THE WAGES OF IMPUNITY: Power, Justice and Human Rights by K.G. Kannabiran. Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2004.
THE author, K.G. Kannabiran is a distinguished human rights activist with long years of experience in the courts. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that there is so much that is commendable about this book. Kannabiran’s strong remarks on POTA and the Armed Forces Act are well taken. His perception about the National Human Rights Commission is interesting and worth serious consideration. Almost every chapter has something to tell us and the book is full of insights and experiences. Kannabiran writes well and his conclusions are usually well founded. But with a book by an author of his stature, all this hardly needs to be said. What I have tried to indicate in this review are some loopholes and shortcomings.
Kannabiran has seen the working of the state agencies and of the legal system at close quarters. As a result, perhaps, he notices the warts more than he sees the face. This is a man deeply disillusioned with all legal systems, with some justification. He has no faith in capitalist institutions, nor in the communist system of governance. Kannabiran reposes no trust whatsoever in either the executive or the judiciary. As a result he is left without any locus in which to rest his faith. Here surely he goes too far.
Kannabiran argues that the behaviour of the state and its agents has not changed after 1947, that the colonial and the postcolonial state have the same face. This is nothing new. As always, and everywhere, law serves power. But are we then to say that the law plays no role at all (in India or outside) except to uniformly oppress the powerless? Should we then throw it out of the window, whatever the consequences? This reviewer will not go as far as that. This is the first point of departure from the author.1
Logically speaking, even to serve power, law must give to the powerless and the exploited a stake in the system. After the anarchy of pre-colonial days, that stake was the safety of life and property. Thus Gafoor, a starving peasant in Sarat Babu’s 19th century story, retorts, ‘In the Maharani’s government no one is a slave. I shall come when I have eaten,’2 when the zamindar’s minion tries to drag him to the master’s presence. His pronouncement does not save Gafoor from a savage beating, but to him it is a further injustice rather than his just desserts. Far from killing it because it is violated, this kind of rebellious perception actually keeps the spirit of the rule of law alive and burning, until it yields results.
The British understood well the value of good governance. In 1775 Warren Hastings remarked about the new outpost at Sumatra: ‘The foundations on which the interest and authority of the Hon’ble Company on this coast rest are the voluntary engagement of the inhabitants to allow them the sole and exclusive right to the entire produce of their country… on condition that the Company maintains on the Island a force sufficient to protect them from all enemies, whether European or native.’ 3
As E.P. Thompson points out, the law may be seen as mediating and reinforcing class interests. But this does not mean that the law is no more than these relations. The law has its own characteristics, history and logic. If the law is patently unjust and partial it will not serve its purpose. It will mask nothing, legitimize nothing and contribute nothing to any class’s hegemony. It is an essential precondition for the effectiveness of law that it shall seem to be just. In order to seem just the law will have to be just that, at least from time to time. Otherwise men will lose faith in it.
To quote Thompson, ‘The notion of the regulation and reconciliation of conflict through the rule of law seems to me to be a cultural achievement of universal significance. In a context of gross class inequalities, the equity of the law must always be in some part sham. Transplanted… to even more inequitable contexts, this law would become an instrument of imperialism… but even here the rules and rhetoric have imposed some inhibitions upon the imperial power. If the rhetoric was a mask, it was a mask which Gandhi and Nehru were to borrow at the head of a million masked supporters.’ 4
In the Indian context, activists can help only because the law creates the space even to denounce it. They really have no other power in their hands. Whenever an activist is killed or beaten up, as tragically happens from time to time, we are outraged precisely because the promise of the law has been violated. The entire struggle over Narmada is proof of the existence of law as a powerful tool for justice. In the final analysis, there is a difference between the rule of law and arbitrary exercise of power. There may be only two cheers for the rule of law, but for no other form of governance is there even one.
Admittedly, this argument assumes the existence of a certain legal culture or a respect for the law. Even during the Emergency, it was not completely wiped out. The then prime minister did not intervene in every case in which her own government or a friendly state government was a respondent. Only when it fails do we realise the value of a legal culture. This culture is a prerequisite for the law to work. It could well be that the presence of activists and lawyers like Kannabiran helps to create a semblance of a legal culture, or revive its comatose form. A people under dictatorship or a totalitarian regime simply cannot complain. A widespread protest means that things are not at the worst possible level of oppression.
Naturally, no one in power will give up easily. (This applies to scheduled castes, tribes, women and anyone else who threatens the power brokers. Incidentally, given that Christians are vociferously clamouring to be included as dalits, there must have been some gain somewhere to scheduled castes). To expect that is to live in a dream world. To follow it up by disowning the law and its institutions altogether is to court disaster. The law is not replaced by justice but by anarchy, tyranny and sheer terror. The so called extra-judicial executions are murders even though they are committed by self-styled naxalites and terrorists, whether in Andhra Pradesh or other states. The dictatorship of the proletariat is still a dictatorship. The adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely holds true, regardless of the name we give the persons who wield that power, be they mandarins, landlords, moneylenders, government officers, cadres, or terrorists. This Kannabiran has understood very well and for him it has been a bitter pill to swallow. But he is still unable to accept that law alone can place limits on power. In some states in India, the lawlessness of law enforcers reaches such abysmal depths that this can appear to be blind and even foolhardy faith. Yet the power of the gun and the power of lawless governments can ultimately be silenced only by the power of the law, provided of course that the authorities formally committed to uphold the rule of law. The promise of law comes back to haunt the rulers at unexpected moments, as it did the police after the Bhagalpur blindings.
Most notably, the law is the only way to access justice for many, especially the poor. After the Bhagalpur blindings, relatives of the blinded men registered First Information Reports. This is how two Bhagalpur lawyers heard of the incident and filed a criminal case in the district court. They used the regular machinery of law till they were forced to knock at the door of the Supreme Court. The system may be ponderous, it may be deeply flawed, but both in principle and in practice the system creates a better access to justice than a knight on a white charger. Second, the system acts according to a person’s legal rights. It is not a largesse from a kind-hearted individual. Like the mills of God, the mills of law also grind slowly, but from time to time they grind exceedingly fine.
