Books
DEMOCRACY UNDER THREAT
edited by Surendra Munshi. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2017.THE book under review is a collection of twenty thoughtful essays written by policy makers, diplomats, political leaders, journalists, counsellors and thinkers that captures a panoramic view of how democracy is under threat in different parts of the world in contemporary times. It is an outcome of the proceedings of an international conference organized by Fortune 2000 at Prague on ‘The courage to take responsibility’ in October 2016. Certain dramatic developments such as Brexit (2016) and, more appropriately, the advent of a chauvinistic leader such as Donald Trump as the president of the USA (2017), seem to have triggered this exercise because so far the UK and the USA were being treated as citadels of liberal democracy. In a broad breadth and sweep it covers a few significant themes pertaining to the crisis of democratic leadership, the fragile and emerging state of democratic institutions, a new era of authoritarianism, populism, Caudillism, and dynastic rule. There are also introspective essays trying to examine whether the West has failed. In the last two essays there is a critical appraisal of thinkers like Mahatma Gandhi and Vàclav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, that locates them in the current phase of post-truth politics. The authors have pitched these essays in the intersecting areas of domestic politics of a given country, comparative politics and international relations. A well thought out and ably presented introduction sets the tone of this exercise. Let me begin with a brief summary of the ideas that feature in this oeuvre.
While making a fervent plea for democratic renewal, Carl Gershman has raised fears about intransigent powers such as Russia and China. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, invaded eastern Ukraine and became a threat to its Baltic and Nordic neighbours. Besides, Putin’s Russia is trying to extend its influence in Iran and Syria after the withdrawal of USA from that region. Apart from the military hysteria of Russia, China has installed anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems in all seven of the Spratly islands in the South China Sea. In view of the ascending power of China in South East Asia, President Rodrigo Duterte of Philippines, infamous for treating the citizens of Philippines brutally, has ideologically aligned himself with China. Similarly Thailand, an emerging democracy, has now come under a military dictatorship. Greshman also alludes to the overall weakening of democratic values and institutions that constitute an internal threat to democracy.
Iveta Ravicovà provides a number of interesting insights on democracy in post-communist states. The author is appreciative of the Velvet Revolution in ‘ex’ Czechoslovakia, but is aware of the fact that to achieve democracy in post-communist states in any worthwhile sense would involve three major trans-formations as Ralf Dahrendorf has argued. During the first stage, lawyers in the initial six months prepare the constitution of the non-totalitarian state. In the second, economists and politicians can help create conditions for political and economic freedom for another six months. However, the last and the longest stage, spread over sixty years, involves the building of values and suitable institutions in a democratic set up. While commenting on the growing chasm between citizens and people, Ravicovà refers to three problems including the unwillingness of citizens to accept tough measures, growing statism and domination of media in politics that cumulatively affects the functioning of contemporary democracies. Shlomo Avineri demonstrates how solidarity and social justice pose a challenge to liberal democracy. Avineri’s discussion on the immigration crisis in the aftermath of the rise of right wing xenophobic populism in the West is particularly insightful. In certain instances, the incapacity of Muslim refugees/immigrants to adapt to the attitudes of the host country, particularly as far as women or homosexuals are concerned, has further aggravated xenophobic attitudes.
The article by Tarek Osman on the future of democracy in the Arab world is particularly striking. Locating the trajectories of democratic governance in a historical perspective, Osman argues that with the emergence of Arab nationalism under Nasser’s leadership, the Arab world increasingly began to project itself as a target of the West. In the process, the ‘miserable record of the Arab countries in respecting political, civil, and human rights became marginal features in the grand story of standing up to imperialist West.’ Moreover, in the Arab uprising of 2011, asserts Osman, young men and women who were well educated, politically sensitized and with liberal leanings were building a movement with immense potential. Paradoxically, even as wide segments of the Arab societies were eager to get rid of aging rulers, they wanted to retain the same flawed state. While discussing the acute polarization between secularists and Islamists, Osman reminds that Islam was the basis of political legitimacy, legislation, social organization and state identity for more than 1400 years in the Arab world. Hence, military victories in Syria or a political settlement in Libya would hardly end the acute polarization among secularists and Islamists. Certain basic problems, including political instability in the Arab world or roughly one hundred million young people without any jobs or skills clearly pose challenges to fragile institutions. While building institutions, argues Arun Maira, diversity and even plurality of histories among people in the world as well as within the country can stimulate creativity and innovativeness.
Christopher Walker effectively demonstrates how in the age of information technology an authoritarian tool kit is developed by powerful countries such as Russia and China. To explicate the modus operandi of new authoritarianism, the author refers to the ‘involvement’ of Russia and China in the US presidential elections of 2016 as well as to the Chinese state funded 1000 Confucius institutes embedded in universities all over the world. Besides, authoritarian ‘soft power’ of Russia and China has long been undermining vulnerable democracies in Central Europe and Latin America. Adam Muchnik goes further in analysing Putinism and the bitter taste of Velvet dictatorships like Russia and Hungary. Although Russia has risen from the ashes, it continues to be plagued by rigidity in thought, poverty of political discourse, demagogy, corruption, gagging of media, centralization of power and the other standard evils of dictatorship. Muchnik perceives similarities between Fascism and Putinism. What is more, Hungarian sociologist Balint Magyar, while describing a Putin like model in Budapest, had categorized the Victor Orban regime as rule of the mafia and had identified a ‘mafia state’. Populism in power undermines the rule of law and can also lead to xenophobia, as exemplified by slogans like ‘Russia for Russians’, ‘Poland for Poles’ and ‘Hungary for Hungarians’. Suat Kinkhoglu discusses aggrieved nativism with reference to the erstwhile imperialist countries such as Russia and Turkey to underscore how they are undermining the politics of pluralism, freedom of expression and minority rights. Russia has replaced liberal freedoms earned under Yeltsin by consolidating state power under Putin. Similarly, the narrative on ‘New Turkey’ that came in vogue after 2013 is defining Turkey in Islamic and Ottoman terms by virtually dismantling Ataturk’s secular Republican model.
