights in the political sphere. This in turn allows them to sustain and develop their livelihood aspirations. The citizens in these countries, thus, have a democratic space where they can assert their rights that are not only constitutionally guaranteed, but also enjoy social legitimacy—unlike (p.275) in South Asian civil society, where they are suppressed from within their own ranks (like the khap panchayats in our country that lynch their sons and daughters for exerting their right to marry outside their castes, or lawyers in Pakistan who congratulate religious fanatics on killing a liberal political leader, Salman Taseer, for upholding the democratic rights of the underprivileged). This does not mean that everything is hunky-dory in the Western democracies. Democracy is often reduced to a term ‘within quotes’—to be upheld or discarded by the ruling elite of these countries according to their exclusive social and economic interests. They simultaneously exploit and distort both the ideology and institutions of democracy. They can be ruthless in suppressing democratic rights if they challenge these interests of theirs. Intolerance of such rights was overwhelmingly evident in the reactions of the US government to the recent Wikileaks disclosures that exposed incidents of human rights violation in which the self-styled ‘world’s greatest democracy’ had been engaged for years. At the same time, the US had been using the ruse of establishing ‘democracy’ to invade sovereign states (cf. its intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya). Its extra-territorial ambitions masquerade as well-meaning efforts to introduce ‘democratic’ institutions in these states to ‘liberate’ their people from autocracies—much in the same vein as the nineteenth-century British rulers used to justify its colonization of India by using the liberalist rhetoric of ‘civilizing’ the natives by establishing the Westminster model of administration.

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Democracy in India Western democracies today suffer from a disjuncture between their current iniquitous project of neoliberalism, on the one hand, and the ideological principles of equal rights on the other, that brought them into being (through the revolutions in France and the USA in the past), and inspired the post-World War II social welfare reforms (as in Britain and Scandinavian countries). Abraham Lincoln must be turning in his grave, watching how his promise to ensure a ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people’, is being betrayed by his successors in his homeland, as well as by rulers of other nation states of the West who swear by his concept of democracy. It exposes the failure of the Western social democrats to protect their ideology and achievements against the onslaught of the multinational corporate interests and the neoliberal goal of globalization. This (p.276) is overwhelmingly evident in the current situation within the US and other Western democracies, which are bedevilled by the wide economic disparity between the top rich and the bottom layers of the ladder; racial discrimination against minorities and immigrants; killing of schoolchildren by individual psychopaths—symptom of a sick society, derailed by a dehumanizing economic system. In the US, for instance, rising rates in such crimes are often attributed to an increasing sense of paranoia, generated by the post-9/11 political culture that is underpinned by vitriolic, violent, and vituperative rhetoric and symbolism. Unemployment among the educated middle classes and homelessness among the labouring classes have demolished the myth of the American dream. The cosmetic change in the colour of its present President has not made any difference to the inbred class prejudices of the US establishment and its minions in the streets. These prejudices had been traditionally shaped by the white rulers against the underprivileged poor, primarily the descendants of the black slaves and the later immigrants. Even today, the blacks constitute the largest number of prisoners in US jails. Paradoxically enough, after years of struggle by them, the democratic rights that were granted by the white rulers to these descendants, in the shape of reservations in educational institutions and access to jobs in the administration, ended up in the creation of a new generation of black toadies serving the interests of the ‘establishment’. Politcos like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who represented the Republican government, and Barak Obama who heads the present Democratic government (as of 2013), illustrate how successfully the ruling elite can co-opt the upper crust of the beneficiaries of democratic reforms among the underprivileged and make them internalize the neocolonial ambitions of the US corporate-military industrial state—propelling them to participate in suicidal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world. This typically represents the ability of the ruling elite to manipulate the normative values and institutional instruments of democracy to serve its social and economic objectives.

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Democracy in India Experiments with Democracy in India This historical experience of democracy—both in concept and practice—in the West, may sometimes appear a bit distant and (p.277) sometimes a tad familiar, when we analyse our own experiments with democracy in the South Asian context. In the postcolonial societies of this subcontinent, the indigenous political powers which inherited the mantle from the colonial rulers were bequeathed with the three main institutions of governance in a Western type democracy—the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. The new rulers had the option of reforming them by purging them of the built-in colonial bureaucratic bias and practices, and reinventing them as instrumentalities for serving the basic economic needs and democratic rights of the common people— particularly the poor and underprivileged, including the most oppressed sections like the Dalits, Adivasis, and women in India. Let us also recognize at the same time that post-Independence Indian civil society inherited a certain democratic tradition, albeit imperfect and often contradictory. The democratic tradition had grown around a relatively free press, a fairly developed judicial system, the practice of public debates on controversial policies, and a strong culture of political struggles for asserting rights of the oppressed. This tradition had been moulded during our freedom struggle. Instead of strengthening these elements of our democratic tradition and expanding their influence among the masses through the available institutions of governance, the new ruling powers chose a different path of development. They followed a course of decolonization and democratization which was conducted mainly through the medium of urban political elite (including the colonial institution of bureaucracy), rural provincial satraps (dominated by the feudal landed interests), caste, linguistic, and religious community leaders (driven purely by their respective sectarian interests), among other privileged sections of Indian society. This relegated the masses of poor peasants, Dalits, Adivasis, and other underprivileged sections to the fringes of civil society, and deprived them of their right to meaningfully participate in democratic decision-making. Democratic rights and institutions were, thus, formally recognized, but were either denied or distorted in all serious practice. For instance, official plans to benefit the marginalized and underprivileged sections have taken a divisive form by differentiating them into categories on the basis of caste and ethnic origins, instead of following the basic criteria of economic dispossession and social (p.278) discrimination that are suffered by all and sundry among the poor. Thus, separate policies of concessions were devised for ‘Scheduled Castes’ (SCs) and ‘Scheduled Tribes’ (STs), for example, quotas of reserved seats in educational institutions and government jobs. In the 1990s, following the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, a further fragmentation took place among the poor with the official sanctioning of the category of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs—which, despite the term ‘class’, actually covered the middle castes in the Hindu hierarchical social system), who Page 4 of 18

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Democracy in India were also designated as eligible for special quotas. Similar demands for reservation in government jobs for religious minorities (for example, the Muslims) are also being voiced now by sections of the Indian liberal democratic spectrum in continuation of their earlier support for special benefits for the marginalized sections like the ‘Dalits’ (designated as SCs) and the ‘Adivasi’ minorities (described as STs). But there are problems with the belief that the present official policy of reservation is a panacea for all the ills that they suffer. The policy, as followed till now, has not ensured the safety of the ‘Dalits’ (who continue to be victims of upper-caste atrocities, even in a state like Uttar Pradesh, which till recently was ruled by the Dalit Chief Minister Mayawati). Access of a few educated Dalits to top positions in the government does not necessarily lead to the improvement of the socio-economic standards of the vast masses of poor Dalits. A Supreme Court bench of Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice A.K. Patnaik in a recent judgement complained that the benefits of reservation never reached the people who were targeted for upliftment, adding that ‘[i]t is only the wards of the bureaucrats and people serving in the government who walk away with the benefits of reservation’ (21 July 2011). Besides, the policy of reservation has led to two trends that have been detrimental to the project of establishing a democratic society based on equal rights for all sections of the disadvantaged. First, it has reinforced divisions among the poor along traditional casteist and ethnic lines, often mutually antagonistic, thus, enfeebling their bargaining capacity as a unified class of the underprivileged poor. Second, it has led to the growth of a privileged sub-elite among the beneficiaries of the reservation policy, which have taken over the political leadership of these caste and tribal communities. The Uttar (p.279) Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati from among the Dalits, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav from OBCs (both being erstwhile Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, respectively), and Shibu Soren and the various Adivasi leaders who occupied official positions in Jharkhand, are typical representatives of a class of politicians from these communities that are replicating the same model set by the upper-caste and upper-class political leaders. Devoid of any ideological principles, they resort to political opportunism, aligning now with the rightist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), next time with the leftist Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI (M), or later with the centrist Congress, to suit their political ambition. Using politics as a money-making business during their stint in power in states in their pursuit of self-aggrandizement, they resort to underhand deals to buy properties and lead an ostentatious lifestyle (thus, choosing as their role model the venal politicos from the upper-caste gentry). Like the black politicians of the US, who are touted as products of American democracy’s ‘affirmative action’, these Indian leaders who claim to represent the underprivileged castes and tribes have been co-opted by a hegemonic corrupt and criminal political system.

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Democracy in India Their co-option exposes the distortion that the democratic process has suffered in India. The Indian people have the right to vote, but both the methods involved in the conducting of elections and the pattern of administration by the government that they elect, totally violate the democratic principles of equality and freedom. During elections, caste-based divisiveness is exploited by local politicians in the rural backwaters. Ethnic and religious divisions are manipulated in communally sensitive pockets. Corruption and crime that have become firmly embedded in the general social milieu, reassert themselves, respectively, in the form of bribing and intimidation of voters. Money power and muscle power do not allow the electorate to exert their freedom of choice in most of the far-reaching rural constituencies that remain beyond the purview of the well-meaning efforts of the present Election Commission to ensure free and fair elections. Finally, during the stage of formation of the government by the elected representatives, or soon after, the corporate sector appears, using its clout to tip the scales in favour of their candidates for major ministerial posts, so that policies are adopted to suit their business interests.