There is a story on the rule of law that this reviewer is tempted to recount. At the Salzburg seminar on rule of law in 2002, a Chinese author/intellectual/resource person from the People’s Republic of China told us where he first heard the phrase ‘rule of law’. He was part of a cultural delegation to Pakistan to plead with General Zia ul Haq for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s life. The general accorded them lavish hospitality, but to this particular request he replied that there was nothing he could do. Pakistan was governed by the rule of law and the judiciary would decide for itself. It came as a revelation that one could grow up without ever encountering the phrase, the concept of ‘rule of law’. Ordinary Indians may not use the phrase, but they do have some notion of it. They will still retort, ‘Yeh kaisa andher hai? Desh mein koi kanoon hai ya nahin? Are we in darkness? Is there no law in India?’
Another point of departure for this reviewer is the focus of the book on political activists who have at any rate challenged the system. There are many different grasses at the roots. This reviewer’s own concerns have been with the liberties of the non-political and downtrodden such as women and tribals. Even their own non-tribal activist leaders do not include them in the process of decision-making. During the Emergency we found it a piece of black humour to tell them that their right to free speech had been curtailed, for they never had it. The same is true of so many women. They may have a vote but almost everywhere, as Anasuya Dasgupta put it, they speak the language of silence.
There are some other points on which I have serious reservations. One is about his interpretation of the concept of secularism, as applied to statutory Hindu family laws, which are part of the Hindu code. Conversion by a spouse to another religion is a ground for divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act. The author comments that this provision is against the secular spirit of the Constitution (p. 145). But he has not looked at the laws of other communities. The Native Converts Marriage Dissolution Act was passed in 1866. At a time when Queen Victoria even refused to receive innocent parties to a divorce, this act allowed a Hindu who converted to Christianity to obtain divorce if the spouse refused to cohabit with the convert on account of conversion. Incidentally, the act applied to people other than Muslims, Christians of other denominations and Jews, i.e., Hindus. This law left the Hindu wife hanging in mid air, for Hindu law made no provision for divorce. Should the Hindu woman convert, her Hindu husband could remarry under his personal law. This act is still on the statute books. It was not clarified why Jews and other Christians were omitted. If the Hindu Marriage Act did not have this provision, the Hindu wife would remain married while her husband would divorce her under the Native Converts Marriage Dissolution Act.
The Native Converts Marriage Dissolution Act was not extended to the Muslim community because Muslim marriage was dissolved instantaneously if either spouse converted to another religion. (This position changed subsequently, under The Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act 1939. Now the Muslim woman’s marriage remains binding even if she converts.) Again, if a man converts to Islam, according to Muslim personal law, he can marry despite the fact that he is already married while a woman has to obtain divorce under her old marriage law. If the Hindu Marriage Act did not have this provision, the Hindu wife would remain married while her neo Christian or neo Muslim husband could take another wife under the Shariah. Only since Sarla Mudgal, sometime in the 1990s, must an Indian man obtain divorce under his old law before he can remarry under his new family law. After 1955, when Hindu marriage became monogamous, the Hindu husband of a wife who converted would also remain trapped. Creating equality of injustice is a poor consolation.
There is another good reason to allow conversion as a ground for divorce. When most couples marry, it is with certain socio-cultural assumptions of their future together. Conversion is not part of it; it is a momentous step bringing with it a completely different way of ordering one’s life. We must recognize that not everyone is an agnostic or atheist. Religion plays a large part in people’s lives, larger than many of us are ready to concede. We cannot visualize the conflicts that this might generate. On the ground that conversion is optional, the marriage is not automatically dissolved. Nevertheless, a choice must be allowed.
Kannabiran comes down on all Hindu family laws for their ‘anti-secular’ provisions. Those lawmakers were walking a tightrope, stretched over a vale of fire. The law had to be specifically restricted to Hindus because people of other religions could cry wolf that the majority was encroaching upon them. Any move to include a Muslim or a Christian in the ambit of Hindu law, for example by allowing a Hindu to marry a non-Hindu by Hindu rites (on the lines of the Christian Marriage Act or Muslim law which allows a Muslim man to have a nikah with a non-Muslim woman who is a kitabi or from the people of the book), would have been received with great suspicion. Muslim personal law does not allow non-Muslims to inherit from Muslims. The Caste Disabilities Removal Act 1850 actually specifies all that Kannabiran lays at the door of the Hindu Succession Act 1956. It is somewhat harsh to see anti-secularism behind every Hindu shadow.
The only way out of the quagmire would be to bring about a uniform civil code. But even a mention of the idea raises hackles! Kannabiran himself is implacably opposed to it because, as he says, the demand has not come from the minorities. That would generally mean the Muslims. For minorities, also read ‘religious leaders’. No one should think that the demand has come from the Hindu majority either. To this day in MARG’s legal literacy workshops, we face total confusion and even hostility when we say that the Hindu Marriage Act forbids bigamy. The point is that since the Hindus were a majority, the government legislated for them without asking any religious leaders. Today Hindu women and other Hindu interest groups can lobby the government directly and bypass religious leaders. For the minorities we have laid down a completely unconstitutional requirement that their religious leaders/churches/ or NGOs like personal law boards, must approve of any change. The minority women may not approach the government directly. To make some changes in their divorce law, Christian women had to lobby for 18 years! This is how secularists create second class citizens. We have not understood a crucial fact that Faustina Pereira, a Christian Bangladeshi, a small minority, has noted in her book on family laws: personal is not private.5
The book flows up to a point, then loses it. That is because it is a collection of papers written at different times. There are several references to the undelivered speech of C.R. Das, the famous tryst with destiny speech and to A.K. Gopalan. These repetitions could easily have been avoided. Some chapters openly express partisan views. One such chapter (Chapter 25) is on the lawyers’ strike in Andhra Pradesh. While Kannabiran is suspicious of the judiciary and the executive, his own tribe of lawyers has escaped his critical eye and even sharper pen. Striking to protest against the transfer of a particular acting chief justice, particularly – as he himself says – after the lawyers had accepted transfers in principle, can hardly be justified as upholding the high ideals of law.
Kannabiran’s sympathies show, as when he puts inverted commas in mentioning that General Vaidya ‘flushed’ out the Golden Temple (p. 102). The inverted comma speaks volumes. He also feels for the handcuffed hardcore terrorist and thinks that handcuffing will dehumanize him to the point of not thinking clearly (p. 112). One agrees with him wholeheartedly that killing a religious group is genocide. One hopes he agrees that it is so, regardless of whether the group is from the majority or a minority. His views on Veerappan leave much to be desired. And his (fortunately) imaginary defence of Sanjay Dutt of the AK 47 rifle in his possession, on grounds of the Mumbai riots is not only invalid, it is plain wrong. Kannabiran justifies it only because he traces the impulse to Thackeray.