In his essay on new authoritarianism in East Asia, Lu-Hsiu Lien views the politics of East Asia from the point of Taiwanese security as well as Sino-USA rivalry. He touches on extra-judicial killings under Duterte in Philippines, the political turmoil in the Korean peninsula as a result of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions as well as rising China and growing tensions in world politics that are eroding democratic freedoms and peace. In the same vein, Juan Pablo Cardenal highlights deteriorating human rights conditions in China under Xi Jinping by shedding light on how the Communist Party of China (CPC) legitimizes its abuse of power. Unsurprisingly, Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiabo, a dissident, was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment for inciting to subvert state power and the socialist system in China while Ilham Tohti, an ethnic Uighur academic, is serving a life sentence for ‘separatism’ and civil activists on the Tibetan plateau are being conveniently suppressed.
In the next section Oscar Arias offeres a general introduction on the structural flaws of populism, followed by Axel Kaiser’s essay on illiberalism to populism in the context of Latin America which is conceptually refreshing. Kaiser explores the genesis of Peronism in Argentina and shows how the popularity of fascism in the pre-War period inspired Peron to organize Argentina into a corporatist state. Moreover, it unmasks the import substitution industrialization advocated by the Economic Commission of Latin America (ECLA) to explain dependency theory and exposes how politicians and demagogues used it to cover up their failures by blaming external factors. Finally, it analyses the impact of Marxist perspectives on Latin America and their institutionalization. Actually the countries of Latin America have failed to institutionalize a worthwhile democratic system. Incidentally, the four countries that have drawn up more than 20 constitutions in their history – Dominican Republic (32), Venezuela (26), Haiti (24) and Ecuador (20) – are all from Latin America. Reliance on Caudillo or redeemer is common in the region. Caudillos have often been charismatic military leaders who mobilized their support through linkages of patronage and personal support. They also sprang up as messiahs or heroes to liberate society from moral and social miseries. Moreover, left wing populist leaders projected themselves as liberators of oppressed masses. For instance, revolutionary leaders such as Ernesto Che Guevara and rulers such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua were all Caudillos.
There are also essays by Neelima Deo and Arjun Chawla as well as Paul Flather that discuss the persistence of dynastic rulers and their legacy. The former dwells upon dynastic rule in India from the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty to other smaller dynasties in different states while the latter broadens the scope of the theme by covering certain other parts of the world such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar.
Discussing whether the West has failed, Andrej Kiska warns about the rise of nationalism, extremism and terrorism, including the advent of the Daesh that challenge democratic values. Alexandr Vondra pointed out that liberal democracy had gained acceptability. Indeed, if the yardstick of free elections is taken into account to measure acceptance of democracy, from 1989 to 2004 the number of countries that held free elections jumped from 69 to 119. Simultaneously, over the years, some important countries such as Russia, Venezuela, Turkey, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Nigeria and Hungary showed sharp deterioration in quality of democratic governance. While defining the West, the author alludes to Paul Valery’s valiant attempt to go into the roots of Europe in the three ancient hills – Athens, Rome and Jerusalem. Greeks (Athens) invented critical knowledge and polis, Romans worked out the first definition of private property and legal system, and Jerusalem endowed European civilization with an eschatological and ethical dimension. While analysing the enduring legacy of western dominance, Thomas Pogge underscores the role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in toppling the anti-West political regimes in countries such as Iran (1954), Guatemala 1956), Brazil (1964), Ghana (1966) Zaire (1966), Chile (1973), Argentina (1976), Nicaragua (1984) Haiti (2004) and Honduras (2009). He also critiques the West’s role in creating networks of tax havens and lending rules drawn by affluent countries that are used by international banks to support illegitimate regimes.
The last two essays on Havel and Gandhi are thought provoking and prompt the reader to reflect on certain basic ethical principles that can guide politics. They locate discernible similarities between Havel and Gandhi in so far as their penchant for freedom, truth and the essential relationship between ethics and politics is concerned. Ramin Jahanbegloo asserts that Gandhi was not attracted to a particular ideology or theology and identified politics with ethics to ensure a convergence of ethics and spirituality. Gandhi emphasized the worth of values like responsibility, tolerance and civility while nurturing conscience, although conscience does not mean the same for all. Havel was equally concerned about truth, conscience, responsibility and civility while ‘living in truth’ in post-totalitarian states. Like classic totalitarian states run by Hitler and Stalin, the post-totalitarian states have their own modes of violence. Such states blur sharp distinctions between the ‘tyrants’ and ‘victims’. While defending one’s dignity and responsibility, argues Jahanbegloo, ‘an embryonic act of dissent is not to become a player in the game of post-totalitarian state’ can also be an important step.