(p.280) From Representative Democracy to Representative Oligarchy Thus, elections—a central element of the democratic process—have been distorted into a modus operandi that paves the way for the domination of the legislature by a small but powerful group of corrupt and criminal politicos, millionaires from the parvenu, and business-house magnates, who try to manipulate legislative decision-making in their favour. For instance, in the present Indian parliament, nearly a quarter of its members face criminal charges. Further, out of the 543 members who were elected to the Lok Sabha (lower house) of Parliament in the 2009 elections, more than half (315) can be described as ‘crorepatis’ or millionaires, according to the valuation of their assets on the basis of their affidavits. Quite a number of them are professional politicians (having been elected on a regular basis to Parliament, or state legislatures, or having enjoyed positions as ministers at the centre or state), who have acquired assets running to crores during their tenure as legislators. Besides, at least 25 per cent of the members of the Lok Sabha (128) belong to categories like industrialists, traders, businessmen, and builders (the latter being engaged in the booming construction sector as contractors, real estate agents, among other activities). Incidentally, the entry of these people in both the houses of Parliament has coincided with the opening up of the economy to the free market following neoliberal reforms, disinvestment of public sector enterprises, and increasing concessions to the corporate sector in the form of tax relief, permission to acquire agricultural land for setting up special economic zones (SEZs), five-star hotels, housing estates, and shopping plazas, among other similar projects. Commenting on the entry of these corporate interests into Parliament, the National Social Watch in its Report on Governance and Development, 2010 (which collected and published the Parliament figures mentioned earlier) stated: ‘This is a clear departure from the past when lawyers Page 6 of 18

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Democracy in India and agriculturists used to dominate the two Houses with the right mix of educationists, artists, intellectuals, industry leaders, sports persons and social workers until the 1990s’. When releasing this report, no less a person than a senior minister of the Indian cabinet, S. Jaipal Reddy, warned his countrymen of the picture that lay ahead: ‘The proportion of the very rich in parliament will keep rising in the days (p.281) to come ….’1 In India, today, where three in four live on near-starvation diets with less than Rs 20 a day (according to the Arjun Sengupta Committee Report), do these members of the present Lok Sabha represent the basic popular socio-economic needs of the poor majority, or concerns about profiteering and political careerism of their tiny oligarchy? Paradoxically enough, the domination of the Indian legislature by representatives of a criminal-swindler-corporate-house syndicate has been made possible by the democratic process itself—in a perverse way. It is the voters who have brought them to power. Even in West Bengal, a supposedly politically conscious state, in the 2011 assembly polls (which was acknowledged by all to have been free and fair), the voters elected some 69 candidates of the Trinamool Congress (which has been voted to power in the state), who had been known to be facing serious criminal cases (based on the declarations of these candidates themselves, as compiled by the independent monitoring body Association for Democratic Reforms and New Elections Watch). Curiously enough, Trinamool Congress Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee picked up nine from among these tainted elected candidates to make them ministers in her cabinet. Further, at least 10 other ministers are known as ‘crorepatis’ including Amit Mitra (who holds the important portfolio of ‘finance’)—the former Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)—claiming assets more than Rs 7 crores. In fact, among the Trinamool Congress Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs), the richest millionaire is Swapan Kanti Ghosh, whose assets are over Rs 12 crore!2

Parliamentary Democracy or a Paramilitary and Semi-Theocratic Democracy? As if these trends of corruption, criminalization, and corporatization of the electoral practice were not damaging enough to undermine democracy in India, the Indian state itself has officially contributed to the process by subverting democracy through the enactment of some of the most notorious draconian laws that curb the democratic rights of citizens in certain areas of India. Known under various nomenclature [for example, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act or AFSPA, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or UAPA, etc.], they have been (p.282) imposed in Jammu and Kashmir, the northeastern states, and areas designated as affected by Maoist insurgencies, where for all practical purposes, the democratic rights of the people are held hostage by the state, on the plea that national security demands temporary suspension of their rights. As a result, for days together, curfews prevent the citizens to come out from their homes, security forces and army personnel raid homes, arrest the young and the Page 7 of 18

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Democracy in India old, kill them in false encounters, rape their women, thereby establishing a reign of terror in the name of curbing terrorism in Kashmir, Manipur, and other insurgency-affected places. What is even more alarming is that the anti-terrorist phobia has communalized the Indian criminal justice system. To give an example, till early 2011, at least 32 Muslims were languishing in jail for years for what the police and the courts have described as their involvement in bomb blasts in Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad in 2007, and Malegaon in Maharashtra in 2006. Now, a Hindu fundamentalist, Swami Aseemanand, has confessed that he along with other Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activists was responsible for those bomb blasts. Will the Indian state compensate these innocent Muslims for the injustice that they have been suffering all these years? Can we blame the minorities, and particularly the youth among them who are always targets of suspicion and persecution, if they lose faith in the democratic system in India? The roots of the communalization of institutions lie in the Indian state’s misconceived conceptualization of the term ‘secular’. Instead of adhering to its original sense of strict separation of all forms of political and administrative activities from religious beliefs and rituals, the state distorted it into a concept that implied blending of all religious activities with the functioning of the state, under the slogan ‘Sarva dharma samanaya’ (coexistence and harmony of all religions). This sanctioned the entry of religion into politics and administration. What should have been a private space for practitioners of different religious beliefs, was allowed to be gradually expanded into the public sphere of governance. Conservative religious leaders began to enjoy influential status in politics, and determine the government’s decision-making process. Thus, in December 1949, a district magistrate of Uttar Pradesh allowed certain Hindu groups to smuggle and (p.283) install idols of Lord Ram inside the Babri masjid in Ayodhya, giving a fillip to the myth propagated by Hindu religious leaders that it was the birthplace of Ram where Babar built a mosque. The next step in the state’s abetting in the encroachment on the mosque by Hindu zealots was taken on 1 February 1986, when the then Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in order to appease them, unlocked the gates of the Babri masjid to allow fullfledged worship of Lord Ram by the Hindus. It was this that goaded the Hindu religious fanatics under the BJP leader L.K. Advani to take the final step by whipping up a frenzy among them to build a Ram temple on the spot—which ended up with the demolition of the mosque by the Hindu communal vandals in December 1992. True to the Indian state’s acrobatics of balancing concessions to the orthodox leaders of all religious communities, soon after opening the Babri masjid gates to the Hindu ‘mohants’, Rajiv Gandhi took a step to placate the conservative ‘mullahs’ of the Muslim community. On 19 May 1986, he passed a law—the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986. This overturned a Page 8 of 18

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Democracy in India Supreme Court judgement of 1985 (in what was known as the Shah Bano case), which upheld the right of divorced Muslim women to claim maintenance from their ex-husbands. The new law—despite the deceptive title—virtually granted protection to the patriarchal values of orthodox Muslim society by denying the women the right granted to them by the Supreme Court, on the plea that ‘there should be no interference with the personal laws’ of the community. Despite such acrobatic games of placating orthodox religious sentiments at the upper levels of the democratic structure, the Indian state’s institutions at the lower levels, dominated by the upper-caste Hindu functionaries, generally display their majoritarian bias and prejudices in their treatment of Muslims. The Sachar Committee (constituted by the Indian government) has come out with shocking evidence of discrimination against the minority Muslim community in every sphere—education, administration, civil society—in blatant violation of the secular principles of the Indian Constitution. The widespread killing of Muslims —after the demolition of the Babri masjid in 1992, and in Gujarat in 2002 (in connivance with the BJP-led state administration)—have left a permanent scar on India’s secular image.

(p.284) Neoliberal Reforms and Subversion of Democracy The corrosion in the democratic institutions of governance and the erosion in the values of a democratic culture have coincided with the initiation of the so-called economic reforms of neoliberalism in the early 1990s by the Congress Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. They opened up the market for exploitation by enterprising investors unrestrained by any state intervention, which led to unfettered flow of liquid funds and encouraged the entry of unscrupulous business interests into the parliamentary sphere. Within a decade, the country was pushed into the jaws of financial fraud and brazen nepotism which, over the last several years, have been sanctioned in covert ways by the political leaders and administrators, leading to the gradual disintegration of the ethical base of a democratic culture. During Rao’s regime, the ruling Congress party was publicly accused of bribing Members of Parliament (MPs), obviously with the free-flowing unaccountable cash, to save the government during a trust vote. This was an unheard of scandal in the history of the Indian Parliament. Such practices received further boost under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee from the late 1990s till 2004, which got embroiled in scandals like Coffingate (profiteering over the import of caskets for soldiers killed at Kargil), allotment of petrol pumps to members of the ruling coalition, selling off of public sector establishments like the Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd (BALCO), Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd (IPCL), and Centaur Hotel to large private companies at throwaway prices. Under the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government headed by the Congress Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—a champion of neoliberalism—the nexus of politicians, bureaucrats, corporate honchos, and mafia dons has taken the danse macabre of corruption to its nadir. Page 9 of 18

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Democracy in India Scams are bursting out like crackers in a bizarre fireworks of skulduggery—the stink over the Commonwealth Games (CWG); the 2G spectrum swindle; the revelations of the Niira Radia tapes exposing complicity of politicians, industrialists, and media personalities in the manipulation of government policies; the chicanery around the Mumbai Adarsh Housing estate allotments; illegal loans given by the (p.285) Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) to real estate companies; corruption charges against army top brass; among many others. These scams, though offensive to traditional ethical values, have become inevitable accessories to the neoliberal model of economic growth that the Indian state has adopted. By its very orientation towards the privileged and powerful investors, this model needs for its implementation the existing instrumentalities of corruption and crime. Without underhand deals with ministers and bureaucrats, how can the corporate honchos seize chunks of the 2G spectrum (in the telecom sector, which is ironically enough, touted as the most successful example of the benefits of ‘reform’!)? Or oust villagers from their homes to set up five-star hotels, luxury housing estates, and entertainment parks—all of which are the brand names for India’s economic growth? Commenting on the situation, two Supreme Court judges—Justice B. Sudershan Reddy and Justice S.S. Nijjar—in a judgement delivered on 4 July 2011, observed that in neoliberal economics, ‘market begins to function like a bureaucratic machine dominated by big business, and the State begins to function like the market’.

