On civil society: issues and perspectives 0761933751, 9780761933755

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Citation preview

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JUL 1: 3· 2006 '·

D1git1zed by

Go�,gle

Origi nal irom

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

D1gin�ed by

Gougle

OHglnal iron,

IJNIVERSJn OF MICHIGAI\I

ON CIVIL SOCIETY

o ,111nel fron,

1 INIVE�SIT'r Of MlCI l ciAN

THEMFS IN lNDIAN SoaoLOGY

SERlfS EDITOR: B.S. BAVlSKAR

0mER VotUMES lN THE SERIES Volume 1: Volume 2: Volume 3:

Sociology of Gender: The Challenge o/Feminist Sociological Knowledge Editor: Sharmila Rege

Urbanization in India: Sociological Contributi.ons

Editor: R.S. Sandhu

Sociology ofReligion in India Editor: Rowena Robinson

Volume 4: The Indian Piaspora: Dynamics ofMigration Editor:N.Jayaram, Volume 5: Tnoal Communities and Social CIUlnge Editor: Pariyaram M. Chacko Volume 6: The Family in India: Structure and Practice Editor: Tulsi Patel

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lJNIVERSIT) or Mltl 11•:5.�N

THEMES IN INDIAN SOCIOLOGY, VOLUME 7

ON CIVIL SOCIETY

Issues and Pers pectives

Editor

N. Jayaram Foreword by

Satish Saberwal

I

SAGE Publications

New Delhi • Thousand Oaks • London

'J

,olnol hon,

l)NIVERSITY OF Ml(I 111'.:,AN

Copyrighr C J� Socwlogia,l Society, 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or 1,1tilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, record­ ing or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writ• ing from the publisher. First published in 2005 by Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd B-42, Panchsheel Enclave New Delhi 110017 · www.indiasage.c-0m Sage Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oalcs, California 91320

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Sage Publications Ltd 1 Oliver's Yard, 55 City Road London EClY lSP

Published by Tejeshwar Singh fur Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd, typeset in 10/12 pt Goudy Old Style BT by Siva Math Setters, Chennai and printed at Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi. library of Concreu Catalogjng,in,Publication Data

All India Sociological Conference (26th : 2000 : University of Kera la) On civil society ; issues and perspectives / editor, N. Jayaram; foreword by Sacish Saberwal. p. cm. - (Themes in Indian sociology; v. 7) Chiefly papers presented at the 26th All India Sociological Conference held Dec. 29-31, 2000 at the University ofKerala and sponsored by the Indian Sociological Society. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Civil society-India-Congresses. 2. Democracy-lnd�ngresses. 3. Non-governmental organizations-India-Congresses, I. Jayaram, N., 195011. Tttle. Ill. Series 2005 HN682.A45 306'.0954- dc22 2005013753

ISBN: 0-7619-3375-l (Hb) 0-7619-3376-X (Pb)

81-7829-518-0 {lndia-Hb) 81-7829-519-9 (India-Pb)

Sage Production Team: Deepika Andlay, Ashok R. Chandran, Rajib Chatterjee and Sanrosh Rawat J1•1nl'rnr,

lJNIVER51T) ,)r �·11 1:111,:;AN

&ra.d

Li-Ot1h1 1/ 8'/J/DIJ Dedicated to the Late Professor G.S. Ghu.rye, Founder-President of the Indian Sociological Society

., 11Jlnol �DIT •

l)NIVER51n OF Ml(I 111'.:,AN

Only a democratic state can create a democratic civil society; only a democratic civil society can sustain a democratic state. The civility that makes de.mocratic politics possible can only be learned in the associa­ tional networb; the roughly equal and widely dispersed capabilities that sustain the networb have to be fostered by the democratic state.

Michael Walter

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Contents Series Note Foreword by Satish Saberwal Preface

9 11 13

/i�

Civil Society: An Introduction to the Discourse

v2.

Civil Society, State and Democracy: Contextualizing a Discourse

J. 4.

15

N.Jayaram

43

D.N. Dhanagare

On Civil Society

67

State and Civil Society: Reframing the Question in the Indian Context

90

J.P.S. Uberoi

Vaka.sh N. Pandey

5. Democracy and Civil Society in India:

110

Integral or Accidental?

SatishSabe:Twal /

6 · Civil Society, State and Democracy:

124

Lessons for India

JI· 8.

P.K.B. Nayar

Non-governmental Organizations and Civil Society in India

137

B.S. &vislcar

State versus Local Control in Common Resource Management: A Comparative Analysis Donald W. Attwood

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150

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8

ON CIVIL SocIETY

9. Nation-Stat� and Open Systems of Stratification: Making Room for the 'Politics of Commitment' Dipankar Gupta

170

10. Civil Society: Religion, Caste and Language in India TK. Oommen 11. Religion on the Net: An Analysis of the Global Reach of Hindu Fundamentalism and Its Imp lications for India Rowena Robinson

203

12. Civil Society and the Limits of Identity Politics

218

13. Farmers' Agitation, Civil Society and the State

237

Civil Society and the Good Society 14. Andre. Be.teille

273

Select Bibliography on Civil Soctety, State and Democracy About the Series Editor About the Edito,.. About the Contributors

294 309

Ananta Kumm" Giri

1·

187

Staffan Lindberg

Index

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310 311 314

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Series Note

T

he Indian Sociological Society (ISS) was established in December 1951 by Professor G.S. Ghurye and his colleagues in the Department of Sociology at the University of Bombay. The ISS soon launched its bi-annual journal, Sociological Bulletin in March 1952. Since then the journal has appeared regularly for the last 54 years. Started on a modest scale, each issue of the journal usually contained about a hundred pages. During the initial years, the print order did not exceed a few hundred copies. Published three times a year since 2004, each issue now contains more than 150 pages; and the print order exceeds 2,000 copies. Moreover, the Bulletin has now matured into a respected professional journal nationally and internationally. Since 1989 it is a fully refereed journal admired for its academic content and the high quality of its production. Very few professional associations in India and other developing countries have been able to achieve and sustain the kind of scholarly reputation acquired by the Sociological Bulletin. The 1SS celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 2001, and to mark the occa­ sion it decided to publish a series of seven volumes, called Themes in Indian Sociok,gy, based on articles published in the journal during the last five decades. When the proposal was placed before the Managing Committee of the ISS, it received a wholehearted suppon and several colleagues came forward to help implement it. The hunched issues pub­ lished during the period contained about five hundred articles on a vari­ ety of subjects concerning society and culture in India and abroad. The authors' list included almost all the leading names in Indian sociology and social anthropology. For the students of sociology and allied disci­ plines it was a virtual goldmine of sociological knowledge. Some of the papers were considered landmarks in the development of the discipline and had acquired the status of 'classics' in sociological literature. Unfonunately some of the issues were out of print and scholars faced difficulties in consulting them. fu mentioned above, the Managing Committee decided to republish some of the seminal papers in suitable volumes under appropriate themes to make them easily available. The Committee identified a number of scholars who were specialists in their

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10 respective fields, and asked them to edit these volumes. Senior colleagues well known for their expertise in the relevant fields were asked to act as academic advisors and to writt appropriate forewords for the volumes with which they were associated. Each editor has selected 10-15 articles related to his/her theme, arranged them in a meaningful sequence, and written a comprehensive introduction to place the articl� in the context of overall development of the field. The editor has also given a list of articles related to the field but not included in the volume, discussing briefly what they contain and why they could not be included. Thi-. has made each volume a self-contained guide to the concerned field. The first two volumes in the series were published in 2003, the following two came out in 2004, and the fifth and sixth were brought out in 2005. We have great pleasure now in offering the final volume On Cit1il Society: Issues and Perspectit1es edited by N. Jayaram. I hope these volumes will be useful to students, teachers and researchers in sociology, social anthropology and other social sciences. I would like to record my thanks to Ornita Goyal and her colleagues at the Sage Publications for their wholehearted support to the project. I am grateful to my colleagues in the ISS who came forward to work on these volumes as editors and academic advisors. This is a result of theit willing cooperation. B.S. Baviskar Series Editor Themes in Indian Sociology

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Foreword

T

he Managing Committee of the Indian Sociological Society decided, in its wisdom, that volumes in this series carry a foreword and, for the volume on Ci,til Society, appointed me to the task even though my credentials are limited to the single paper which Professor Jayaram has been kind enough to include in this volume. We have here a judicious selection of 13 papers from Sociological Bulletin, published over a decade, along with a thoughtful introduction, exploring the long history of the concept in Europe alongside the variety of concerns that it signals today. By 'Civil Society', we understand, very broadly, the social domain, small or large, which lies between the restric­ tive enclosures of family, kinship and the like on one side and the coer­ cive powers of the state on the other. Modem technologies enable states to deploy vast powers of surveillance and coercionj and all societies need to discover how to discipline their governments on the exercising of these powers. When a government can claim the moral cover of a popular, electoral mandate for its functioning. the disciplining of that government can be especially tricky. This task is never effortless; but it helps to be able to draw upon the long traditions of internal constitu­ tional evolution, that has marked several parts of western Europe. Over the past 50 odd years, we in India have struggled with making the constitutional arrangements and controls, largely of western inspira­ tion, work-in a milieu where, on the other side, family, jad and, at times, religious traditions have continued their tenacious holds. Between the coercive potentials from both sides, a necessarily faltering space in the middle has been forming, variously around the organized assertions of women, of the lower castes., of Muslims and in movements around issues of the environment, of the right to information, of empowering the marginalized and of voluntary and cooperative pursuits of diverse goals. These efforts may have been faltering, but we have also seen lives of astonishing commitment and dedication, and there are several track records which will inspire generations to come. Jayaram's menu is limited by what the journal has carried over the years, but there is rich fare here. Its balance is tilted towards the

12 the theoretical-and we shall hope that the publication conceptual and ' of this volume will provoke greater investigative vigour in relation to the processes on the ground which are strands in the complex weave of civil society in India.

Satish Saberwal

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Preface

C

ivil Society has emer�ed as a topic of transdisc�p�ary discourse. _ _ Over the years, Socwlogrcal Bulletin, the official Journal of the Indian Sociological Society, has published over 40 articles on the subject. Not all their authors have used the term 'civil society', and many of them did not view their work as a contribution to the discourse on the subject. Interestingly, some of these articles reported on empirical stud­ ies much before Indian scholars, including political scientists, began con­ sistently engaging ih a discussion on the concept. Put together in this volume are 13 selections of seminal significance from its pages. The choice of each one of them was determined by their thematic focus and analytical concerns: conceptual clarification, substantive coverage, empirical orientation or a combination of these. The texts of these selections have been reproduced as they were ori­ ginally published by the Bulletin, though obviqus grammatical errors and printing mistakes have been corrected. The Bulletin's referencing style has changed over time and the bibliographic details provided by the selections have not been the same. 1 have sought to present the refer­ ences in a uniform format. The selections here have varied objectives: contextualizing the dis­ course on 'civil society, the state and democracy', delineating the 'cul,. tural' and 'power' perspectives on civil society, analysing the relation between 'civil society and the good society' and examining the nature of civil society and its relation to specific institutions or processes in India. Together with its analytical introduction and a select bibliography, this volume of essays, it is hoped, would be a useful reference work for all those interested in the concept and reality of Civil Society. It was very kind of Professor B.S. Baviskar, former President of the Indian Sociological Society, to have invited me to undertake this inter­ esting academic endeavour and I owe him a special word of thanks for his encouragement. I am grateful to Professor Satish Saberwal, the academic advisor for this volume, for his sage advice and crisp foreword. Besides Professors Baviskar and Saberwal, the draft of my 'Introduction' was read by Professor Partha Nath Mukherji and Mrs V. Vijayalakshmi; I thank

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14 them for their comments and suggestions. I thank Dr Manish Kumar Thakur and Dr Jasmine Damle for helping me locate some missing cita, tions, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences for its material and acad, emic support to my engagement with this project. I have fond memories of the helping hand that I received from Professor C. Rajagopalan when I set out on my sociological journey. His guidance and supervision have stood me in good stead for more than three decades now. As a small token of my gratitude, I am happy to offer this volume to him. The scholars whose essays are reproduced here will be happy to see their centributions forming· a part of a larger collective enterprise. Alas, our friend Vikash Pandey is not with us to share in our joy. We miss him.

N.Jayaram

1 Civil Society: An. Introduction to the Discourse N. Jayaram

A

fter being nearly consigned to the history of ideas, the concept of Civil Society1 was relaunched on the intellectual scene in Europe with the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s (see Pelczynski 1988). Civil Society, like citizenship, became a key concept in the attempts to capture the essence of dissident politics and to introduce democracy in Europe after the collapse of communism since 1989.2 It was a forceful idea in mobilizing citizens against repressive states and in reclaiming the ·private sphere in social life from the all­ encompassing state. It had at one stage even connoted the idea of emancipatory politics. Civil Society, thus, can be viewed as a rebound or recovery concept. The intellectual threads of the political developments in Europe were picked up elsewhere in the world, including countries where the state was not necessarily perceived as being repressive, as for instance in the United States of America in the 1980s. The concept became handy for intellectuals and activists of varied ideological persuasions: socialists opposed to globalizing corporate networks, global society theorists disen­ chanted with the nation�state, critics of the developmental state, prot• agonists of free market economy, communitarians articulating concerns about community life, leaders of people's movements of various sorts and even those critical of representative democracy itself

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N.JAYARAM

The vigorous debate that ensued in the West, especially in the Anglophone countries, had its resonance in India. The concept was imported into intellectual circles in India in the late 1980s, and its meaning and rele�ance began to be vigorously discussed from the early 1990s. Political scientists Rajni Kothari, Gurpreet Mahajan, Sudipta Kaviraj and Neera Chandhoke were joined by sociologists Andre Beteille, T.K. Ootnmen, J.P.S. Uberoi and Dipankar Gupta in the discourse. If in political science the Civil Society discourse was occasioned by a re-thinking on the nature of state and the dynamics of democracy in India, in sociology the context for the discourse was provided by the plethora of social rnovements and the role of the non-governmental organizations (NOOs) in socio-economic development. Having initiated the discussion earlier on, the political scientists produced systematic analyses and compiled anthologies on the subject (see Chandhoke 1995; Elliott 2003). Recognizing the need for taking stock of the emerging thinking on the subject among the sociologists, the Indian Sociological Society chose 'Civil Society, State and Democracy' as its symposium theme for the XXVI edition of its All India Sociological Conference, held at the University of Kerala, Thi.ruvananthapurarn from 29 to 31 December 2000. Many of the speakers at thi.s symposium, whose presen­ tations form the bulk of this instant anthology, raised issues which have been intermittently debated in seminars and classrooms as well as in quasi-formal exchanges among sociologists. In the chapters that follow, 13 well-known sociologists---11 Indian and two from abroad elucidate in great detail a variety of themes relat­ ing to civil society in India. This introductory essay is not intended to go into the semantics of iCivil Society' per se or its scope and problems in India; other essays in this volume deal with these in greater detail. Rather, its focus is on the themes and issues pertaining to the discourse on Civil Society, in general, and in sociology in India, in particular.

Civil Society: Metamorphosis of an Idea Although the concept of Civil Society is in very wide circulation today,3 it has eluded consensus among scholars regarding its definition and attributes. Nevertheless, those who use the concept seem to agree that it refers to a reality that is important: that civil society is fundamental to democratic governance. One can, in fact, notice that scholars are

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Civil Society: An Introduction to the Discourse

17

enamoured about the re-discovery of civil society and are enthusiastic in endorsing it Citing Comaroff and Cotnaroff (1999), Carolyn M. Elliott notes that Civil Society 'has assumed mythic proportions as a tool of the social itnagination; an ideological construct for a good society' (2003: 3). How did the concept of Civil Society originate?i How has its nuance changed over time? To begin with, the concept of Civil Society was a product of eighteenth-century European liberal thought; it was intro­ duced to capture the idea of a desired state of reality. The Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Ferguson viewed 'Civil Society' as a state of 'civility' and as. a consequence of civili:zation. As a political term, it was useful in distinguishing between the 'western governments' and 'oriental despotism', 'civilizations' and 'barbaric states' (Abercrombie et al. 2000: 48);� Later, in the writings of Georg W.E Hegel and Karl Marx, this concept was used as a shorthand label to characterize the society emerging from urban-industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century. Andr� Beteille draws our attention to the distinctive feature of their usage as the term arising from the German language in which they thought and wrote (see infra Chapter 14). The phrase which they both used in German, namely, burgerliche Oesellschaft, may be translated into English as either 'bour­ geois society' or 'civil society', Neither of them regarded bargerliche Gesellschaft as the highest fortn of historical development; Marx was, .in fact, critical of it. The debate which followed was inevitably briefed by ideological orientations. In this debate, Marx was the inspiration for Antonio Gramsci to develop the concept of Civil Society in fuller details. Yet, Gramsci's approval of Civil Society, too, was qualified. In its new avatar, however, the concept of Civil Society appears to be in search of a reality! It is, therefore, not surprising that almost every scholar discussing civil society, prefaces by saying that there is no con­ sensus on the concept; and while many would also stay clear of a defini­ tion (not excluding the editor of this anthology), others would like to give a 'working definition' of what they mean by 'Civil Society'. Alternatively, they tty to specify the characteristics of the concept as they use it (see Beteille infra Chapter 14; Saberwal infra Chapter 5), lest their usage is misunderstood or misinterpreted, A survey of the expositions of the con­ cept would show that those who use it are mote clear about what they d o not mean by it than what they do. Interestingly, even in the German language a neologism, zivil Gesellschaft, which is a literal translation of the English 'Civil Society', has now been introduced. This development is evidently due to the need

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felt by German scholars for a term to distinguish between 'bourgeois society' and 'civil society', as bargerliche Ge.sellschaft, used by- Hegel and Marx, is not only unsuitable but even misleading in the contemporary context. It may also indicate, as Beteille notes, 'that we can get little guidance from either Hegel or Marx in the understanding of what has come to be widely regarded as civil society' (infra Chapter 14). Thus, the first point to be noted about Civil Society is that, while it: carried a consistent focus if not an absolute conceptual unity as it was used originally in the classical debate on the subject, in its contemporary usage the concept is devoid of consensus. As Z.A. Pelczynski notes, 'few social and political concepts have travelled so far in life and changed their meaning so much' (1988: .363). Whether conceptual unity is a virtue by itself, I will not debate here; but there is no gainsaying that, lacking a minimum consensus about its axial features, Civil Society has become a holdall concept and has resulted in tenninological confusion. One may legitimately doubt its usefulness as a conceptual tool (see Kumar 1993),6 or even be tempted 'to dismiss it as yet another fad' or as an instance of 'academic hype' (Gupta 1999: 234, 256). Be that as it may, what explains the shifting meaning of Civil Society, be it in sociology or any other social sciencCi either in its initial and later incarnations or its current usage? One explanation could be the follow� ing. The concept of Civil Society, in whatever historical or societal con, text it is discussed, lies at the intersection of the economic, political and social relations that human beings enter into in their collective exis, tence. In the social sciences, there is hardly any consensus as to the analytical or empirical separation of these relations or the nature of the relationship between them. The variations in the ontological premises underpinning the ideological stance of different approaches to under, standing social reality preclude any such consensus. The differentiation from the original intellectual pursuit called 'political economy' into dis, ciplines, such as economics, politics (or political science) and sociology, has only confounded the confusion. Besides being nebulous, Civil Society is also a value,laden concept; an idea of desirability is part of it: it is a kind of 'aspirational shorthand', as Robert Hefner describes it, for ideas of equity, participation and public fairness (cited in Elliott 2003: 3). The proponents of Civil Society, Elliott notes, see 'all kinds of benefits, from preserving privacy, empowering citizens fat problem,sblving and counterbalancing the state to training citizens, deepening participation, and increasing the effectiveness of government'. It is 'an answer to civic estrangement and an emblem of _ ,,,1nl'rnr,

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Civil Society: An Introduction to the Discourse

modernisation, the new magic bullet for development and democracy' (2003: 4), a p-anacea for 'the ills afflicting postmodern states, and economies' (Rudolph 2000: 1762). It is the 'inchoate and polymorphous character' of Civil Society, according io postmodern observers, that makes 'it appealing, but as social ideology, not social analysis' (Elliott 2003: 4). If the phrase 'Civil Society' eludes agreement on its definition and characteristics in the English language itself, one can well imagine the problem of translating it into Indian languages. How would the non, English-speaking intelligentsia, say in Bengali, Hindi or Tamil, under­ stand the concept and communicate about it? The problem is something more than simple linguistic translation; it is one of superimposing 'cul­ tural translation' on 'linguistic translation' of a concept which is origin­ ally ambiguous. It draws our critical attention to the sociocultural specificity of the concept of Civil Society; like that of the state (see Kaviraj 2001: 318). Neither the historical context in which we seek to analyse civil society, nor the principles underlying it are the same across the countries. No wonder, the theoretical questions and empirical con­ cerns about civil society in its relation to the state and democracy differ from country to country.