In the process of situating his essay between truth and post-truth, Surendra Munshi holds that post-truth is a condition where truth loses all its relevance or importance. He cites two quite grotesque examples of ‘disputable facts’ to underscore the point. For instance, while campaigning for Brexit, it was claimed that Britain spends 350 million pounds per week by being in the European Union or even worse, Trump mentioned that Barak Obama was a founder of the Islamic State and Hillary Clinton was its co-founder! Such unethical assertions in a post-truth world actually drive home the relevance of Gandhi. For Gandhi, truth was God and the only means to realize it was through ahimsa. Anyone in search of truth must have abundant humility. Gandhi construed God as an invisible power that he wanted to realize by placing himself constantly in the service of humanity. Munshi holds that for both Gandhi and Havel, the hidden sphere of conscience is important. Gandhi lived in colonial times while Havel knew the communist world. However, Havel saw a great similarity between colonialism and communism and Munshi highlights that he had no qualms about characterizing the former Soviet Union among the last colonial empires.
In view of their content, these essays cannot be critiqued in any conventional academic sense as they have more often stemmed out of reflection, opinions and even the lived praxiological experience of the authors. At the same time, it appears rather obvious that parameters of liberal democracies as they evolved in the West have set the standards of this exercise. Indeed, the experience of western democracies cannot be replicated elsewhere, especially in the developing countries. Hence, several Latin American countries and even Russia and China have and will continue to deviate from the standards set by the West. Nonetheless, no author in this collection has countered the undeserved hegemony of western ideas on democracy. Ideas stemming from the West were indeed dominant at a certain point but they never became universal. Strangely, after the end of the Cold War, Fukuyama and his initial ‘end of history’ thesis had overemphasized the relevance of western liberal democracies. Similarly, the world is no longer unipolar and world politics is punctuated by the anarchic rhythm of globalization that has witnessed the re-emergence of Russia as a dominant power and China as a rival power of the USA. Trends unleashed by globalization, such as a better connected world, growing social inequalities, vibrant social media have had their impact on the functioning of democracies.
Several pertinent questions beg answers after reading this collection. For instance, does dynastic rule in India and other parts of the world demonstrate the feudal mindset of the people? Will regimented societies of Russia and China or even post-communist societies change drastically to become democratic in a western sense? Do diversities in multicultural and heterogeneous societies strengthen democratic institutional arrangements? At the end, it may be worth recollecting that the continent of Africa too witnessed a wave of democracy after the 1990s. Yet this collection has no article on any African country. However, these minor limitations in no way reduce the significance of this eminently readable volume, which arguably is an indispensable reading for scholars/ students in political science, international relations studies, sociology and contemporary history.
Rajen Harshé
Former Vice Chancellor, Central University of Allahabad
CASTE AND NATURE: Dalits and Indian Environmental Politics by Mukul Sharma. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2017.
DEBATES about the environmental crisis occupy centre stage today. A lot has been written about environmental movements, environmental disasters, and the politics around environmental issues. We know that the victims of environmental destruction are the poorest of the poor, tribal and womenfolk. What has, however, remained unsaid in the mainstream history of environmentalism is the subject of this book: Dalit history in environmental discourses, and how and why this already marginalized section was further made ‘invisible in environmental discourses’. Mukul Sharma’s book, Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian Environmental Politics, examines nature through the lens of caste, a rare scholarly contribution in Indian environmental narratives.
The book captures the relationship between Dalits and the environment. One might wonder if at all there is any connection between the two since nature and caste are rarely discussed together in academic forums on environmental movements or even in environmental activism. For decades, the voice of Dalits in these narratives were often left unexpressed, whether local, national or regional. The politics of caste in the domain of environment have been a ‘blind spot’ (pg. xix). Sharma explores environmentalism through the lens of various Dalit conceptions of caste based access to nature, through Dalit thought, writing, discussion, histories, folktales, memories and activism. His book powerfully argues that rather than looking for conventional insights in environmental narratives, we should rather focus on Dalit political and social traditions to locate invisible and unheard strands of environmentalism.
The book has five chapters that focus on the denial of Dalit experience in the literature on environmentalism, Dalit environmental visions, Ambedkar’s views on the environment, Dalits and water rights and finally, a chapter dedicated to Dashrath Manjhi, the Dalit Mountain Man and the new commons. Sharma’s big claim is that though caste and nature are intricately interwoven in India, the connection between the two has never been academically or otherwise examined. Issues of land, water, forests are as much linked to caste anxieties as to matters of social and environmental justice. This well researched book provides a comprehensive and compelling argument to demonstrate not only the deep connection between caste and nature but that not acknowledging this link is unfair and a mistake that academics, policy makers and activists cannot afford to make. Sharma draws upon multiple examples to show that living with nature means constantly negotiating with caste hierarchies and domination that results in injustice against Dalits. While comparing Dalit meanings of environment to certain mainstream environmental thought, Sharma shows that Dalit experiences of environment are ridden with metaphors of pollution, impurity and dirt. Therefore, caste and untouchability are often reflected in Dalit narratives of nature. A strange mix of nature, caste, untouchability and work is reflected in the ecological experience of Dalits in their everyday work as agricultural labourers, wage workers, pot makers, planters and farmers – all activities relating directly to land, forests, water and the immediate environment.
Sharma begins by introducing concepts that take us to the core of the caste and environmental debates. The interrelationship between environment and caste, what Sharma calls ‘eco-casteism’, is a powerful concept to analyse the role of caste in resource use and distribution. One of Sharma’s critiques is that while scholars have highlighted that the access, use and distribution of resources was based on specific occupations and caste groups, they continue to see this form of resource distribution as a sustainable way of resource use, pointing to the Hindu caste system as a progenitor of the concept of sustainable development. Environmental discourses based on such narratives, largely seen in mainstream environmental writing, provide a defence of the caste system and dominant Hindu society. In a country that is so deeply hierarchical, how can one expect that access to natural resource could be uniform across various caste groups? In many ways, according to Sharma, the history of caste has shaped the history of environment in India.