A Fractured Judiciary This brings us to the role of the judiciary—the other major institution in the Indian democratic system. Barring a few honest and bold judgements (as the one referred to before), its actions have also come under a cloud recently—with allegations of nepotism against state high court judges, and to cap it all, the sensational revelation by a veteran Supreme Court lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, that half of the apex court’s 16 chief justices were corrupt. The pillar is not only being eaten away by termites in the shape of inept and corrupt judges, but is also fissured along different ideological affinities of individual judges. Its intervention in certain controversial issues has revived the long-standing duel between the executive and the judiciary, and also revealed the risks involved in the disproportionately discretionary powers that judges often enjoy. Some of the Supreme Court judgements have taken a lot of flak from secular-minded people and civil rights activists. One such judgement was the infamous verdict of Justice J.S. Verma in 1995, when he upheld the concept (p.286) of Hindutva as ‘a way of life’ and approvingly described it as ‘development of uniform culture by obliterating the differences between all the cultures coexisting in the country’. This flew in the face of the Indian Constitution’s fundamental commitment to preserving unity in diversity and pluralism in culture. His judgement reversed an order by the Bombay High Court that had earlier struck down the election of the Page 10 of 18

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Democracy in India Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi on the ground that he sought votes by promising to make Maharashtra the ‘first Hindu state’—an announcement that again went against the secular provisions of the Indian Constitution. Justice Verma’s verdict quashing the Bombay High Court judgement gave a direct boost to the Hindu communal forces. From around the same time—the mid-1990s—we find the Supreme Court also increasingly favouring a pro-authoritarian statism, sacrificing the civil liberties of citizens in favour of the all-devouring concern of ‘national security’ as defined by the Indian government. It sanctioned constitutional validity to some of the most draconian legislations like the AFSPA, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA)—rejecting several appeals against their enactment by groups of civil liberties activists. Although the TADA and the POTA have been repealed—following both domestic and international pressures from human rights activists—the Indian government has grafted most of the provisions of those two Acts into a newly enacted UAPA. The anti-democratic attitude of the Supreme Court towards prisoners held under this Act was displayed during the long fight over the case of Dr Binayak Sen—an internationally recognized physician working among the tribals of Chhattisgarh. As an activist involved in the civil rights movement, he protested against the violation of human rights of his tribal patients by the police and a statesupported private mercenary army called the Salwa Judum. In retaliation, a vindictive Chhattisgarh administration arrested him in May 2007 under UAPA and the Chhattisgarh Public Security Act. For the next four years, despite repeated appeals, the apex court refused to grant him bail. It was only in 2011, that a bench of Supreme Court judges allowed him bail—after prolonged pressures from human rights activists in India and abroad, and reputed physicians from all over the world. (p.287) Supreme Court verdicts vary from one bench of judges to another, depending on the socio-religious bias or political sympathies of individual judges. Judgements passed by India’s apex court during the last several years, thus, reflect a curious mixture of quasi-religious opinions (like the definition of ‘Hindutva’) on the one hand, and enlightened progressive decisions on the other (like the institution of Public Interest Litigation, which allows any citizen to approach the apex court for the redressal of grievances that he might be suffering from authoritarian actions by the administration). Further, at least two recent judgements by Supreme Court benches, through intervention in the domain of the executive, have indeed given relief to sections of the rural poor, and a third judgement has put in the dock the Indian government for its shillyshallying over the issue of corruption. In the first judgement in July 2011, the apex court declared illegal the Salwa Judum, ‘Koya Commandos’, Special Police Officers, and similar paramilitary forces (raised by the government to fight Maoist insurgency)—which had acquired notoriety in the state of Chhattisgarh for their atrocities on the non-combatant common villagers—and directed the Page 11 of 18

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Democracy in India government to disarm them. Soon after, another bench of the Supreme Court quashed the Uttar Pradesh government’s forcible acquisition of farm lands from unwilling villagers (under the emergency provisions of the Land Acquisition Act). The bench held the state government guilty of violating the provisions of the law by transferring the acquired land from industrial to residential purposes. The judgement has far-reaching implications for farmers in other parts of India also, where government officials are acquiring land from them—often forcibly with the help of the ‘emergency provisions’—in the name of public interest (like industrial development), but then selling them off at higher prices to private builders who are constructing residential complexes, five-star hotels, and entertainment parks for the urban rich. The Supreme Court judgement may halt this practice to some extent. The third recent Supreme Court judgement has indicted the central government for dragging its feet in recovering the black money stashed away by corrupt businessmen and politicians in Swiss banks and elsewhere. It has set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to be headed by two retired Supreme Court judges to investigate into and monitor all black moneyrelated cases. (p.288) These recent instances of judicial activism by some of the judges, who openly express distrust in the capacity of the legislature and the executive to protect the democratic rights of the citizens, have evoked debates in the Indian press and among parliamentarians. Questions are being raised about the limits of the jurisdiction of courts, and whether they are usurping the powers of the executive and the legislature. The separation of powers enjoyed by the three institutions should surely be respected. But the more important question is the duty to respect and protect the basic democratic rights of the citizens. Have the three institutions adhered to their respective codes in carrying out this fundamental duty? As for the legislature, parliamentary privileges have been thoroughly abused by the elected representatives for their personal gains, the most disgraceful examples being the cash-for-votes scandals—the one mentioned earlier that took place during the Rao regime, and the other in 2008 on the floors of Parliament under the tenure of the first UPA. What was even worse in the first case was the complicity of the judiciary which granted immunity to the MPs who were accused of accepting bribes. As for the bureaucracy, over the last few years, increasing cases of corruption involving senior officials of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) like director-generals, chief secretaries, who manned different departments of the administration both at the Centre and states have come to light. Income-tax commissioners and heads of the customs departments have been caught in the net of bribery. If in this miasma of total evaporation of professional ethics in the higher echelons of governance, a few assertive judges trespass into their domain to compel them to implement measures for the restoration and protection of the democratic rights of the poor, should we go along with them or the pedantic commentators in the media who insist on legal niceties about the territorial sovereignty of the three institutions? Page 12 of 18

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Democracy in India They are not water-tight compartments. Under the Indian Constitution, they are expected to collaborate to guarantee the citizens the fundamental rights that they are entitled to. At the same time, it must be pointed out that these recent verdicts by a few judges in favour of the poor, are exceptions to the rule. By and large—especially at the lower levels—the Indian judiciary largely remains dominated by high court judges and judicial magistrates, who subscribe to outmoded socio-moral values (heavily (p.289) biased against rights of women, depressed castes like Dalits and tribals, and religious minorities), and favour the interests of the upper classes. If allowed to prevail, their judicial activism may turn into judicial autocracy.

Crisis of Democracy in India: Institutional and Moral It is primarily the collective failure of the functionaries of all the three institutions that hold up the structure of Indian democracy to adhere to their respective responsibilities and codes of conduct, which has led to the present crisis that democracy is facing in India. The causes can be identified as: (a) the emergence of a new generation of careerist politicians, devoid of any ideological beliefs, in the post-Independence era; (b) the rise of identity-based ethnic, provincial, and religious politics that is intolerant of the pluralism of a democratic society; (c) the reinforcement of the conservative values and norms of a feudal hierarchical society of the past; and (d) more importantly, in the present phase of globalization, the emergence of a corporatocracy (the term used by John Perkins in his 2005 book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, to describe the oligarchy of privileged members of political parties, bureaucracy, financial institutions, judiciary, and powerful industrial magnates), which has almost taken over the institutional structures of the Indian democratic system, and made them define and shape public policies to meet its requirements. The executive, the legislature, and the judiciary are either being subverted from within, or reorganized from without, to serve this new oligarchy. Members from among India’s new generation of bureaucrats, politicians, industrialists, judges, and media magnates, whose mentalities have been shaped by the laissez-faire of ‘liberalization’ of the Narasimha Rao–Manmohan Singh era, have found their way into these institutions, and are manipulating the nuts and bolts of the constitutional mechanisms to further their respective interests which coalesce in a nefarious collective endeavour. The most revealing illustration of such collaboration is provided by the conversations recorded in the Nira Radia tapes over manipulating the appointment of ministers to favour corporate interests in the distribution of the 2G spectrum facilities. It is obvious that the regulatory mechanisms (p.290) of the Indian state are no longer solid and pure enough to prevent such aberrations in the world’s largest democracy.

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Democracy in India In order to legitimize these aberrations in a system of parliamentary democracy as followed in India, the corporatocracy needs a change in the social environment that would fashion the collective mood in favour of its operations. The Indian media have come to its aid. The much lauded Fourth Estate has connived with the corporatocracy—as well as with the state institutions dominated by it—to create a social ambience that would accept their acts of perfidy. It has succeeded in moulding a consumerist environment that immunizes the body politic against any moral repulsion towards corruption in general, and opens up layers of avenues to the various sections of the public to join the amoral race of self-aggrandizement. To help shape this environment, the mainstream media has opened up ample space for leading economists and political commentators, who toe the official line of lauding consumerism, as a sign of economic growth brought about by the post-1991 neoliberal reforms. Being a part of the club of beneficiaries, they naturally ignore the stark reality of the sufferings of the people at the grass roots, which can never be captured by the selective methodology of statistics collected by academicians or government agencies. Starvation and malnutrition among the rural poor, upper-caste oppression on Dalits, and exploitation of tribals under a still-continuing feudal dispensation in backward districts, coexist with the new forms of deprivation introduced by the same much-lauded ‘neoliberal reforms’, under which the state and corporate magnates displace villagers from their lands to make way for mining operations and industrial projects, and dislodge the urban poor from their homes and trades to set up shopping malls in the retail sector or organize spectacular entertainments like the CWG. The mainstream press and TV channels have also served as a handmaiden of the corporatocracy-driven Indian state’s propagation of the need to curb democratic rights of certain sections of our people for the sake of national security, as in Kashmir, the northeast, and the Maoist insurgency affected tribal areas in the heartland. The TV channels in particular have specialized in a type of talk shows, often in the form of panel discussions, where the anchors whip up a securityobsessed nationalist xenophobia against any dissenting voice that may protest (p.291) against the Indian state’s anti-democratic policies. The latest instance is the media’s witch hunting of Indian social activists and journalists who had been voicing their protest against human rights violation in Kashmir at international forums, some of which happened to be organized by the US-based Kashmiri Ghulam Fai—who has now been found to be funded by the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This revelation has provided these media functionaries and commentators with an opportunity to brand these Indian human rights activists (whom they had been gunning for all these years) as ISI agents. But such witch-hunting violates the democratic right of any Indian citizen to speak at any forum to put forward views that may be at variance with the Indian state’s official views. We, thus, find that the democratic space for public discourse on controversial issues is fast shrinking. A social Page 14 of 18