Civil Society and the State: A Binary Opposition? The imprecision of the concept of Civil Society is often sought to be clari­ fied by opposing it to other concepts, which are presumably clear. In the literature on Civil Society, one comes across a variety of its binary oppos, ites, 1 but the most peraistent of its· conceptual opposite in the contem, porary discourse on the subject is the State.8 Many scholars have viewed the disenchantment with the State as a major reason for the current interest in Civil Society (see Chandhoke 1995; Seligman 1992). In the analysis o f the State-Civil Society relation, there is a general tendency to emphasize the oppositional 'versus' rather than the conjunc­ tive 'and'. Even when the conjunctive 'and' is used, the tendency is to pitch the telationship as one of antagonism: the state as the antagonist of civil society or civil society as the antidote to the tyranny of the state. This tendency is evident in the general criticism of the state and its apparatuses and in its extreme form in the wish for it to wane, if not wither way (not in the Marxian sense). lt is also evident in the uncrit, ical glorification of civil society and its institutions. This lionization has

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perhaps

something to do with the context of the rebirth of the concept: when the European polities felt exasperated and helpless under the communist tyranny, its intellectuals found in the idea of Civil Society 1 a programme of building independent fonns of socbll life from below, free from state tutelage' (Taylor 2003: 43). However, the conviction became widespread that this independence of society should be an integral feature of a democracy. Accordingly, 'the invocation of the term has not ceased with the turnover of power; on the contrary, it has only just begun' (ibid.: 44). Jn India, during the last few decades, political scientists have been repeatedly pointing to the declining legitimacy of the state. Commenting on the social and political erosion in the country, in the late 1980s, Kothari highlighted 'the polarisation between a State increasingly unwill­ ing to carry out its constitutional obligations and a people not knowing who else to tum to', and identified this polarization as setting 'the stage for the growing incidence of violence, injustice, destruction of moderate mcxles of dissent and articulation of people's discontent and disenchant­ ment' (1988: iii). Atul Kohli (1991) doubts the ability of the state to maintain order and to create conditions for the eradication of the unre­ solved problem of poverty. In a more recent analysis of governance in the country, succinctly subtitled 'From Developmental to "Predator State"', Prem Shanlcar Jha has bemoaned the 'pervasive failure of governance and nation-building.in the country as a whole' (2004: 133). It is, thus, easy to understand why it is so tempting for some scholars to see civil society as an alternative to the state (see Kothari 1988) or at least to argue for the reduction in the state's role (see Munshi and Abraham 2004: 9). However, other scholars have cautioned against the seductions of the civil society perspectives which seek to conceptually 'disembed' the state from civil society. In her incisive discussion on what she calls 'the conceits of civil society', Chandhoke (2003) stresses the need to bring the state back into the Civil Society discourse and to rec­ ognize the conflicts within civil society and its incivilities. Similarly, Pandey exposes 'the fallacious understanding of the relationship between state and society as mutually hostile, and its consequent polar­ ising effects'. He argues that 'such a dualism results in a retrogressive romanticisation o f tradition/culture and civil society' (see infra Chapter 4). Furthermore, as Iris Marion Young has noted, 'State insti­ tutions and actions have their own unique virtues in promoting democ­ racy and social justice' (1999: 142), and the civil society too has its own limitations (see ibid.: 15�1). _ ,,,1nl'rnr,

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Setting aside the binary opposition between the State and Civil Society, we may see other dimensions of the relationship between the two. For instance, what is the role of civil society in the context of the privatization of some of what were once taken for granted as state func. tions? ls the Civil Society discourse a part of 'the neo-liheral politics of globalisation'? (Elliott 2003: v). How do we understand the politics of civil society? Examining the inherent politics of civil society, Chandhoke (2003) has drawn attention to the way identities are constructed through the politics of memory and narrative and the problems of language and meaning with special reference to India.

Civil Society as the Mediating Space One idea that seems to run through all the interpretations of Civil Society, including those vieWing it as the binary opposite of the state, is that it refers to the amorphous interrnediate space represented by institutions between the family and the state; a space which is free of both kinship relations and' those determined by the state.9 Writing about the mediating institutions that link individuals to each other and negotiate between citizens and the state, ™teille writes � society with only individuals (citizens) at the one end and the nation (or state) at the other would be difficult not only to live in but also to think about' (2000: 184). One may recall here that, in his Prafe.ssional Ethics and Civil Morals (1957), Emile Durkheim had stressed the importance of 'intermediary groups' connecting the individual to the state: that individualism in an unregulated environment of the free market economy would lead to anomie; that intermediary groups (or voluntary associations) would provide moral regulation in societies where seculariza­ tion has eroded traditional patterns of morality. The intermediate space between the state and civil society may be constituted by formal organizations or informal networks; it may be characterized by high intensity interactions of a transitory nature or by intermittent short-duration interactions, or by relations of varying degrees of permanence: community gatherings (manchs and sabhas), clubs (mandalis) and associations (samajs), unions (sanghatanas), move­ ments and action groups. Obviously, the question of the objectives of the group (be it formal or informal, explicit or implicit) and how the group constituting the.intermediate space is organized (democratic-notionally or operationally-or autocratic) are important to bear in mind,

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Considering that there are various types of groups10 occupying the 'intennediate space', one needs to be clear as to what groups merit atten­ tion in theorizations about Civil Society. As Elliott asks, does it include 'only western-style voluntary associations or the larger array of groupings in the Indian social environment?' Moreover, does it cover 'only the groupings that serve progressive purposes, or should it be understood to include various kinds of non-democratic groupings? That is, how does one think about a civil society that is uncivil?' (2003: v). Some modem theories of associationalism argue 1that voluntary asso­ ciations (a) provide local opportunities for representation; (b) offer opportunities for active citizenship by encouraging participation, and thus contribute to civil culture; (c) contain the spread of bureaucracy in political organisations; and (d) foster pluralism and diversity' (Abercrombie et al. 2000: 18). According to them, the essential charac, teristic of Civil Society is the devolution of decision-making power and responsibility. For them, in brief, Civil Society is the agglomeration of autonomous associations that exist independently of the state: 'associa­ tions which curtail the power of the state while simultaneously allowing individuals and groups in society to manage their affairs directly' (Mahajan 1999: 1188). That is, Civil Society is another appellation for voluntary associations or NGOs. Is Civil Society synonymous with voluntary associations or NGOs? If so, why encumber ourselves with an ambiguous phrase? Are all NGOs the same (see Baviskar infra Chapter 7)? As Vithal Rajan asks, 'Are they the yogis or the bhogis of development?' Rajan is scathing in his criticism of the role of NGOs in development: Even many NGOs which vociferously espouse the 'people's cause', not only depend on the largesse of their foreign donors, but have little contact with grassroots political movements. In fact, they con­ sciously portray themselves as 'non-political'. Hence, the power over decision-making remains, as it always has, in the hands of the elites, whatever competing identities they may take over internal struggles for power, prestige or profits. (2004: 254) 'In this rather grim scenario', Rajan observes, 'the role of voluntary agencies is to be seen neither as humanitarian nor as non-political. Their movement, if it may be called so, has gone though rather startling trans# fonnations: from that of the "Handmaiden to Government" from the time of independence till the near#famines of the early 1960s through

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the role of "The Filini Rebel.. in the heyday of Naxalite upsurge to that of the "Orab Advocate" of the 1970s and 1980s and today's role of the "Sarkari" Catalyst' (Rajan 2004: 257). To set the .record right, Rajan recognizes the fact that NGOs in India are perhaps among the most experienced; they have many achievement stories to tell in the areas of micro-credit, community health, primary education, watershed management, and afforestation schemes. However, he doubts whether their 'micro-successes' are 'replicable' (ibid.: 25'5). Moreover, many foreign-donor-backed NGOs serve the national/ economic interests of the donor agencies; and in most cases the leadership of these NGOs rests in the hands of 'gifted entrepreneurs' or 'charismatic individuals' (ibid.: 259�). Even ignoring the criticism of the NGOs and their role in development, can w e separate the polirical from the civil in NGOs or the so-called CSOs (civil society organizations)? It is not rare that a 'CSO' articulating. lob­ bying and defending a 'civil' cause canvasses for suppon in electoral pol­ itics (see Kaaenstein et al. 2001). It is well known that political leaders in India draw on non-party networks for policy reforms (see Jenkins 1999). Do not associa�.g.1 trade unions-which are aligned with or exten­ sicms of political parties, become extensions of the state apparatus if the party with which they are aligned or affiliated comes to power? Thus, the criticism of those who juxtapose the state and civil society or view the latter as no more than voluntary associations: that associa­ tionalism (or associative democracy) cannot do away with the state; associationalism, in fact, requires a strong legal framework (provided by the state) to prevent destructive competition among associations and groups (see Cohen and Rogers 1995; Hirst 1990). After all, in India too, the NGOs have to be registered and they need to observe the laws enacted by the state, and are even subjected to state control and audit

Civil Society and Mobilization Viewing Civil Society as the mediating space between the furnily and the 7state, and the mediating space as constituted by associations, raises ques­ tions concerning its role in mobilizing people for socio-economic or political causes, and the role of political parties vis,�-vis civil society. Political parties, by definition, are voluntary associations, and they seek to mohiH:u- support on platforms whose ideological sinews may be less or

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more explicit. As such, they may be viewed as part of any democratic ct\-11 society. However, political parties are involved in the struggle for state power, and a ruling party exercises state power. Viewed thus, the location of the political party as a civil society institution becomes problematic, especially if Civil Society is viewed as opposed to the state: can we exclude all groups which compete for political power from the purview of civil society? Do we include those which represent interests of the widest sectors of society? If so, how do we determine the extent of rep­ resentation? Is it not the case that small political parties, which stand no chance of coming to political power or may .be on the margins of political power at best, act as no more than interest groups or pressure groups? We may, thus, see the location of political parties in relation to the state and the civil society as a continuum: at the one end, a voluntary association distantiated from the state; at the other end, a part of the government, exercising state power and deeply engaged with the struc­ tures of the state. Along that continuum, a political party may move over time: those who lead protests, rallies, and yatTas today may speak with the authority of office tomorrow, and vice versa. Mobilization of people is neither confined to nor exhausted by political parties. It is, however, interesting to note that many a social movement mobilizing people for specific causes has culminated as a political party competing for state power or taken on a strong political flavout The Indian National Congress originated and developed as a mass mobilization against British imperialism and for swaraj; the Jharlchand movement demanding reintegration of the original homeland of Jharlchandis gave birth to Jharlchand Mukti Morcha as a political party; the Dtavida Ka.zhagam (and its off shoots Dravida Munnetra Ka.zhagam and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Ka.zhagam) originated as a non-Brahman and rationalist move­ ment led by Periyar; the Assam Gana Sangram Parishad was the outcome of a successful student agitation against the then Assarn government, and the Ir ll·1t :111,:;1.1.N 1

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9.

10. 11.

12.

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14.

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autonomoua arena of economic exchanges which is dominated by the commodity principle, it I.I diatinct from earUer fonna where poUtical and economic power were collapsed (Marx); and aa a property of sophisticated opaque states as opposed to tranaparent and openly coercive states (Gmnaci). Furthermore, she argues that it is 'a sphere which i s fl� by the domain of particularistic loyalties and the state' (Chandhoke 1995: 251). For brevity, the term 'State' may be wed to refer 'to activities and inatitutiona of legal regulation, enforcement backed by coercion, legulativcly mandated coordination and public �ces, along with the managerial and technical apparatus necessary to carry out these functions effectively' (Young 1999: 143). DcUncat:lng the basic interrelated dichotQmy of 'Ovil Society' (the ensemble of socio­ economic relations and forces of production) and 'the Stllte' (the superstructural manifestations of claas relations inaide civil eociety), In The Germa!'I Id.tcwc,, Marx and Engels posited 'Civil Society' as 'the true focus and theatre of all history' (1976: 50). Modifying Marxian interpretation. Gramsci (1971) located Civil Society between the coercive relations of the State· and the economic sphere of production, and Iden­ tined it as the realm of the private citizen and individual consent. Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato (1992: 18) refer to it as the 'third realm' differentiated from the economy and the state. Young di,tinguishes three levels of associational life that arc relatively free from the state 11nd economy: 'private uaociation, civic aasc!>ciadon, and poUtical wociation' (1999: 143). Part.ha Chatterjee (19981 281�2) gives an inalghtful illustration of a Kolbta slum, which lives outside the pale of law (it occupies land illegally and has no access to civil services) but conduct:B iu internal affairs through an orderly mechanisnu (a model of civil society). Writing on the �tate and civil society in relation to toeial justice, Youna makes a perceptive observation: 'We who live in liberal democratic societies with deep injustices cannot address these injustices through free associa­ tional life alone. We need strong regulative and coordinating programmes mandated through state inatitutions, strongly linlced to participatory and critical civic organ­ isations' (1999: 161). For expositions and commentafiea on Haberma1's concept of 'the public sphere', sec Craig Calhoun (1992). For a wider treatment of the subject, see Larry Ray (2001). One need not assume that all western societies are secular and individualistic as the imported theQretical models may suggest Elliott aven that 'On the ground, western society is less sec� less individualistic, and less different from 80-called traditional eocietiea than in theoretical models' (2003: 9). She cites Robert Hefner's observation that 'the associations which form the social pillan of democracy i n The Netherlands, a widelr appreciated model of civil society pluralbm, ate rcUgious groups in a society where religious affiliation is largely inherited' (ibid,). There have been some attempts at empirical explorations on civil society in India: of ideological contestations, by Mark Robinaon (2003); the public sphere, by Susanne Hocber Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph (2003); social capital, by Hans Blomlcvist (2003), sec also Blomkvist and Swain (2001); ethnic conflict, by Aahutosh Vanhney (2003). Rajesh Tandon and Ranjita Mohanty (2003) bring together 90llle caae studies of civil eocicty initiatives.

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References Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner. 2000 ·. � Penguin Dictionary of Socioloc (4th edition). London: Penguin Boolc6. Beteille, Andri. 2000. 'Civil Society and Its INtitutions', in his Antmornies ofSoeiaJ: Es5a1s on I� and lmtitulions, pp. 172-97. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Blomkvist, Hans. 2003. 'Social Capital, Civil Society, and Degrees of Democracy in India', in Carolyn M. Elliott (ed.), Ow Sociec, and Democracy: A Reader, pp. -405-23. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Blomkvist, Hans and Asholc: Swain. 2001. 'Investigating Democracy and Social Capital in India'. Ecooomic and Political Wukl, 36 (8): 639-45. Calhoun, Craig (ed.). 1992. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press. Chandhoke, Neera. 1995. Stau and Civil Sociec,: Exploraaons in Political Theory. New Delhi: S age Publications. --. 2003. � Conceits of Ow Sociec,, New Delhi: Oxford Univ'Crsity Press. Chatterjee, Partha. 1998. 'Community in the East'. Economic and Political �ekl, 33 (6): 277-82. Cohen, Jean L . and Andrew Arato. 1992. Political Theory and CM! Societ.), Cambridge: MIT Press. Cohen, Jean L. and J. Rogers. 1995. Associations and Democracy. London: Verso. Comaroff; John L. and Jean Comaroff. 1999. Civil Society and Political Ima,ination in Africa: Critical PeT"speaiues. Chicago: Univetsity of Chicago Press. Durkheim, Emile. 1957. Professional Ethics and Otlic Morals (tr. by Cornelia Brookfield). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Elliott, Carolyn M. 2003. 'Civil Society and Democracy: A Comparative. Review Essay', in Carolyn M. Elliott (ed.), Cwil Sociecy and. Demoqacy: A &ad.tr, pp. 1-39. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Fraser, Nancy. 2003. 'Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy', in Carolyn M. Elliott (ed.),. Cillil Society and Democracy: A &adc, pp. 83-105. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gram&Ci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Nocebooks (tr. from Italian by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith). London: Lawrence and Wishart. Gray, John. 1993. Post Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought. Londonc Routledge. Gupta, Dipankar. 1999. 'Civil Society or the State: What Happened to Citizenship?', in Ramachandra Ouha and Jonathan P. Parry (eds), lnsl#ulions and lnequalir:ies: Essays in Honour of And.rt Blt.eille, pp. 234-58. New Delhi: Oxford UniveJSiry Press. Habennas, Jurgen. 1987. The Theqry of�ve Acuon-Vol. 2: Ufeworld and S:,stem; A Cririque·of Functionalis1 Re.a.son (tt by T homas McCarthy). Boston: Beacon Press. --. 1989. � $1114CtuTal Transformation of rk Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a C-at.egary of Bourgeois Sociery {tr. by Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence). Cambridge: MIT Pre5$. Hefnelj Robert. 2003. 'Civil Society: Cultural Possibility of a Modem Ideal', in Carolyn M . .Elliott (ed.), Civil Sockey and Dcnoc,-acy; A &ad.tr, pp. 145--06. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hirst, Paul (ed.). 1990. Representative Democracy· and its Umits. Cambridge: Polity Press. Jenkins, Rob, 1999. Democratic Politics and Economic Ref arm in India. Cambridge: Cambridge Unive.rsiry Press.

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Jha, Prem Shankar. 2004. 'India: From Developmental to Predator State', in Surendra Munshi and Biju Paul Abraham (eda), Good Gomnance, Democratic Socletia and G�. pp. 133-148. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Katt.enstein, Mary, Smita Kothari and Uday Mehta. 2001. 'Social Movement and Polirics in India: Institutions, Interests and.Identities', in Atul Kohli (ed.), The Svcass ofIndia's Dfflwcracy , pp. 242�9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2001. 'In Search ofCivil Society', in Swiipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eda), Cillil Sociery: History and lwibilitia, pp. 287-323. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keane, John (ed.). 1988. Ci\iil Sodei, and the Scau: Nt\11 Perspecti11ts. London: Veno, Kohli, Atul. 1991. India's Democracy: An Anal,.su of Chantini Scau-Socitc, Relaaons, Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Kothari, Rajni. 1988. The State against Democracy: ln Search of Humane G(M'ITV.ll'ICe: Delhi: Ajanta Publications. Kumar. Krisban. 1993. 'Civil Society� An Inquiry into the Usefulness ofan Historical Term'. Brirish Joumol of Sodoloc +4 (3): 375-95. Mahajan, Gurpreet. 1999. 'Ovil Society and Its Avatars: What Happened to Freedom and Democracy?'. EconomiC and Polirical Wukl134 (2): 1188-96. Marx, Karl and Fredericlc Engels. 1976. Co/Jtcted Works Vol. 5 Man and En(tls 1845-47.. Moecow: Progresa Publiahets. Munshi, Surendra and Biju Paul Abraham. 2004. 'Introduction', in Surendra Munshi and Biju Paul Abraham (eda), Good GOllmlanCe, IArnocratic· Societies and Globalisation, pp. 9-26. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Pearsall, Judy (ed.). 1999. The Concise Oxfard Dictionary (10th edition). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. PelC%'Ytl$1ci, Z.A. 1988. 'Solidarity and the "Rebirth of Civil Society"', in John Keane (ed.), Ciw Society and the Sr.au: New PmpccdlieS, pp. 361-80. London: Verso . .Rajan, Vithal. 2004. 'NGOs as Parmers in the Process of "Reform"; Are They the Yogis or the Bhogis of Development?', in Surendra Munshi and Biju Paul Abraham (eds), Good �e. Democratic Soc� and Globalisation, pp. 253-70. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Ray, Larry. 2001. 'Civil Society and the Public Sphere'. in Kate Nash and Alan Scott (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Polirical Sooiology, pp. 219-29. Malden, Mau. (USA)/ Oxford (UK): BlacKWell Publishers. Robinson, Mark. 2003. 1Civil Society and Ideological Contestation in India', in Carolyn M. Elliott (ed.), Ow Societj and Democracy: A &adff, pp. 356-76. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Rudolph, Susanne Hoebcr. 2000. 'Civil Society and the Realm of Freedom'. Economic and Political Weekly 35 (20): 1762�9. Rudolph, Susanne Roeber and Lloyd I. Rudolph. 2003. 'The Coffee House and the Ashram: Gandhi, Civil Society a,nd Public Spheres'. in Carolyn M. Elliott (ed.), Civil Soc_ier:, and Democracy: A &adff, pp. 377-404. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Seligman, Adam. 1992. The Idea of Ci\iil Society. Princeton, New Jet$Cy: Princeton 'University Press. Tandon, Rajcsh-and Ranjita Mohanty (eds). 2003; Does Ciw Society Matter! GOlltTTlllnCt in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Taylor. Charles. 2003. 'Modes of Civil Society', in Carolyn M. Elliott (ed.), Civil Society and Democracy: A Reac.ler, pp. 43�2. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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V8!$hney, Ashutosh. 2003. 'Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society: India and Beyond', in Carolyn M. Elliott (ed.), Ciw Soder, and Dmiocracy: A lwwr, pp. 424-55. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Wahcr, Michael. 2003. 'The Idea of Civil Societyi A Path to Social Reconstruction', in Carolyn M. Elliott (ed.), Ciw Societ, 411d Democ,-acy: A�. pp. 63-82. New. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Young. Iris Marion. 1999. 'State, Civil Society, and Social Justice', in Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cord6n (eds), DemocTacy's Value, pp. 141-62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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2 Civil Society, State and Democracy: Contextualizing a Discourse• D.N. Dhanagare••

Introduction

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he rise of several post-colonial states was the most striking phenomenon of the second half of the tw!!�tieth century. As new nation-states were born, the air was full of excitement, filled more with hopes than despair. Those in the Third World who had succeeded in their anti-imperialist struggle, whether by insurrectionary, or guerrilla or peaceful, non-violent means, were in a triumphant mood. Their right to self-determination had bee.n conceded by history. Efforts were now on to plan their social and economic reconstruction. In that process only the proverbial democratic form of governance held the promise to fulfil the aspirations of the people. Competing political ideologies of modernization-capitalism and free- marlcet economy, socialism (as in then USSR), fascism (as in the

�ally published in Sociological Bulletin, vol. 50, no. 2, 2001, pp. 167-91. •*'J'hu article is a revised version of a paper preiented at a ,ymposium organized as part o f the XXVl All India Sociological Conference, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, 29-31 December 2000.