The chapter has tried to map some of the terrain of this eco-casteism by analysing the case of Sulabh International’s social service organization. Sulabh’s extraordinary efforts in liberating scavengers from their caste based occupation, at an ideological level, are expressed in the framework of eco-casteism, foregrounding Hindu Brahminical practices. The ‘anti-caste’ position taken by the Sulabh is thus constantly coloured by its premise of Hindu ethos, Hindu idioms and Brahminical values. For example, one of the initiatives of Sulabh encourages the liberated manual scavenger women to go for a dip in the Ganga river at Varanasi and Sangam, presenting it as a kind of rebirth in the Hindu religion, and thereby a confirmation in the belief of sacred places, rituals, priests and divine experience. Therefore, for Sulabh, the ‘problem of scavengers’ reflects a deviation from the glorious Hindu past, and that scavengers’ liberation has to be reshaped and integrated within a Brahmanical Hindu religion. The constant references to dominant Hindu practices, symbols and festivals allow one to ‘control’ and impose a certain ‘order’, indicating a patronizing attitude of Brahminical practices over the Dalits. Sulabh’s approach is thus often in sync with modes of neo-Hinduism, as it imagines a pan-Hindu unity by bringing Dalits under its fold and by strengthening their Hindu identity.
In the absence of social and national belongings, Dalit narratives express an ecological belonging to earth, natural resources, and the non-human elements. All the varied narratives of Dalits have a resonance to modes of thinking about nature. The chapter on Dalit environmental visions delves into a new form of environmentalism that is conceptualized through the Dalit lens. Sharma analyses a range of literature, drawing from folklore, myths, rituals, dramas, songs, poems, stories composed by relatively lesser-known Dalit scholars – C.J. Kuttapan from Kerala, Basudev Sunani from Odisha and Dalpatbhai Shrimali from Gujarat. This chapter also draws attention to the work of leading anti-caste leaders – namely, Jyotirao Phule, Kancha Ilaiah and E.V. Ramasamy. What makes Dalit environmentalism unique is that Dalit lives and livelihoods are intricately tied to natural resources, combined with social and ecological inequality and injustice. This has not only physically destroyed them but also degraded their social and moral relationship to it. Though Dalits are largely invisible in conventional environmental history and narratives, as a community they are seen to be ‘rooted in the soil’ (pg. 61) as they have a contextual, social and organic connection with their environment and this deep investment in land is reflected through songs and poems. The folk-based chronicles carry notions of untouchability, domination and cruelty. Dalits narratives are on the one hand marked by a clear sign of oppression but on the other, also display multiple layers of labouring and liberating through lens of productivity, fertility and nourishment (pg. 73). The section on ‘Dalits and Animals’ (pg. 89) is particularly important as repeated reference to animals mean their degraded and inhuman state of living. Dalit lives are often compared with animals – treated more like animals than humans, such as in the recent incident in Una where Dalits were flogged.
The chapter on Ambedkar’s views and their relationship to Indian agrarian and environmental traditions is central to Dalit ecological visions. While there has been substantial writing on Gandhian environmental thought, Ambedkar’s views on the environment have been less explored academically, probably because they were seen as inspired by western and modern civilization. Ambedkar, according to Sharma, was a nature lover who was fascinated by landscapes and gardening. Every aspect of Ambedkar’s experience brought him in contact with the natural world and its politics. For Ambedkar, Sharma writes, ‘Nature was shaped by caste, for example, water had a definite caste, as it turns "polluted" as soon as a Dalit touched it’ (pg. 118). For Ambedkar, not only natural resources, but any rural or urban built environment is a site for both caste oppression and caste aspiration. This chapter provides a detailed case study of the Mahad Satyagraha and several other agitations by Ambedkar where access to natural resources was mediated through the ties of caste.
The last chapter is about Darshath Manjhi and his tireless efforts to single-handedly bring down a high hill for constructing a road to connect his village to a nearby city. The chapter looks at the ‘commons’ through Manjhi’s life, particularly through his labour. Common spaces such as land, pond, river, forests, parks, roads have been symbols of environmentalism but through Manjhi’s story, the author shows how social identities and environmental practices are shaped by a Dalit’s specific experience of common space. Manjhi, a Dalit, a bonded labourer and a villager, had layered relationships with nature that were determined through exclusion, fear, isolation, bondage, pain, thirst, hunger and caste prejudices. Manjhi’s levelling the hill produced a new commons that universalizes space as something that is accessible to and shared by all.
To conclude, this book has been eloquently written but some chapters are overly long and repetitive. Despite this shortcoming the book is exceptionally readable. Sharma is also careful in his treatment of Dalits and shows that there is no homogenous or single voice of Dalits and that their ecological traditions vary over time and space. This book is highly recommended for environmental conservation practitioners and social science scholars and will be particularly valuable for scholars in the field of Dalit studies, environmental studies, human rights and development studies. Mukul Sharma has done an important service to show both the human and non-human world in a new light by combining caste and nature.
Ambika Aiyadurai
Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar
EVERYDAY COMMUNALISM: Riots in Contemporary Uttar Pradesh by Sudha Pai and Sajjan Kumar. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2018.
CONTRARY to popular belief, the history of communal violence in our country does not go back very long in time. Organized communal violence, as against stray occurrences of sectarian strife, began in UP in the 1890s around the question of the cow. The 1920s witnessed a series of Hindu-Muslim riots after the collapse of the non-cooperation and Khilafat movements. In the late 1930s, the worsening political relationship between the Congress and Muslim League sparked off a large number of communal riots. It was, however, only in the 1940s that sectarian strife/communal violence acquired the features of a civil war, as the possibility of Partition began to appear imminent. Violence also acquired a serial character, violence in one area being followed by violence in another area.