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Democracy in India ambience is being deliberately created to fashion an amoral public mentality and dumb down political dissent. The records narrated earlier expose how in India today, justice can be vaporized to suit the political powers, by either co-option, bribing or intimidation of the judiciary, and corruption and crime can gain a grudging social nod, and even legitimacy, as necessary instrumentalities for economic growth. Media—the other arm of democracy—purveys news and opinions as hormones to motivate a public with pure self-interest and desire for conspicuous consumption. Rights under democracy are being reinterpreted as the freedom of avaricious individuals to work up their way by hook or by crook to join the nouveau riche, and create enclaves of their own choosing, which stick out like sore thumbs from amid the vast swathes of poverty and social discrimination. India has, thus, become a classic example of how a democratic society can be insidiously turned into a semi-totalitarian society where the common citizens are captives in the neoliberal market of conformity, and where a coterie of likethinking individuals wielding power and influence, manipulate concurrence on every side in favour of their gluttony.

Prerequisites for Political and Social Changes The questions that we face are how to (a) restore the spirit of democracy in the existing institutions; (b) establish effective centres (p.292) of democratic functioning at the grassroots level; and (c) create the culture of democracy in our society, particularly among its traditional, conservative, and the modern nouveau riche sections? Regarding the first—democratization of the three pillars—executive, legislature, and judiciary—the values and norms of democracy that are built into the Indian Constitution, still continue to provide assets to the civil liberties groups to build up pressures on these institutions to concede to the democratic rights of the common people. During the first UPA regime, measures like guarantee of rural employment, protection of the rights of forest dwellers, and public right to information (however imperfect and inadequate) were enacted under these pressures. But as in the past, these egalitarian measures in their implementation, have been subverted by the coterie of local political party apparatchiks, traders, and lower-level bureaucrats (for example, subdivisional officers, block development officers, thana policemen), through the siphoning off of the funds meant for rural employment, and suppression of the rights of the forest dwellers. In the case of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, activists who dared to demand information about illegal operations indulged in by senior bureaucrats in league with powerful politicians, were killed by hired goons employed by these people. Till 2011, at least three RTI activists have been killed —Satish Shetty, Shashidhar Mishra, and Lalit Mehta. Past experiences have shown that recourse to the judiciary for the redressal of such cases of injustice Page 15 of 18

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Democracy in India takes years. The judicial system then needs to purge itself of judges whose personal, conservative, and orthodox mindset and political bias, violate the basic tenets of our Constitution by delaying, and thus denying justice to the poor and their representatives. Mass movements at the district and village level to whiplash local bureaucrats and judicial officers to adhere to the constitutional norms can be a form of struggle to restore, or reinvent democracy. In a recent endeavour to rid the institutions of corruption, the Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare and his followers resorted to the means of satyagraha, and succeeded in compelling the UPA government at the centre to take them as partners in the formulation of a Lokpal Bill (providing for the appointment of an ombudsman to deal with complaints of the common citizens against government institutions). The experiment failed with their differing among other things, (p. 293) over the issue of bringing the prime minister under the jurisdiction of the ombudsman. But both Hazare’s agitation, however well-meaning it might be, and the government’s official draft of the Bill, formulated under popular pressure, touch only the surface of the problem of corruption, ignoring the need to overhaul the basic socio-economic structure and reverse government policies that encourage corruption. A Lokpal Bill, even if enacted, will therefore be yet another cosmetic legislation that will remain ineffective, as many other similar normative measures. When we talk about the second issue—establishing effective centres of democratic functioning at the grass-roots level—we may recall our experiment with the panchayati system. Decentralization of power through that system was expected to educate and empower the villagers at the bottom to take part in decision-making. But in many parts of the country, it has been hijacked by the rural vested interests, a new sub-elite from among the villagers, who have replicated the same pattern of corruption and criminal coercion that we are familiar with in the upper echelons of our society. The sarpanchs (panchayat heads), who are elected by the villagers from among their own people, soon develop ambitions, and adopt as their role models the local MLAs, who wield authority through their muscle power, or the MPs who have made money through crooked means. Social audit of the functioning of panchayats in some villages in Ajmer, in Rajasthan, shows that funds amounting to crores meant for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have been misappropriated by sarpanchs.3 This brings me to the third question that I had raised—the creation of a culture of democracy at the grass-roots level, both in the rural and urban sectors. By this I mean the moulding of a social ethos of egalitarianism—an all-round sociocultural environment where people will prioritize demands for (a) economic equity and social justice through democratic institutions and praxis; (b) accountability from the functionaries of these institutions; (c) end to obscurantist religious practices and xenophobia that violate human rights; (d) Page 16 of 18

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Democracy in India recognition of the distinct cultural identity of ethnic and other minorities, accompanied by social reforms within their communities; and (e) space for dissent. It may be noted that these demands are well (p.294) within the purview of the Indian Constitution’s Directive Principles and Fundamental Rights. Well-organized efforts by civil society and secular political organizations to create such an environment will marginalize the divisive trends that emanate from the sectarian demands of the various religious, caste-based, ethnicchauvinist groups, as well as ostracize individuals and groups that thrive on profiteering and political careerism.

Looking Forward to an ‘Indian Spring’ There is a need for an ‘Indian Spring’ to address all these three concerns that have been raised above. The recent ‘Arab Spring’, despite its earlier hopes, remains confused and divided regarding its goals, and is consequently being exploited by domestic vested interests—like the army in Egypt, or Islamic fundamentalists elsewhere—and threatened by the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military intervention in Libya and Syria. To avoid a similar fizzling out of popular protests, we in India need a cohesive public movement with a coherent long-term programme to reclaim civic space and transform the basic iniquitous system. It has already begun with the creation of the National Alliance of People’s Movements and other such formations which, through their mass agitations, have often been able to pressurize the legislature to recognize some of their demands, and the judiciary to pass orders to the executive to implement the changes that they had been demanding. These three institutions in India can, thus, still be utilized by social activists and human rights groups to extract occasional concessions in favour of democratic rights of citizens—but have to be constantly whiplashed by these groups to implement those concessions. This perpetual tension between an intransigent state’s reluctance to recognize democratic rights and the popular urge for the assertion of those rights, has often exploded into armed confrontations—over issues like the exploitation of tribals and forest dwellers, and acquisition of land from farmers. Even nonviolent agitations by the rural poor against encroachment on their lands have been met with violent reprisals by the state—reiterating again the image of India as a ‘paramilitary democracy’. In order to restore the spirit of democracy, there is the urgent need for channelizing these current popular movements (p.295) into a path of long-range strategies so that the prevailing oligarchic and militarist configuration of power in our society is totally dismantled to make way for the emergence of an alternative system of democratic participation. It requires a theoretical and strategic groundwork to integrate the various streams of public protests in India—ranging from agitations by vast sections of the rural population (against SEZs, encroachment on their lands by the corporate sector), industrial proletariat and unorganized labourers (for increased wages and security of jobs), and armed struggles by peasants (in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Page 17 of 18

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Democracy in India and other areas against feudal oppression and incursions by industrial interests), on the one hand, to active intervention by public intellectuals and lawyers through the press, and on the floors of the courts, on the other. It is only such a groundwork which can restore the loud and clear voice to the suffering poor, enabling them to speak back to the rulers in a tone ringing with confidence in the prospects for an alternative socio-economic order that will reinvent democracy in India by creating institutions of governance ‘of the Indian people, by the Indian people, and for the Indian people’. Notes:

(1) . See http://socialwatchindia.net/news/rise-of-themillionaires-in-commonmens-house (accessed 22 October 2010). (2) . See http//newsleaks.in/ten-crorepatis-in-mamata-banerjees-ministry (accessed 27 May2011). (3) . See The Hindu, 9 January 2011.