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pre-World War Il Germany and Japan) and democratic socialism (of the Nehruvian lndia)-were directing the reconstruction measures in the new states. 1 However, the ruling classes in most post-colonial states found democracy to be too slow to respond to the rising expectations of people. One after another, the institutional framework of democracy in several Larin American, African and South Asian states was consigned to the museums of history. Civil liberties of people came under a cloud as military regimes replaced democratically elected governments one after another, either by coup d'etats or by peaceful takeovers. Some of the East European states were no exception to such a development. Ironically, some of such military dictators were prompted by the Marxist ideology-. It must, therefore, be recognized that the discourse on 'civil society' in contemporary social sciences has its roots in the political upheavals new nation-states experienced during the second half of the twentieth century. While contextualizing the discourse on 'civil society, state and democracy' in India, this historical background of nation-building expe­ rienced by the new states has to be borne in mind. It would also be per­ tinent to recapitulate the classical debate in social sciences on civil society, state and democracy. The Classical Debate

The intellectual tradition of discoursing the nature of the state and civil society is traced back to the contract theorists-Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on the one hand, and to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, on the other. Social thinkers like Niccolo Machiavelli have often conceived the state as a product of reason, that is, as a rational society in which human beings can lead a life following the dictates of reason. To Hegel, 'the process of rationalisation of state not only merges with the process of statisation of reason',2 but also the two processes get inter­ woven; ultimately, when the rationalization of the state reaches its climax, it no longer remains as an ideal model but becomes a reality, that is, a moment in history (Bobbio 1979: 21). There are three forms in which the process of rationalization of the state manifests itself: (a) the state as a radical negation of the pre-state social existence1 or what some contract theorists call 'the natural state of society' (Hobbes and Rousseau); (b) the state as a regulation of natural

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society, since it is not an alternative but a mode of perfecting the society it regulates (Locke and Kant); and (c) the Hegelian notion of the state, which not only creates but also contains civil society (Marx 1977: xlvi--xlviii). According to Hegel, the creation of civil society is the achievement of the modem state that unifies the duality of civil life and political life by means of an institutional framework that has a threefold functional apparatus: (a) monarch-a sovereign ruler by birth, independent of the mundane interests of political factions; (b) an extensive bureaucracy-a class of salaried civil servants loyal to the state; and (c) an assembly a body comprising representatives of the crown, the executive power and the civil society-that deliberates and worlc.s out modalities of reconciling the aims and interests of the state and civil society, so that their decisions could be translated into law (O'Malley 1977: xlvii-xlvili). The state, according to Hegel, is not only responsible for the creation of civil society, but also for its sustenance. Hegel also highlights somewhat contradictory forms in which civil society manifests itself. On the one hand, civil society has to capture the spirit of modem capitalism that serves the individual interests; on the other hand, being the public sphere of ideas, it has to have an uncom­ promising commitment to certain collective interests. It is, therefore, a moral order, too (Kaviraj 2000: 11-12). Marx and Engels do not define the state as a reality of ethical nature. Rather, they view it as the 'concentrated and organised force of society'­ society that is characterized by certain forms of production and their attendant social relations. Hence, the abstraction-state is basically reified by a committee of the dominant class, that is, the bourgeoisie (Marx 1970: 703). Neither is the state a supersession of civil society, nor does it transform civil society into something else. The state incorporates civil society, as it is. Finally, vis-�-vis civil society, 'the stau is a secondary and subordinate moment in history'. It is not the state which conditions and regulates civil society, but it is the other way round. That is, the civil society and political society (= state) relationship, as envisaged by Hegel, was turned upside down by Marx and Engels: 'The state being a transitory phenomenon must therefore, abolish itself after it has first abolished the pre�state natural society' (Bobbio 1979: 21). 3 More recently, the discourse on state and civil society has focused attention on Antonio Gramsci's political thought, which uses civil society as a key concept that differs from that of Hegel as well as that of Marx and Engels. The critical difference between the ways in which Marx and Gramsci conceive of civil society lies in the fact that, according

D.N. OiiANAGARE to Marx, the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in the political economy. As Marx puts it, Civil society embraces the whole material intercourse of individuals within a definite stage of the development of productive forces. It embraces the whole commercial and industrial life of a given stage, and insofar transcends the state and the nation, though, on the other hand again, it must assert itself in its foreign relations as nationality, and inwardl.'J must mganite .itself as a state. The word 'civil society' emerged in the 18th century, when property relationships had already extricated themselves from the ancient and the medieval communal society. Ow society as such an1-y develops with the bour­ geoisie; the social mgcm.isadon eoolving directl, out of production and commerce which in all ages forms the basis of the state and of the rest of the idealistic superstructure has however, always been designated by the same name. (cited in Axelos 1976: 91; emphasis added) I

For Hegel, the state is the armature of civil society and is situated higher than civil society so that i t can rule over social and historical developments as a whole. For Marx, the political reality of the state is constituted by the entire economic life relationships of production and the class struggle for which civil society is the real theatre. Clearly then, Marx tends to reduce the development of civil society to the structure of productive forces and social relations arising out of them. Marx, therefore, stands opposed to any idea . of the state as constituting an autonomous tool of management, one that would develop a strong bureaucracy and civil service whose functions are social in some univer­ sal way. Since Marx thought statism, centralism and bureaucratism only organize, centralize and institutionalize social and political alienation (cited in ibid.: 97), which would, by definition, be antithetical to civil society, he, therefore, considers civil society as belonging to the structural sphere, to the 'base', rather than to the 'superstructure'. To Gramsci, however, civil society belongs to the superstructural sphere: it 'comprises not all material Telationships, but all ideological cultural relations; not the whole of commercial and industrial life, but the whole spiritual and intellectual life' (1976: 10-18). The second major difference between Marx and Gramsci lies in the theme of 'hegemony', which occupies a central place in the latter's con­ ception of society and political sauggle. Gtamsci distinguishes between political leadership (which is identified with force a negative moment of

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civil society) and cultural leadership (that represents the positive moment of the superstructure). By cultural leadership, Gramsci (1976: 245-47; see also Bobbio 1979: 39) implies the introduction of moral and intellectual refonns that neither Marx nor V.I. Lenin has accorded any significance to. Therefore, Gramsci's.'hegemony' must not be mistaken as a restatement of Lenin's collective will ofpolitical leadership or the dictatorship of the pro­ letariat.4 For Lenin, dictatorship and hegemony are two sides of the same coin; for Gramsci, the conquest of hegemony precedes the conquest of power (Bottomore et al. 1987: 201-3; Gramsci 1976). Hegemony, accord­ ing to Gramsci, implies that a class maintains its dominance or supremacy, not simply through a special organization of force but because it is able to transcend its narrow class interests, exert a moral and intellectual leader­ ship and maintain the desired 'civil society-state equilibrium'. The clas.s hegemony is, thus, by consent obtained by the dominant class, not through force but by providing moral and intellectual leader­ ship at a junction, or what Gramsci calls a 'historic block' that is autonomous. Hence, the autonomous space of civil society is conceded by Gramsci, who goes beyond viewing the state as a mere insttument of class domination as expounded by Marx and Engels, and Lenin {Bottomore et al. 1987: 201). Similarly, Gramsci does not seem to be fond of the popular phrase 'withering away of the state' that is used in the orthodox Marxist-Leninist tradition. The end of the state is con­ ceived not as supersession of the state, but as reabsorption of the state (that is, political society) in civil society. This enlargement of civil soci­ ety is the real constitutive moment of hegemony, when the dominant social class succeeds in making its own hegemony so universal that force would no longer be necessary. Civil society then becomes a (self-)regu• lated society, since it is now freed from political society as a separate autonomous entity (Bobbio 1979: 41-43; Gramsci 1976: 53). Civil Society and Democracy: Some Contemporary Interpretations The notion of civil society is today commonly identified with a non, statist, somewhat romanticized, set of institutions that stand for liberalism in the form of free market in the economic sphete and democracy in the political sphere. More contemporary interpretations of this notion seem to be drawing heavily on the liberal intellectual ttadition. It is often _ ,,,1nl'rnr,

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D.N. DHANAGARE argued that civility is the core of civil society. The notion of civility, according to Shils, considers 'others' as fellow citizens of equal dignity in their rights and obliga­ tions as members of civil society; it essentially means treating others, including one's adversaries or detractors, as members of the same collectivity, even though they belong to different political persuasions, religious or ethnic communities whose interests run counter to those of yours (1991: 12-13) and who have the right to participate in the same collective conscious­ ness. ln other w.ords, civil society is a sui gen.eris, transcendent reality and is secular in ethos-a state of supra-individual collective enlighten­ ment. It enables citizens to accept the drama of conflict, cooperation, competition and accommodation, and even the inner contradictions unfolding in its theatre every day. An underlying assumption of the concept of civil society is that, although the development of modem capitalist economy is conducive for civil society, it does not necessarily guarantee that society in the capitalist epoch would be 'civil society'. J.A. Hall (1998: 32-34), for instance, argues that civil society is that form of societal self-organization which not only allows for cooperation with the state but also facilitates 'individuation'. In this sense, Hall is equating the concept of'civil society' with modernity. By implication, he has suggested that though normally the development of capitalism and modernity should coincide, it may not always happen that way. Hence, at times even the basic ingredients of civility may as well be missing in capitalist economies. What is then implied in civil society is the individual's freedom in daily life, in which his or her choices are honoured, if necessary even safeguarded against all kinds of savageries. It means that powerful groups with tyrannical ideas are not allowed to erode the space meant for an individuars moral autonomy. ln more positive terms, 'civil society' upholds voluntarism and freedom, and offers individuals, irrespective of their creed, colour or culture, an equal chance to create their own selves (ibid.: 33). It is an open sphere which not only permits differences but also tolerates dissent, and to a certain extent even encourages it. While stron� links exist between the market economy of industrial capitalism and civil society, historical experience reveals that certain dogmati� monopolistic and authoritarian tendencies did · creep in.

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Adam Smith had considered such aberrations as detrimental to civility.

Admittedly, capitalism as a system of power-sharing under a regime of free and competitive market fosters legitimization of the principles of eco­ nomic freedom, political liberty and institutionalization of sociocultural pluralism. Nonetheless, as was envisioned by Smith, forms of syndicalism among producers and distributors of commodities or services can and do violate the principle as well as practices of free market and harm the collective interest in protecting the individual's liberty of choice. Particularly, such erosion becomes common when forces of monopoly and corporate capitalism compellingly pressurize governments to create obstructions in free trade and competition.5 Spe cially, the authoritarian variety of capitalism was witnessed in the history of Wilhelmian Germany and Imperial Japan. Under the contem­ porary phase of globalization, the impact of the forces of the capitalist world economy, operating via multinationals, is no longer confined to a single nation-state or a geopolitical region (Wallerstein 1991: 158-99). Even cultural tastes, ideas, habits and institutions, not just technologies, tend to get homogenized across regions, nation-states and continents (Lim 1992: 578-92). Under the global regime, therefore, not just civility but even civilizational identity faces the threat of extinction. The revival of interest in the discourse on 'civil society, state and democracy' today has to be understood in this backdrop, too. The unification of West and East Gennany that followed the demoli­ tion of the Berlin Wall, the turbulent developments almost all over Eastern (communist) Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet political sys­ tem have also contributed to the revival of interest in the discourse on 'civil society, the state and democracy'. The Leninist doctrine of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' manifested itself not only in a centralized economy, but also in the centralization of power in the hands of a party bureaucracy that was accountable to none. The experiment of a single� party democracy-the hallmark of the Soviet system-could neither bring a genuine sense of participation nor could it inject a sense of accountability in moral terms among the rank and file. Admittedly, the communist regime under Stalin had succeeded in accelerating the rate of economic growth and in bringing a semblance of modernity to the USSR. To achieve this, however, it had to militarize the working class and unleash a reign of mass repression and terror on an unprecedented scale (Benelheim 1994: 197-240).6 This course of events explains why the collapse of the Soviet system came sooner than expected.

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Using the Soviet experience as a negative reference point, E. Gellner has identified some core features of 'civil society' thus: Civic spirit means the presence and authority of a moral conscious­ ness which binds a man to his contractual and other obligations without needing to be underwritten by a torrid network of ritually reinforced social links. A man endowed with civic spirit respects his undertaking though to an anonymous parmer and not part of a whole network of ritually endorsed social relations. [ ... )' Never, theless, these associations, fragile by old standards, seem able to stand up to the state. This is so partly because there is a respect for the abstract constitutional principles as such, and not only to the groupings operating within it. (1991: 501) In a later work, Gellner (1994) has deftly blended his staunch defence of civil society as an ensemble of constitutional-industrial,secular-capitalist­ social-democratic society with his scepticism of civil society, particularly about its ability to protect the liberty and autonomy of the individual. This somewhat contradictory position of Gellner rests on the ground that any rigid conformity to democratic theory entails 'decisions to create insti­ tution, or the willed production of order' (Leca 1998: 120) and that it can impinge on culture that gives us 'identity', vision and values to carry out choices, whether individual or collective (Gellner 1994: 196). Notwithstanding this paradox, Gellner opts for civil society because it offers a knowledge whose validity or justification does not depend on its context, and which is equally accessible to all, and particularly because, in civil society, truth is not linked to identity (see Leca 1998). Gellner further characterizes civil society as a total society-that is, a 'set of social relations which articulates relationship between allocation of power and domination of the production and distribution of material resources and the production and management of (culturally defined) meaning' (1994: 193). Yet, civil society is neither a unified totality nor a 'closed' system. lt separates domains l.ilce knowledge from ethics and identity, economics from politics, class from citizenship, and association from status. The holistic character of civil society lies in its individual­ ism, its religion is its secularism and its treatment of all cultures as equal. Its passionate commitment to critical reason makes it accept the rule of law as an act of faith. Hence, social bonds in civil society, unlike in hier­ archical agrarian societies, are both individualistic and egalitarian at the same time. This situation, according to Gellner, is precisely the source of

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inner contradiction of civil society: Qn the one hand, market"centred individualism not only encourages inequality but also justifies hierarchy; on the other hand, egalitarianism would impose restrictions on the market which w:ould resist any normative limits either on fulfilment of needs or on profit accumulation. Still, he is optimistic of the capabilities of civil society to sustain the autonomy of individuals (Gellner 1994: 127-28). 7 Although the ethos of civil society is reflected in individualism and cultural pluralism, quintessentially civil society is a way of organizing power. True, pluralistic pressures produce institutions to counterbalance the state. However, civil society is not to be understood as opposed to the state. In fact, according to Gellner (ibid.: 90), any modem society, and, therefore, civil society, is unthinkable without some kind of an effective welfare state. However, he vehemently opposes any form of centralized authoritarianism, be it the state or even gemeinschaft (com­ munities), which often tends to be oppressive in limiting the choices of the individual in the name of cultural conformism. He highlights 'self�policing and modularity' as a key defining feature of civil society. It means that the pursuit of a disinterested and individually sanctioned virtue (and not one that is imposed by the state) is one of the essential bases of democracy-a precondition for the sustenance of civil society (see Gellner 1994: 78; see also Leca 1998: 130-31).

State and Democracy Democratic political theory posits a kind of relationship in which demo­ cratic politics and civil society are interdependent. As a public sphere, civil society must facilitate free dialogue between private individuals and public interest, and the debate that shapes public opinions must be free of state interference. Moreover, that public sphere ought to be accessible to all individuals and groups. Both civil society and democracy are the preconditions of the existence of each other (Chandhoke 1995: 161-65) and historically they have reinforced the positive strengths of each other or have suppressed them. In relation to civil society, as any other Marxist, Gramsci (1976: 253) has emphasized that the state's ultimate goal is to end itself, which implies the re-absorption of political society into civil society. This is, in a sense, an endorsement of Marx and Engels' vision of 'the withering away of the state' in communism-the final stage of development. However, closer

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scrutiny would reveal how Gramsci viewed the role of the state and democracy somewhat differently. As a representative system, the functioning of a democracy at the macro level amounts_ to parliamentarianism. A. career-oriented bureaucracy runs such a representative system of governance, because parliamentarianism tends to be politically a nuisance due to remote and ineffective participation as well as the lack of direct accountability. Such a situation, where parliamentarianism and the representative system become two sides of the same coin, is most likely to cause harm to civil society, according to Gramsci. In a civil society, the state is no more than an instrument of ensuring that a parliament functions as a forum for public debate or, what Hegel called, the public sphere of ideas. It must create conditions for freedom of expression, dissent and choice in terms of alternative goals and means which ultimately end all forms of exploitation. However, the real ethos of democracy and parliamentar• ianism is individualism which truly means the 'individual appropriation of profit and of economic initiative for capitalist and individual profit' (Gramsci 1976: 255). Such private profits, often amassed at the cost of others, defy the spirit of civil society that has an unwavering commit­ ment to common interests. According to Gramsci, the party system and parliamentarianism form a symbiosis which functions more like 'black markets' and 1illegal lotteries' where and when official market and the state lottery are for some reason kept closed. Moreover, black parliamentarianism is seen by protagonists of democracy as a progress in the sense that it is a historical neces­ sity although its actual functioning is no different from an anti• historical regressin. (ibid.: 255-57) Two sets of arguments have been advanced in more recent discussions on civil society in relation to the state and democracy. First, that agro-economic systems with patron-client form of relations are not quite conducive to the growth of civil society. Such social formations generally cohabited with local kinship-based production communities since they found the centralized systems as unworkable and the bureaucratically run farm-revenue administrations to be unviable. Second, that civil society flourishes only under a modem industrial capitalist system that not only preaches but also practises 'laissez-faire doctrines of free competition. Notions of public-spirited integrity, freedom of individuals, respect for the rule of law and the principle of political liberty, historically speaking,

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have all found expression in industrial societies. They alone could free not just production but the whole economic life in Western Europe from the shackles of master-serf or patron-ntext of Mobilisation', Mobilisation: An International Journal 1 (2): 191-202. ---. 1999. 'Reconciling Identity and Equality: Implications for Democratisation and Governance in South Africa and India'. Indian Social Science &ww 1 (1): 51�5. Rudolph, L.I. and S.H. Rudolph. 1960. 'The Political Role of India's Caste Associations'. Pacific Affairs 33 (1): 5-22. Srinivas, M.N. 1962. Casie in Modem India and Other Essa,s. London: Asia Publishing House.

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11 Religion on the Net: An Analysis of the Global Reach of Hindu Fundamentalism and Its Implications for India• Rowena Robinson••

Introduction

T

his article is about the ideology of Hindutva in the context of a globalizing India. It looks at this ideology in relation to other ideologies available for consumption and examines how Hindutva constructs itself in relation to these. For this purpose, it analyses various Internet sites of different organizations which propound the new Hinduism and those of recognizably right,wing organizations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). The Internet is, indeed, par excellence, the place for global communication today. This article was written for a symposium on identities in civil society, held as part of the XXVI All India Sociological Conference at Thiruvananthapuram from 29 to 31 December 2000. The symposium •Originally published in S1x:iological Bulletin, vol. 50, no. 2, 2001, pp. 23&-51. ••Thii; article is a revised version of a paper presented at a symposium o'l!anized .15 pan of the XXVI All India Sociological Conference, University ofKerala, Thiruvananthapuram, 29-1 I December 2000.

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chose three forms of identity-religion, caste and language for study. I argue that religion, rather than caste or language alone is the main marker of South Asian (and i n _particular, Indian) identities on a global scale. If we are to look at India in the context of the globalization of economy and culture, it is this that one must watch closely. Caste has a limited capacity to bring about global unification and divi­ sion of Indians. Indeed, if the Internet is anything to go by, trying to mobilize on caste lines seems to be considered a bad form. Non-Resident Indians (NRls) express their views in chat rooms and news groups thus: 'I would like to put down my thoughts on completely useless political and castiest national and local Telugu associations in US', or 'Let us not take the narrow fragmentations of caste into the cyberland also. Let all Tamil­ speaking and Tamil-interested people unite as Tamils.' Caste is, then, not the best global mobilizing axis. Apparently, language seems to have greater potential. However, the erosion of linguistic difference in a global economy and the necessity of bilingualism, if not multilingualism, place limits on the axis of language, too, for the cultivation of global divisions. Certainly, language has had its day. Agitators for Tamil and Konkani know well the power of language to divide and to unite. However, apart from the recognition of certain languages in India and the acceptance of their usage at the state level, the language issue cannot be extended beyQnd a certain point. It cannot ignite flames at a global level. Its power to fabricate again and ever anew the boundaries between imagined. groups cannot match that of religion, which more than any other identifier in India has the capacity to battle it out on the global cultural market. Religion and religious boundaries in India., and South Asia in general, have resonance with religious divisions in other parts of the world. Sometimes the vituperative language of Samna or the ObsenJeT on the Net against the Muslims captures exactly the kind of language used by Musli.tn-bashers in the West. A Samuel Huntington would have his match in writers for these journals.

Hindutva Ideology and Its Spread in Popular Religion Hindutva is known to us in its overt political form., not fully in its more insidious, covert form, which affects social interaction and attitudes and •l I') I Ile I

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shapes political inclinations. In this fonn., I would argue, the ideology has probably been around for longer than we imagine, though certainly not in the strength that we have seen in recent times. It is not, however, simply a result of the 'reaction' of the majority to the 'presumed pampering' of Muslims and other minorities by the Indian state. It has a longer and probably more complicated history. Partition has played its role in creating and cementing images ci the 'Other'. Migration, within and. paxticularly, out of India has played a very important role in the reali:zarion of religious difference. These strands inter­ twine with others, One has to consider the recovery of the 'spiritual' and the 'Indian' in (and arising out of) the context of globalimtion and the fears of modernity. In thi., conteXt, therefore, Hindutva is not only- anti-Islam, but also anti-Christianity and anti-communism. Moreover, Hindutva is also lilce its 'Others' (fundamentalist or millennial Islamic or Christian movements), which have risen out of similar anxieties. Howevei. Hindutva's relationship with these other ideologies is particularly tendentiow: it seeks to overcome by replication, even while it insists on its difference. It argues that it is a 'way oflife', •tolerant' and 'receptive', even while it lays down the dharma, defines itself dogmatically and draws its boundaries ever more sharply. The ideology of Hindutva cannot be confined to a complex of certain right-wing Hindu organizations consisting of the RSS, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the VHP and the Bajrang Dal. This ideology or ele­ ments of it, has seeped into all manner of public discourses, culture and popular religion. It has, indeed, become part of the 'common sense' of the land. To understand how this is so, one needs to look at the variants of the ideology and the different groups these variants might appeal to. Hindutva, and the base of intolerance on which it thrives, varies from the passive and relatively non-violent to the aggressively communal. Thus, the benign intolerance of the modern middle-class Hindu Indian for things Muslim ('Fiza mdn sab ha-ra hara tha. Mujhe kehna to nahin chahfye, pm saha nahin gaya. '-'In the movie Fita, everything there was a lot of green. I should not say this, but it was difficult to tolerate.') lies at one end of the spectrum. At the other end emerges the violent, rioting face of the fundamentalists. In between lie the various shades. Elements of the ideology of Hindutva now penetrate a range of phenomena that lie broadly in the realm of popular religion and culture. These phenomena include the kinds of packaged spirituality thrust at us from the Internet, the television and the newspapers. Channels vie with each other for the spiritual attention of viewers. The now older classic seri­ als such as Ramayana and Mahabharata remain the favourite$, but these

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days the selection is much wider: Bhakti Geet, spiritual lessons and bhajans each dawn; serials on Krishna or Ganesha-all these and more are avail, able for spiritual consumption. Newspapers provide us with 'sacred space' and 'sacred chants', 'inner light'. and 'religion' and 'religious values'. There is a profusion of sacred music-some of it upbeat and made trendy-now available. Films from the early 1990s onwards have begun to stress 'Indian values' and 'family values', even as they locate them, selves increasingly in spaces inhabited by the migrant middle,class Indian. Sacred cults abound. Going to p,us, sants and cultic spots, attending spiritual and value workshops that teach one how to cope with stress and attain inner calm-all th� are activities that numerous people engage in today and they have their advertisements and appro­ priate media attention. The transformation of neutral, secular public spaces into sacred spaces is partly state encouraged and, often, the links between private individuals and trusts and politicians who allot land and come for inaugural ceremonies are more complex and remain concealed. The 'value education' formula of the BJP regime is now familiar and its links with the Hindutva ideology need no elaboration. What needs to be understood is that the Hindutva ideology splits itself into a project of violent retribution and a project of cultural affirmation. These strands intertwine in schemes to destroy the Muslim or Christian monuments and 'unearth' or 'rebuild' temple structures that really or allegedly lie beneath. However, for the most part, the projects can exist side by· side without most people understanding the insidious and dangerous linkages between them. The project of cultural and 'national' affirmation, encapsulated in the various elements we have outlined earlier, is what attracts a large section of the middle-class Hindus resident within and outside India. They would see themselves as repelled by the violent face of Hindutva, for it does not gel with the 'modern' outloolc they would lilce to imagine them­ selves as bearing. Having a base within this class is very important for the Hindu right, as the class, articulate, educated and transnational, projects an acceptable image of the ideology to the outside world. It. therefore, serves Hindutva's purpose to lceep these two strands apart; deny and, if possible, prevent others from seeing the linkages between them. There are other elements involved in malcing the 'cultural affirmation' aspect of Hindutva, captured in the heterogeneous fonns of popular reli­ gton, acceptable and attractive to all and, particularly, to the middle�class transnational Indian who, 1 believe. is the main audience for (if not the author of) its scripts. The paclcaging of faith has played a major role in