The 1950s was a period of relative calm. However, in the 1960s fresh instances of communal violence began to trickle in. These were generally explained in terms of occupational rivalry between established trading and manufacturing communities being threatened by the newly emerging ones. By the 1980s, the trickle had turned into a torrent. Communal violence became much more widespread, organized and with regional connectivity. From the 1990s, communal violence can no longer be seen as an episodic phenomenon but a sustained and continuous one. Is there an explanation for this communal violence which has transcended the boundaries of class, region and time? The book under review attempts to do just that. Through an empirical examination of the communal scenario in the two sub-regions of UP, eastern and western, the book offers a framework that might help explain the violence not simply in contemporary UP but in other parts of India and at different times. This indeed is an ambitious exercise. It involves cutting across contexts and identifying some common threads which retain their applicability independent of the specific context. The book identifies two such threads – the ideology of communalism and strategy formulation by the top leadership of BJP.
The book, to its credit, has eliminated certain possibilities from its orbit of explanation-making – communal violence is not simply any other social violence; it has its own specificity. It cannot simply be reduced to a class dimension. It is also not an external manifestation of innate prejudices and hatreds. In fact, many of these prejudices and hatreds are a creation of the violence itself. The book advances a range of frameworks to study communal violence – essentialism (treating religious identities as preexisting in an a priori manner,), instrumentalism (manipulation of existing cleavages by the elite for the purposes of grabbing political power), institutionalism (the impetus provided to the growth of religious cleavages by the existing social arrangements and institutions) and constructivism. Its preference is for constructivism, arguing that communal identities are constructed rather than given. Constructed partly under colonialism and partly during the process of modernization after the end of colonialism, the creation of these identities also has something to do with the arrival of democracy in an essentially pre-modern set-up which resulted in creating a transitional society devoid of any clear social foundations.
It is, however, clear from the treatment of these categories in the book that these frameworks are posited as complementary rather than as alternatives. The book uses all of them as significant inputs into its larger package of explanations for communal violence. For instance, the text is pervaded by an instrumentalist approach when the book discusses the role of political leadership.
The book has both a factual-empirical and a theoretical-explanatory component. The empirical part is extremely rich and adds to our existing understanding. The comparison between the profile of communal violence in the eastern and western parts of UP is particularly illuminating. The explanatory part is more general. It proceeds along the following lines: The communal scenario has undergone a shift since the initial decades of the 21st century. Instead of grand violent episodes organized around politics, communal violence has now become routinized and diffused into everyday social lives. The title of the book ‘Everyday Communalism’ refers to this phenomenon. It operates like low intensity warfare in which the forces are kept in abeyance but ready to strike any time. The everyday communalism in UP is continually energized through events like ghar wapsi, love jihad, beef politics, cow protection, conversion, and other such activities. All these activities need to be seen as connected to each other and integral to the strategy of organizing everyday communalism. The strategy itself operates at three levels: at the core is the centralized strategy formulation by the pan-Indian leadership. This is then transmitted to the local leadership which is entrusted with the task of operationalizing it through a series of events and activities. It is at this level that young people who act as foot soldiers of everyday communalism are mobilized. The third level also involves the use of social media such as Twitter which carries on a sustained propaganda. Through this multi-pronged approach, the communal pot is thus kept simmering.
The book advances a set of variables or ingredients that have played a key role in creating this situation. Compulsions of electoral politics, long-term cultural goals, cultural anxieties as a result of uneven economic development, occupational rivalries played out along religious lines, prejudices inherited from the past, globalization, agrarian stress, changing rural-urban nexus, shift from class based mobilization to identity formation, the lateral consolidation of caste groups against Muslims, decline of secularism, Ram Janmabhoomi movement and other such factors have created a context in which the BJP leadership has been able to implement its strategy of instituting everyday communalism.
It is not clear from the book what exactly is the relationship of these ‘ingredients’ with each other. Quite often cause and consequence become mutually substitutable in the explanatory scheme. Has the BJP created the scenario described above or is it simply a beneficiary of an independent communalism that has grown through factors independent of it? What is the role of BJP in the growth of contemporary communalism is an extremely important question in the basic schema of the book. But the answers it provides are ambiguous and tentative. The book correctly sees communalism as a structure with multiple components. However, the relationship of the parts with one another and with the whole needs to be dealt with greater theoretical rigour. If communalism can be likened to a large motorized vehicle, we need to correctly identify the engine, fuel, accelerator, driver and the mechanic. Even as it is very clear who owns the vehicle and who all are being taken for a ride, literally and metaphorically, we need to know more about the entire mechanism.
The book offers an interesting discussion on the caste question. The introduction of the caste dimension has significantly altered the profile of communalism and created multiple possibilities. Will lateral consolidations along Dalit and OBC lines hamper the grand project of Hindu consolidation? Or will these assertions actually turn against Muslims, constituting the ‘striking arm’ of Hindu communalism? As of now the pendulum appears to be oscillating between both the possibilities.
A major strength of the book is that it looks upon communalism as constructed rather than inherent. It also does not reduce communalism to a class phenomenon even as it focuses on the class dimension by highlighting class rivalries. It also brings out the role of various economic and political factors while explaining communalism. The book quite correctly identifies religious passions as a product rather than an underlying cause. However, there is unevenness in the importance assigned to different ingredients in the overall explanation. Whereas strategy as an ingredient is discussed in great detail, the crucial role of ideology has been simply assumed instead of being brought into the orbit of discussion. As a result, leaders and organizations appear like external manipulators, interested in grabbing power and exploiting the situation. A calculated, well orchestrated strategy with clear aims and objectives emerges as the supreme explanatory factor. That the communal actors are also implicated in the same process that they seek to advance does not come across so clearly in the book.