There are some loose statements not expected from a man of Kannibiran’s stature. There is no difference between actual and legal arrest (p. 5). The distinction he makes between independence gained by political struggle and one gained lawfully is neither tenable nor intelligible (p. 60). An assault is not legitimated by acquittal (p. 200). A puisne judge is not transferred to become chief justice elsewhere because he is unfit to occupy the office in his home court (p. 237).
One interesting observation en passant: out of 59 references in the bibliography, only 18 refer to Indian authors. Not one of them is on philosophy of law or on jurisprudence. A large number of the references are to books on the Constitution. Even a Upendra Baxi or a Rajeev Dhavan do not merit a passing glance. It brings home to us that for all our condemnation of the colonial masters, modern Indian jurisprudence begins (and ends) with them.
It is a book written with passion and sincerity, even when one does not agree with it wholeheartedly. A good read, with a lot of information. It justifies the stature of the man and the author as an intrepid fighter in the name of justice for the men and women he considers worthy.
Vasudha Dhagamwar
Footnotes:
1. This discussion is substantially taken from the reviewer’s forthcoming book, Role and Image of Law in Tribal India, Sage, 2005.
2. Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay, ‘Mahesh’ in Sharatchandra Ki Sarvashreshtha Kahania, Rajat Prakashan, New Delhi, (nd), pp. 50-57
3. B.M. Warren Hastings, Papers.
4. E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, Penguin, 1985, pp. 258-269.
5. Faustina Pereira, The Fractured Scales, The University Press, Dhaka, 2002.
CASTE, CULTURE AND HEGEMONY: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay. Sage Publications, New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London, 2004.
THE book under review is important for two reasons. First, it gives studies on Dalits in colonial times a new geographical focus. Most studies on Dalits in colonial times have been focused on the western region of India. The basic reason for this was that both the pioneers of the Dalit movement, viz. Mahatma Jotiba Phule (1827-1890) and Dr B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), were born and worked in this part of India. It goes to the credit of Sekhar Bandyopadhyay that he has rescued studies on Dalits in colonial times from being Maharashtra centric. The book under review is the third book Bandyopadhyay has written on the subject. His previous intellectual efforts were crowned by two widely acclaimed books, viz. Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872-1937 (Richmond, Surrey, 1997) and Caste, Politics and the Raj: Bengal, 1872-1937 (Calcutta, 1990). Now this trailblazer is not alone. Swaraj Basu has joined Bandyopadhyay recently with his Dynamics of a Caste Movement: The Rajbansis of North Bengal, 1910-1947 (New Delhi, 2003).
Second, the book under review is important because it challenges the received wisdom about the social organisation, identity formation and political assertion of Dalits. Gail Omvedt in her Dalits and the Democratic Revolution (New Delhi, 1994) emphasised not the pollution but power aspect of caste society. Her thesis was that Indian ‘caste feudalism’ grew due to the alliance between Brahmanism and state power. Kancha Ilaiah’s emotive book, Why I am not a Hindu (Calcutta, 1996) spoke of the total alienation of dalit-bahujan samaj from the nation and its dominant Hindutva-spewing right wing politics in independent India. Bandyopadhyay discards neither alienation nor power as possible explanations for the social dynamics of lower caste movements. But his focus is on exploring how lower caste ideologies of protest are interwoven with the ambition for power among the Dalit elites, whether classes exist among lower castes, and if there is no trend of linear progress among these castes, how the meaning of boundaries and identity markers of Dalits change with social contexts (p. 36).
Historians generally prefer to write chronological narratives. But, though by a historian, this book is different. Bandyopadhyay has treated the subject thematically, locating his empirical findings in the ongoing debate about culture, hegemony and dominance in social sciences. Besides an Introduction and a Conclusion, the book under review consists of five thematic chapters, viz. ‘Caste and Power: Competing Discourses in Bengal’, ‘Caste and Popular Religion: Revolt against Hierarchy and its Limits’, ‘Caste and Social Reform: The Case of Widow Re-marriage’, ‘Caste and Gender: Social Mobility and the Status of Women’ and ‘Caste and the Territorial Nation: The Hindu Mahasabha, Partition and the Dalit’.
The book starts with endorsing the findings of Niharranjan Ray and Hitesranjan Sanyal that caste status did not have a stranglehold over society in pre-colonial Bengal. The reason cited by Ray for this was that the process of Aryanisation began as late as the 5th century A.D. in Bengal and that, even after it started, the liberal indigenous tribal culture diluted the orthodox varna culture (p. 18). Therefore, pre-colonial Bengal was (i) not a carbon copy of the rigid ideals propagated by the conservative medieval smritikaras and accepted by the British Orientalists; (ii) society was segmented but not segregated and therefore, Chandalas were rightful dwellers of the city; (iii) since the Gupta period, those who controlled land refrained from physical labour and were called uchchjati, which only showed the link between class and caste in Bengal; and (iv) sub-castes were being created due to occupational specialization, not just ritual differentiation, claimed Sanyal. Social mobility was possible for lower castes through the occupation of new wastelands for cultivation, technological innovations and commercial success (p. 20).
The book concludes that in the colonial period the bhadralok, drawn mostly from the high status group of Brahmins, Kayasthas and Baidyas, retained their dominance by coopting those upwardly mobile sections from trading, middle peasant and Dalit castes which sought accommodation in the status system. The elite groups controlled land, education and professions; they also possessed political leadership and religious textual knowledge. This Rajapundit nexus was used by the bhadralok to ‘set the limits for the imagination of the lower castes’ and thereby win their consent for the legitimacy of the ideology of hierarchy and domination (pp. 240-2). Hence, while the political debates in the public arena were suffused with class rhetoric, the mental world of the Bengali Hindus was submerged in status based on caste and endogamy. Like most of India, therefore, the caste system in Bengal has retained its essence by making some adjustments in its form, asserts Bandyopadhyay (pp. 246-7).