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Religion on the Net making this new Hinduism pleasing for the modem Indian. Audio and video cassettes, hip music albums, packaged rituals, lectures, work.shops on cults and meditation: religion is now available in easily digestible forms, clean and sanitized shortcuts and, more important, it is in com, plete harmony with materialism. The new face of Hinduism teac� no austerity; it allows you to access the spiritual, while wallowing in the material. Indeed, it promises greater material gain without too much cost. The newspapers tell us of urban middle-class Indians attending 'life improvement' discourses and lectures on the Bhagwad Gita. They are e�ed in a variety of cults from that of Shitdi Sai Baba to Swaminarayan and Radhasoami. Corporations now organize 'meditation-based self­ management leadership' programmes for their executives. The IQCWln yuppie is the best target for these initiatives. There is a complexity to this profusion of religion available today. There is more than one side to it and the links are not always easy to trace. On the one hand, one has the increasing 'scientification', if one m.i,ght so put it, of tradition. Advertisements for ayuNedic and herbal cosmetic o r medical products stress that they are 'natural' and that their benefits have been proved 'scientifically'. There is a keenness to impress with scientific fact and proof. From the concept of kundalini, the benefits of yoga., the ideas of vaastu shastra-all are sought to be shown as adhering to scientifically valid notions of truth. This desire spills over into other spheres. We are familiar with the appropriation of the historiographical method by the Sangh Parivar and the uses to which they seek to put it. The desire is to prove religion by the methods of modem science and modem social science. There is another side to this religious profusion, however and that is an increasing credulity and dependence on the supernatural and mysti­ cal, without much question. I recollect the avidity with which modem middle-class Indians, resident and non-resident, believed (or sought to believe.1) in the miracle of the milk-drinking Ganesha some years ago. The dependence on cults and the manipulation of the divine for very materialistic ends can be read as a frantic need to latch onto certainties in the face of the increasing and destabilizing pulls of modernization and globalization. Both trends feed off cultural patterns globally available: the increased interest even of Westerners in altemarives alternative medicine, alternative science, alternative lifestyles-and the interest in looking at these more scientifically. The clean and sanitized face of the Hindu religion today plays a very important role in selling it to the West, and particularly, to the NRI, who

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is the most important audience for this new spirituality. It allows him (and, I t1Se the pronoun deliberately) to be proud of his faith in its modern incarnation, without the mess and chaos associated with the Indian religions by Westerners. The space of multiculturalism (and, inci­ dentally, the postmodernist trends in social science discourses) allows him to masquerade as modem and also be different with pride. 'Garo se kaho hum Hindu hein' ('say with pride that one is a Hindu') is the apt expression for this phenomenon. fbpular Hinduism in the 19'X)s both feeds off and feeds Hindutva ideology. The expansion and diversification of the realm itself; as we have traced earlier, are something that one has seen happening from the late 1980s onwards, after the entrance of the 'Hindu-right' on the political and public stage with the launching of the Ayodhya movement. The cultural organ­ izations of the Hindu-right feed popular spirituality directly by the organiza­ tion of collective, neighbourhood rituals :md festive celebrations and pujas. The increased presence of the VHP and its parallel organizations at sites of popular pilgrimage, and the streamlining and standardization of rituals perfonned at such sites, are again processes that have a more recent history. The ideology projects itself in cultural and public discourses indirectly through its stress on 'values', 'national identity and pride', 'Indian woman­ hood' and the like. This emphasis emerges in public denunciations of foreign television channels or 'Miss India' contests. In the end, there is a profusion of the elements that go into the making of Hindutva and not all the elements are espoused by everyone. While violence might be specifically abjured by many, the 'cultural' aspects of the ideology make it acceptable to an increasing number of people. These aspects locate themselves on the East/West or tradition/modem divide, and allow Indians to feel that they can combine 'Western materialism' with 'Indian spirituality' without too much effort or inconvenience. Th ey can justifiably feel pride in their faith. The global thrust of Hindutva has a long past. The strains were already visible in the construction of Hindutva in the 1920s. At that time itself one was confronted with a Hinduism that saw itself as having a mission that was both national and international, lndian and global. . The RSS was started with 'the mission of reorganizing the Hindu people on the lines of their unique national genius' (Online 4). This project of RSS, it is claimed, is not only a great process of true national regeneration of Bharat but also the inevitable precondition to realise the dream of world unity

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and hwnan welfare. � as we have said. it is the grand world-uniting thought of Hindus that can supply the abiding basis for human brotherhood, that knowledge of the happ� of mankind, while opening out full and free scope for every small life especially on the face of the earth to grow to its full stature. (Online 4) The rise of Hinduism in this form is, thus, only partly linked to the suppression (SC>•called) of it by the modem, secular nation-state. It must be linked, to some extent, historic.ally to the rise of identities in the colo, nial period, when already Hinduism, Islam and Christianity were pitched against each other in the battle for souls. With the Khilafat movement and the association of Christianity with the West, this was already a transnational battle. Golwalkar wrote of the 'world mission' of Hinduism: [In the past] our Hindu society, strong, self-confident and self, effulgent, acted as the fulcrum of that far-flung empire of the Spirit. Our anns stretched as far as America on the one side ... and on the other side to China, Japan, Cambodia, Malaya, Siam, Indonesia and all the South-East Asian countries and right up to Mongolia and Siberia in the north. During all these centuries, there were neither uprisings by the local people nor their exterminations which would have been inevitable if there had been the slightest sign of domination or exploitation by a foreign people and a foreign culture. . . . That stands in glowing contrast to the bloodstained pages of the history of expansion of Islam, Christianity and now communism and of the various 'world conquerors' produced by other countries. Even to this day, the basic life-pattern of many of those people is Hindu.... We find so many Hindu faces all over there, proud of their Hindu heritage, even though many of them are now Muslims by religion. It is inevitable, therefore, that in order to be able to contribute our unique knowledge to Mankind ... we stand before the world as a self,confident, resurgent and mighty nation.The RSS has resolved to fulfil the age-old national mission by forging, as the first step, the present-day scattered elements of the Hindu society into an organised and invincible force .... (ibid.) In other words, the process of linking, by contrast, Hindutva to other global ideologies has been a part of the construction of this ideology from its very roots.The conversion of the world, however, is sought through r,,, ,Jln,-:1 ir1m

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the movement of 'recapture', 're-conversion'. lt is viewed as a process of returning to a moment in a projected history, in the same way as the con­ version of tribes in India is seen as a proce.ss of recovering their past. The global reach of Hindutva was a process that had already started in the 1960s and 1970s, before the culmination of the crisis of Hindu-Muslim relations in post-Independence India. The VHP, which thtust itself violently on the Indian political imagination in 1983 with the launching of the movement to 'free the birthplace of Ram', was formed as an 'inter­ national organisation' in 1964 with the following aims: (a) To consolidate and strengthen the Hindu society. (b) To protect, promote and propagate Hindu values of life, the ethical and the spiritual in the context of modem times. (c) To keep in touch with all the Hindus living abroad, and to organise and help them in all possible ways in protecting their Hindutva. (Online 5) The VHP divided the world into 'zones' for the purposes of its work of pro­ pagation and organization of the Hindu religion globally. Apart from South Asia, these zones are America, Europe, Africa-Madhya Asia and South­ East Asia. Journals, such as Hinduism Today started in the 1970s, have been spreading the ideas and beliefs of Hinduism for some 20 years. I n fact, it has been argued that a large amount of the money that feeds the Hindutva project comes from the NRis. Certainly, they must support it not only monetarily but also morally. They are often enraptured by the vision it projects and swarm to it. The reasons, as I have said before, may not be far to seek. First, the cults and organizations variously involved in spreading the religion abroad have ensured that it is made simple, digestible modem, clearly comprehensible and free of the taint of super­ stition. It is religion packaged and neatened up, its untidy edges trimmed and its content clarified. The spread of Hinduism in this form offers to Indians abroad easy and objective arguments against Western religions. It allows them pride in their roots as a bulwark against possible racism or anti-immigrant feelings. They might easily cling to it. The fears of alienation from one's origins and of children going astray feed into the complex of instability experi­ enced by the migrant Indian. Subtle forms of racism or the constant need to explain (and justify, perhaps) difference must intertwine with ideas about the 'right' socialization for children to create the defensive complex of ethnic and religio-cultural 'Otherness'. which then protects even as it categorically sets apart.

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One must, then, be aware of the complex o f international linkages. Perhaps ideas might need to be inverted. Did the political crisis of Ayodhya create the global defence of Hinduism among migrant Indians? Or, is the reverse more true: that international organizations, closely or more loosely linked to the Hindutva project, had already established a base of support-moral and, importantly, material-that fed the explo­ sion of differences on the subcontinent? Certainly, this must have con• tributed, I am inclined to think. to the reinforcement of support for Hindutva among the urban Indian middle cl�whose complex location within the globalizing economy must be taken into account here.

Inter11.:t Hinduism There are dozens of sites devoted to the spread of the Hindu religion on the Net. On the face of it, many of these sites are not self-consciously projecting a Hindutva ideology and, quite possibly, not many would answer ·willingly to the label of 'fundamentalism'. Some of these sites are Bochasanwasi Shree Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, Hinduism Today, Hindu Institute of Leaming, Freelrtdia, Hindu Mandir, RSS, Organiser, Sri Swami Shyamananda Paramhansa, Sri Sarveshwari Samooh, ISKCON, Institute of Sri Ram Chandra Consciousness and Sanatan Dharma. There is a Global Hindu electronic network that links one to hundreds of sites on Hinduism. There are numerous sites of par­ ticular temples in different cities and states. These sites are 'virtually' battling it out with others--Islamic, Christian and so on-for souls. There are several reasons for wishing to suggest that strains of a common ideology find their imprints in these sites regardless of the fact that some of them might be ostensibly completely autonomous and they certainly have not all originated at the same place or time. The very pro­ fusion, indeed, might sl.{ggest intunacy, which is underscored by the traces, found everywhere, of language and ideas perhaps too akin to be unattached. Second, various Hindu organizations have made it, for a long time, their specific endeavour to unite disparate units across South Asia and the world to create a more closely knit whole. 1 have already quoted earlier the RSS project of forging 'the present-day scattered ele­ ments of the Hindu society into an organised and invincible force' (Online 4). The VHP's Head Office in New Delhi not only affiliates all VHP units abroad, it also works for the 'affiliation of those institutions from

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foreign countries that have similar objects' and is resolved to encourage them and 'give all assistance and help in their worlc' (Online 6). The fact that these sites are interlinked through larger networks and they reference each other is clear evidence of their common associatiQn. The sites are clearly maintained by ample resources and are technically superb and visually attractive. Let us loolc at some sites in order to under­ stand how they intennesh in terms of ideas and concepts. The borrowing is complex; sometimes shadowy, sometimes more explicit, For in$tance, we note the site 'Hinduism Today' managed by the Himalayan Academy. It offers discourses, pamphlets and other literature on how one can become a Hindu. As it says, The whole idea that all religions are one may be true in spirit, but in actuality no. One path or another must be chosen and then lived fully. We don't hear Indian Hindus saying much anymore, 'I'm a Christian, I'm a Muslim, I'm a Jew', as they used to proclaim in the 1970s. Today they are proudly saying, 'I am a Smarta, a Vaishnavite, a Shakta or a Saivite'. Much of this change is due to the courageous stand that Hindu leaders of all denominations and traditions have talcen. (Online 3) Resonances of the 'gan.i', the pride of being 'Hindu' are clearly heard. Patriarchal notions concerning women and their place in the family and society are brought out baldly in a section titled 'The Role of Women'. It stresses, quite unembarrassed, that women find no equality in Hindu society. The ideas about women to be found here find their echoes in Hindutva ideology which talks of upholding 'symbols of national veneration, such as sanctity of womanhood ... ' and 'family values' which epitomize 'Indian culture': Women in Hindu society are held in the highest regard, far more respected, in truth, than in the West. But this does not imply the kind of 'equality' or participation in public interactions that are common in the West. The qualities traditionally most admired in an Eastern woman are modesty of manner, shyness and self-effacement. Self-assertive or bold tendencies are regarded with circumspection. Feminine refinements are expressed and protected in many customs including the following: 1. \%manly resen.ie: In mixed company, a Hindu woman will keep mod­ estly in the baclcground and not �te freely in conversation. •l I') I Ile I

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3. 4.

5.

of course, does not apply

to situations among family and close friends. When male guests are in the home, women of the household will appear when it is proper for them to do so. VJ.Si.tors do not �t or ask to meet µtern. Women are not expected to speak out or make themselves a part of the conversation. Wife walks behind husband: The wife walks a step or two behind her husband, or if walking by his side, a step or two bade, always Riving him the lead. (In the West, the reverse of this is often true.) Sewing at meals: Ar. meals, women follow the ancient custom of serving the men first before eating. Chapero,ung: It is customary for a woman to always be accom­ panied when she leaves the home. living alone, too, is unusual. Women in public: Generally, it is improper for women to speak with strangen on the stteet, much less strike up a casual con­ versation. Similarly, drinking or smoking in public, no matter how innocent, is interpreted as a sign of moral laxity. (Online 2) This,

2.

213

Other sites talk of the modest clothing habits of the Indian Hindu woman, her culture and tradition, her bindi and sanskriti and the like. �ues concerning Hindus are spo�n about and these usually include terrorism (by fundamentalists, usually Islamic), temple building, the loss of culture among the youth and the like. Internet sites are being used fo r the propa­ gation and expansion of Hinduism, � conversion to it A site offering short steps on 'How to Bero.me a Hindu' talks of Hinduism's 'Nine Fundamental Beliefs' and its 'Five Precepts', the 'Five Obligations' of all Hindus, indeed, even Hinduism's 'Eight Sacraments'. lbe patterning of the modem Hinduism on Islam and Christianity is clearly evident Recollect what has been argued earlier regarding the location of Hindutva as an ideology in relation to lsmn1t Christianity and, indeed, even communism. These sites speak the language of conversion and mis.,ion, of creating a global community. In these sites, Hinduism has convened itself. It is now a 'faith' with canonical rituals, with precepts and obligations lilce Islam, with sacraments like Christianity and with a conversion strategy that models itself on both. lt is a religion on par with other world reli­ gions: it has redefined itself. Howevet; one must notice that Hinduism in this form has a more complex relationship with Islamic and Christian fundamentalism as shall be shown from examples on the Internet. Hinduism is quick to separate itself from the 'xenophobic' religions, pre­ sumably Islam and Christianity, even while it is offering salvation, a new life, a new name, even a 'baptism' certificate just lflre these religions.

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The metaphor of 'reconversion' still haunts: one becomes a Hindu because one detects deep down that one is intrinsically Hindu and one's gunl (always more illuminated) can see that inner light within one and recognizes it by bestowing on one a 'Hindu' name. One can discern in all this the echoes of the stress on and the pattern of naming in Christian conversion, the obsession with a 'Christian' name.

•

Xenophobia is a foreign concept to Hindus, who embrace even those who are unlike themselves. How do you know if you are a Hindu deep inside? ( ...] If you believe, as your gun, does, in the existence of God everywhere and in all things, you are certainly not a Christian, Muslim or Jew. If you believe in one Supreme God and many Gods, you are certainly not a Christian, Muslim, Jew or Buddhist. The Buddhists don't believe in a personal God. They do not like to use the word God. [...] If you believe in the law of kamuJ, action receiving its comparable just due, you might be a Buddhist, but then you have the personal God problem. If you believe in reincarnation, punarjanma, 'being born again and again', you might be a Buddhist or a Jain, but then there is the Gcxl prob­ lem again. Another point: if you are attracted to Hindu temples, well then certainly you are not a Christian, Buddhist, Jew) Muslim, Shintoist or Taoist. ( ...] Carefully choose the sect within the Sanatana Dhanna that you will devote your life to following. It is important to lcnow that one cannot simply enter the Hindu religion. It is necessary to enter one of Hinduism's specific sects or denominations. Go with your Hindu friends to a Hindu priest in a temple of your choice and arrange for the name-giving sacrament, namakarana samskara ... his ceremony brings you formally into the Hindu community, recognising and ratifying your proclamation of loyalty and wholehearted commiunent to the Sanatana Dharma and validating, now and forever, your Hindu first and last name. ... The certificate marking entrance into the Hindu fold is a legal document giving the name of the temple, home or hall the cere­ mony was performed in. It is signed by yourself, and by the priest, his assistant and at least three witnesses who are established members of Hinduism. (Online 1) Hinduism, it is argued, has always accepted the adoptee and converts. Hindus should be proud of their names, markers of religion and culture, just as Muslims and Christians are. The correspondences found here

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between Christian and Islamic conversion and the models they follow are astonishing. One hear$ of sects, liturgists, 'certificates' of baptism, 'community'. One is even offered stories of miraculous conversions and a great stress is placed on 'severance' from one's pre,conversion past. All these sites are cleai; easily accessible and user friendly. Hinduism is user friendly. These sites compete with others devoted to various Islamic fun, damentalist and Christian millennial, fundamentalist cults. The linguis, tic and ideological overlap is tremendous. Hinduism clearly perceives itself in a war for souls, as it were, with these other cults, and it talks, like Islam and communism, of building a 'global community', uniting people in the faith. The language, as I have already indicated, used for Islam by Hindu sites virtually replicates that used by Christian and Western observers. The war of civilizations is on. Nevertheless, Hinduism is always in a tense relationship with these other ideologies for it projects itself relentlessly as 'different' and tolerant even while it refashions itself wilfully on the lines of more dogmatic, canonically rigid faiths. This tension is mediated, I would like to suggest, by the trope of 'reconversion', which I have referred to above. Recon­ version is not just an event in the life of tribes or in that of other persons turning to Hinduism. It is the fonn of conversion particular to Hinduism. For, if, as the ideologues suggest, one converts because one 'recogni�s· that deep down one is Hindu, and if the world from Siberia to China was, in any case, once Hindu, then, conversion is always, already a turning back, not just for Indian tribes but on a global scale. Reconversion ts possible, then, only for Hindus and is the only possible 'conversion' to Hinduism, which makes this 'religion' distinctly different from other mission religions, which convert by exterminating the old and imposing 'foreign' faiths.

Conclusion: Implications, Limitations and Possibilities I began by suggesting that religion, rather than caste or language, appears to me to be the main mark.er of Indian identity today on a global scale. I have tried to show the complex location of the transnational middle classes in sustaining this particular identifier. I would further suggest that the media could make much more of religious distinctions than those of caste or language because these resonate forcefully with

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intematiotial religious divides. Hinduism locates itself in relation to these divid'es, these global, if one likes civilizational-cleavages. It sees itself pitched against Islam, Christianity and even communism. It also, in the process of modernizing itself and equipping itself for this global battle, challenges these other ideologies by approximating them. The modem Hinduism is, then, techno-savvy, bounded, natty and nice. In order to understand the play of identities in India today, therefore, one needs really to locate it within a larger picture; one needs to look at India not alone but in relation to other countries in a global economic and cultural contes(x)t. However, I am not announcing the death of the nation-state. Ultimately, the project of Hindutva associates itself with a geographical territory and its demographic reconfiguration, the Hinduization of the Indian nation. Therefore, the appropriation of state machinery for this purpose is a vital political battle. We have been seeing that appropriation in action; and its consequences for those Hindutva wants left out. Hinduism has seen itself as pursuing the project of'reconversion'. I am suggesting that reconversion is not merely one type of conversion strategy that Hinduism adopts in Telation to tribes, other modes applying elsewhere. Hinduism converts by reconverting and reconversion itself is more than a strategy or an episode. It is a discursive device employed to encode Hinduism's difference from other ideologies. Even so, the ideological divide is morphologically bridged .through the linguistic and formulaic similarities one observes. One n,eeds to ponder on the role of social science discourses in creat­ ing and/or sustaining these cultural wars. The cultural tum in the social sciences has, no doubt, along with other public and academic discourses favouring the 'alternative', the 'indigenous' or the 'ethnic' contributed to the growing legitimacy accorded to these standpoints. Moreover, the market plays a deciding role and the ethnic 'culture' is saleable and extremely lucrative. The way in which social scientists have talked of the happy combination of'tradition' and 'modernity' among (Hindu) Indians needs to be rethought a little. We are familiar with the literature that talks of (if it does not also appear to celebrate) the ability of Indians to 1 compartmentali1,e' their faith and put on and off caste lilce (in fact, with) a set of clothes. One needs to query, while speaking of this selective merging of the 'traditional' with the 'modem', how far it can go. And, who bears the costs? W hile I do not have the space or time to enter into a detailed discus• sion here, it is possible to show that this version of Indian (Hindu)

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modernity is increasingly undemocratic and exclusive in its orientation. Dalits, women, minorities, ttibals: these are groups left out in the pulling together of 'tradition' and 'modernity' that I have been talking of. Perhaps we need to recall Max Weber's simple and profound insight that value systems conflict with each other and cannot be so easily harmonized. A SOC\ety, if it wants to be open and civil, must re-examine critically and self-reflectively the configuration of values that best admits, if with faltering steps, this aim.

Refemras Online 1: http://www.himalayanacademy.comtbui,/convenionA)3intro,html {)pljne2: http://www,himalayanacademy.com/bui.a-/c:onversion/13cues_clues.html Online 3: http://www.himalayanacademy .comA,ui,/convenkm/index.html Online 4: http://www.hindubooka.ora.,1,ot/pl-ch l .han Online 5: http://www.vhp.org/englisluite/a-origln-growth/whyvhp.htm Online 6:

http�//www.vhp.org/engli1h1ite/dDimen1ion1_of_VHP/qViahwa%20Samanvya/ vilhwahinduperiahadboard.han#needa

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12 Civil Society and the Limits of Identity Politics• Ananta Kumar Gm••

... no one person can contain the whole of human experience and some level of interpenetration of identities is necessary for individual survival and mutual understanding. To tallc about identity as a cat� gory for organising relations misses entirely this sense in which each of us is actually part of the other, whether we Ii.Ice it or not. Identity politics implicitly brealcs this fundamental human relation and is per# haps the appropriate politics in a market dominated society where dependence is feared and despised and independence a valued aim. -Ian Craib (1998: 174) Equal respect for everyone is not limited to those who are like us; it extends to the person of the other in his or her otherness. And solidarity with the other as one of us refers to the flexible 'we' of a community that resists all substantive determinations and extends its permeable boundaries ever further. [... ) Here inclusion does not

•Originally published in Sociological Bulletin, vol. 50, no. 2, 200l, pp. 266-85. ••This article is a revised version of a paper presented at a sy�ium organized as part of the XXVI AU India Sociological Conference, University of Ker.tla, Thiruvananthapuram, 29��1 December 2000.