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Index

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

(p.305) Index aam admi (the common man) 35 aboriginal property claims, in settler colonies 109–10 Abu-Lughod, Lila 113n10 accumulation by dispossession 21 Adarkar, Neera 26 adibasis/adivasis 106–9, 111, 277 Advani, L.K. 175, 181–5, 283 adverse drug reaction (ADR) 205–6 affluent worker, convergence between middle class and 40 Afghanistan militant Islam in 135 Soviet intervention in 1979 145, 149 African Traditional Religions (ATR) 160n11 Agamben, Giorgio 244–6, 250, 257, 266 agrarian change 11–13 Akhand Bharat 254 Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS) 169 Akoijam, A. Bimol 17, 243–67 Alavi, Hamza 199 Alkire, Sabina 224 All India Congress Committee 132n4 All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) 73 All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) 148 Ambagudia, Jagannath 104, 106 Ambedkar, B.R. 105 Amin, Shahid 268n7 Anand, Nikhil 22 Andersen, Walter 169 ‘Anna Hazare Roadshow’ 118 anti-Islamic backlash 135 anti-Muslim pogrom (2002), in Gujarat 8, 183, 185 Page 1 of 22

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Index Appadurai, Arjun 10, 100, 118 Appleby, R. Scott 136 Application Integrity Policy (AIP) 209 Arab Spring 294 aristocracy of public sector labour, in India 73 Arjun Sengupta Committee Report 281 Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) 17, 245–6, 258–65, 269n23, 281, 286 Arthur, Paul 160n13 Ashmore, Malcolm 195 Association for Democratic Reforms and New Elections Watch 281 Ayodhya mosque, mass mobilizations by BJP and its organizations at 146 azaan, conflicts in Indian cities over 33 Aziz, Faisal 153 Aziz, Mazhar 150 (p.306) Babri masjid/mosque, in Ayodhya 179, 181–2, 283 Bachchan, Amitabh 223, 229–31 Bajpai, Rochana 104 Bakari, Mohammed A. 141, 155 Banerjee-Guha, Swapna 21 Banerjee, Mamata 281 Banerjee, Sumanta 17, 273–95 Banerji, Debabar 200 Bano, Masooda 136 barey log 36 Battle of Bombay (1956) 23 Baviskar, Amita 27, 111 Baxter, Craig 176 Benjamin, Walter 20, 23, 260 Bernstein, Eduard 80 berozgaar (‘unemployed’) 44 Béteille, André 4, 14, 17n2, 41–2, 74n2, 79–97, 100–1, 119, 123 Bhabha, Homi 249, 253, 268n7 Bhagwat, Mohan 190n1 bhajan mandalis (yoga camps) 127 Bhanot, Lalit 241n12 Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd (BALCO) 284 Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) 169 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 138, 144–7, 160n8, 228, 279 in 1998–2004 182–5 as a moderate party (1980–9) 177–80 in opposition 185–6 radical phase (1989–98) 180–2 Bhargava, Rajiv 141 Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) 12 Bhatt, Mahesh 132n5 Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) 40 built with Soviet collaboration in 1950s 49 conflicts in mines between workers 73 division of industrial workforce 50 Page 2 of 22

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Index housing stock of 74n7 management by SAIL 49 middle class workers of 41, 69–70 absenteeism from work 48 comparison with British working class 47 impact of rewards on work efficiency 43 interest in next drink 42 performance of dirty and physically demanding tasks 43 mothers of households 51 school system of 75n8 township 50–1 workers market situation of 53–61 middle-class lifestyles of 69 status situation of 64–9 work situation of 61–4 Bhushan, Prashant 132n3, 285 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali 149 Blair, Tony 135 blasé attitude 31 Borrows, John 109 Bose, Sumantra 152 bourgeoisie 86 (see also proletariat; working class) Brahmin, as role model 10 Brass, Paul R. 142, 144 Braverman, H. 75n15 Brazil, a revanchist city 21 Brhlikova, Petra 209–10, 214n2, 216n14 Britain, miners and steelworkers in 73 ‘Brown Englishmen’ 200–1 Brown, Wendy 113n1 (p.307) Bukharin, N.V. 80 burgeoning cities, in South Asia 20–1 Burke, Edmund 129 Burns, Tom 195 Bush, George W. 135 Cabinet Mission 109 Campagin against Corruption 27, 117–20, 122, 128–30 (see also Hazare, Anna; Jan Lokpal Bill) Campbell, Horace 144 ‘Can India Fly’ (Dipankar Gupta) 223 capacity for coexistence 28 Carothers, Thomas 266 Casanova, Jose 135, 160n7 caste(s) -based politics 11 composition of Indian middle class 95 as discrete groupings 11 domination on Indian society 100 Page 3 of 22

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Index as grammar for conducting democratic politics 100 hierarchy idea 10 patriotism 10 proud of its identity 10 quotas 96–7 traditional occupational structure association with 85 upliftment of status by lower 10 Catholic democrats 167 Catholic wave of democratization, in Latin America 137 Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) 72 Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, New Delhi 200 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 100 Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), Nigeria 149, 157 Chandavarkar, Raj 24, 26 Chatterjee, Partha 21, 25, 34, 132n6, 253, 255, 268n8, 269n15 Chatterji, Roma 30 Chattopadhyay, Bankimchandra 255 Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha 73 Chhattisgarh Public Security Act 286 citizenship 7, 15, 69–74 institutionalization of 8 liberal-statist framework 17 link between civil society and 127 purpose of civil society 125 as redressal strategy 244–6 weakest aspect of 16 City of Gold film 26 civic self-organization, neoliberal valorization of 33 Civic United Front (CUF), Nigeria 149, 157 civil society 15, 132n6 and associational life 125–8 Hazare's campaign against corruption 117–18 idea of 121–5 media campaign as an expression of 117 and movement, differentiation between 119 movements and 128–32 claim for title, by tribes 110 class concept, of Weber 46 class(es) (see middle class/communities) consciousness 69–74 contradiction and conflict (p.308) advancement through polarization of 79 Marxists’ views on 80 reproduction 69–74 class resentment, notion of 33 class situation of group, consists of market situation 46 clinical trials, of medicines 211–13 Clinton, Bill 230 coalition politics 167, 174–5 Coffingate scandals 284 Page 4 of 22

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Index Cohn, Bernard 100 colonial city(ies) homes to multitude of religious and cultural minorities 23 spaces in 23 colonial urban planning, principles of 25–6 Commonwealth Games (CWG) in 2010, Delhi 120, 223, 233–6, 284 communalism 6, 8, 28 communal movements 6 Communist Party of India (CPI) 73, 143 Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI (M) 72–3 Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (John Perkins) 289 conflictual arrangement, among parties 159n6 Congress (Organization) 174 Congress party 24, 113n4, 144, 154–5, 167, 284 consensual arrangement, among parties 159n6 Constitutional Assembly Debates (CAD) 102, 104–10 consumer expenditure 87 contemporary India, feature of 223 context 2 The Context of Ethnicity (Dipankar Gupta) 6 Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 75n14 contract research organizations (CROs) 211–12 Contributions to Indian Sociology (Dipankar Gupta) 1 Corbridge, Stuart 145–6 corruption 15 in 2010 Commonwealth Games (CWG) Delhi 120 Team Anna campaign against 27, 122 Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City film 36n3 cosmopolitanism of bazaar 30 of upper-middle class 30 cosmopolitan medicine 215n1 Country–Town Nexus (Dipankar Gupta) 12 crime rates, rise in US 276 criminalizing untouchability 105 Crook, Nigel 202 cultural differences 101, 112 Culture, Space and the Nation-State (Dipankar Gupta) 7 current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) 209–10 Dalits 103, 179, 256, 267 Damle, Shriddhar 169 Das, Veena 144 Datta, Ayona 30 Davey, H.T. 176 Davis, Mike 20 Day, S. E. 69 de Certeau, Michel 20, 22, 25, 31 (p.309) decolonization, 142, 277 deep-rooted schism, notion of 240 Page 5 of 22

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Index Deleuze, Gilles 240n2 Delhi-6 film 27 democracy 15, 95 Asian model of 266 as concept and praxis 274 formal institutions of 117, 119 in India crisis of 289–91 experiments with 276–9 fractured judiciary 285–9 representative to representative oligarchy 280–1 liberal (see Liberal democracy) mark of civility for basic rights of others 127 neoliberal reforms and subversion of 284–5 parliamentary 281–4 presentation of civil society for individual concerns 117–18 democratic citizenship 121 governments 119–20 Deneulin, Séverine 136, 158 Deoras, Babasaheb 175, 178, 190n1 Department for International Development (DFID), UK 136 Desai, Morarji 174 Desai, Sonalde B. 213 Dhillon, Kirpal 264–5 Dhobi Ghat film 27 difference double play of 223 necessity of 223 differentiated polities 139 differentiated regimes electoral mobilizations of religious demands 146–9 religions of resistance into religions of revolution in, transformation of 151–4 religious discrimination post-9/11 in 154–6 differentiation 160n7 difference between integration and 139 dimensions of 159n5 types of 137–8, 158 Dinham, Adam 161n18 Dirks, Nicholas 100 disgust, notion of 33 distribution of income 87 diversity 105 Djurfeldt, Goran 202 dual membership controversy 175, 177, 186 Dugger, Celia W. 241n7 Dumontian model 100 Dumont, Louis 10 Dunning, W.A. 267 Page 6 of 22

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Index Ecks, Stefan 205, 207 economic liberalization, in India 144–5 economic policies of India, after 1991 22 economic restructuring 226 educated, difference between uneducated and 88 education in India, advancement of 89 electoral democracy 101, 111 embourgeoisement, of proletarian vanguard 14, 40 employment status, of middle class 84 (p.310) encounters with strangers 28 enlightened modernism 150 (see also Musharraf, Pervez) enlightenment 122–3 Eric Wolf/Krishna Bhardwaj Award (2004), to Dipankar Gupta 12 ethnic conflicts 6, 144 ethnicity challenge of 5–9 Gupta’s work on 15 ethnic movements 6 violence 8 extreme left parties 166–7 Fabian, Johanes 113n10 faith-based organization (FBO) 137, 144, 155 Falola, Toyin 148 Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) 281 Feldhaus, Anne 24 Ferguson, James 45, 113n10, 226–7 Fernandes, George 184 Finkelstein, Maura 25 Fischer, Michael J. 113n10 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), US 207, 209–10 Ford Foundation 29, 118 mobilization of American social scientists in 1950s 29 formal education 89 Foucault, Michel 265–6 fracture as strategy 237–8 Franke, Marcus 152 Freedom of Religion Bills 146 free market 123 French Declaration of 1889 245 French Revolution 129 Frøystad, Kathinka 28 fundamentalist Christianity 135 Gadkari, Nitin 186 galli 32 Gandhi, Ajay 30 Gandhian socialism 177 Gandhi, Indira 173–5, 189 Gandhi, Mahatma 131, 259 Page 7 of 22