Like all books of history, the beauty of this book lies not in its staid conclusions. Instead, the majesty of this book lies in the vivid details. The author has painstakingly collected data to make the point that the lower caste elite consciously led their willing caste-fellows into aping the bhadralok. We know that caste hierarchy was challenged by popular religion, especially during the medieval Bhakti movement. Ramakanta Chakravarti suggested that Bhakti saints tried to create an environment of ‘spiritual democracy’. Bandyopadhyay shows that spiritual democracy never materialised and caste hierarchy persisted despite the efforts of fakirs and Bhakti sects. Fakirs like Lalan Shah (1774-1890) influenced urban literary elites like Rabindranath Tagore but could not establish a sect because his search for ‘the man of the heart’ was more esoteric, individualistic and secluded (pp. 88-9). On the other hand, the efforts of Sri Chaitanya (1485-1533) and the Gaudiya Vaishnava sect his followers put together, was more attractive to the upwardly mobile middle rank peasants and trading castes like Sadgops or Tilis. Ultimately this sect also got institutionalised into ‘an established religious order of Bengali Hindu society’ (pp. 82). Hence, radical fakirs, like Duddu Shah, raised their voice in despair by saying:
‘Namasudras, Mochis, Bagdis (all untouchables) –
They too seek glory in caste.’
The question of widow remarriage forms the core of the chapter on Caste and Social Reform. We know that Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar in Bengal propagated this reform and that it failed. It is interesting that lower castes traditionally practiced widow remarriage but they turned into opponents of this practice in the period of reform. The desire to ape the upper castes led the intermediate and lower castes to not only abandon the practice of remarriage of widows but also to forbid it, according to the Census of 1891 (p. 135). At the Bengal Namasudra Conference in 1922, a group of 500 reformers proposed a resolution on the desirability of widow remarriage. This group was outnumbered twenty times by the anti-reformers who ‘physically heckled and drove’ the reformers out of the conference (p. 140).
The book is not without its faults, both functional and substantive. It is teeming with references to theoretical debates and it is based on a large number of archival and vernacular sources. The functional fault of this first-rate academic book is that it does not have a glossary or bibliography, an absence that has reduced the utility of this book for readers and researchers alike.
The substantive problem with the book is that it confuses the terms Hindu nationalists and Hindu communalists. Nationalism is undoubtedly Janus-faced. It has few takers in our rapidly changing globalized times and some extreme forms of nationalism have been akin to fascism. But it is also a fact that nationalism steam-rolled parochial identities and helped dissolve the repressive politics of colonialism. Hence, a famous author on colonial Bengal like Bandyopadhyay does not do himself proud by gifting the mantle of nationalists to Hindu communalists of the Mahasabha variety.
Congress leaders and Hindu Mahasabha-ites may have cooperated with each other on some occasions and for some time. But were they moved by the same motives and was their ideology similar? Did any Congress leader say what V.D. Savarkar asserted in February 1939 that India is ‘the country of Dalits as it is ours but it is not the country of Muslims’ (p. 201)? Didn’t Hindu Mahasabha seek ‘Militarisation of Hindus and Hinduisation of politics’ in 1941 (p. 208)? Didn’t the Mahasabha incite slogans like ‘Muslim sakti ki jay’ by raising slogans like ‘Hindu sakti ki jay’ during communal disturbances in Khulna in 1944 (p. 214)? The killings at Noakhali and Calcutta in 1946-7 were only a byproduct of this politics of mutual exclusion/hatred practiced by both the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League. Why lump Gandhiji’s Congress with this infamous combine whose politics thrived on discord and disharmony?
Bhupendra Yadav
RE-VISIONING THE PAST: Early Photography in Bengal 1875-1915 by Malavika Karlekar. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2005.
PHOTOGRAPHY came to India in 1840. A product of scientific enquiry, it is no surprise that its early practice was used in the interests of the colonial state for surveillance and control. However, the colonial encounter was not a homogenous one. This new visual culture was eagerly embraced by the bhadralok samaj in Calcutta. A pioneering work laying out the social history of photography in Bengal was Siddharth Ghosh’s Chhobi Tola (Taking Pictures, 1988). As with most vernacular works (the book was written in Bengali), the worth of this mine of information remained unexplored and Ghosh was to die prematurely in 2002. Malavika Karlekar has explored some of his work further in her book Re-visioning the Past that deals with early photographic practices in Bengal from 1875 to 1915.
In opposition to coffee table books on ‘exotic’ colonial India, both Karlekar, and Ghosh before her, interrogate photographs of Bengal in their social and historical context. Karlekar’s book analyses studio photographs of the Bengali middle and zamindari classes drawn from private and family collections as well as existing archives in Bengal. Using writing of all kinds, including her own earlier work that documented the early memoirs of Bengali women, Karlekar constructs a thicker reading of these visual sources. A historical layering of the photographs adds new dimensions to looking at them. One such instance is the images of Jnanadanandini Devi from the Tagore family, dressed in the Brahmika sari popularized by her. As pointed out by historians, women in Bengal wore a single piece of cloth around the body till the mid-19th century. The new need for greater visibility of women in the public domain necessitated reform in female dress that was adapted from European and other Indian traditions. As with any other visual representation, the book draws attention to the fact that photographs were not innocent representations of reality but embedded in social and cultural discourses of the time.
The first two chapters of the book summarize the early history of photography in India that has been laid out by a number of scholars, both Indian and western. A more valuable point made by Karlekar in this section is about the porosity of the colonial encounter. That colonialism was a complex phenomenon that altered both the colonizer and the colonized is fast being recognized not just in the field of photography but also in literature and historical fiction. In laying out this history, Karlekar points out how ‘natives’ were often part of colonial surveys of India and may have made their own interventions in these projects.
In turn, Indian photographers like Ahmed Ali Khan and Deen Dayal or enthusiasts of photography in Indian royal families produced exotic ‘views’ of the Orient that were not different from those by the British. While one could refer to a common colonial visual discourse that was adopted by both western and Indian practitioners, this porosity played out more interestingly in the studio. In a situation where the public domain was racially segregated, the studio became a space not only for sharing the same physical space, but also of a ‘world-view that underlay standardized compositions, poses and props of the studio portrait’ (p. 64).
These ideas are explored further in the third chapter where Karlekar looks at images from private collections and traces a complicated history that links photography with emerging notions of family, conjugality and gender roles in the early 20th century. In the emerging bhadralok culture of Bengal, the act of being photographed was a ‘coming out’ and an assertion of status. This act was not without an edge. ‘The attainment of such positions involved change and adjustment, conflict and dilemmas, that were often not free of tension. The photograph presented the public face of achievement and success. At times though, it barely concealed underlying stress not only of being photographed but also of what the new life stood for’ (p. 87). Leading the reader in an interesting direction by analyzing three ‘cross-over’ images in her conclusion, Karlekar further points out how the status that these men and women aspired to was not just about mimicry of the colonial way of life.