The communal project does not simply ride on the shoulders of power hungry politicians. Communalism is also an ideology, a belief system. It reaches out as much to the heart as to the scheming mind. It is like a tidal wave that sweeps both the agents and the victims into its fold. The agents are not always external to the project; they operate very much under the influence of the ideology. Political communalism is reinforced not simply by powerful sentiments but also a certain ‘idealism’. An instrumentalist approach tends to neglect this important aspect of communalism.
Everyday Communalism: Riots in Contemporary Uttar Padesh is an extremely important book that offers us a good view of how everyday communalism is operating in Uttar Pradesh and the potential trajectories available to this phenomenon.
Salil Misra
Professor of History; Pro Vice Chancellor, Ambedkar University Delhi
HINDUTVA RISING: Secular Claims, Communal Realities by Achin Vanaik. Tulika Books, Delhi, 2017.
THE book under review is a ‘reworked and updated’ version of The Furies of Communalism (1997), and aims at providing a ‘contemporary reader for an audience at home, and especially abroad, so that they could arrive at a better understanding of the rising spectre of Hindu communalism.’
At the very outset, Vanaik makes it clear, ‘My own analytical spectacles remain those of a Marxist – which is not to deny the necessity of thinking through, across, beside and beyond the Marxist tradition as well, for Marxism is not, does not claim to be a theory of everything’ (p. ix).
Vanaik recognizes that, the ‘Ram Janmabhumi movement’ was ‘the greatest mass mobilization since the era of India’s independence’ (p. 9), and proceeds to analyse the dynamics of the spread of Hindutva ideology and politics. He updates his analysis right up to 2017, discussing in some detail ‘The New Modi Regime’ towards the end of his investigation. He joins issue with ‘traditionalists’ and ‘anti-secularists’ and argues forcefully for ‘Modernity’. He points out, ‘Modernity makes communalism possible, yet also carries the antidote for it. This is never a permanent cure, but it can be a stable and increasingly effective one’ (p. 249). He insists implicitly and explicitly (and quite rightly) that beyond the point of immediate response, the fight against communalism can only be effective as an integral part of the overall project of democratic restructuring of the social and economic system, and such a restructuring, needless to say, has to be rooted in the classical Marxist position of universal emancipation, which in turn flows from the enlightenment principals of rationality and individuality. Naturally, therefore, he seeks to situate his argument in the context of a ‘wide ranging overview of India’s economy, polity and society’. It is indeed reassuring to see his emphasis on the material basis and historical evolution of the Indian social and cultural institutions and practices, including caste.
He also joins issue with fellow Marxists on the question of classifying communalism as a variant of Fascism, and argues for unsuitability and inapplicability of the ‘Fascism paradigm’ to Hindu communalism. Be it with reference to modernity and religion or to the ‘Fascism paradigm’, Vanaik indeed almost deliberately turns his book into a kind of ‘reader’, providing a lot of information regarding scholarly debates on these matters. In fact, the ‘Fascism paradigm’ debate reads more like an in-house discussion amongst the Marxist theoreticians, and certainly enriches the reader.
But, can we say something similar about the real subject matter (i.e. ‘Hindutva’) of this ambitious volume? Does it really clarify our understanding of Hinduism, Hindu Nationalism and Hindutva – the topics the author sets out to deal with?
To answer these questions, let us start with Vanaik’s emphasis on the ‘secularization of Indian civil society’. He says, ‘…the secularization and democratization of society is the task – one demanding that religious systems learn their place in the new dispensation. They have no inherent dynamic leading them to endorse or practically reinforce modern principles of pluralism and democracy. The world religions are historically shaped entities bearing the marks of that shaping. But this does not mean they are incompatible with such modern principles.
‘…religions have to learn how to become compatible, and accept the costs and consequences of what that entails. That is what the ideology of secularism (in so far as it deals with the issue of secularization of civil society) would demand… for communalists to anti-secularists can distort this message into a purportedly anti-religious one. This distortion is greater when religions are directly exhorted to learn their place. It is less counterproductive when religious systems are indirectly pushed into adopting more accommodating postures because of the practical virtues and benefits that attend the progressive institutionalization of democracy and justice (in the wider sense) on the ground’ (p. 255).
Incidentally, was this not exactly what Nehru was trying to do? Consciously avoiding a ‘purportedly anti-religious’ message, and focusing on ‘institutionalization of democracy and justice’? His success or failure ought to be assessed not with the dogmatic or even academic facility of being away from the thick of real politics, but with a sensitivity to the complexities of Indian society and the memories of Partition caused by communal politics. And also by the fact that he was culturally rooted and confident enough to describe the dams and factories as the ‘temples of new India’ to fellow Indians. Coming from an author who, on the one hand, laments the collapse of Nehruvian consensus and on the other, blames Nehru for the ‘worst massacre of Muslims’ (more on this later), the above restatement of the Nehruvian approach to secularization of civil society to me is both heartening and amusing.