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Index Gandhi, Rajiv 178–9, 189, 283 Ganesh Utsav 23 Geiser, Urs 153 Gell, Alfred 106 Gellner, David 27 General Medical Council (GMC), Britain 201 gentrification, of mill lands of Mumbai and Ahmedabad 26–7 Ghassem-Fachandi, Parvis 36n3 Ghosh, Swapan Kanti 281 ghost of modernity 226–9 global assemblages meaning of 204 pharmaceuticals as 205–11 global capitalism, in India 21 Goffman, Erving 197 Goldthorpe, J.H. 40–2, 69, 81, 87, 90 Golwalkar, M.S. 168, 170 good governance 136 good people 36 (see also urban citizenship) goodwill towards all religions (sarva dharma sambhava) 141 Gould, Harold 172–3 Green Revolution technology 6 Grigson, W.V. 106 2G spectrum case 284, 289 Guha, Ramachandra 118 (p.311) Gulf War 135 Gulf War II 161n18 Gupta, Akhil 113n10 Gupta, Dipankar 4, 11–17, 34, 40, 79, 99, 121, 124, 152, 215n5, 243 addressing of making new internal boundaries 224 criticism of Louis Dumont 10 educational background of 3 morality and ethics, distinction between 8 study of Shiv Sena 5–6 Habermas, Jurgen 135 Halsey, A.H. 90 Hannerz, Ulf 113n10 Hansen, T.B. 20–36 Haqqani, Husain 150 Hariprasad, B.K. 132n4 Harriss, John 40, 46, 53, 145–6 Harvey, David 20–3 Hathi Committee Report (1975) 206 Haynes, Jeffrey 140, 153 Hazare, Anna 117–18, 120–1, 128–31, 292–3 health care issue, in India 16 health policy in colonial and postcolonial India 196–202 crude death rates, decline in 213 Page 8 of 22

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Index and ethnography, view from north Indian villages 202–5 regional variations in states 213 in Pakistan 196–206 Hedgewar, K.B. 168, 190n1 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 119, 123–4, 129, 240n2 hegemonic control 148, 160n13 Heilman, Bruce E. 148–9 Hiebert, P.G. 3 hierarchy(ies) Gupta’s view on 99 new 110–12 notion of 10 ritual 101, 103 Hindu Mahasabha 168, 170, 173 Hindu–Muslim bhai-bhai 28 Hindu nationalism 167 Hindu nationalist parties, in Indian political system 167 moderation thesis and 190 variables accounting for strategies of 188 Hindu tolerance, notion of 141 Hindutva 138, 146 Holmström, M. 40, 42, 45, 53, 59 Hope, Keith 90 Hull, Matthew 29 Ibrahim, Omar Farouk 148 identity Gupta's work on 15 politics 101 inclusion-moderation theory 166–7 Independence, Indian boundaries between small and lower rank since 92 marriage age for women during 93 state-religion relationships at 143 independent professionals 84 ‘India anthem,’ Bachchan video in 60th anniversary of Independence 223, 229 (p.312) Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) 184 Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) 184 Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) 97 Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) 97 Indian Medical Council (IMC) 201 Indian National Congress (INC) 95, 143 Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) 72 Indian Patents Rules of 2003 206 Indian people, notion of 9 Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd (IPCL) 284 ‘Indian Spring’ 294–5 ‘India Shining’ campaign, by BJP 228, 240n4 informal labour 227–8 informal sector (kaam) 14 Page 9 of 22

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Index integrated polities 139 integration 137 of tribes 106 integrationist regimes religions of resistance into religions of revolution in, transformation of 151–4 religious discrimination post-9/11 in 154–6 statist c-option of religious demands and organizations by 149–51 intelligibility in city 33–6 intermediate class 80 internal alterity 223, 237 internal boundaries 224, 237–8 internal other, in post-reform decades 224 International Journal of Health Services 200 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 145 Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) 291 Iranian Revolution (1979) 135, 153 Islam/Islamic/ Islamicization/Islamization 141–2, 149–50 articulation of alternate Islam issue, among Zanjibar youth 155 fundamentalists 294 governance 142 horizontal mobilizations 152 integration 138–9 militant, 135 political, 138 radicalism 152–3 religious terrorism in name of, 135 in states religion of Pakistan 143, 149–50 Islamophobia 155 IT service sector in India, contribution to GDP 228, 241n6 Jaffrelot, Christophe 15–16, 165–90 Jamaat-e-Islami 187 Jana Sangh dual membership controversy 177 emergence in 1951 167, 170 incomplete moderation (1968–79) 173–7 sectarianism (1951–67) 170–3 transformation from radical niche party to uncompromising coalition 167–8 (p.313) Janata Dal (United) 186, 192n17 Janata Party 175, 177 janjatis 111 Jan Lokpal Bill 118, 120, 130, 132n6, 292–3 (see also Hazare, Anna) jati puranas 10 Jayal, Niraja G. 118 Jeffery, Patricia 216n6 Jeffery, Roger 16, 44, 195–215 Jharkhand Party 113n4 jhuggi-jhopris (hutments) 66 jihad 135 Jinnah, Mohammad Ali 142 Page 10 of 22

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Index Jodhka, Surinder S. 1–17, 141, 144, 147, 154 Johnson, Chalmers 262, 264 Johnson, E.W. 173 Joshi, Manohar 286 Joshi, M.M. 185 Juergensmeyer, Mark 135 juridico-political model of power 244–6 kaam (‘work’) 43 kachchi (‘incomplete’ and ‘imperfect’) naukri 43 Kaiser, Paul J. 148–9 Kalyvas, Stathis 167 Kapila, Kriti 15, 99–113 Karlsson, Beppe 111 Kashmiri Ghulam Fai 291 Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire) 231 (see also Bachchan, Amitabh) Kaur, Raminder 23 Kaur, Ravinder 16, 221–40 Kazi, Seema 264 Khalistan movement, in Punjab 6–7 khap panchayats 275 Khilafat Movement 168 Khilnani, Sunil 104 Kingston, Paul W. 81 kisan movement 12 Kohli, Atul 163 Kothari, Rajni 125 Krishna, Anirudh 213 Krishna, K.B. 97 Kuper, Adam 113n10 Kymlicka, Will 243 labour aristocracy 41 manual (see manual labour) non-manual (see non-manual labour) language of difference 221 Lareau, Annette 81 late marriages, in India 94 Lefebvre, Henri 20, 22–3 left-wing radical parties, Indian 16 liberal democracy 246–59, 265–7 Liechty, M. 66, 74n6 Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) 285 Lincoln, Abraham 275 Lincoln, Bruce 161n15 Lindberg, Staffan 202 Living Biographies of Religious Leaders of the World (Jawaharlal Nehru) 172 Lockwood, D. 40, 44, 46–8, 66, 80, 87 Lohia, R.M. 174 Page 11 of 22

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Index Lok Dal 174–5 Lord Ram temple, rebuilding in Ayodhya 179, 283 low-ranked group 10 Luthria, Milan 26 Lyon, Andrew 216n6 (p.314) madhyam varg 65 Mahajan, Gurpreet 15, 117–33, 141, 144, 147, 154 Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) 293 Maitra, Pandit Lakshmi Kanta 247 Malik, Iftikhar 142 Mallet, S. 40–1 Mallya, Ernest T. 149 Mandal Commission 97, 278 Manjrekar, Mahesh 26 manual labour 41, 43–4, 69, 80, 88 Maoist movements, in Red Corridor in central and eastern India 112 market situation, of workers 47 marriages of choice, in India 94 Marshall, T.H. 73 Marxian approach to society 79 Marxian theory 5 Maton, Karl 195–6 Mayawati 278–9 Mbembe, Achille 23 McLuhan, Marshall 237 Medical Council of India (MCI) 201, 215n5 Mehta, Deepak 30 Menon, V.P. 260 Mera Bharat Mahan (My India Is Great) slogan 248 Merlan, Francesca 110 metropolitan life emergence in Europe and North America 20 heightened awareness and predominance of intelligence 31 Michels, Robert 166 middle class/communities 14, 35, 92 central place in sociological imagination 79 distinction between affluent worker and 40 blue-collar labour force and 41 distribution of income impact on 87 employment status of 84 existence of lower and upper class 86 formal education 89 increase in opportunities for individual mobility 90 in India/Indians caste composition 95 consumer expenditure 87 introduction of caste quotas by Britishers 96 knowledgeable about career advancement 85 Page 12 of 22

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Index preoccupations of 90 prominence after 1991 economic policy 81 reasons for fragmentation 93–4 regional variations in social gradations 92–3 internally differentiation and stratification of 92 Marxian views on 80 new occupational system 85 in UK 80 middleman (dalal) 44 militant Islam 135 militant secessionist movement among Sikhs, in Punjab 152 militias (Hindu defence movements) 168 (p.315) millet system, of Turkish Caliphate 139 Mills, C. Wright 2, 83 Minault, Gail 168 Mitchell, Clyde 32 Mitra, Amit 281 Mitra, H.N. 167 Mitra, Nripendra Nath 167 mobility of individuals 90–1 moderation process 166–7 moderation theory 16 modernity, Indian embourgeoisement, of proletarian vanguard (see embourgeoisement, of proletarian vanguard) Institutionalization of 4 representation of universalistic norms 4 as a value 4 modern office, emergence in nineteenth century 83 Modi, Narendra 184, 192n17 mohalla committees, formation during Bombay riots 28–9, 35 Mookerjee, Syama Prasad 170, 191n5 mool bharatiyas 111 morality and ethics, distinction between 8 Mufti, Mariam 142, 144–5, 149–50, 156, 160n14 Mukandala, Rwekaza 147, 161n19 Mukherjee, Mithi 104 Mukherjee, Pranab 132n4 mullah-military alliance, in Pakistan 150 Mumbai Adarsh Housing estate allotments scam 284 Munda, Jaipal Singh 105–10, 113n5 Murthy, N.R. Narayan 230 Musharraf, Pervez 149 Muslim communities alarming conditions of 29 neighbourhood in Mumbai 30–1 Muslim minority 168, 243 Muslim Personal Law 139–43, 147 Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 283 Page 13 of 22