In her opening comments, Karlekar acknowledges the difference in the ways historians and sociologists read images as opposed to their interrogation by visual disciplines like film and media studies. My critique of the book, if any, lies in this direction that somewhat uneasily straddles the purely descriptive role of photographs as illustrative and analysis of the images as representation. The former is the bulk of the book and provides a rich visual layering of the history of colonial Bengal. The latter includes a reading of images, some identified and others ‘orphaned’, an apt term used by the writer to describe isolated images that nothing is known about. While historians often read the photograph as a material source or as evidence of the past, there is also the unmistakable fact that the act of being photographed was also an act of performance. To read a direct correlation between this evidence in the photograph (in the form of clothes, accoutrements such as backdrops and furniture or even pose, body language and facial expressions) and social relationships of power, subordination and even resistance, is to treat the photograph as inherently vested with realism and the truth. Representation, even if it were for the purposes of documentation (as these photographs were) must be seen as a step away from the real.
Karlekar invokes disciplines like semiotics and psychoanalysis for her readings of ‘orphaned’ images: ‘This kind of engaged reading, gleaned serendipitously, is perhaps the most exciting, as well as the most controversial where often, more than the persona, the ephemera, accoutrements, and choice of studio props become powerful signifiers. And when… one reads meaning into the half smile and the reluctant hand, there is almost an element of psychoanalysis involved’ (p. 167). However, semiotics and psychoanalysis are also contested terrains, and they must be invoked in a more open-ended manner, leaving room for multiple interpretations of the same image. To read resistance in a clenched fist or the set of ones mouth can at best be open-ended interpretations. After all, as Karlekar herself interestingly points out, the process of photographing (with head clamps and other body clamps to make the subject sit still) was probably so arduous that it is not surprising that the ‘daughter-in-law’ of the Russick Lal Mullick family (going by mere visual appearances, it is not difficult to also see a strong facial resemblance between all three subjects in this portrait making them mother and daughters perhaps?) sat at the feet of her ‘mother-in-law’ with a sulky expression (p. 124).
She states ‘...it is almost as though the body language and gaze of the women reveal that they feel that they are being looked at critically by their husbands, and of course also by the almost invariably all male photographic establishment. They appear to be never free from this gaze, either literally or as an invisible check on their behaviour, posture and demeanour. The women seem to want to resist (Srivatsan 2000) the pose/role imposed on them by the photographic event where a simulated sense of marital conviviality is fostered for the public gaze’ (pp. 100-101). Theories of a monolithic, all encompassing male gaze have long been challenged within film and cultural studies that point out more complex ways in which women have negotiated the act of representation. One of these was the performance of ‘hyper’ femininity (accounts from zenana studios seem to suggest a certain preoccupation with ‘dressing up’ for photographs) or expected roles. Therefore, subversion may be read even when they posed in conventional ways.
The ways in which subjects posed in the studio was determined by a multiplicity of factors that included certain dominant visual codes of the time. Most early studio portraits were formal arrangements where the subject did not show much facial emotion. The ‘glazed’ look that Karlekar often refers to was one such code and, therefore, to conclude conjugal disharmony between a couple on the basis of this look would perhaps be an over-reading of almost all images of the time. Film studies have also moved beyond associations that link status and hierarchy with placement within a frame, that could often be choices made merely for a pleasing composition. Her correlation of spatial distance in the frame (say a couple separated by a table) with psychological distance that they might have, also seems somewhat overdetermined here.
Karlekar’s analysis is more thought provoking in sections where she invokes historical information to layer her subjective interpretation of an image. One such example is her reading of the arresting image of two couples from the Tagore family: Jnanadanandini and her husband Satyendranath, his brother Jyotirindranth and spouse Kadambari who seem to look beyond the frame of the photograph in different directions (p. 104). Though it does seem a bit difficult to tell the difference between whether a character is looking at something definite or is lost in thought, Karlekar’s pointing out the well-known fact that Rabindranath Tagore had a more than close relationship with his sister-in-law Kadambari who later committed suicide, adds an extremely thought provoking layer to her reading of the fluid placement of subjects of this somewhat unconventional image.
Going by the fact that all four subjects were from a known elite family, it is perhaps likely that they may have asked to pose in this way. After all Jnanadanandini is known to have been photograph ‘savvy’. Not only was she a photographer herself, but there are accounts of her persuading others to be photographed in the studio. The photographic image was therefore a creation of a complex negotiation between the sitter and the taker, further mediated by existing visual culture and codes of behaviour, notions of social status, desire and performativity. Added to all these layers is the context of the researcher who looks back at the past from the vantage point of contemporary debates in historical writing. It is this negotiation that the book points to, joining an exciting trend in the writing around early Indian photography. Overall a richly illustrated and thought provoking book, though the publishers could have done better with the layout of the pictures.
Sabeena Gadihoke
CRIME AND MONEY LAUNDERING: The Indian Perspective by Jyoti Trehan. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2004.
Jyoti Trehan’s Crime and Money Laundering is both lucid and readable. Though no original study of the subject, it is an exhaustive compilation that would be readily acceptable as a suitable textbook explaining money laundering, the international cartels that control its working and, in particular, its ugly face. In terms of organized crime, the author focuses on gambling syndicates, white slave traffickers, drug barons, gun runners, terrorist groups and the rest of Mafia inc. which, as he explains, are all part of ‘Big Crime’. The notorious or infamous names by which they are known is meticulously listed country-wise with a brief bio-data of each. He has subsequently in his compendium, succinctly mapped out its upward spread and curve through forays into E-commerce and the Internet. He describes all the various legal conundrums, both national and international, codified to muzzle the hydraheaded money launderers of the world. Yet the merry expansion of this tribe, in India and the world, is not satisfactorily explained and the hint that lawmakers are at fault will fetch him few buyers. But more on that later.
To those who deal with such ‘white collar’ crime, the book may come across as saying little that is fresh. What, however, is undeniable is that the author has toiled hard – the select bibliography between pages 230 and 244 of the book reflects the author’s ardour in dealing with his subject. Trehan has attempted the tight-lacing of the contents in five parts constituting 24 chapters that reveal a tenacious mind focused on unravelling an unfortunately understudied crime that impinges on both national security and economic liberalization. For this reason, Part III of the study has a greater significance than other sections of the book. Here his voracious reading and travels, though unashamedly extolled as elsewhere, are buttressed by a practitioner’s insight. If the reader can disregard the unusually complicated discussion on the definition of national security, given the author’s delight in showing off his scholarship, it is because the exposition is pithy, subtle and explicit. The view, ‘security is simply put securing the nation’, helps him to explicate on how ‘washed’ money can tinker with the components of national security. Had he only elaborated on the irrevocable damage money laundering causes with the same zeal that he developed his definition of national security, this chapter could have made a mark of its own. It is this weakness, an inability to expose in more searing terms the perils of black money in a nation’s growth and well-being, both in its security and its economic development, that to some extent derails his feisty formulations in the remaining chapters of Part III. One expected and looked for an explication of the real dangers to the nation’s life from money laundering, dissected and exposed with expertise by a professional. But here he disappoints.