Be that as it may, the question is: can there be a civil society without language and its attendant cultural memories? And can there be any cultural memories without legends and specific idioms of expression? Hopefully, the project to secularize civil society will also have ‘talking to people’ as one of its key components. How does one go about it in Indian society where literacy is not a precondition of being rooted in literary tradition of the language, and where it is difficult to separate the literary from the religious? One has to just look around outside the ‘English educated’ circles to find fellow Indians who may be ‘illiterate’ but know their Kabir, Tukaram, Mira and Nanak better than many literate and educated. How does one take the project to them? To further concretize the query, let us recall the sixteenth century poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi, whose great epic has recently been in the news (for all the wrong reasons though).
Jayasi was a believing Muslim and a practising, in fact revered, Sufi supposedly possessing miraculous powers. Out of his Padmavat, ‘a little Jayasi Ramayan can be carved out’, as the eminent historian Vasudev Sharan Agrawal in his commentary on Padmavat puts it. So much so that even Alauddin in Jayasi’s Padmavat reflects on the vagaries of political power with explicit references to Lanka of Ravana. Now, will a reference to Jayasi constitute a reference to Muslim tradition or to a Hindu one or to ‘inadequate’ syncretism of Indian cultural experience or to Hindu communalism plain and simple, as after all the Ramayan is involved here? Vanaik’s approach does not help in solving the above puzzle. And without having an adequate sense of such issues of language, memory and cultural idiom, the project of ‘secularization of civil society’ cannot be anything but a statist fantasy.
Again, Nehru (and even Gandhi) had an infinitely richer sense of the dynamics of religion and the project of secularizing civil society. Nehru wrote in 1945, referring to required changes (towards modern values of secularism and democracy) in outlook, ‘It is probable that in this process many vital changes may be introduced in the old outlook, but they will not be superimposed from outside and will seem rather to grow naturally from the cultural background of people’ (Discovery of India, p. 577). And in 1960, having been prime minister of India for some years, talking with R.K. Karanjia, he underlined, ‘the need to find some answers to spiritual emptiness facing our technological civilization’ (The Mind of Mr. Nehru, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1960, p. 25). It was with this need in mind, along with the need of encouraging ‘vital changes in the old outlook’, that the Nehru government took important institutional initiatives in the area of literature and culture along with science and technology.
One expected the erudite author of the book under review to give Nehru his due at least on this count, as he himself says (and quite rightly), ‘It is not for Marxists to deny the existence of spiritual experience, but only to point out that its sources can be and are many and that a positive and healthy modernity enhances the sources and possibilities of the spiritual’ (fn. 6 on p. 25). But, here we find Nehru (in spite of some positive references to ‘Nehruvian consensus’) as someone responsible for the ‘greatest ever massacre of Muslims in independent India’ because he had ‘sent the army to overthrow the Nizam of Hyderabad’ (fn. 84 on p. 356). What was the context of the army being sent to Hyderabad? Was there a private communal army called ‘Razakars’ or not? Could one have really expected the government of a newly independent state to preside over its Balkanization?
Unfortunately, Vanaik also completely ignores the fact about how tough the Nehru government was with the Hindu troublemakers in West Bengal who wanted to ‘retaliate’ against the attacks on Hindus in the then East Pakistan. One has to imagine the pressure Nehru had to withstand within his party and government at this point. There was a clamour for ‘transfer of population’ – something which not only Savarkar but even Ambedkar had proposed as ‘the only lasting remedy for communal peace’. The argument was clear enough: ‘There is no reason why the Hindus and the Muslims should keep on trading in safeguards which have proved so unsafe?’ Temperatures were so high that it was not only the ‘hardliner’ Patel, but even the ‘pacifist’ Acharya Kripalani who had advocated a ‘tit for tat’ policy. Protesting against the Nehru-Liaquat Pact, the Hindutva icon S.P. Mukherjee resigned from Nehru’s cabinet. A book claiming to deal with the question of communalism in India in a serious way (Marxist or non-Marxist) is expected not to be polemically selective; it must also be academically fair about its facts.
Interestingly enough, the author of a book about Hindutva barely engages with its theoretical postulates. What to think of the fact that Lalchand and other early exponents of political Hindutva find no mention in the text and later ideologues like S.P. Mukherjee and Golwalkar have been disposed off in a couple of sentences and fail to feature in the index. Even Savarkar does not merit a detailed engagement, though it was he who way back in the forties had forcefully argued and campaigned for the long-term project of ‘Hinduization of all politics and Militarization of all Hindus’.
In May 2014, Narendra Modi began his triumphant address to the newly elected party MPs by expressing gratitude to ‘five generations of dedicated workers, whose sacrifice made this glorious victory possible.’ In spite of their differences with Savarkar on strategy, the RSS has been assiduously working precisely on Savarkar’s above-mentioned project, and has continued to see the political tendencies represented by Congress and the left as their main enemy. The slogan of ‘Congress Mukt Bharat’ is not merely the product of an arrogant individual’s mind, but a pithy summing up of the politics of the Hindutva project.
But, Vanaik has a radically different prognosis. According to him, ‘The underlying reality is that, even allowing for Congress’s ineptitude and culpability, the Sangh’s Hindutva project could never have advanced as it has if the social and political soil had not been long fertile for its flourishing. Those liberals who have repeatedly waxed eloquent on the virtues of the national movement, the secularity of the state and its remarkable Constitution have never been prepared to admit this reality. For millennia "Hinduism" was little more than a compendium label for multiple sects with various beliefs and rituals possessing no unifying thematic. The Gandhi-led national movement introduced the poison of religiously inspired appeals that were necessarily oriented towards mobilizing the majority Hindus. Both before and after Gandhi, there has been a steady process of what the eminent historian Romila Thapar has called "syndicated Hinduism". This has more or less entailed the systematic consolidation of an ever widening Hindu self-consciousness across castes’ (p. 363, emphasis added).