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Index Nandy, Ashis 136, 259 Narayan, Jayaprakash 174 ‘National Agenda for Government’ in 1998, by BJP 182 National Alliance of People’s Movements 294 National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) 57, 75n9 National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) 143 National Cow Protection Bill (2003) 147 National Democratic Alliance (NDA) 146–7, 178, 183, 186, 284 (see also Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)) national elections performance of BJP 181 of Jana Sangh 171 National Health Service, UK 197 national identity India, embodied in Hindu culture 168 National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) 213 National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) 213 (p.316) National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) 213 naukri (‘service’) 43–4 Navarro, Vicente 200 Nayar, Baldev Raj 185 Nehru, Jawaharlal 106, 172–3, 189, 251–2, 254, 268n10, 268n16 Nehruvian ‘mixed economy’ 221 Nehruvian modernity 2, 6 neighbourliness 27–33 neighbours 27–33 neoliberal globalization 2 new India, notion of 221 new middle class 82–3, 88–9 The New York Times 229–30 Nichter, Mark 215n3 Nigam, Aditya 250 Nigeria current politics of 156 differentiation types in 158 ethnic conflicts in 144 federal principle of proportionality 148 integrationist pressures in 150 military interventions in 144–5 misuse of oil revenues 145 mobilization of religious demands 147 radical Islamist movements in 153 religious symbols and identities use in election campaigns 148 sharia law introduction in northern 151 social differences among Muslim in northern 153–4 state-religion relationships at Independence 143 state secularism association with Christian community 141–2 emergence of 141 Nigeria Inter-religious Council 156 Page 14 of 22

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Index Nigerian People’s Congress (NPC) 143 Nijjar, S.S. 285 Njozi, Hamza M. 155 Nolte, Insa 141, 144, 148, 150–1, 153, 156 non-adivasis 110 non-Brahmin professional classes 97 non-Congressism, notion of 174 (see also Lohia, R.M.) non-manual labour 41, 43–4, 69, 80, 88 non-manual occupations 89–90 non-preference doctrine 141 non-recognition, of tribal polities 106 non-religious parties, electoral mobilization of religious demands by 146–9 Norman, Wayne 243 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 294 Northeast Christian insurgents in 152 insignificance of 256 other 256 outside other 256 North West Frontier Province (NWFP) 150, 160n14 Nuttall, Sarah 23 Nyirabu, Mohabe 144–5 Obama, Barak 276 old middle class 82–5, 89 O’Leary, Brendan 160n13 (p.317) Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai film 26 organized sector employees benefits of 45 state sponsorship of 45 Other Backward Class (OBC) 96, 278–9 Overseas Development Administration (ODA) 198 Pakistan contemporary Islamist challenge to state 152 differentiation types in 158 ethnic conflicts in 144 integrationist regimes since 9/11 in 156 Islamic Republic creation in 142 militant Islam in 135 military intervention in 144 modernist elite struggle in 149 religious parties and organizations, characteristics of 150 religious parties role in 138–9 resistance to Islam’s encroachment into state 142 state-religion relationships at Independence 143, 149–50 structural adjustment programme in 145 Taliban 152 Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) 139, 149 pakki naukri 43 Pal, Bipin Chandra 254 Page 15 of 22

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Index Palshikar, Shreeyash 23 Pandey, Gyanendra 250, 260 paramilitary democracy 281–4 Parekh, Bhikhu 139 parliamentary democracy 281–4 Parry, Jonathan 14, 40–74 Parsons, Talcott 197 particularistic moralities 8 partition in 1947 8, 96, 183, 253–4, 259–60 Patel, Sardar 106, 250, 268n10 Patel, Vallabhai 107 Patidars in Gujarat, obsessed with white-collar employment 43 Patnaik, A.K. 278 People’s Democratic Party (PDP) 148 Perkins, John 289 permanent job (naukri) 14 Petryna, Adriana 211 Phadke, Y.D. 23 pharmaceuticals, as global assemblages 205–11 Philpott, Daniel 136–9, 158, 159n5, 160n6 Planning Commission 200 Pocock, D. 43, 49 political changes, prerequisites for 291–4 political Hinduism in India 135 Islam 138 order in city 33–6 psychology of liberal democracy 246–59 society 34 politicization, of religious identities in electoral competition 147–8 politics, Indian centrist politics 147 Hindu nationalist parties 167 organizing framework 137–40 The Politics of Health in India (Mark Nichter) 215n3 (p.318) Poona Pact of 1935 105 Popper, Karl 119 positive (p.319) discrimination 103 secularism 177–8 Post, Jerrold M. 247 postmodernist peasantologists 12 Povinelli, Elizabeth 109 Powell, Colin 276 pracharaks. 169 (see also Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)) Prakash, Gyan 23 Prasad, Rajendra 107, 113n6 Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) 258, 286 Page 16 of 22

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Index principled distance 141 proletariat 26, 40, 86, 295 public health centres (PHCs) survey, in India 200 public health trials 211–13 Punjab economic development and modernization in 6 Khalistan movement in (see Khalistan movement, in Punjab) Puranic Bharat 253 Putnam, Robert 126 Quit India movement 108, 267n4 quotas system 95, 97, 278 Radia, Nira 289 radical parties, in electoral system 166 radical political movements 135 Rai, Alok 255 Rakodi, Carole 136, 158 Ranbaxy 206, 209–10, 216n14 rank/ranking characteristics of 90 in Indian middle class 90 Rao, Nikhil 26, 30 Rao, P.V. Narasimha 189, 284, 289 rashtra chetna (the national consciousness) 256 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) 146, 160n8, 167–71, 175–6, 178, 180, 282 Rath Yatra movement, by BJP 181 Rau, B.N. 104 Raveendran, R.V. 278 Ray, Raka 27 reclaim citizenship 243 Reddy, B. Sudershan 285 Reddy, S. Jaipal 280 reformed India 229 religion(s) -based political movements 135–6 conversion into statistical model of minorities and majority 108–9 new roles in public life 143–5 organizing framework 137–40 of resistance transformation into religions of revolution 138, 145, 151–4 of revolution 138 as sociological category 101 tension between state and 137 Religions and Development Research Programme project 136 religious communities 6, 23, 26, 93–4, 137, 139–40, 151, 277 demands electoral mobilization of 146–9 statist c-option of 149–51 discrimination after 9/11 attack 154–6 Page 17 of 22

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Index minorities 8, 96, 106, 135 political parties 137 electoral mobilization of religious demands by 146–9 illiberal role in Pakistan 138–9 institutions to connect state and religion 138 Report on Governance and Development, 2010, by National Social Watch 280 Report on Minority Rights 107 Reports on the World Medicines Situation 205 representative oligarchy 280–1 reservations 72, 154–5 caste-based 95–6 in government jobs for religious minorities 278 Supreme Court judgement on 278 Rice, Condoleezza 276 Right to Information (RTI) Act 292 right to the city, in Kolkata through Bengali theatre 25 right-wing radical parties, Indian 16 right-wing radical political formations, in India 15–16 riots, in Bombay (1992–3) 28–9 Roberts, F.O.N. 145, 147–8, 151, 153 Robins, Robert S. 247 Roy, Arundhati 118 Roy, J.J.M. Nicholas 107 Roy, Olivier 135 Rudolph, Lloyd 147, 175 Rudolph, Suzanne Hoeber 147, 175 rule of law 122, 166, 189–90, 244, 265 Runciman, W. G. 80, 87 rural change 11–13 Sachar Committee Report (SCR) 29, 154, 283 Sáez, Lawrence 155 sahib log (the ‘sirs’) 47 Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti (SMS) protest against Nehru’s decision 23–4 (see also Battle of Bombay (1956)) tapped into regional sentiment 24 Sangh Parivar 169, 178, 182 Sanghvi, Vir 233, 241n14 Sanskritization, notion of 10 Santos, Maria Emma 224 sarkari naukri (government employment) 43 Sarva dharma samanaya (coexistence and harmony of all religions) slogan 282 Sassen, Saskia 204 Savarkar, V.D. 168 scalarity guaranteed equality, notion of 109 Scheduled Caste (SC) 103, 278 Scheduled Tribe (ST) 103, 110–11, 278 Scheduled Tribe (ST), of India 15 Schumpeter, Joseph 166 Schwedler, Jillian 166 Page 18 of 22

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Index Second Vatican Council (1962–5) 137 (p.320) sectarian identities 6 secularism Indian characteristics of 140–1 Hindu tolerance notion 141 Nehru’s commitment to 173 solution for management of diversity problems 141 in Nigeria and Tanzania 141 secular state, at Independence 140–3 self-employed persons/professionals 81, 83–6 (see also old middle class) semi-theocratic democracy 281–4 Sen, Binayak 286 Sennett, Richard 32 Shah Bano case 179–80, 283 Sharia Court of Appeal 141 Sharia law 135, 139, 150, 153–5, 157 Sharma, K.L. 12, 113n4, 113n5 Shiv Sena 5–6, 12, 34, 286 domestication of city’s public spaces 24 promotion of Maharashtrian street food 25 rise of 24 Sikh ethnicity 7 Simmel, Georg 20, 22 Singh, Charan 175, 177–8 Singh, Gurharpal 15, 135–59 Singh, Manmohan 284, 289 Singh, Rajendra 190n1 Singh, Rajnath 185 Singh, V.P. 180 singularity, of Indian civilization 252, 254–5 Sinha, Yashwant 186 slum bastis (‘neighbourhoods’) 43–4 Smith, Adam 123 Smith, Donald Eugene 140 Smith, Neil 21, 31 social activism 28 social anthropology 3 social changes, prerequisites for 291–4 social class(es) 46, 73, 86–7 social differences 9, 102, 153 social evaluation, of work 88 social grading of occupations, governance of 88 Socialist Party 174 social scientists in India, views about Indian society 3 social stratification meaning of 9 sociologists study of 90 Social Stratification (Dipankar Gupta) 9 Page 19 of 22