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imply locking members into a community th a t closes itself of from others. The 'inclusion of the other' means rather that the bound­ aries of the community are open for all, also and most especially for those who are strangers to one another and want to remain stranget. -Jurgen Haberma.s (1998: xxxvi-xxxvii)

The Problem

V

oluntary associations, social movements and struggles for recognition constitute a significant domain of civil society, and the contem po· rary revival of the idea of civil society owes much to these movements and struggles. In the last four decades, social movements have fought for the recognition of suppressed groups-race, caste, ethnicity and gender-and this struggle has a historical as well as a continued con­ temporary significance. Frances Fox Piven; who is otherwise critical of some of the dangerous implications of identity politics, tells us, '... iden.. tity politics is especially necessary to lower status peoples, to those who are more insecure, and who are more likely to be deprived of recognition and respect by wider currents of culture and social interaction' (1995: 106). For the subordinate groups, identity politics was a vehicle of 'psychic emancipation' as well as 'political empowerment' (ibid.). Identity pol­ itics, as an aspect of movements and struggles for recognition, is an important part of our contemporary world. As Kevin Hetherington argues, 'Identity politics is now celebrated as the arena of cultural and political resistance within society and is often viewed as indicative of a move to a new type of postmodern or late-mode(tl society' (1998: 22). There is now a need to rethink identity and identity politics as part of a struggle to reconstruct civil society as a space for non-idendtarian pol­ itics and ethics. This need is occasioned by a displacement in the eman­ cipatory promise of identity politics. Earlier identitarian movements were fighting for th.e emancipation of groups concerned, but now they are more preoccupied with the annihilation of the other than with self-­ emancipation. As Nancy Fraser observes, In the 1970s and 1980s, struggles for the 'recognition of difference' seemed charged with emancipatory promise. Many who rallied to the banners of sexuality, gender, ethnicity and 'race' aspired not

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only to assert hitherto denied identities but to bring a richer, lateral dimension to battles over the redistribution of wealth and power as well. With the turn of the centuty, issues of recognition and iden­ tity have become even more central, yet many now bear a different charge: from Rwanda to Balkans, questions of'identity' have fuelled campaigns for ethnic cleansing and even genocide. (2000: 107) Such a displacement of the emancipatory promise of identity politics is also discernible closer: at home. As H. Srikanth tells us about contem­ porary identity politics in Assam: For crea�g and consolidating its respective identities. every group makes efforts to construct the 'other'. Initially, the 'other' was the Bengalis, later the Bangladeshi immigrant and now it could be anyone-an Assamese, a non-tribal, a Muslim, an officer from Guwahati on a trip to Barak valley or even a resident of Lakhsmipur trying fo.- a job in Sivasagar. [...]The 'other' should always be sub­ missive to the 'natives'. If at any time the other persists and refuses to submit, he needs to be killed or at least deported to his original homeland. (2000: 4124) Movements of identity politics now promote itepressive fortns of com­ munitarianism', and in their preoccupation with 'authentic collective identities', they 'serve less to foster interaction across differences than to enforce separatism, conformism and intolerance' (Fraser 2000: 119). In this context, there is a need to look into the limits of identity politics as a part of rethinking identity, difference, community, culture and multi­ culturalism. The present article undertakes such an exploration. It argues that identity politics, many a time, has taken an involutionary turn in which there has been an assertion of one's identity; but, such an assertion has not been accompanied by a self-critical move to be refiective about one's own .asserted identity and be dialogical to many others jn the creation and living of one's identity. This uncritical, assertive move within identity pol­ itics constitutes a danger to the self and cultural creativity. In the face of such challenges. we need ethics politics of identity formation which are not exclusionary but dialogical. In the latter, identity here is integrally linked to the calling of a dialogical praxis in which the self and the other are in dialogue, rather than at each other's throats with sharpened knives. This dialogical praxis requires self-development and self-transfurmation on

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the part of the mobilizers of identities-issues which are coospicuous by

their absence in the predominantly political connotation and mobilization ci civil society at present {Girl 20C0a).

· Identity Politics and New Social Movements: The Dialectic . of Resource Mobilization and Identity Formation and beyond During the last three decades, new social movements of various lcind&­ ecology movements, women's movements and student movements-­ have been im.portant agents of self,development and social change. The new social movements have striven for a new identity formation on the part of the participants, and this aspect of their work is in contrast to the work of resource mobilization on the part of old social movemen� party-based and class-based. However, when we look at contemporary social movements, even of the new variety, we find in their work an intertwinement between identity formation and resource mobilization. Thus, understanding the work of social movements in terms of the exclusionary or 'either-or' logic of identity and resource is not helpful; we need to look at contemporary movements as embodying a dialectic of identity formation and resource mobilization (Girl 1992; Rochon 1998). The need for such a perspective becomes clear when we look at the vision and dynamics of new social movements of our times, such as the USA-based Christian socio-religious movement of the Habitat for Humanity (Giri 2002). Habitat builds houses for low-income families in around 1,500 communities in the USA and 60 other countries around the world. Through its activity of service, Habitat provides a new identity to its participants--the identity of belonging to a Christian evangelical movement, which believes in doing rather than just preaching and one which is different from numerous charity organizations-in that people are not given anything for free. For example, the recipients of Habitat contribute to the services they receive supplying labour to the building process and making regular mortgage payments. However, when we talk to the volunteers of Habitat, it becomes clear that they are interested not only in 'identity fonnation', but also in 'resource mobilization'. They are able to assemble resources based on their differential identity, that is, they are able to generate more resources, because they are not like any other

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charity organization, which in tum prevents them from compromising their identity of belonging to a movement with a difference. With the donations they receive, which is partly due to their organization's unique character, the leaders and volunteers ofHabitat are able to maintain their distinctive identity and avoid knocking at the doors of the government for grants. At the same time, there is a complexity in the process of identity formation in Habitat which calls for another deeper dialectic, that of self-reflection and self-transformation. The identity of Habitat volun­ teers is crucially dependent upon the performance of the homeownets. Homeowners must repay regularly, which he!ps Habitat volunteers to feel secure in their identity of belonging to a movement where money and labour are I)Ot given either as a dole or a charity but becomes a link in an ever-widening circle of a 'Revolving Fund for Humanity'-a fund with which new houses are built for the needy. The leaders and volun­ teers of Habitat fe.el threatened when the homeowners default. In order to secure this identity from all probable threats, the actors of Habitat would not hesitate to impose their own middle-class identity upon the homeowners by insisting on the destruction of the dilapidated trailer of a selected homeowner. Some of them also would not feel the prick of conscience in throwing out a defaulting homeowner on to the streets of Chicago on a cold winter night (chat this actually happened in the Chicago Habitat affiliate was reported widely in the newspapers in the USA) or suggesting to take out the roof of a poor farmer's Habitat house (as in a village . in Andhra Pradesh), thus blurring the thin line separat­ ing the vicarious from the creative identity formation. This blurring has to do with the sometimes-exclusive preoccupation on t'.he part of the Habitat actors with their own spiritual self-development, and their fail­ ure to relate this preoccupation to their responsibility to the other and the need to transform society which structures such an unequal rela­ tionship between the self and the other. Creative identity formation calls for a creative reconciliation between care of the self and responsibility to the other. In the work of Habitat, there is a dialectic between identity formation and resource- mobilization; but, in the process of identity formation, there is insufficient attention to the dialectic of critical self-reflection. Thus, in understanding movements for alternative identity formation, we need to move beyond the sociological dialectic between identity formation and resource mobilization, and bring the dialectic of self-transformation and self-reflection to the very heart of identity :formation itself. This move,,

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however, calls for understanding dialectics itself in a new way, not concerned with thesis and anti-thesis alone. For Roy Bhaskar (1993, 2000), dialectics now need to be rethought as a quest for 'open totalities' accompanied by the dialectics of sel£,transformation. As Roop Rekha Verma argues, 'The dialectic by itself does not explain the possibility of cultural change or a critique of culture. [ ... ] What is important to add in this dialectic is that internalisation can be reflective or unreflective' (1991: 533). It is the lack of a dialectic of self-reflection and self­ transformation which makes the Habitat volunteers blind to the predica­ ment of the homeowners. It is self-reflection which relativize.s preoccupation with either invari­ ant or absolutist collective identities. In understanding the work of new social movements, we need to be aware of the problem of invariant collective identity. As Sheldon Stryker tells us, '[In new social move­ ments] collective identities become bases for members' definition of self' and there is a 'blurring here of individual and collective identity' (2000: 24). Dialectic as critical self-reflection helps us relativize our absolutist self, assertions. It seems that in contemporary women's movement there is a gcadual recognition of this relativization. Proponents of women's move­ ments now realize the limits of speaking of women's identity in the singular as they have become attentive to the differences of race, caste, class and power within the so-called unified category of gender. I n femi­ nist studies and women's movernentS, there is also a recognition of the dangers of essentializing 'woman' as an identity group. Iris M. Young notes, 'The identification of "woman" with a self-conscious political movement seems to designate arbitrarily what, from the vantage point'of common sense, seems merely a specific group of women' (quoted in Nicholson and Steidman 1995: 24). Gayatri C. Spivak also offers a similar critique: 'I think the hardest lesson for me to learn-and I have not learnt it, one attempts to learn it every day-is that the word "woman'' is not after all something for which one can find a literal referent with� out looking into the looking glass. ( ...] What 1 see in the looking glass is not particularly the constituency of feminism' (1990: 70; see also Gedalof I 999). The dilemma that we face here is, 'How can we use group labels without attributing to them any essential characteristics!' (Nicholson and Steidman 1995: 24}. Coming to terms with such challenges calls for a new mode of partici­ pation in the visio1' and experiments of social movements. Hetherington argues,

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ANANrA KUMAR. Goo Social movements have been associated with a political identity

defined by a Euclidean geometry of master and slave a geometry of opposite sides, opposing clas.,es, opposing genders, opposing skin hues, opposing sexualities and so on. The marginalized have often adopted this geometry as well. [...) To adopt a connotative approach means not only challenging the simplicities of denoting but also the simplicities of Euclidean thought. (1998: 29; see also Laclau 1996)

The Limits of Identity Politics In dealing with identitarian movements then the key questions are, 'How do we generate ways of understanding identity as central to personal and group formation while avoiding essentialism? And how do we articulate identity so that it can be understood in relation to socio, historical dynamics?' (Nicholson and Steidman 1995: 21). These issues call for exploring the limits of identity politics as we appreciate its signifi­ cance in democratizing and pluralizing an earlier centrist, unitarian, authoritarian and a monological world. However, this exploration is not from the transcendent and purl$t standpoint of an external observer, but from the vantage point of genuine struggles of idendtarian movements themselves as well as from critical participation in and reflection on these. The first limit of identity politics is that it reifies identities and this rei.fication and substantialization are not only dangerous for the 'other', they arc dangerous fot the 'self as well. Identity politics many a time lead to the denial of choice on the part of the individuals whose identities arc valori.zed and fought for. In their different but related ways, both Andre Beteille and Amartya Sen draw our attention to this aspect of the limits of identity politics. For Beteille, 'the greatest threat to civil society in India �omes from the intrusion of collective identities into domains that ought to be governed by rights and obligations of individuals' (19991 2589). While Beteille draws our attention to the dangers to individual freedom emanating from collectivist identity politics, he is silent about the need for supplementing individual freedom with attentiveness to the well-being of others (see Girl 1998). In exploring the limits of identity politics, we must avoid falling into the trap of either the collectivist erasure of individual freedom or the individualist self-closure which docs not realize and actualize one's responsibility to the other. Sen's (1998)

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critique of identity politics also draws our attention to the denial of choice at work in such politics, but here individual freedom is, at least rhetorically, linked to social commitment. He draws our attention to the new tyrannies that are emerging in the 'unreasoned identity shifts' that are taking place in different parts of the world where people abdicate 'r esponsibility to consider and iwess how one should think and what one should identify with' (Sen 1998: 21). One difficulty with Sen's critique of identity politics is that it gives reason unconditional primacy and does not recognize the need for it to be supplemented by self-critical awareness of the limits of reason itself and the need for a henn.eneutic spiritual supplement (Girl 2000b}. At the same time, Sen quite admiringly draws our attention to the issue of what Habennas (1998) would call post-national identity fonnation. Limits of identity politics urge us to realire not only the limits of assertive identitat..­ ian groups within the nation-state but also understand the limits of the nation-state as a taken-for-granted ultimate frame of our identity. For Sen, The importance of nationality and citizenship cannot be denied in the contemporary world. But we also have to ask: how should we take note of the relations between different people across borders whose identities include, inter alia, solidarities based on classinca, tions other than partitioning according to nations and political units, such as class, gender, or political and social beliefs? (1998: 28) In this context, Sen presents a transnational and planetary challenge of identity formation before us: Even the identity of being a 'human being'-pe rhaps our most basic identity-may have the effect, when properly seized, of broadening our viewpoint; and the imperatives that we miy associate with our shared humanity may not be mediated by our membership of collective identities such as 'nations' or 'peoples'. (ibid.) The reign of collectivist identities, unless put in place and perspective, can create impediments to our realization of ourselves as subjects. According Alain Touraine, identity politics must be understood in rela­ tion to a thrust towards a global marketization, and both these processes threaten the unfoldment of ippropriate ethics and politics of the subject: 'As it becomes more difficult in this globalised society to define oneself as a citiren or a worker, it becomes more tempting to define oneself in

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terms of cultural community such as an ethnic group, a religion or belief, a gender or a mode of behaviour' (2000: 31). Touraine movingly presents the predicament in which we are at present, pushed and pulled as we are between global marketization and communitarian identity mobilization: Our real point of reference is not hope, but the pain of being torn apart. Because the world of objectification and its technologies has been so debased as to be no more than a market, while the world of cultural identity is locked into a communitarian obsession, the indi­ vidual who exists inside us all is suffering the agony of being tom apart, of feeling that his or her lifeworld is decayed as the institu­ tional realm or even the representation of the world itsel£ (Touraine 2000: 55) From the displacement of the subject that takes place in identity pol­ itics let us now go baclc to the issue of the displacement of material inter­ est and the redistribution that accompanies many a movement of identity politics in the contemporary world. About the contemporary identity politics in Assam, Srikanth writes, ' ... the politics of identity in Assam is basically the politics of Philistines, trapped in the world of appearances, fighting imaginary crimes. [ ... ] fts ideology masquerades class exploitation and ignores the material structures and forces respon· sible for their problem' (2000: 4124). Similar is the critique of Sarah Joseph (1998) who laments that class as an analytical category has been totally excluded from contemporary discussions of culture and ethnicity. According to her, 'The view that identity claims should be viewed as rights in particular needs to be critically interrogated. And any attempt to critically examine identity claims would necessarily involve going beyond the self-perception of individuals and groups to understand such claims in relation to wider social processes' (ibid.: 130). The greatest danger of identity politics, however, lies in the fact that it debilitates our capacity to learn. This fact is easily discernible in the case of the identity politics that is taking place in India in the fields of caste and religion. The dalit movements today continue to be bound to anti-Brahmanical logic and do not explore the task of reconstruction and self-criticism outside of the villainous construction of the Brahmanical other (see lliah 1995). It is now universally recognized that education is crucial for human development, and Ambedbr himself had emphasized the importance of education for the emancipation of dalits. But, in inculcating the habits of education, dalits, who are almost always ..l IIJIIP I 'IT\"1

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first generation learners, can learn from the life,-practices of Brahmans. Dalits can learn the habitus of education from Brahmans, as Brahmanical castes can learn the art of labour from the dalits. Such mutual learning can facilitate the intertwining of mental learning and manual labour in both the Brahmans and the dalits 1 which in turn can lead to the transcendence of their categorical identities. However, such a situation is not possible as long as the protagonists of dalit politics stick to dalit­ ization as the sole route to emancipation and Brahmanical sociologists loo� at any effort at human improvement as an instance of sanskritiza­ tion and offer it as the sole model of social and cultural development. Civil society as a project of learning in the lives of individuals and communities privileges neither dalitization nor sanskritization, but is animated by the .dialectic of self-realization. The same problem of refusal to learn and an arrogance to kill the other which poses a challenge to our self-secured identity is witnessed in the contemporary identity politics of religion. Attacks on Christian communities and missionaries have been a barbaric and tragic pan of the religion-based identity politics in our country. Such attacks reflect, at a deeper level, the envy and jealousy that some belligerent Hindu organ­ izations have towards the services rendered by some Christian organiza­ tions, and their unwillingness to learn from such ethical engagement and to make Hinduism and several of its institutions undertake more service activities. This challenge of learning and self-criticism becomes clear in wh_at a senior citizen of Baripada in Orissa, who is himself a Hindu, told me during my recent fieldwork: We Hindus spend all our energies in observing so many festivals and now collecting donations for these has become a thriving industry. The wealthy Hindus of the town put their money in building temples, but they would not spend a rupee in undertaking service activities in the city, what to speak of going out to the remote tribal areas as Christian missionaries-do. Similar is the approach of the self-study movement of Swadhyaya, a movement of practical spirituality from within contemporary Hinduism. For Swadhyaya, Hindus must learn from Christian missionaries to work among the unreachable and downtrodden. As Hindus learn from Christians, Christians and Christian missionaries also can learn from the Hindus that there are many ways to God and not one, and also understand the difficulties and anxieties that many Hindus,

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not just Hindutva fundamentalist forces, have about conversion. AI> Felix Wilfred, himself a passionate Christian, writes, Many Christians may dispute how founded are the fears of our neigh­ bours regarding conversion and how much it may be s�tiated by hard facts. But the fact is that there is such a widespread impression that Christians are concerned about increasing their numerical strength in addition to the power and influence they already wield in terms of their institutions and foreign flow of funds. Such impressions create a lot of difficulties in our mutual relationship. (2000: 236) For Wilfred, though Christian services 'today exhibit a certain parallel to what is being done either by the state or other voluntary agencies', there is little cooperation between Christian service agencies and other volun­ tary organizations which heightens the need to 'practice greater collabo­ ration with the larger civil society' (ibid.: 194). Thus, there is a challenge of transformation for both the Hindus and Christians: the Hindus can learn from Christians to make their religious activities focus more on service programmes; the Christian organizations can strive to make their institutions more accessible to people at large, facilitate more public control of these institutions, participate in the civil society as partners of dialogue and embody the practice of what in Christian theology is called kenosis or self-emptying vis-�..vis the use of power. However, in the field of identity politics of our country, we are faced with the fact of a persistent refusal to learn, which is antithetical to the spirit of multiculturalism. A multicultural society has to be a learning society where different cultures and individuals are open to learning from each other. Such a society req uues, as Satya P. Mohanty tells us, 'an adequate appreciation of the epistemic role of "culture" which provides us "deep bodies of knowledge of hum.an kind and of human flourishing"' (1998: 240). Each culture is an epistemic community and provides us a unique mode of knowing the world; but, this knowledge is not destined to be particular, rather it finds its fulfilment in creative universaJi7c1tion (Rajan 1998). Genuine multiculturalism facilitates creative universalization of partic­ ular knowledge of the world and requues the flourishing and practice of 'epistemic cooperation' (Mohanty 1998: 240). This state, in tum, requires opening to and learning from the members which assertive identity politics rnakes difficult to happen. This epistemic learning is not simply a

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question of epistemology, as it seems to be the case with Mohanty, but involves ontological preparation and work on self-development on the part of the self, culture and society. An ontological opening for epistemic cooperation can facilitate the realization of 'cultural communication' and 'cultural liberation', and contribute to the much needed 'recompo­ sition of the world' in these days of fragmentation and deconstruction (Touraine 2000; see also Parekh 2000). It hardly needs to be stressed that such a vision and practice of multi­ culturalism calls for a reformulation of our conceptions. of culture and 1 community. As Gerd Baumann reminds us, Multiculturalism is not the old concept of culture multiplied by the number of groups that exist, but a new, and internally plural praxis of culture applied to oneself and to other' (1999: vii). Each culture has a dimension of beyond which resists its total subsumption under custom, convention and po wer (Pande 1989). As Veena Das tells us, There are constantly moving, dynamic, challenging, encompassing relations between culture as a societally agreed set of values which structure voice and voice as appearing in transgression, proclaiming the truth of culture and relationshi�yet allowing culture to be born not only as external facade but as endowed with soul. (1995: 160) Identity politics has its limits in realizing· such a vision and practice of culture, especially in recognizing human voice. It also has a naturalized view of community. However, community is not only the storehouse of a naturalized identity, it also has a moral dimension which calls for what Habermas (1998) terms a 'post-conventional' identity formation on the part of the participants. In .such an identity formation, identity needs cannot be easily satisfied by appeals to communitarian frameworks; rather it requires a morally just identity formation on the part of the actors and proceeds with a frame of 'qualitative distinctions' Ooas 2000; see also Matustik 1997). Such a process of identity formation calls for the rethinking of the community as not merely a space of conformity but as a space of responsibility. In thinking about community, there is a need now to make a move from community as a space of 'descriptive respon, sivity' to being a space of 'normative responsibility' where, as Calvin 0. Schrag passionately tells us, 'Responsibility, nurtured by the call of conscience, supplies the moral dimension in the narrative of the self in community' (1997: 100).