Nevertheless, this is a thoughtful exposition of a crime, ancient in historical terms but new in the speed it is gathering adherents in the society as a whole. Many of them (the individuals, institutions, activities) so identified believe that they have nothing to do with organized crime and thus would be shocked at being considered a part of any organized criminal group. Hence, Jyoti Trehan has done us all a great service by opening up a debate at this juncture. The book is a must read for all those in the field of law enforcement against financial crooks. His suggestions on how to rework existing laws to make investigation of crimes relating to money laundering easier to investigate and, therefore, facilitates sending such criminals behind bars, may invite derisive comment. But in the absence of credible deterrence, as reflected in laughable statistics of success in prosecution, he has a point. This is precisely what readers have to ponder over and if the book can excite such thinking it will have served its purpose. The subtitle, ‘the Indian perspective’, mentioned in fine print, raises expectations on some India-centric dalliance with money launderers. Unfortunately, such material is sketchy, in fact, woefully inadequate.
A final word. The book is marred by an overuse of phrases such as, ‘I would like to take the readers back’ or ‘ During my visit’ or ‘ Let us now examine’ or ‘ I have read many books’ which detract from the narrative flow. One expects the editors to be somewhat more alert.
Shantonu Sen
HINDUTVA: Exploring the idea of Hindu Nationalism by Jyotirmaya Sharma. Viking, New Delhi, 2003.
I DISCUSS the book entitled, Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism by Jyotirmaya Sharma through the prism of two intellectual traditions: Continental philosophy, especially Foucault, and Classical Indian philosophy. I have used the insights of Foucault to understand the structure of the text under discussion. Subsequently, I will selectively use two important ideas from Classical Indian philosophy to lay bare the boundaries of this text. First, let me locate the book under consideration in the contemporary context.
In stock trading, what is reckoned within a day-to-day dealing is how much a share loses or gains, rarely the original value of a share. In this sense, attachments and detachments take precedence over the original thing. A similar act of forgetting or amnesia seems to loom large over popular political discourses, particularly in the case of some crucial terms. This seems to be happening in the case of Hindutva. Of course, there is a difference. Unlike in the above analogy, where what is forgotten is the past, in contemporary political discourse it is the present. It is noteworthy that the term Hindutva is most frequently invoked by its critics. Nevertheless, a serious lapse in the understanding of this term seems to surround their usage. In the very utterance of this term, the gaze or focus seems to slip either on to Hinduism or to fascism. Hindutva’s contents are, then, largely circumscribed by an association with these two concepts resulting in cognitive voyeurism.
The secular discourse seems to have instituted a binary between the left-liberal versus the right. The former combination is largely associated with non- or anti-religion, whereas the latter is de-facto slotted as religious. This allows a conflation of the meaning of Hindutva and the contents of Hinduism, forcing our gaze on Hindutva to slip into the domain of Hinduism. This is a serious lapse, as the author of the term Hindutva, V.D. Savarkar, clearly distinguishes. He says:
Hinduism …means the school or system of religions the Hindus follow… ‘Hindutva’ is far more comprehensive and refers not only to the religious aspect of the Hindu people as the word ‘Hinduism’ does but comprehends even their cultural, linguistic, social and political aspects as well. It is more or less akin to ‘Hindu polity’, and its nearly exact translation would be ‘Hinduness’. The … word, ‘Hindudom’, means the Hindu people spoken of collectively. It is a collective name for the Hindu world, just as Islam and Moslem world or Christendom denotes the Christian world (1984: 78).
Further, for him a Hindu need not necessarily accept the authority of the Vedas, as ‘a man can be truly Hindu as any without believing even in the Vedas as an independent religious authority....’ Therefore, the brand of Hinduism that is usually identified with Vedanta philosophy is not central to Hinduism; rather, to Savarkar it is only a ‘derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva’ (1964: 2). To him, the ‘...concept of Hindutva is an idea embodying ...a principle of unity.’ It is ‘...not [just] a word but a history. Not only the spiritual or religious history of our people, as at times it is mistaken by being confounded with the other cognate term Hinduism, but a history in full’ (1989: 3); consisting of one language (Hindi); one name (Hindu); a common culture and law. All are pre-British and pre-Islamic (1989: 71). A Hindu is one for whom the S/Hindusthan is not only a fatherland but also a holy land (1989: 113). Thus, to understand Hindutva as part of the contents of Hinduism is to understand a whole from an insignificant fragment. Ashis Nandy has highlighted this in his famous essay entitled, ‘Hinduism and Hindutva: The Inevitability of a Confrontation.’ A.G. Noorani subsequently acknowledges this difference between Hinduism and Hindutva, though without acknowledging Nandy. Noting this difference saves our cognitive focus on Hindutva from slipping into Hinduism.
A similar danger of the process of a ‘slipping of the gaze’ is apparent when associating Hindutva with fascism, for instance in Sumit Sarkar, thus giving rise to intellectual complacency. It may well be that the characteristics of Hindutva are the same as, or similar to, fascism. Further, such equivocation may also serve the purpose of drawing the attention of a large numbers of readers to ongoing processes in the present by alluding to past misfortunes. Thus, using the past as a cautionary tale may legitimately help in avoiding dangers in the present or in the future. In the parallel drawn between fascism and Hindutva, the former does help as a metaphor in assisting and reinforcing the critique of Hindutva, or even making a case for secularism. Used as a metaphor or even a rhetorical tool, the word ‘fascism’ has enormous appeal. However interesting, metaphors, though they occupy and belong to the heightened realm, are often parasitical on facts. They enhance the realm, highlight the margins, and employ exaggeration as a tool to drive home a point, but are no substitute for what they enhance. This structural feature of the idea or fact and the metaphor is crucial in the process of making the point. When we fail to recognize this structural feature and employ it otherwise, then certain shifts may take place without our knowledge. This seems to have happened in the case of the parallel drawn between fascism and Hindutva.