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Index sociological differences 101 sociological imaginations 2 (see also Mills, C. Wright) sociologists/social anthropologists in India assistance to economists and development planners 4 early generations of 3–4 in USA doubts over middle class concept 81 Sociology, in India 3 Soren, Shibu 279 South religion and politics in 158, 159n1 spatial aura 26 (see also urban spaces, cultural and social coding of) special economic zone (SEZ) 280, 294 (p.321) Special Investigation Team (SIT) 287 squatting 110 Sridharan, E. 75n10 Srinivas, M.N. 3 states definition by Max Weber 265 neutrality in religious affairs 147 States Reorganisation Committee (1955) 113n4 status, in Indian middle class 90 Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) 49 Stein, Howard 144 strangeness in city 22–7 strangers in city 22–7 ‘Streets Full of Life’ essay (Richard Sennett) 32 Sudarshan, K.S. 185, 190n1 Supreme Court of India Prashant Bhushan revelations on judges of 285 reservation benefits judgment 278 upheld recommendations of Mandal Commission 97 Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) 143–4, 148 Tanzania balancing of religious representation in 148 debate on Muslim socio-economic disadvantage 155 differentiation types in 158 IMF imposed structural adjustment in 1986 145 mobilization of religious demands 147 secular civic–territorial model of national identity, challenge to 144 state-religion relationships at Independence 143 state secularism accommodations of Muslim demands 142 after 1961 141 struggle between Muslim and Christian in 148 Team Anna, Campaign against corruption 27, 117–19 Tehelka magazine 36n3 Telugu Desam Party (TDP) 186 Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA) 258, 286 Page 20 of 22

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Index Thakkar, A.V. 107 Third Republic period (1991–2) 160n10 Third World country 5 Thorat, Sukhadeo 97 Tilak, Bal Gangadhar 23 tolerance as cosmopolitanism 30 as cultural-civilizational disposition 27–8 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). 206–7, 209 trade unions 34, 127 transitional class 80 tribe(s) birth of false debate for 104 debate in Constitutional Assembly 102, 104–10 Ghurye–Elwin debate on 102–3 matter of culture 103 Trinamool Congress 281 Tully, James 109 Turner, Terence 113n10 Uberoi, Patricia 17 (p.322) uncoerced human associations 122 unemployment 44, 48, 60, 145, 276 UN Human Development Index 2011 224 United Nations’ International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs 112 United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government 284, 288, 292 Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) 281, 286 unorganized sector employees 45 Upadhyaya, Deendayal 170 upper caste theory 10 urban alienation 23 charisma 34 citizenship 36 governance in India 35 infra power 34 intelligence 31 poor 34 revanchism 21 specialists 34 urban crisis, as return of ignored 21–2 urban spaces Certeau’s notion of 26 cultural and social coding of 26 urban studies, importance of 20 Vajpayee, A.B. 175, 177, 182, 184–5, 284 vanvasis 111 van Wersch, Hubert 24 Vatuk, Sylvia 28 vegetarian housing Indian colonies, proliferation of 33 Page 21 of 22

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Index Verkaaik, Oskar 34 Verma, J.S. 285–6 vikas (of ‘progress’/‘development’) 44 village, Indian as invaluable observation centre 3 value of 4 Vishnu Puran 268n14 Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) 146, 160n8, 171, 178, 180 Vora, Rajendra 24 Walzer, Michael 122 war on terror 135, 139, 155, 161n18 ‘war on terror’ 135 Waseem, Mohammed 142, 144–5, 149–50, 156, 160n14 Weber, Max 5, 46, 48–9, 265 Wennerhag, Magnus 204 Western modernity 136 white-collar workers 42, 75n15 white-collar work, in urban India 14, 69 Wikileaks 275 Wilkinson, Steve 160n12 Woolgar, Steve 195 working class 86 (see also proletariat) distinction between middle class and 87 World Bank 35, 118, 216n4 World Council of Hindus 146 (see also Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)) World Development 136 World Health Organization (WHO) 200, 205 World Trade Organization (WTO) 207 (p.323) Yadav, Lalu Prasad 279 Yadav, Mulayam Singh 279 Yee, Amy 211 Young, Iris Marion 244 Zanzibar issue, in Tanzania 149, 155 Zia regime, in Afghanistan 145 Zia-ul-Haq 149 (p.324)

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Editor and Contributors

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship Surinder Jodhka

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092070 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.001.0001

(p.325) Editor and Contributors A. Bimol Akoijam is Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Earlier, he had also taught at Delhi University and was a faculty member at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. His basic research interests are in the areas of politics of knowledge and social and political psychology. Besides being a professional academic, Professor Akoijam is also a cinema and theatre enthusiast and has scripted and directed two films, Langoi-Challabi, a documentary film; and Kari-gi Kiruni Nungsiradi, a fiction. Sumanta Banerjee is a journalist and has written extensively on the Indian political situation. He has been engaged in the study of popular culture and social history of Bengal, and his publications include The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (Seagull Books, 1998) and The Wicked City: Crime and Punishment in Colonial Calcutta (Orient Blackswan, 2009). He is at present a fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. André Béteille, FBA, is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Delhi and National Research Professor. He has lectured at many universities across the globe and his work has been widely appreciated. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2005. T.B. Hansen is the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. He is also Director of the Center for South Asia at Stanford University. He has worked extensively on urban politics, communal violence, religious identity, and the anthropology of the state in both India and South Africa. His major works are The Saffron Wave: Page 1 of 4

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Editor and Contributors Democracy (p.326) and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (Princeton University Press, 1999), Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay (Princeton University Press, 2001), and more recently Melancholia of Freedom: Social Life in an Indian Township in South Africa (Princeton University Press, 2012). Christophe Jaffrelot is Senior Research Fellow at CERI (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales) at Sciences Po (Paris), Research Director at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King’s India Institute (London), and Global Scholar at Princeton University. Among his publications, all originally by Hurst (London) and Columbia University Press in New York, are The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to 1990s (Penguin India, 1996), India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (Permanent Black, 2003), and Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste (Permanent Black, 2005). He has also co-edited with Laurent Gayer, Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalization (Columbia University Press, 2012). Roger Jeffery is Professor of Sociology of South Asia, Dean International (India) and Director of the Edinburgh India Institute at the University of Edinburgh. He has held visiting positions at Jawaharlal Nehru University and at the Institute for Economic Growth, in New Delhi, and has carried out fieldwork in rural north India several times since 1982. His most recent books are (edited with Anthony Heath) Change and Diversity: Economics, Politics and Society in Contemporary India (Oxford University Press, 2010) and (edited with Craig Jeffrey and Patricia Jeffery) Degrees without Freedom: Education, Masculinities, and Unemployment in North India (Stanford University Press, 2008). Surinder S. Jodhka is Professor of Sociology at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems in the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has earlier taught at the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, and the Panjab University, Chandigarh. He was Director of the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi, during 2008 and 2010. He has published widely on the subjects of rural and agrarian change, caste in contemporary India, and social/ (p.327) cultural identities. His publications include Caste: Oxford India Short Introductions (Oxford University Press, 2012), Village Society (ed. Orient Blackswan, 2012), and Community and Identities: Contemporary Discourses on Culture and Politics in India (ed. Sage Publications, 2002). He is the editor of the book series Religion and Citizenship (Routledge). He is among the first recipients of ICSSRAmartya Sen Awards for Distinguished Social Scientists (2012) for the year 2012. Page 2 of 4

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Editor and Contributors Kriti Kapila is a social anthropologist based at King’s India Institute, King’s College London. Her research focuses on the legal life of culture in contemporary India. She is currently working on emergent forms of intellectual property in biogenetic substances, cultural goods and practices, and life itself. Ravinder Kaur is Associate Professor at the Department of CrossCultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. She is currently engaged in an interdisciplinary research program that concerns the nature, effects, and fragilities of India’s imminent global ‘rise’. Her publications include Since 1947: Partition Narratives among Punjabi Migrants of Delhi (Oxford University Press, 2007) and Religion, Violence and Political Mobilisation in Contemporary South Asia (Sage Publications, 2005). Gurpreet Mahajan is Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has published widely on issues relating to multiculturalism, cultural diversity, minority rights, secularism, and civil society. Her publications include Explanation and Understanding in the Human Sciences (Oxford University Press, 1992; 1997; 2011), Identities and Rights: Aspects of Liberal Democracy in India (Oxford University Press, 1998), The Multicultural Path: Issues of Diversity and Discrimination in Democracy (Sage Publications, 2002), and Accommodating Diversity: Ideas and Institutional Practices (ed. Oxford University Press, 2011). Jonathan Parry is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has done field research in various parts of north and central India on various different topics. His publications include Caste and Kinship in Kangra (Routledge 1979), (p.328) Death in Banaras (Cambridge University Press, 1994), Death and the Regeneration of Life (edited with M. Bloch, Cambridge University Press, 1982), Money and the Morality of Exchange (edited with M. Bloch, Cambridge University Press, 1989), The Worlds of Indian Industrial Labour (edited with J. Breman and K. Kapadia, Sage Publications, 1999), Institutions and Inequalities (edited with R. Guha, Oxford University Press, 1999), Questions of Anthropology (edited with R. Astuti and C. Stafford, Berg, 2007), and Industrial Work and Life: An Anthropological Reader (edited with G. De Neve and M. Mollona, Berg, 2009). Gurharpal Singh is the Dean of Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He is the editor of New Dimensions of Politics in India: The United Progressive Alliance in Power (Routledge, 2012) (with Lawrence Saez). He has written The Partition of India (Cambridge University Press, 2009), (with Ian

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Editor and Contributors Talbot), and Ethnic Conflict in India: A Case-Study of Punjab (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).

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