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Rethinking and Reconstructing Identity and Difference Such a view of culture and community calls for a different conception and realization of self-identity. Identity is not only a matter of apriori formulation and categorical determination; it is also an aspect of an unfold­ ing narrative. To talk of identity then is to talk of narrative identity, as Paul Ricouer (2000) would teach us, which is crucial to our idea of a capable subject. 'The identity of the narrating self finds its proper analogue not in an Qjectivating nwnerical identity but rather than in the self-identity achieved through the development of characters within the plot of a story' (Schrag 19')7: 39). Self-esteem and self-respect are crucial to this narrative identity. T hese aspects are also concerns with identity politics, but unlike identity politics in the pursuit and work af narrative identity, the concerns with self-esteem and self-respect are not bound to the self-individual or group; rathei; it overflows to the fields of the othet As Ricouer puts it, Life stories are so intertwined with one another that the narrative anyone tells or hears of his own life becomes a segment of those other stories that are the narratives of others' lives. We may thus consider nations, peoples, classes, communities of every sort as institutions that recognise themselves as well as others through nar­ rative identity. (2000: 7) Narrative identity helps us overcome the limits of reification of identity in identity politics, which is further facilitated by realizing the distinction between identity and identification. While preoccupation with identity has the implication of absolutization, determination and fixation, an engage­ ment with the processes of identification makes us sensitive to the proces.s of identity formation which is a constant negotiation between the desire to reify and the desire to fly the chains of essential fixation. Baumann empha­ sizes this distinction between identity and identification: 'We will not know what an identity is unless we have tried to dissolve it into situational iden­ tifications; ·we will never learn what culture is until we understand it as a dialectic, double discursive, process: People reify it and at the same time undo their remcations.' He urges us to 'unreify all accepted reification by finding CTOSS-cutti.ng cleavages (among identities)' (1999: 140). The distinction between identity and identification that Baumann makes gets an enriching dialogical shift in Hetherington (1998), where

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'identity is performed through bricolage' rather than through the annihilation of the other. Hetherington urges us to understand the spednc topology of identity and identification in the contemporary world where there are multiple locations and lateral and 'transversal' (cf. Schrag 1997) pathways of connections and conversations among them. In the words of Hetherington: In a world where identities cannot be attributed to singular uncom­ plicated subject positions (authors or narrators outside the story), identity becomes all about multiple location and performativity within that location. Under such conditions, the main issue associ­ ated with such spatial uncertainty is identification. It is through iden­ tifications with others, identmcations that can be multiple, overlapping or fractured, that identity-that sense of self-recognition and belong­ ing with others-is achieved. (1998: 24) A concern with identification as different from identity tells us that there is no essential confrontation between identity and difference, and differences have not only a creative and productive role to play in unset­ tling identity but also in helping us to realire the other within and in its manifold creative unfoldment (Connolly 1991). 1bis situation calls for rethinking identity and the relationship between identity and difference. So far, th.is relationship has been thought about in the language of univer­ sality, which has led to the subsumption of one under the other. Now th.is relationship needs to be thought about transversally. Universality stresses unification but transversality proceeds in 'an open-textured gathering of expanding possibilities' (Schrag 1997: 133) in establishing a connection between identity and difference. In transversality, the process of establish­ ing th.is connection is always an 'ing', a unifying process, rather than an 'ed', a finalized result (ibid,). In reconstituting the relationship between identity and difference, we need to move from a universalist unification to a transversal connectivity; an art of connectedness which acknowledges the lack of a total fit between identity and difference, but, nonetheless, continually tries to establish a relationship 'moving beyond the constraints of the metaphysical oppositions of universality and particularity and iden­ , tity and difference (ibid.). An engagement with identification urges us to understand negotiation between identity and difference. This negotiation is not only external but also intemal. There is a need to take note of the experiential dimension of identity formation, and experiencing identity as a process involves

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constant negotiation not only with th� who are around us but also 'internal negotiation' (Craib 1998). Identity has both the dimension of self and social, and rethinking identity calls for a realization that our identities are not exhaustively social (Cohen 1994; Rapport 1999). As Craib argues, We certainly have social identities: I am a university teacher, a father, a husband, a psychotherapist, a supporter of the English cricket team and so on. Some of these (especially the last one) could disappear without my experiencing any great loss. 1 would have lost an identity, not m:Y identity. If1 suffered a major tragedy in my family life, ceasing to be a husband and becoming a divorced man or widower, my iden­ tity would have changed in an excruciatingly painful way but I would still have an identity. Social identities can come and go but my iden­ tity goes on as something which unites all the social identities l ever had, have or will have. My identity always overflows, adds to, trans­ fonns the social identities that are attached to me. (1998: 4) For Craib, identity politics does not understand the limits of the social in talking about identity, and it is linked to projective identification: Projection is a psychological operation by which I fail to see some threatening or unpleasant part of my own make-up but recognise it readily in other people. Such a mechanism can be seen as the basis of homophobia. If I am anxious and threatened by my own homo­ sexual desires, then I can deal with them by projecting them into other people and dealing with them there by persecuting and attempting to suppress them. (ibid.: 172) Projective identification is a vicarious substitute to our essential and unavoidable need for emotional communication, and in the practice of identity formation, it needs co be transformed by discovering and nurturing our dependence on others. Contra-Habemw, for Craib, it is emotional intersubjectivity, not linguistic intersubjectivity, which is at the heart of our identity formation, and emotional intersubjectivity requires the lubricant of love and a capacity to identity with the suffering of others: 'The discovery of freedom is the discovery of multiple fonns of suffering and perhaps the most meaningful personal sense in which we can talk about having an identity is that our identity is the result of the quality of out suffering' (ibid.: 177). Thus, in rethinking identity as well as the relationship between identity and difference, there is a need to bring suffering to the core of our vision and

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practice. Bringing suffering to the heart of identity fonnation has the potelltial to transform the annihilatory logic of contemporary identity politics, and such an invocation is enriched by a dialogue with Mahatma Gandhi and Emmartuel Levinas (see Barnes 2000). Gandhi tells us of the need to prepare ourselves to undertake suffering, when the need arises and the call comes, in order to establish a creative and transformational rela, tionship with others. Levinas (1991: 123) a1so brings suffering to the hean of our webs of relationships when he says that the .ego must be prepared to 'undergo the suffering that would come to it from non-ego'. He reminds us that 'it is no longer a question of the ego, but of me. 1he subject which is not an ego, but which I am, cannot be generalised. Here the identity of the subject comes from the impossibility of escaping responsibility' (ibid.: · 13-14). This responsibility is that of identifying with the suffering of others, and not of inflicting suffering on others as is the case with most instances of identity politics in the contemporary world. Such identification with suffering requires much more than the valorizarion of identity politics and the production of triumphant memory and history which does not seek to forgive reconcile, and participate in overcoming the logic of con­ temporary bindings. Taking the predicament of Jews and Palestinians as a case in point, Edward Said articulates such a challenge of rethinking and reconstructing identity before us: 'Israelis and Palestinians are now so intertwined through history, geography, and political activity that it seems to me absolute folly to tty and plan the future of one without that of the other' (2000: 191). T he creation of this common future depends on identifying with the suffering of each other. But, for Said, Most Palestinians are indifferent to and often angered by stories of Jewish suffering. ... Conversely most Israelis refuse to concede that Israel is built on the ruins of Palestinian society.... Yet there can be no possible reconciliation, no possible solution unless these two communities confront each's experience in the light of the other. (ibid.: 192)

Conclusion In his 'The Power of Identity, Manuel Castells tells us that at the contem­ porary juncture of globalization creative identity fonnat:ion, or what he

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calls 1 reflexive life planning', is impossible except for the elites of society and the only way identity formation can now take place i., through the 'reconstruction of defensive identities around communal principles; (1997:.11). Castells bases himself only on a limited set of particular kinds of defensive identity mobilizations. We need to have detailed studies of a variety of identity formation at work in the contemporary order. In this article I have not provided ethnographic instances of creative identity formation in detail, though I have made brief references to movements such as the Habitat for Humanity and Swadhyaya which do not fall under the type of defensive and fundamentalist identity mobilization that Castells talks about. In this article, I have explored the limits of identity politics and polit­ ical and spiritual preparation for a non-identitarian civil society. A key argument of this article has been that identity-based movements have been important agents of change and political contestation in the con­ temporary world, hut their mobilization now needs a hermeneutic and spiritual supplement of recognizing and identifying with the suffering of others. Identity politics now needs to be transformed by openness to the other, and through such a dialogical opening, we can recreate civil society as a space of ethico-political mobilization of the subject. In such rethinking and reconstruction, the following lines of Sri Aurohindo provide us encouragement: A lonely freedom cannot satisfy A heart that has grown one with every heart I am a deputy of the aspiring world My spirit's liberty I ask for all. (1950: 649)

References Barnes, Michael.2000. Traces of !he Other. Chennai; Sarya Nilayam. Baumann, Gerd. 1999. � Mwldculntral Riddle: &rlunldng National, Ethnic and Rdigious Identities. London: Routledge. ™teille, Andrl. 1991. 'The Reproduction of Inequality: Occupation, Caste and Family', Contrib1'tions ro Indian Sociology 25 (1): J 28. --. 1999. 'Citizenship, State and Civil Society'. Economic and Polia.cal Weeld) 34 (36):. 2588-91. Bhaalcar, Roy. 1993. Dial.ecria: The Pulse of Freedom. London: Verso. -�. 2000. Ml)t!l the East ro Wes,: The Od:,ssey of a Soul. London: Routledge.

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Cutella, Manqe). 1997. Th.e 1wir,- ofldtntii,. Lo�: Buil Blackwell. O,hen, Anthony P. 1994. Self-ConscioKSness: An AlumacM � of �­ London: Routledge. Connolly, William E. 1991. ldtntii,/Differma: Democratic Nqodarions of Political A-,rado,: Ithaca: O,mell Uruversity Press. Craib, Ian. 1998. � Identity. London: Sage Publications. Das, Veena. 1995. 'Voice as Birth of Culture'. Eihnos 60 (J.-t): 159-79. Fraser. Nancy. 2000, 'Rethinking Recognition'. NewI4t RA'ieu,. 3 (May-June): 107-20. Oedalof, Irene. 1999. Against Prmr,: RnhmJcing ldenat, with Indian a,ul Wesrmt &minimu. London: Routledge. Girl, Ananta K. 1992. 'Undenrandirig Contemporary Social Movements'. Dialecucal Andrropoloc, 17 (l): 35-49. --. 1998. 'Well-Being of lnatitutionai Problematic Justice and the Challenge of Transformation'. Socioqica.l Bullean 47 (l): 73-95. --. 2000a. 'Rethinking Civil Society'. JWew of�a,ulCJtance 5 (1): 99-127. --. 2000b. \Rethinking Human Well-Being: A Dialogue with Amartya Sen'. )OlfflllJl of lntffllational Dewlopment 12 (7): 1003-18. --.. 2002. Bwildir!, in rht Mmpu of Shacks: Th.e � IJlul Pro,itcts of Habitot for H�- New Delhi: Orient Longman. Habermas, JQrgen. 1998. Inclusion of rht Odier. Cambridge: Polity Pre,s. Hetherington, Kevin. 1998. fuf,rmions of ldaitit,: Space, �. Politics. London: Sage Publicationa. lliah, II TOrl l

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left front 'family' of movements. The new farmers' movements have also not made any inroads there. Many observers and commentators have taken this fact as proof that the new peasant movements are reactionary political formations which cannot bring any blessings for the majority of the rural poor. What is needed, they say, is a broader political front, which, while recognizing the need for remunerative agriculture, also addresses the need for reforms and policies that favour the rural poor. Left movements have also tried to pursue such a strategy. Since the early 1970s, the communist parties have made several attempts to include remu­ nerative prices for farm products among their political demands. A number of articles on this theme have also appeared in People's Democr� Communist Party of India (Marxist) publication. A number of agitations have also been conducted on the issue of prices of inputs and of farm out­ put. Nevertheless, no mass movement has appeared on this account. The reason is not difficult to find. In the present political scenario, rural society is too divided along class lines to allow for such an alliance between the poor peasants and the landless, on the one hand, and the middle and rich peasants, on the other. With a long history of being the champions of the former, the communists also have difficulties in establishing credibility in the eyes of the landed groups. An attempt to include the poor peasants and landless labourers in the new peasant movements would probably come close to a corporative strategy, and it is very uncertain if the proletarian classes would really benefit from this inclusion. If farmers can put pressure on the urban-industrial sector for more favourable terms for agricultural and rural production, it should be up to the labourers themselves to organize to get a better share out of this development and also press for further institutional reforms. Autonomous organization is most probably necessary to further this end. Thus, the demand for a united rural front of all peasants and workers would be similar to asking the Indian bourgeoisie to include also the workers in the Chambers of Commerce. What would be the consequences of that alliance for trade union activities?

Peasant Movements and Development Thinking One way of understanding the new peasant movements is to see them as articulating an altemati.ve economic development strategy, in which

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capitalism and market relations as such are not questioned, but which emphasizes agriculture and the rural economy. The message is that if more surpluses are left in the rural areas and with the rural house­ holds, they will, invest them in agriculture, and small-scale industry, creating employment and development for all. By its labour-intensive character, agriculture is presented as an alternative to large-scale industrial investment, which provides much fewer jobs. This analysis has been seen as a variant of populist ideology which has followed in the foot.steps of industrialization and urbanization the world over for the last 150 years. Byres (1979) and others call it neo-populism. It has been characterized as a more or le� romantic expreMion of people left behind by develop111ent. The favourite target.s of this critique are Upton (1977) and Schumacher (1973). However, this critique tends to forget that at least p-art of this understanding was also crucial in the development policies pursued by countries such as China and Tanzania, and in the devel­ opment strategies propagated by the IW in the 1970s (Kitching 1982: 70-84). Practical proponents, however, are in good company. Several theories of institutional economics have also stressed the role of agriculture in cap· italist economic development. The conventional view that agriculture should produce cheap food and raw materials, feed urban areas with chhp labour, earn foreign exchange or else be relegated to a dwindling role in the economy as capitalist industry and services develop, is being challenged in a major way. It is the development of agriculture through land reforms and increased production which is seen as crucial (Adelman 1980, 1984; Adelman and Taft-Morris 1980; Bairoch 1973; Senghaas 1985, 1988). Even the success stories of Taiwan and South Korea are seen as examples of how the development of labour-intensive agriculture goes hand in hand with successful industrialization (Skarstein 1991). Christer Ounnarsson writes on the example ofTaiwan: Agricultural modernisation gave increased incomes and higher pur­ chasing power to the rural population, thereby enabling it to form a market for industrial goods. The question is how this could happen when agriculture was being so heavily exploited at the same time. 'The answer lies in the increased productivity resulting from the Testructuring of agriculture, chiefly because the land reform was accompanied by a series of institutional changes at the local, regional and national levels, which brought positive effects in terms of diffusion of technology, credits and infrastructure. [ ... ]

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Perhaps the most important institutional change was the organisation of the so-called Farmers' Associations at the bottom level. The removal of the landlords bad left a lacuna with regard to land management and rural credit. If this problem had not been resolved, the land reform would not have been successful. A Farmers' Association was an independent financial association with local management1 which organised credit and marketing and helped with the introduction of new technology. Through land reform and its accompanying institutional reforms the marginal cost of land was reduced, which facilitated investment in new technology. Moreover, the incentives reached down to the producers at the bottom level instead of being con.fined to the big landlords as before.

(1992: 92-93)

This line of thinking, thus, claims that a dynamic development of agri­

culture needs strong organizations, co-operative institutions or other actors. Part of that process is the organization of peasants in autonomous movements which address development issues, press for more efficient administration, credit, infrastructure, diffusion of knowledge, etc. The farmers' movements must take the step from agitation to a more positive type of organization in economic associations, co-operatives, etc. The state, on the other hand, must be autonomous and strong so as not to yield to the partial interests of the farmers' movements alone 1 but simul­ taneously carry through a policy of 'stick and carrot', encouraging increased productivity via a combination of price incentives and price pressures, and through institutional reforms organize the conditions of production efficiently. Analysed in this perspective one could say that the Indian farmers' movements carry at least part of this understanding with them. At the same time, they may also put forward a great deal of stumbling blocks to such a development. Depending on their class basis and ideological standpoints, they may, for example, prevent the state from carrying through further necessary land reforms, adequate agricul­ tural taxation, new types of irrigation schemes and other institutional changes. Thus, from this point of view, the farmers' movements are volatile social constructions, which can serve potentially both as promoters of a rural emphasis facilitating a dynamic development of capitalism in agri• culture based on family farms and as hindrances to the efficient imple­ mentation of such agricultural development policies. To a large extent,

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it is a class issue. It is a question of whose interest will dominate the movements, the middle and even small peasants, the rich peasants, the capitalist farmers or combinations of these. Whichever class or classes and tendencies will prevail is an open question and depe nds very much on a number of internal and external factors. It is in this context that the develop ment of the internal discussions and negotiations in the various farmers' movements are crucial for the choices ahead. Since they are found to be very different because of regional variations, there should also be some scope. for a variable outcome. The ecological policies now being discussed in Maharashtra may be one such sign of variation, to begin with. Policies of the Indian state and of international actors may very activ�ly interfere in these processes, setting terms and conditions for the development of the agrarian economy and the way peasants/farmers can be mobilized in the future. In fact, it is the interplay between these actors and the various farmers' mobilizations that in the end . will determine the outcome. It is clear, however, that these processes and forces are not bound a priori to favour the interests of rich peasants and capitalist farmers alone. Other outcomes can very well be unagined.

Conclusion Returning to our original question, it is correct to say that the new peasant movements in India belong to a new genre of movements emerging in developing countries today. However, to the extent that these new .movements are seen to represent a new type of politics, in which civil society is pitted against the state, we must conclude that this is not the understanding or policies of the new peasant movements. They purport to represent the whole of rural society against the state and urban­ industrial interests, but their goal is a reformed state in which rural producer interests are more predominant than what has so far been the case. It is also quite clear that these movements represent particular classes in the rural economy, that is, primarily the interests of middle, rich and capitalist farmers in a rapidly commercializing economy. As such, they also have different relations to the state apparatus as com­ pared to the poorer classes in the countryside. Thus, the slogan, 'civil society against the state', has no validity in India and most other developing countries. The state in a class-divided

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society cannot be seen as a monolithic entity standing in a unilateral relationship to an undivided civil society. State and society mutually constitute each other. The sharp class divisions both in the rural and urban societies must be analysed in conjunction with a state that both reproduces and changes some of these class relations through its policies over time. Apart from more or less narrow class interests, it is, however, also � sible to see the new pe3&ant movements as an expression of a new devel­ opment thinking in the Indian economy, in which labour-intensive agriculture and &mall-scale industry are presented as an alternative to large-scale capitalist industrialization and urbanization. This can explain part of the success of the new peasant movements, as also their ability to relate to other new movements lilce the women's and the environment31 movements. At the moment, the farmers' agitations now hitting the headlines also override the mobilization and organization of the vast majority of poor peasants and landless labourers; and their ability to associate effectively with the new social movements--the green's, women's, tribals' and lower-castes' movements. Whether this development is a temporary or more permanent feature of the political scene remains to be seen.

Not-es 1. Many write.rs on social movements have a tendency to include a multitude of SO· called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in their fold. Middle-class activists m.ushroom in those organizations, which are often called action groups. Many self-help gmups am.ong poor slum inhabitants or poor tnbals/vtllagers have this char­ acter· of private iwociation or entrepreneurship funded from ouuide. However, u much of a theoretical imagination there might be amongst the leaden of these, it does not turn them into movements. ].. See, for example, Chapter 14 in Btown's · (1965) standard textbook on social psychology with the telling title, 'Collective Behaviour and the Psychology of the Crowd'. J. For classical works in this field see, for example, Wilson (1975) and Worsley (1970). 4. Contending schools fight battles- with pens if not with sworda, the m0&t important cleavage perhaps being that between what has been labelled the resoMTCf!-� paradigm and the idemiry-orienied paradigm (Cohen 1985). 5. I am using the two terms peasant and fanner interchm1geably. In many textbooks, fanners would presumably mean marlcet-otiented agriculturalists, wru,ch is the

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rati�e for talking about farmers' movements o r unions. Peasants would mean a more subsistence-oriented agriculturalist. In everyday usage, however, the latter term is somewhat condescending and has a slightly racist tinge. The dictionary definition of peasant is, 'Peasant ... (not 1n OB, Austraua, Canada, New Zealand, USA) coun­ nyinan . working the land ... (cf. for OB smallholder) ...' (quoted from Tht Am.ianctd l..ea,ntr'sDicuonary, Hornby et111.1963: 715).The so-called 'peasants' have a1ao been mar�t- orient� (or cenruries, not leut due to British colonization policies.Since the there is not much serue In scientific literature uses both terms In a variety of making the distinction. Moreover, there is no terminology fur the dittinction in the Indian languages. 6. An exception to this may rule be Tamil Nadu, where, In the 1970s, I TOf"l l

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organizations, often funded or at least inspired by international agencies, as the core; others would regard assemblies of persons for ethical, moral and religious discourse as the core. Such formations, no matter how desirable in themselves, belong to the periphery rather than the core of what I consider to be civil society, whose core consists, in my view, of the open and secular institutions that mediate between the citizen and the state in modem democratic societies. I n drawing attention to the great divergence of opinion about civil society among social scientists in India, l do not mean to suggest that there is complete agreement about it among social scientists in the West where the idea first came into use. There have been at least two distinct usages in the West, among which the one that is better known in India is that which goes back to Hegel and Marx. Now, for both Hegel and Marx, civil society was not a universal but a historical category that they saw as emerging in the European societies of which they were members. They themselves gave little thought to extending the concept to soci­ eties outside the West. It is doubtful that either Hegel or Marx would use civil society as a synonym for the good society. There is a distinctive feature of their usage, arising from the language in which they mainly wrote, to which I must draw attention. The German phrase actually used by both Hegel and Marx was Bargerlichegesellschaft, which may be translated into English as either 'civil society' or 'bourgeois society'. Hegel did not regard Bargerlichegesellschaft as the highest form of historical develop­ ment, and I hardly need to point out that Marx had an ambivalent rather than a positive attitude towards bourgeois society; he might consider it as a necessary stage in the historical development of the good society, but certainly not as the equivalent of it. There is now another term in German, Zivilgesellschaft, which corre­ sponds much better to the specific sense conveyed by 'civil society' in English. But that is a new term, devised to meet a contemporary need for which the term Burgerlichegesellschaft used by Hegel and Marx, is no longer found suitable. It is in fact a neologism in the German language based on a direct adaptation of the English phrase. The new coinage is a belated acknowledgement by Ger:man writers of the need to distinguish between bourgeois society (or Burgerlichegesellschaft) and civil society (or Zivilgesellschaft). It also indicates that we can get little guidance from either Hegel or Marx in the understanding of what has come to be wid'ely regarded as civil society: they wrote about bourgeois society, and not civil society.