Fascism has often been employed as a metaphor without taking the structural relation between a metaphor and a fact into cognizance. As a result, instead of enhancing the contents of Hindutva, the metaphor seeks to substitute it. It is not always clear to most what Hindutva really is, but they nevertheless proceed to use terms like fascism in the hope that such a deployment will enhance our understanding of Hindutva. This diverts the attention of the author, who uses the metaphor of ‘fascism’ to explain Hindutva, as well as that of the reader; both seem to concentrate more on ‘fascism’ than on Hindutva. Several problems arise as a result: it leaves the reader intellectually less informed about Hindutva; it involves a cognitive voyeurism in understanding Hindutva by looking at the contents of fascism. This is cognitive complacency, where one does not recognize the overlapping domain, the rough edges between these two realms, and thus limits the explorations into the domain of Hindutva. Further, while some might know the dangers of fascism, there may be others who may be ignorant of it. This poses a double burden where the reader has to first understand fascism and, then through it, Hindutva. There is, therefore, a need to avoid the easy flow from Hindutva to fascism while staying for a moment to gaze at the contents of Hindutva. That is, there is need to move from duplications and tautologies to the realm of independent identities.
Against this background, Jyotirmaya Sharma’s book, perhaps for the first time, presents a detailed descriptive and historical account of both the idea of Hindutva and its historical developments. It fills an enormous gap thus facilitating a better understanding of the term Hindutva. In his introduction, Sharma provides a detailed but crisp background of the trajectory of Hindutva. Some of the important stations in this journey are Dayananda Saraswati followed by Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda and finally V.D. Savarkar. Chapter 2 which discusses Dayananda Saraswati, lucidly sets out the new imperative which preoccupies contemporary Indian thinkers, namely, the need to react to or undo or even combat the ‘West’s perception of India and Hinduism.’ ‘Satyarthaprakash’, points out Sharma, ‘is a reaction to what others say about Hinduism and India’ (p. 18). What others said about India is that it is ‘stagnant’ and ‘benighted’. This chapter also discusses Dayananda’s acknowledgement of the positive aspects of the West, his rejection of other Indian systems like Jainism, Buddhism, and texts like Raghuvamsha, Yogavashista, Bhagvat and Tulsi Ramayan. He signals the importance of Dayananda, pointing out how ‘nineteenth and twentieth century restatement of Hinduism looked upto Dayananda as someone who had reinstated India’s Golden Age and had dignified its origins.’ This accordingly, contributed to an ‘extreme vision of a unified, monochromatic and aggressive Hinduism’ which provides an ‘inspiration to votaries of Hindutva today’ (p. 45). Like Dayananda, points out Sharma in his next chapter, for Aurobindo too ‘genuine patriotism and an authentic national destiny was possible… only through the revival of the Vedic institution of the fourfold order, catruvarna, a symbolic and typical institution often misrepresented as the four castes’ (p. 49). Even while conceding some ‘disclaimers’ in Aurobindo, Sharma however, elicits a consistent argument in him which is:
Indians were weak and unmanly and therefore required the kshatriya impulse; they had grown feeble and had to appropriate the Shakti of Science; to wield the Shakti of Science they had to re-Aryanize themselves; re-Aryanizing, among other things, meant the rediscovery of Occidental impulses already present in the Indian blood (p. 59).
This coupled with his characterization of superiority and tolerance of Hinduism, concludes Sharma, made Aurobindo’s utterances on Hinduism and Hindu by 1939, ‘echo the notions of Hindutva that Savarkar was advocating’ (p. 69). The chapter on Swami Vivekananda shows how Vivekananda considered Islam as narrow-minded in contrast to Hinduism as tolerant, and his attempts to whitewash the intolerant aspects of Hinduism. Having set the genealogy and discussed various important stages in this trajectory of Hindutva, the last chapter entitled, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, presents a detailed description of what eventually culminated as the ideology of Hindutva.
Undoubtedly, the reader is shown around substantially, leaving him or her with rich and ‘thick’ details delightfully organized and trendily narrated. The narrative is so absorbing that one does not until the end realize that the lineage it traces – of the idea of Hindu nationalism from Dayananda Saraswati to V.D. Savarkar via Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda – leaves one almost claustrophobic. This is something like the feeling of suffocation when one come out of a cinema hall after watching a good film. Put in academic terminology, like the knowledge/power nexus in Foucauldian sense, the books leaves us with no alternatives available within these thinkers. Notwithstanding the contextualisation of Vivekananda by Tapan Raychaudhuri in order to bail him out of ‘Hindu chauvinism’, Sharma’s book knocks down any such defence. Of course, there is a passing reference to another trajectory, which does not partake in the six characteristics of Hindutva that he has discussed. This is referred to in the last two pages of the introduction where he indicates an alternative line available in Tagore, Gandhi and Lohia. Similarly, there is a reference to K.J. Shah who asked ‘a set of extremely significant questions’ (p. 12). Interestingly, these exceptions figure at the end of the introduction and in a way remain vulnerable to secession from the main thrust of the text.
True, after compartmentalizing Swami Vivekananda within the fold of Hindutva, Sharma does acknowledge on page 113 the positive and laudatory statements that the monk made about Islam. This reference too can easily be detached from, as it does not in any significant manner enter into the formation of conclusions made in, the text. Barring these stray references, the book more or less forecloses any space to articulate non-Hindutva ideals in the writings of Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda.
At a psychological plane this sense of claustrophobia, coming after long spell of fudging, does some good. It leaves us to stay with this idea face to face, does not allow us to fudge or to escape; it closes the options of escaping which is inherent in the facility called alternative. That is, like Foucaldian power/knowledge, it forces us to confront rather than escape. In this respect it does a lot of good to those who are mere admirers of these thinkers. In fact, I have in my several later readings, asked for a different reading package, which is something like facility to break-journey at each chapter to peep at the structural contours of this work.
Now I will come to my next intellectual tradition, namely, Classical Indian philosophy, particularly, two important ideas, namely, the importance of the hearer and the notion of debate. Sharma’s book, like Partha Chatterjee’s Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? earlier, breaks open the isolationist works on Indian thinkers where the discussion of each thinker is, as it were, separated by chapters, each in isolation from the other. In this format each chapter is like a gas cylinder, unconnected with the other. These two writers on the other hand have brought into discussion a historical-cumulative-causal approach to understand the developments in modern Indian politics. This method, it must be noted, is Hegelian in origin; it is unidirectional and linear. It is good at showing the contribution of the preceding to the present, in our case how Dayananda Saraswati, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo contributed to V.D. Savarkar. I am ready to concede that this method may perhaps be best suited while explaining those social processes, like in the West, which followed the sequential order where the previous is done away with by the present. (For more on the difference between sequential and simultaneous temporalities, see Raghuramaraju 1995.) However, an important limitation of this approach is that it is bereft of contestation, and here I am not referring to mere antithesis in Hegelian dialectics. It takes into consideration contributions and accumulations, but cannot touch upon the idea of contestation.
This brings us to our present context. While Sharma’s book shows the historical trajectory of the development of Hindutva, it fails to recognize those who have contested Swami Vivekananda. In other words, it fails to recognize those spaces of debate these thinkers can have. In a debate the thinker does not get contributed but in a sense gets sized. So there is a need to present not a bolstered thinker but present him or her with their critiques, so that their danger can be contained. This is a path that I have tried to tread in my work (forthcoming) where I discussed how Vivekananda is contested by Gandhi; Savarkar by Gandhi; Sri Aurobindo by Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya. Through this idea of debate, which is central to classical Indian philosophy, we can get a better and contested picture of these contemporary thinkers.
Here let me show how important debates are in the Classical Indian philosophy. Referring to the debates in classical India ‘prevalent probably as early as the time of Buddha and the Mahavira (Jina),’ B.K. Matilal says:
Logic developed in ancient India from the tradition of vâdavidyâ, a discipline dealing with the categories of debate over various religious, philosophical, moral, and doctrinal issues. There were several vâda manuals available around the beginning of the Christian era. They were meant for students who wanted to learn how to conduct debates successfully, what tricks to learn, how to find loopholes in the opponent’s position, and what pitfalls to be wary of… Of these manuals, the one found in the Nyâyasûtras of Aksapâda Gautama (circa 150 AD) is comparatively more systematic than others…
Debates, in Aksapâda’s view, can be of three types: (i) an honest debate (called vâda) where both sides, proponent and opponent, are seeking the truth, that is, wanting to establish the right view; (ii) a tricky-debate (called jalpa) where the goal is to win by fair means or foul; and (iii) a destructive debate (called vitandâ) where the goal is to defeat or demolish the opponent, no matter how… The first kind signals the employment of logical arguments, and use of rational means and proper evidence to establish a thesis. It is said that the participants in this kind of debate were the teacher and the student, or the students themselves, belonging to the same school.
The second was, in fact, a winner takes-all situation… Tricks, false moves, and unfair means were allowed according to the rules of the game…
The third type was a variety of the second type, where the winner was not supposed to establish his own position … but only to defeat the opponent using logical arguments, or as the case was, tricks or clever devices (1999: 2-3).
So it is necessary to present these thinkers not only in the scale of historical-cumulative-causal but equally in active debate with their adversaries so that we get to know their ‘sized impact’ rather than their ‘bolstered account’.
Another important problem with this approach is the impact it leaves on the hearer. Let me explicate this by recalling another important aspect, namely that Classical Indian philosophy is hearer centred. Referring to the importance of the hearer in the philosophical discourse in the ‘classical systematic philosophy in India,’ Kalidas Bhattacharya writes,
‘…it is almost always – the only exception being Buddhism – understood from the point of view of hearer’ (1985: 178). Further, referring to an important logical system in India, he says, ‘Nyaya is consistent in another procedure too. Language it understands throughout as heard, not as spoken, the speaker being understood as only an erstwhile hearer learning language and it’s meaning from other speakers and now only using them’ (1985: 183).
Hearer centredness, which is so central to the classical Indian philosophy, is resurrected here to account for the ingenuous attempt of contemporary Indian philosophers. Now, where does the trajectory presented by Sharma leave the reader? Political accuracy apart, such an effort displays the tendency to think in terms of historico-causal lines, eclipsing the possibility of jerks of contestation. At a political plane it facilitates the appropriation of these personalities by the ideologues of Hindutva, whose opponents, on the other hand, consequently feel weakened and even threatened.
Last, let me point out that the book, while constructing the maze of Hindutva as available in these thinkers, does not mention a pervading view endorsed by all of them, namely, their fascination for modern science and technology. In fact, more than Hindutva it is this underlying consensus on modern science that facilitates a better understanding of the convergence of all these thinkers. This would also bring into force Savarkar’s fascination for modernity and reveal the modificatory aspect of Hindutva distinguishing it from pluralistic Hinduism. This might also foreground Gandhi’s critique of modern science and technology and following from this, his critique of those who were fascinated by it. These are some issues that can be raised in the context of this book which is rich in details and provides a fascinating account of the idea of Hindutva. I strongly recommend it to all those who want to understand contemporary India as also those who want to know the vulnerability of tradition and also perhaps modernity in its relation to tradition in the societies outside the West.
A. Raghuramaraju
References:
Bhattacharya, Kalidas. 1985. ‘Some Problems Concerning Meaning,’ in Analytical Philosophy in Comparative Perspective, eds. B.K. Matilal and J.L. Shaw, D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Chatterjee, Partha. 1986. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Matilal, B.K. 1999. The Character of Logic in India, eds. Jonardon Ganeri and Heeraman Tiwari, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Nandy, Ashis. 1991. ‘Hinduism and Hindutva: The Inevitability of a Confrontation,’ Times of India, (New Delhi), 18 February 1991.
Raghuramaraju, A. 1995. ‘A Note on Critique and Alternative in Alisdair MacIntyre,’ Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Vol. XII, No. 2: 128-136.
Raghuramaraju, A. (forthcoming) Debates in Indian Philosophy: Classical, Colonial and Contemporary, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
Raychaudhuri, Tapan. 1999. ‘Swami Vivekananda’s Construction of Hinduism,’ in Swami Vivekananda and the Modernisation of Hinduism, ed. William Radice, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 264-280.
Sarkar, Sumit. 1993. ‘The Fascism of the Sangh Parivar,’ Econom–ic and Political Weekly, 30 January 1993, pp. 163‑67.
Savarkar, V.D. 1964. ‘Essentials of Hindutva,’ in Samagra Savar–kar Wangmaya, Poona: Maharashtra Prantic Hindusabha.
Savarkar, V.D. 1984. ‘Some of the Basic Principles and Tenets of the Hindu Movement,’ in Hindu Rashtra Darshan, 2nd edn, Bombay: Savarkar Prakashan.
Savarkar, V.D. 1989. Hindutva, Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan.