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Marx, and to some extent Hegel as well, may be regarded as the in$piration for Gramsci's views on civil society which are in many ways fuller than those of either of his two predecessors. The value of Gram.sci' s contribution lies in his better appreciation of differentiation and mediation. However, while recognizing the great significance of civil society, Gramsci did not by any means regard it with unmixed approval. Gramsci's observations on state, civil society and political society, though much admired by the cognoscenti, are not easy for the uninitiated to unravel. His writings show an acute awareness of the interpenetration of state and civil society in what may be called the bourgeois democratic regime. That regime, according to him, exercised its grip not simply through the constituted authority of the state, but also and more deeply, through the hegemony of civil society. To the extent that civil society was the site of hegemony, it could not be viewed with unmixed approval. An earlier and somewhat different perception of civil society may be found in the writings of the Scottish moral philosophers. Notable among these is Adam Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Ci11il Society ( 1966), first published in 1767. Here too, civil society is viewed not as a univer­ sal but as a historical category, in the process of formation. However, on the whole, it is viewed with sympathy, although there is both misgiv­ ing about the future and nostalgia for what civil society was displacing. The Scottish moral philosophers did not have the principled antipa­ thy towards the bourgeois democratic regimes that came to characterize the work of Marx and, even more, of his successors. In eighteenth­ century Britain, the bourgeois democratic tegime was still at a nascent stage, and those like Ferguson and Adam Smith looked forward to an era of continuing peace and prosperity under its aegis. In this tradition., the positive attitude towards civil society goes hand in hand with the posi, rive attitude towards bourgeois society. Peace and prosperity went together in their conception of the emerging social order. A common contrast in nineteenth-century social thought, found in both Henri de Saint-Simon and Herbert Spencer, was that between 'industrial society' and 'military society'. They saw the dark face of military society more clearly than the dark face of industrial society. For Ferguson, the development of civil society meant a movement away from barbarism. Civil society was not only the site for the pursuit of private interest, it was also the site for the practice of civility. The con­ trast was between civil society and natural society. Civil society pulled man out of the state of nature in which untempered passion held sway, and it encouraged the orderly pursuit of interest through the practice of ,lllJlfl>I TOf"l

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civility. Not surprisingly for a man of his time, Ferguson believed that Western Europe was the proper home of civil society� The significance of the contrast between the passions and the interests has been brought out with remarkable effect by Albert Hirschman (1977). The eighteenth century abounded in arguments about the beneficial effects on society and polity of the expansion of commerce and industry. A world governed by the rational pursuit of interest would be a world characterized by constancy and predictability. A new legal order which respected the rights of the individual-as against the claims of the clan and community­ was essential for its succeM. But a change merely in the legal order would hardly suffice. W hat was needed in addition was a change in customs and manners, in other words, in society in the widest sense of the term. However, the change from 'rude' to 'po lished' manners would not be without its costs, and no one perceived those costs more clearly than Ferguson. Hirschman has put the point nicely: ½s a mepiber of both a Scottish clan and the g1oup of thinlcers who formed the Scottish Enlightenment, Ferguson was especially ambivalent about the advances "po lished" nations had achieved over the ''rude and barbarous" ones' (ibid.: 119-20). A society based on the division of labour was for him not preferable in every respect to one based on clan and community. His concept of civil society was specific enough for him to recognize that it was not a panacea. A peculiar feature of the discussion of civil society is that there are many who use the term lavishly but hardly describe its content, while there are others who discuss that content extensively but use the term scarcely, if at all. Alexis de Tocqueville (1956) had a better understand­ ing of the new social order that was emerging than Hegel, and he did not have towards it the kind of antipathy that marked so much of the writ­ ing of Marx. He showed a profound insight into the new social order­ its strengths as well as its weaknesses but he scarcely used the phrase 'civil society' to describe it. His key phrase was 'democratic society' which he contrasted with 'aristocratic society'. To put it in a nutshell, his conception of democracy was that it had two sides, a political side an� a social side, and in his account of the latter, he ranged through the entire gamut of institutions, manners and customs-the 'habits of the heart', as he memorably called them-characteristic of what may be rightly described as 'civil society'. Among contemporary authors broadly within the same tradition as de Tocqueville, Edward Shits (1997) has written about civil society with both insight and sympathy. His contrast is not between democratic and

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aristocratic societies, but between democratic and totalitarian societies. Civil society in this view is incompatible with a totalitarian regime; it can thri.ve only in a liberal democracy, although it is not identical with it. Liberal democracy is a set of institutions. Civil society comprises the institutions of liberal democracy but it contains other institutions as well. It also comprises a pattern and standard of judgement without which the institutions of civil society cannot flourish. When that pattern of judgement and the relations it sustains are lacking, it is scarcely possible for civil society to exist at all. (Shits 1997: 70) The aforementioned interpenetration of institutions makes it difficult to give a clear and consistent account of civil society. In his characterization of civil society, Shits assigns some importance to the virtue of civility. There is more to this emphasis than the mere appreciation of good manners as a matter of form. Civility ensures the free and franlc exchange of opinions among persons with divergent polit, ical attachments and, indeed, with divergen.t conceptions of the good society. It also ensures a certain basic equality in interchanges among persons occupying unequal positions in society and its institutions. Civil society cannot prosper unless its members are able to put themselves, at least to some extent, in the positions of their political opponents and their social inferiors. It is in this view of the subject, by no means the only or even the predominant one in contemporary Western writing, that the idea of civil society comes closest to that of the good society.

The State and Social Movements I have said enough in the foregoing to make the point that, whatever the case may be with the good society, civil society is a historical and not a universal category. This point is not sufficiently acknowledged in con� temporary discussions of the subject in India, and, if it is, it is done so only in a half,hearted way. Much of the discus.5ion seems to be driven by either a radical disenchantment with the present or an insidious nostalgia for the past. The disenchantment with the present that has led to the creation of an interest in civil society is in the main a disenchantment with the state and its institutions. There can be little doubt about the steady

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and continuous loss of faith in the Indian state in the last 50 years, particularly among the intelligentsia. What people have come to expect from the state has to be measured against what they expected of it 50 years ago when India became a republic. If they had not expected so much at that time, they would probably be less disenchanted today. The new Constitution, adopted exactly 50 years ago, defined for the state a very ambitious and comprehensive role in the regeneration of society. The Directive Principles of State Policy ranged from free and compulsory education until the age of 14 to the ban on cow slaughter. The prolonged debates in the Constituent Assembly, lasting for over three years, show how keenly the leaders of modem India wanted the new state to be the handmaiden of social change. But, if society was not yet ready to be regenerated so comprehensively, the entire blame for that cannot be laid against the state. An important part of the state's effort for the regeneration of society was to be realized through economic planning. Shortly after the adoption of the new Constitution, a high,powered Planning Commission was set up with the prime minister as its chairman. From almost the very begin, ning, planning in India was based on the principle that the state should take over the commanding heights of the economy. Disenchantment with centralized planning had set in already by the mid,1970s, and it is by now. widely recognized that the direct involvement of the state in every kind of economic activity has harmed the economy itself by stifling individual initiative and voluntary effort. A more basic and palpable source of disaffection has been the runaway expansion in the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. When people think of the state today, they think of its bureaucracy, and it cannot be said that the Indian bureaucracy has in the last 50 years endeared itself to the Indian people. In all sections of the population the feeling has grown that the bureaucracy does not serve society, it serves itself And certainly, a gargantuan bureaucracy is not anybody's idea of the good society, whether in India or anywhere else. There has been disenchantment not only with administration, buti if anything. even more with politics. The state legislatures and to some extent even Parliament have lost much of the dignity with which they were invested 50 years ago. Not only are legislative skills absent among many if not most legislators, some among them are of doubtful virtue while others have criminal records. It is not that there were no corrupt or uninformed legislators in the pas� but on the whole they remained quiet. Today, the conupt and the uninformed are also the most vociferous.

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Political parties too have lost much of their credibility in the public eye. There was a time when the Congress party was an object of pride for its members and of admiration for many who were not its members. That time is now long past. In the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata), where I grew up, the Communist party enjoyed considerable public esteem in the 1950s and 1960s, but no Communist party does so anywhere any longer. It seems as if a political party has to be in office for only a short while for it to be dragged to the dust by its own members. Many factors have contributed to the decline in the public esteem of political parties. There was an anarchistic element in Gandhian thought which came to the fore in the J.P. movement of the mid-l970s. It sought to give expression to the vision of a partyless democracy which devalued not only the executive and legislative branches of the government but also the party system itself. In this vision, the driving force for the regen­ eration would come not from the state and the institutions associated with it, but from the social movement which has come to occupy a central place in some of the current conceptions of civil society.

State, Citizenship and Mediating Institutions In a certain line of thinking, that has acquired considerable influence in recent years, the state has come to stand for oppression and decay, and the social movement fo r freedom and regeneration. [f one is looking for a turning point1 one will find it in the repressive measures of the Emergency and the political disordet that preceded and followed it (Dhar 2000). In this line of thinking, civil society is identified with the social movement, and the state and civil society are viewed in oppo· sition to each other. I have taken some pains to sketch out its back, ground because I believe the argument underlying it to be confused, and the appropriation of the phrase 'civil society' to buttress it an abuse of terminology. In the perspective in which I view the subject, state and civil society are not antithetical or substitutable; they are complementary {™teille 1999). Where the state was hostile to civil society, as it was in the USSR under Stalin or in Germany under Hitler, civil society shrank and with­ ered. Where it was supportive of civil society, as it was in Britain and the Netherlands in the post-war years, it grew and prospered. But, in a democracy, the state also requires support from civil society for its own

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health and well-being. If we believe that democracy has two sides, the social and the political, the one cannot grow without the otheL A notion that is not always clearly articulated is that civil society can be made to do the work that the state has failed to do. This view 1 con­ sider to be a delusion. Those who have fixed their sights on people's movements have persistently attacked the state for being unfeeling and uncaring, oppressive and dehumanizing. alien and alienating, and, in sum, out of tune with the aspirations, sentiments and needs of the ordinary people. It should be put on the back burner, and the real work of recon­ stituting the nation should be assigned to civil society. In the extreme case, the target of attack is not merely the state as it is or has been for the last 50 years, but the state as such, the very idea of the state itself. This kind of emancipationism is antithetical to the idea of civil society, as I understand it. I will not try to give a definition of civil society, but instead sketch out the context in which it may be meaningfully described. While doing. so, I would like to repeat that civil society is a feature of the modem world, and it will serve little purpose to look for alternative forms of it in the medieval or ancient world. The framework within which I seek to understand civil society has three basic components: (a) state, (b) citizenship, and (c) mediating institutions. Each has certain distinctive features, although they are homologous with each other. Their historical growth and, therefore, the historical growth of civil society, may be understood only by keeping in sight the mutuality of their relations. When I spealc of the state in the context of civil society, I have in mind only the modem constitutional state based on the rule of law. There have been states of many different kinds in different times and at different places, and these have been described by political theorists, his­ torians, sociologists, anthropologists and others. They include tribal states in Africa in recent times, feudal states in medieval Europe, impe· rial states in China and India and totalitarian states in twentieth-century Russia and Gennany. These states were associated with societies to which the term 'civil society' cannot be fruitfully applied. The adoption of a republican constitution was a watershed in India's long and complicated history. We celebrated the Golden Jubilee of the republic a short while ago, but the celebrations were somewhat muted in comparison with what we had on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of India's independence, or even the advent of the new millennium. Certainly, freedom from foreign rule is a great event, but so is the

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inception of a new republic. Perhaps we have been less successful in nurturing the new republic than in freeing ourselves from foreign rule. The Constitution of India, which may be viewed as the charter of our democratic society and polity, is, I believe, the lengthiest and most elab­ orate and detailed document of its kind. It also took a very long time in the making. One reason why so much space and time were taken is that its makers knew that they were making a brealc with the past, and, there­ fore, what was being stated had to be spelt out clearly. No one felt this need more keenly than Dr Ambedkar who piloted the document through the Constituent Assembly. However, no constitution can provide for every contingency, and ours has had to be amended more than 80 times in less than 50 years. As one would expect, the Constituent Assembly represented a diver­ sity of points of view. But there was a consensus that the state should derive its authority from secular, rational and impersonal rules. Rules are secular when they are created by the actions ofmen and do not claim any divine origin; they are rational when there is a conscious and continuous eflort to make them consistent with each other in accordance with some wider general principle; and they are impersonal when they are designed to apply to all without fear or favour. lawyers were present in sttength in the Assembly, and legal procedures were repeatedly invoked. There were some who wanted more feeling, more soul, more spiritual matter to be put into the constitution; but the lawyers prevailed. Oearly, Dr Ambcdkar set a very high value on the kind of state he and his colleagues in the- Constituent Assembly had set out to create. But, ,mlike many others, he had few illusions about the readiness for such a state of the society whose darker side he knew only too well. 'Democracy in India', he had said, 'is only a top dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic' (Olnstituent � Debates 1989: 38). lf not all has gone well with the Indian state in the last 50 years, is the state alone to be blamed? If the constitutional state does not emerge fully formed with the adop­ tion of a constitution, this is even more ttue of the second component in. my triad, namely, citizenship. Citi:en.ship has distinct lega) and social characteristics, present in S(.We societies and absent in others. To be sure, the gem1 of the iJea may be ft1und in some societies of the iwt. but the iJea llt uni\c-crsal ciri.."'CnShir in the sense given to it in the Indian Constitution, as in other lnlll.km constitutions, is of recent historical gmwth. It$ origin and Je\'ellipment are intimately linked with the origin anJ development ot the Cl,nstirutional state.

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Civil Society and the Good Society The specific issue before the Constituent Assembly was the transformation of a nation of ,subjects int() one of citizens. The British empire, in Nirad Chaudhuri's memorable words, had 'conferred subject• hood but withheld citizenship' (1951: v). However, citizenship, except in the purely formal sense, cannot be created overnight merely by inscrib­ ing a set of rights in a constitution. As sociologists since T.H. Marshall ( 197 7) have shown, the development of citizenship in the.substantive as against the formal sense was a slow and tortuous process that in Britain extended over more than 300 years, and is still by no means complete. Many in the Constituent Assembly seemed to believe that citizenship was a part of their national heritage of which they had been deprived by the colonial government. While it is true that Indians were denied citizenship during British rule, the belief that they enjoyed citizenship before British rule is mistaken. Pre-British society was not a society of citizens or even of individuals; it was a society based on family, caste and community. Citizenship and caste are antithetical principles; one cannot grow with· out the other being to some extent and in some respects diminished. There is a vague and unformed opinion that an alternative to the Western form of civil society may be found among the traditional insti­ tutions of Indian society, and caste itself has been considered as a possi­ ble candidate. In a letter dated 4 February 1996, M.N. Srinivas urged me to consider such a possibility. He asked. 'Does not India provide a unique example of "civil society" providing stability and continuity for nearly two millennia?' In fairness, it has to be noted that he began with the remark, 'It may appear perverse to you but please think about it', and ended by saying, 'I am not convinced by what I have just said but it ma, bear thinking.' Few have had Srinivas's natural curiosity or his ingrained intellectual scepticism, and many have drawn conclusions where he would merely ask that a possibility be considered. Although caste has been an institution of great strength and durabil­ ity, providing linkages both within and between groups, that is not the kind of institution I have in mind when I speak of institutions that medi­ ate between the citizen and the state in civil society. The institutions I have in mind are what I call 'open and secular institutions'. They are of a different genus from the institutions of kin!ihip and religion. What is an open and secular institution? A modem university, such as the Universitv of Delhi or the Jawaharlal Nehru University, is an open and secular institution. It is open because admissions and appointments are made on individual merit, without consideration of family, caste or

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284 community. It is secular because, teaching, research and other activities in it are free from regulation by religious authority and religious doctrine, Medieval Oxford and medieval Cambridge were not open and secular institutions, although they have become so for all practical purposes through a long and not entirely painless evolution. The university is only one example of the many kinds of open and secular institutions mediating becween citizen and state. There is a large variety of these, such as schools, libraries, newspapers, publishing houses, laboratories, hospitals, banks, political parties and numerous others. Some are organized mainly for profit, others are funded mainly or solely by the government. However, they all serve to link individuals with each other and with the wider society through ties of a very distinctive kind. Mediating institutions of the kind described above constitute the backbone of what I understand by civil society. They have grown in every country, and may now be regarded as a distinctive feature of the modem world as a whole. But their growth has not followed the same trajectory everywhere. It is undeniable that their nursery was the Western world where they have had the longest and most continuous period of growth. India is one of the few countries wher:e they have grown more or less continuously since the middle of the nineteenth century. It is impossible to survey the social landscape of contemporary India without paying serious attention to the institutions about which I am now speaking. Despite their almost continuous growth in size and variety in the last century, it cannot he said that open and secular institutions have secured a firm foothold in every case. This is true whether we take universities, hospitals or political parties. They have failed to meet the high expecta, tions placed on them at the time of independence. While this is true of modern institutions in general, it is particularly true of the ones in the public sector. It is being increasingly said that they are alien implants unsuited to the Indian soil. While the fragility and vulnerability of the open and secular institu, tions mediating between the citizen and th� state poses difficult, not to say intractable, problems, it is not easy to take too seriously the bogey of foreign implants. If we have to dismiss the University of Delhi, the National library, the Presidency General Hospital, the Indian Institute of Science and the Congress party as foreign imports, then we must also dismiss citizenship and the constitutional state for the same reason. The present condition and the future prospects of these three components are inextricably linked. While it is impossible to predict an absolutely

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safe ride into the future for any of them, it is difficult to see what kind of alternative vehicle, if any, is available to carry us into the future.

Voluntary Action Because of the disenchantment with the state and the mediating institu­ tions that are its counterparts, attention is turning increasingly to what many now say is the true motive force of civil society, namely, voluntary action. The interest in voluntary action, voluntary movements and volun­ tary associations has been given a new I� of life by the concern for the creation or revival of civil society, partjcularly � the cotµ1¢.es of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It has acquired a global dimension. One very small but telling indication of the connection being made between the two is the recent redesignation of the Centre for Voluntary Organizations in the London School of Economics as the Civil Society Centre. The significance of voluntary action in linking society and politics together and in driving them forward in democratic systems cannot be too strongly emphasized. A democratic society cannot function properly, nor to speak of its growing, if everything in it is left to the state or even to statutory bodies. Mere statutory action will be infructuous if it is not underpinned by voluntary action. The mediating institutions of which I have spoken would amount to little if they left no room for voluntary action and relied only on statutory action. It will be a �vesry to regard the university, the library, the laboratory, the hospital or even the bank merely as statutory bodies from which all voluntary action has been banished by the long arm of the state. The state does not have such a long arm anywhere, and certainly not in India. The significance of voluntary action and voluntary associations in the life of a democratic society has been brought to light by many, but by none more persuasively than Alexis de Tocqueville, As is well known, in presenting his account of democracy in America, de Tocqueville repeat­ edly compared its fonunes in the United States with those in his own country, France. He attributed the success of democracy in America to the natural inclination, so to say, of Americans to form associations. As he put it, 'Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association' (1956: II, 106). Observers of American society, from outside as well as within, have repeatedly drawn ,lllJlfl>I TOf"l

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286 attention to the number and variety of voluntary associations in it (Hsu 1963; Hunter 1998). De Tocqueville made a distinction between political and civil associa, rions only to point to the ways in which they reinforced each other. 'In America', he said, 1 the liberty of association for political purposes is unlimited' (1956: I, 193). It must be remembered that in the early decades of the nineteenth century, this kind of liberty was to some extent a novelty in Europe. De Tocqueville was shrewd enough to realize that liberty of association was a safeguard not only against the authority of the state but also against the power of the people. � the present time the liberty of association has become a necessary guarantee against the tyranny of the majority' (de Tocqueville 1956: I, 194). He viewed pop· ulism not as a form of democracy but as a threat to it. If de Tocqueville thought of civil society, it is because of the great value he assigned to civil associations in democratic societies. He was impressed by the range and variety of such associations in the United States in con• trast to what he knew of them in his own country or in other European countries. 'In the United States associations are established to promote the public safety, commerce, industry, morality and religion. There is no end which the human will despair of attaining through the combined power of individuals united into a society' (ibid.: I, 192). It was not only their num, hers that were important, but also their variety. I hardly need to stress the contribution these associations make to the formation of citizenship. At the same time, civil associations do not emerge out of the blue, just anywhere, simply because we believe that they contribute so much to the growth of citizenship. If every soil is not equally conducive to the growth of open and secular institutions, it is not equally conducive either to the growth of civil associations. There was something in the character and personality of the Americans, a unique feature of their culture that de Tocqueville found particularly congenial to the growth of civil associations. The citizen of the United States is taught from infancy to rely upon his own exertions in order to resist the evils and the difficulties of life; he looks upon the social authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, and he claims its assistance only when he is unable to do without it. (ibid. ) l t is the same trait to which he referred elsewhere in his work as 'individualism'. onu, f,, I 'in,, llNIVER51T'I' or �ll(lilGAr-J

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I f we now turn to the contemporary Indian scene, we will find that voluntary action and voluntary associations are of many different kinds. Just as the voluntary component is not entirely absent in what are for­ mally statutory bodies, so also it is not equally present in every associa­ tion considered to be a voluntary association. To the extent that a voluntary association is also an organization, its members have to con­ form to certain rules, whether or not they are statutory rules. The tran, sition fr o m a movement to an association, and from an association to an organization which seelcs and secures statutory foundations, is familiar to all students of modem societies. When a mov�ment acquires an organizational form, it does not acquire the same form in every case. Even in a single country lilce India, one may see them at various stages of development, in various sizes, and with varying degrees of functional specificatiol\ and differentiation. While these movements, associations and organizations taken in their totality undoubtedly contribute something to the life of civil society, it would be unwise to form a judgement about the nature and extent of their contribution without discriminating among them.

Non�ovemmental Organization The last decade of the tWentieth century may justly be described as the decade of the non-governmental organization or the NGO. The NGO has now become a part not only of the Indian social landscape but also of the vocabulary of practically every Indian language and of languages in many parts of the world. There is now also a growing body of litera­ ture in which the nature and significance of the NGO and its contribu­ tion to economic development and social change is extensively discussed. Some of this discussion takes the form of advocacy, calling for a wider appreciation of the transformative role of the NGO worldwide, particularly in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America where the state is corrupt and oppressive and democratic institutions are fragile and ineffectual. Advocates of the NGO have_ put forward the idea of the Third Sector in society in which the state and market are the first and second sectors Oain 1995). The NGO is separate &om the state because it is a 'non-governmental organization'; it is separate from the market because it is a 'non-profit organization'. However, while the idea of a Third Sector ,lllJlfl>I TOf"l

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is appealing, it is by no means easy to specify. Are NGOs only one component of the third sector, the core of that sector or the whole of it? From the sociological point of view, it would be absurd to maintain that NGOs do or can fill the entire space in society not occupied by either state or market. Economists were justified Within their limits to distin­ guish between the public sector and the private sector. However, to extend that distinction, after adding a third sector, to the whole of society would be to set foot on shifting sands. Autonomy in general and autonomy from the government in particular are and ought to be prized as values in any democratic society. The medi­ ating institutions I spoke of earlier-universities, libraries, laboratories-­ are zealous of such autonomy as they have. The University of Delhi, to take but one example, is an autonomous institution under an Act of Parliament. But the autonomy of such institutions is always relative and never absolute. They have to constantly contend, not always success­ fully, with threats from the government to their autonomy. It would be a travesty to regard such institutions, however precarious their auton­ omy, as merely creatures of the government. And does an NGO escape regulation by the government simply by calling itself 'non-governmental', particularly if it has to look to the government for funding? An NGO may secure autonomy-including financial autonomy-from the gov­ ernment, but does it enjoy autonomy from the international agencies to which it has to tum for funds? In considering the vital issue of autonomy, we have to ensure that different standards are not used for the estab­ lished institutions of society and the emerging body of NGOs. Staying just a little while longer with the example of the university, India does not have private universities, but the United States does. Will it be reasonable to describe such private universities as Harvard, Princeton and Stanford as organizations for profit, on a level with the business firm? The London School of Economics has been, at least for as long as I know, a limited company, registered under the Companies Act in the United Kingdom, but it has also been a distinguished academic institution, some of whose faculty members have, moreover, contributed to the creation of the welfare state. It_may well be the .case that Harvard, Princeton and Stanford derive large incomes from which their presi­ dents, deans and professors in part benefit, but that does not mean that they cannot contribute anything to civil society. lt hardly makes sense to say that salaried professionals in universities, laboratories and hospitals work only for their individual profit whereas salaried professionals in Oxfam, ACTIONAID and ACORD work only for service to society.

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To take a different example, is the Bar Council of India an organization of the government or is it an organization for profit? It would perhaps be true, though trivial, to say that in bourgeois society, every person works for his own profit. What is not tru.e is that every person works only for his own profit, and from no other impulse. The more important point is that in institutions, associations and organizations of the kind I have referred to in this section and the preceding one, it is extremely difficult to sort out the sheep who work mainly for service to others from the goats who work mainly for profit to themselves. What evidence we have lends to suggest that the component of voluntary action in what are called voluntary associations or NGOs is. highly uneven, and in some cases it ts weak. In a detailed empirical study of Britain, published just after World War II, Lord Beveridge (1948) drew a distinction between the 'philanthropic motive' and the ·•mutual aid motive' in voluntary action. While philanthropy is extremely important in any civilized society, what really counts in the life of civil society are the associations created and nurtured by the impulse of mutual aid. In comparing Lord Beveridge's account of voluntary action in Britain with what little I know of the work of NGOs in India, I am struck by the strength of mutual aid in Britain and its weakness in India. The sheer range and variety of associations created by individuals acting together in pursuit of a common objective, without encouragement or support from outside or above, is truly remarkable. Typi�ally, such an association began its career when a group of like-minded persons in similar circum­ stances got together to achieve a common purpose, raised money among themselves, arranged to meet periodically, and to have a meal together before or after the meeting. Having launched itself in that way, the asso­ ciation might cease to exist after a brief span of lime; or it might continue in broadly its original form for decades; or it might expand, branch out and change its form. De Tocqueville was not wholly right when he said that a new under­ taking was likely to be launched only in America by an association, but in England by a notable. Voluntary associations set up and managed by indi­ viduals on the basis of tnutuality were extremely important in Britain throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, until they were displaced to some extent by the welfare state. These associations were not only based on mutual aid and self-reliance, they became schools for the cultivation of those qualities. It is as yet too early to determine how far education in the civic virtues of mutuality and self-reliance is being provided by the many NGOs that have come into existence in India.

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The trajectories of many of the NGOs in India appear to be different from those of the voluntary associations observed by de Tocqueville in America and described by Beveridge in Britain. The sources of their funds ate different. It appears that the most successful NOOs in India­ and elsewhere in Asia, Africa and Latin America-are the ones that are best able to ensure a steady flow of funds from the government or from international agencies. If the effectiveness of an NGO depends on its capacity to keep funds flowing in from foreign donors, then it must surely affect its contribution to the growth of civil society in India. To me it appears that the NGO in India is often caught between the ideals of the social .movement and the requirements of organized philan­ thropic service. lt is far from my intention to belittle either the philan­ thropic impulses of foreign donors or the very highly creditable work that many NGOs in India are doing in the fields of health, education, child­ care, and so on. The bureaucratic apparatus of the government is ill­ equipped to take care of many of the needs of the common people. If other agencies and organizations are able to do what the government was expected to do, but failed to do or do well, their efforts should receive public support and encouragement. Nevertheless, the question of what they contribute to the creation of civil society, and in what way, still remains open. The NGOs in India are too diverse for them to have a single organ­ izational form and too new for them to have acquired a definite one. Many of them will no doubt fade and disappear, but as a social phenom­ enon, the NGO is here to stay. lt is difficult to predict the typical or pre­ dominant form they will acquire in course of time, but my feeling is that it will be well within the range of organizational forms already in exis­ tence. In particular, where it is large and successful, I doubt that the NGO will be able to dispense with bureaucracy, rational accounting and material incentives for its employees. Once they take root, NGOs in India will undoubtedly acquire some of the social characteristics of the Indian soil on which they are growing. Even if they are able to escape the influence of caste, it is doubtful that they will be able to escape the influence of kinship. The claims of kin­ ship are very strong in Indian society, much more so than in nineteenth­ century America or in post-war Britain. Public bureaucracies have so far been reasonably successful in keeping those claims at bay, at least so far as recruitment and promotion at the higher levels are concerned. The more cosy environment of the NGOs, particularly the smaller ones, makes them more indulgent towards the claims of family and kinship,

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and they will find it easier, in a way more natural, to accommodate the wife, the nephew and the daughter-in-law t,han the civil service. Religious Assemblies

If I have given the impression that Indians show very little initiative in voluntary action in comparison with the Americans or even the British that impression new needs to be qualified. It is true that they appear to be excessively dependent on the government in running not only institutions such as universities, hospitals and laboratories but also in establishing and maintaining 'non-governmental organizations'. However, there is one extensive and significant domain of social action in which they show genuine initiative, mutuality and self-reliance. That is the domain of religious activity in the widest sense. The ease with which help and support can be mobilized in India in the organization of a religious event is remarkable. The enthusiasm may be observed and experienced in any contemporary Indian city when there is a �e, a religious ceremony or a religious discourse. People in the neighbourhood come forward and offer help freely and ungrudgingly. They do it without seeking support from the government and without consideration of financial reward; they do it because they like it. As a boy, I experienced this enthusiasm in the .city of Calcutta. There, the most important social event of the school from which I matriculated, as of most such schools, was the annual Saraswati Puja. The entire event was organized with remarkable efficiency and good humour by teen-aged boys. The main responsibility was with the boys in the senior year, and in my last year at school, I joined the others in collecting donations, select­ ing the idol, arranging the decorations and the music, and, most impor­ tant of all, ensuring that the food would be abundant and well prepared. No doubt, some students believed that their piety would bring them good results in the forthcoming examinations, but that was not my motive, and I doubt that it was the main motive of any of my fellow students. On a later occasion in the same city, a friend took me to the house next door to collect a donation for the local Durga Puja. These neigh­ bours were Brahmos, and they were puritanical and strait-laced. The lady of the house told my friend that being Brahmos, they did not believe in idol worship, so she would not make any donation. My friend was indig­ nant. He pointed to our house and said, 'Those people are Christians.

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292 Do you think they believe in idol worship! But they are not mean about money.' He then wallced out of the house abruptly, leaving me speech" less and embarrassed. Though born a Hindu, my mother had a principled objection to idol worship, but she would be appalled by the thought of turning away a neighbour's son who had come to collect money for the Durga Puja. It may be said that great religious events such as Durga Puja in Kolkata, Ram Lila in Delhi or Ganesh Chaturthi in Mumbai bring people together for aid and support in collective action seasonally and not con.. tinuously. But they also have permanent effects. There is a continuity in the membership of the bodies, now universally known as committees, which organize the events from one year to the next. If they are not insti,.. tutions, many of them have at least the makings of institutions. In some cities, the temple is used as a base for organizing seasonal religious events on a larger scale, mobilizing support from its r�gular mem,.. bers as well as others. The secularization of India has not put an end to temple,..building; if anything, there has been an increase in it. Unfortunately, we do not have good sociological accounts of the build· ing of new temples in contemporary India. We need to know in what measure and in what ways philanthropy and mutual aid come together in such activities. My surmise is that philanthropic support flows more easily into temples than into universities, libraries or laboratories. Where there is philanthropic funding of NGOs, it is likely to come from the rich countries of Europe and North America. As I have already indicated, there is a great variety of religious activ .. ities, organized, unorganized and partly organized, that takes place out . side the temple which is a specifically religious institution. There are also senri,-religious and quasi. .religious activities. Among these are regular, occasional and sporadic assemblies of persons for discourses of a moral, ethical or spiritual nature. Hinduism as a system of religious beliefs and practices has been organized very differently from Christianity or Islam. It has left much room for activities that might be interpreted as either religious or non.. religious, according to the inclinations of the individual. In that sense, though not in every sense, it has a closer affinity with secularism than either Christianity or Islam. However, Hinduism is changing, and one significant change is its tendency to define itself in opposition to other religions, notably Islam. There is sometimes a linkage, even if it is a loose one, between the aMCmbly for moral, ethical and spiritual discourse and a religious move,. ment. India has been the land of religious movements, and the energy that

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creates such movements is still very strong. A religious movement is also a social movement, but not all social movements are religious movements. In conclusion, I can only raise a question, which is a very important one, but for lack of time and space, I cannot even attempt to answer it. How far do religious movements and assemblies for moral, ethical and spiritual discourses contribute to the formation of civil society7 They may contribute a very great deal to the formation of the good society, depending, of course, on what one means by that phrase. Nevertheless, I have taken pains to distinguish between the good society and civil society. I remain sceptical about what religious assemblies and religious movements can contribute directly to the formation of civil society, although their indirect contribution may be extremely valuable. Civil society requires the separation of open and secular institutions from the institution of kinship and religion, although it does not require the exclu­ sion of the latter from society as a whole.

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Select Bibliography on Civil Society, State and Democracy Articles Appearing in the Sociological Bulletin (• Included in this Volume) Donald W. 1992. 'State venus Local Control in Common Resource Management: A Comparative Ana1Y$5'· 41 (1 & 2): 1-17.• Baviskar, B.S. 1969, 'Co-operativea 'and Caste in Mahatuhtta: A Case Study'. 18 (2): 148 66. --.. 1971. 'Factiona and Party Politias: General El«tioaa in an Aasembly Conatituency in Maharuhtra'. 20 (l): S+-77. --. 2001. 'NGOs and Civil Society in India'. 50 (1): 3-15.• �teille, Andre. 2001. 'Civil Society and Good Society'. 50 (2): 28-307.• Caplan, P. 1980. 'Joinen and Non,Joinen: A South lndtan City Suburb and Its Women'5 Oub'. 29 (2): 206-21. Chauhan, Brij Raj. 1964. 'Cbokbala: An lnten,illage Organisation ofa Caste in Rajasthan'. 13 (2): 24-35. --.. 1968. 'The Panchayati Raj and the Democratic Policy'. 17 (1): 35-54. Desai, l.P. 1979. 'The Concept of the Desired TyPe of Society and the Problems of Social Change'. ZS (1 & 2}: 1-8. Dhanagare, D.N. 2001. 'Civil Society, State and Democracy: Contextualisi1:1g a Discourse'. 50 (2): 167-9 l .• Drives; D. Edwin and Driver E. Aloo. 1982. 'Social Oasa and Voluntary Associations in Urban South India'. 31 (2): 133-5,f. Dua, Veena. 1970. 'Social Organisation of the Arya Samaj: A Study of Two Local Arya Centres in Jullundur'. 19 (1): 32-50. Owivedi, Raqjit. 1997. 'Farb, People and Protest: The Meduiting Role of Environmental Action GrouP6'· 46 (2): 209-43. Eiaenatadt, S.N. and Harriet Hartman. 1994. 'Movements of Protest, Construction of Centres and State Formation in.India and Europe'. 43 (2): 143-59. Giri, Ananta Kumat 2001. 'Civil Society and the Llmits ofIdentity Politics'. 50 (2): 266--85.• Gupta, Oipankat 1999. 'Nation-State and Open Systems of Stratification: Maki ng Room for the "Politics ofComtt1Jnnent"'. 48 (1 & 2): 59-73.• Kanhere, Uaha. 1986. 'White Collar Trade Unionism: Bank Officers' Trade Uniona in Ahmedabad, Oujanit'. 35 (2): 73-94. �rg, Sraffan. 1992. 'f-annen' Agitation, Qvil Society and the State'. 41 (l & 2): 19--48.• Attwood,

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316 communal riots, violence, 193,242,260 communalism,27,46, 99,121 communication, 82,115;ladt of, 60 communism, 15, 35,55,68, 71,209, 215 Communist Party of India-Manrist, 262,280 communists,262 communitarians,15,176,220 community, communities,21,85,128, 157, 161,218-9, 283,284 competition,48-49,54,57,128,130, 155,161 complementary 6liation,85 complimentllrity, 82 conciliariQn, 85 conflicts,68,99, 102,126,134, 1-+4, 146 conflict resolution,60,122 conformism,. 220 confonnity,68 Congraa,Congress (I), 24,57,58,116, 197-98,2�, 249,280 conscience, 74,90,140, 229 consciousness,87 consensus,61,106 conservati6m,53, 101 Constitution of India,115-17, 120, 133, 196,198, 279-80,282-a3 conatitutiona.lism,96 consumer movements,190 contradicdons and r1asses, 131,134,250-5 Conventicle Acts, 1664 and 1670,74 convergence,120-1 cooperation,48,86,132 Co-operative Developm ent Foundation (CDF),141 co-operatives: as managers of common resources,153-54; and community organization,151;in rural India, 154 - 5 7 co-optation,57 corpotate interest,12 7 corpotateness,85 Corporation, 73 corruption,83,118,129,142,152,157, 162,164,249,279 Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology (CAPART). 143

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Covenant,76 cow .slaughter issue,178 criminaliution of politics, 56 Cromwell,75,77 Cuba: natiorialism, 172 cults,205-6,210 culnual, culrural tradition,culture, 48,56,63,67,69,77-78,83-M, 91-92,101-4,111, 115, 131, 204-5, 208,213-14,219--20,228 -30; autonomy,200;and civil scxiety,J1; community,226;conflict,, 34; conformism,51; continuum,63; diversity,26,198; homogenization, 53;in India,. 97-99,100;identity, 200;lea,103; nationalism,102; process,239;rclatiom,46-47;unity and cxclusiveneaa, 103 custom, 77, 82-aJ;v�us state, 85 C�l83 Dahomey,68 DaUt: empowennent,193;politics,227 Damodar Valley Corporation,200 debt-trap,59 decentralization, 249 decision-making process,33,55,61,63, 111,138,145 de1I1ocracv,democratic politics, democratization,15,16, 19--20, 22-23,26,29-32,36-37,43-4-4, 56-63, 70,83,91-94,96,98-101, lo+-6, 110-11,113-14,116, 118-22. 130-1, 133-34, 137, 142-44. 187,238-39,245-48, 277-78,280-1; civil society-and, 47�51, 130-l;-lndian experience, 56-61; decentralization, 1-+4; politics,110-11; state and,51-56 demographic crisis,59 deprivation,180,196 · , 243 n..__, a·qnn ..,.,....., destitution,79 development, 19,51, 142 development thtnlcing and new peasants movements,262-65 developmentalism,138 dhmmam,99

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317

Index dictatorship, 49,55,56, 64n6 digitalization,60--1 disciplinary institution6,248 diJcontent and dlaenchantment,20,37, 62,27�79,2&5 discninination,100,102 disorder, 85 disparity,201 dissentm,74,84 clistrlbutivejl.lltice, 189 divergence, 82, 275 divenity,22,79,98,129,139 divinity,69 dominance,47 domination,50,53,79,104 Dravtda Kaihagam (DK), 24 Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), 24 Dravidian I�--• ...,"lliu&gea, 82 . droit commun, 84 dualism,duality, 20,JI, 84,91-96 durability,156,157,160 duda and responsil,illties, 111 eccleaiastical law, 83 ecol ogy movements,221 economic, economy,36,50,53,59, 120, 134, 146,204, 248, 263, 266; aspect of civil society,126--28; disparities, 134; drain,120; federalism, 70; freedotn,49; growm,, 60; juatice, 134; liberalism,,54; markets, 26; rationality,181; relations,126 Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), 132 education system,80 efficiency,157,160, 162 egalitarianiam, 50,60,91,95-96, 101,104 ego,egotism,102,233 e-governance,30,60 electoral politics,118 electronic media network,35 elitism. ,188 Emergency (1775-77),58,61,280 e.mpowerment, 145 Engels, Friedrich,45,171 England: public worship,7+-75 English literature,115

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environmental degradation,139 environmental movements, 23�39,260 epiatemology,228-29 equality,34,82,9+-95, 100, 102-4, 133, 187-89,191, 195, 202,212,278; of all rellgiona. 7�79 eseendalism., 224 ethical order, 7 4 ethico-political mobili%ation, 36 ethics, 35,50 ethnic and rcligioua movements,237 ethnic,ethnicity,26,57,61,92,95, 9�99,219; conflicts,93, 119; movements, 238 ethnocentrism, 103 Europe,Europeans,81�2; civil society, 53,67,7+-77; economies,54; politiQ,15; western, 75 European Union,1# exclusion, LOI, 184, 293 Executive,130,188 exogamy, 85 exploitation,52,79,144,239,245 Ezhavas, 180,194 family, 71,81,86, 111, 125,256,260, 283; civil society and state,trinity,72-73; and state, 187 fanaticism,99,129 Farmer's Associations,264 fascism,43,68 federalism,79�0 Ferguson,Adam, i76--77 feudalism,96,101,173,177,181�2 force, use of, 69 Foreign O>ntribution Regulation Act (FCRA), 139,146 formaVinfonnal continuum,154 fragmentation, 103,126,229 Frazer, James 0.,68-69 free rompetition, 52 free market,free marlcet economy, 15,21, 43,47,49,92 freedom,'tS, 84,94, 95,127�, 130--.31,I 133, 171,173,181,224,28�1 French Revolution, 84 Fukuyama,Francis,96

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318 functional corporatism, 70 fundamental rigl\ts,13 3 fundamentalism,60--2,91,93, 100-1, 103,106,190 Gandhi,Indira, 57-58 Gandhi,M.K.,7 l,78, 102,117-18, 120-1, 194,233,247 Gandhi,. Rajiv, 146,247, 244 gtml!!inschnft (communities), 51 gender, gender relations,27,92,105, 111, 116,219; discrimination,101-2; equality,192 genealogy, 85 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATI),131 geographical factors, 183 Germany� capitalism,49 global community, 55 globalization, 26, 35,106,233; and civil society,131; and Hindu fundamentalism, 203-+i and identity politics,225 god,Iring and country,trinity, 80 Ood•1:ealization,77 Golwalka r, M.S., 209 good sociecy,37, 273-93 Gorkbaland: ctisls, 98 governance,125:failure,20; post-colonial,62 government and civil society, 124-5 Graeco-ltalian tradition,68 Gramsci,Antonio,17,30,32, 45--47, 51-52, 72,88, 126--27, 172,276 Greek struggle for independence, 171-72 Green Party,54 Green Revolution,197,2-42, 251,261 gree. nhouse approach. 162 guerrilla,43 guild socialism,70 Gujarat; non-government organizations (NGOs), 140,143 Habermas,Jurgen, 30,68 Hans, Kohn,172 Hapsburg Empire,183 haonony,82, 127

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Hazare,Anna,139,144 Hegel,Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 18,30, 32,44 46,52,68, 71-74,97, 126--27,130, 275-76 hegemony,35,46--47,71-72,99, 126--27, 260--i. 276 Henry VIII, 74, 75 heretics,76 heterogeneity,81,92,99,105,139, 188 hierarchical society, hierarchies,27, 34, 50,56, 63,69,79,84,100,114,173, 176,178, 179,180,182, 185, 188, 192,195,197 Hindi, 80-81 Hindu(s), Hinduism,Hindutva,35,61, 78,80, 98,100,101,119, 191-94, 227-28,260,292; caste society,63; fundamentalism,62; nation-state, 78; nationalism, 101; and Muslim relations,78,193,210; as popular religion,204-11 Hindu Code Bill,196 Hinduism Today, 211-12 Hitler, Adolf, 183,280 Hobbes,T homas,44, 70,85, 124-25, 129-130 homogeneity,homogenization,79,81-S2, 91,97, 100-1, 103,201 human dignity, 99 human relation,218 Human Rights Commission,133 human tights,25,32,139 human rights groups, 129,238 human subjugation, l 06 idealism,118 identity, identities,identity politics,27, 34-36, 50, 80-81,91,98, 101, 119-22,181-2, 1�91,195,200, 202,204; and civil society,218-34; formation, I 78-79, 221-24; an,d new social movements,221-24 Ulireracy, 32,56, 133 imperialism,24,71, 171 inclusion/exclusion politics,34,219 independents,74 India: civil society,61--63,77-79, 132-35

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319

Index Indian nat;ional congrag (INC), See CongTCM Indian Social lrutitute,146 individualism, individual,21, 5�2,62, 125,286 lndo-Aryan languages,82 lndo-Pak War,1971,57 industrial. indusll"ializl!tion,263,266; capitaliam,48, 239; democracy, 70; economy,256; so_ciety,274, 276 Industrial Revolution,75, 84 inequality,inequalities, 32,60,82,95, l�l. 103-4, 106 infonnadon technology (IT),60 injustice, 290 innovativeness,157,161 institutionalaation,61 institutions,debacle,60 integration,80, 131 int�ty, 118 intellectual scepticism,283 intellectual, unfattered,172-4 interest groups, 57 intermediary institutioru, associations,31,68 internal conflicts,85 international class, 171 international funding 11gencit!$, 59 International goverrunent organizlltions (lGOS),131 International Labour Organization (ILO), 242 international relations, 85 inte .mationalism,172 Internet and Hinduism, 21 i -15 Isidore •of Seville,83 Tslam,l&lamic fundamentalism,35, 98, 103, 114-15, 191,205,209,113, 215,216,292 Jainism, 191, 196,197 Jaipal Singh,199 Jammu and Kashmir: crisis,98 Japan: imperialism, 49 ;an, 26,111,12�21,178,193 jehad. 119 Jerome,83

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Jews, 197, 233 Jharkhand,crisis,98,198; movement, 25, 198--200 ]harkhand Multti Morcba,24 Jharkhand Patty,198 Joint Forest Man�ement OFM),143 Joshi,Sharad, 242-+3, 248 judicial system, judiciary, 130,170, 188 justice,125 Kalebr cornmiasion, 197 Kannada autuvaligars,Bangalore, 201 Kant,Immanuel, 173 Karat,Prabsh. 146 I