One doesn’t know really how to react to this bundle of smug simplifications. The only ‘religious’ movement Gandhi supported was a Muslim one for the preservation and continuation of the institution of Khilafat. This move may be described as wise or unwise, but one should not miss the fact that the ‘Gandhi-led national movement’ was faced with the challenge of evolving a modern national consciousness out of the traditionally given solidarity of religious communities. In a country of unparalleled religious and cultural diversities, it was not as easy a task as pontificating about various aspects with the benefit of hindsight.
Let me point out a couple of things about the other self-assured claims as well. Does the author realize that his understanding of Hinduism would be music to Hindutva ears? This is precisely what it holds about Hinduism – ‘It is a culture, a way of life, not a religion. It allows for multiple sects (including the Muhammadi and Christi) with various beliefs and rituals. It has no single dogma ("unifying thematic" in other words).’
But for ‘millennia’, i.e. historical time, things have been quite different from the self-assured perception of the author, as well as that of the Hindutva proponents. So far as ‘eminent historian’ Romila Thapar is concerned, her view of ‘syndicated Hinduism’ is quite nuanced and it is a great disservice to her argument to use it in such a careless way. Unfortunately for Vanaik and many others, there may or may not be a ‘Hinduism’ (‘with a unifying thematic’), but there are Hindus – millions and millions of them, and they have been there for millennia and outside the Indian subcontinent as well.
As a matter of fact, all religions are historical constructs, including the ones claiming God’s own will as their source and justification. The difference lies in the nature of the ‘unifying thematic’, and as David Lorenzen points out with massive evidence drawn both from Indian and non-Indian sources in his magisterial essay, ‘Who invented Hinduism?’ – ‘A Hindu religion theologically and devotionally grounded in texts such as Bhagwad-Gita, the Puranas, and philosophical commentaries on six darshanas gradually acquired a much sharper self-conscious identity through the rivalry between Muslims and Hindus in the period between 1200 and 1500 and was firmly established long before 1800’ (Who Invented Hinduism and Other Essays, Yoda Press, New Delhi, 2006, p. 2).
Kabir in the 15th century was quite aware of Hindus (with a sense of unifying thematic) and ‘Turks’ (i.e. Muslims) fighting over their Ram and Rahman without knowing the essence of either. And so was the Portuguese traveller Garcia de Orta when he informed his countrymen about people in ‘this country’ (Goa, India) asking ‘Are thou Mosalman or Indu’. So was the Marathi sant Eknath writing his Hindu-Turuk Samvad in the sixteenth century, and so was the Italian Padre Guiseppe Maria da Gargnano composing his ‘Jabav Sawal ek Kristan aur Ek Hindu ke Beech Iman ke Oopar’ (A Dialogue between a Christian and a Hindu about Religion) in 1751 in Bettiah, north Bihar. Incidentally for Vanaik’s edification, this text was written in the Devanagari script, not in Kaithi. (Readers of this review will see the logic of this last comment presently.)
The Congress’s culpability through its acts of commissions and omissions cannot be denied. The Congress government’s approach to the Shah Bano judgment and its eagerness to be the ‘first’ in banning The Satanic Verses were forerunners to its mishandling of the Babri Masjid issue. But then, an enquiry into the spread of Hindutva should also confront the question: ‘What did the Communist parties do?’ The Ram janmabhumi mobilization began in 1984; did the Communist parties ever bother to organize a counter-mobilization? Of course, this is an uncomfortable question, but nevertheless a crucially important one – academically as well as politically.
Finally, the present reviewer is unabashedly one of ‘those liberals’ who takes pride in the legacy of the national movement, and its remarkable achievement – the Indian Constitution. The remarkable thing about the Indian Constitution is that the chairman of the drafting committee was B.R. Ambedkar, a great scholar, a Dalit leader and a lifelong bitter critic of Gandhi and the Congress. The even more remarkable thing, however, is that the Constitution, rooted in the ideals of ‘liberty, fraternity, equality’ and upholding the idea of ‘justice – social, economic and political’ – was adopted by a Constituent Assembly which was not an elected one and with most of its members from a privileged background. Some credit to the sprit of the national movement is in order here.
But, Vanaik finds this Constitution suffering from a Hindu communal bias. One can go over in some detail here as well, but for want of space, let me confine myself to a most peculiar observation by him. According to him, ‘While India has a large number of official languages, only Hindi has been given the status of a National Official Language, specifically in the Devanagari script, a Brahmin-dominated script that was not as widely used at the moment of Independence as the Kaithi script, which was perceived by the upper castes as closer to Hindustani than to Sanskrit’ (p. 205, emphasis added).
Frankly I find it hard to believe that Vanaik has even looked at an actual copy of the Indian Constitution or at the publication scene in Hindi at the time of independence, or even before. Or if indeed he did and this is what he has as a result written, I can only say that it leaves me stumped at its sheer audacity. In constitutional and legal matters (and in serious academic discourse as well), words are and ought to be used with care, relying more on reason than on emotion.
Article 343 of the Indian Constitution mandates – ‘The official language of the Union will be Hindi in Devanagari script.’ The Constituent Assembly was acutely aware of the crucial difference between ‘National Official Language’ and the ‘Official Language of the Union’, as even a cursory perusal of the Constituent Assembly Debates will bring out. A majority of members, of course, did not consider India an ‘amalgamation of nationalities’ (like some leftists did and still do), but felt that just as one Indian nation can exist with many religions and cultures so too can be the case with many languages. Naturally, therefore, nowhere in the Constitution is Hindi described as the ‘national’ language – official or unofficial. In fact, it was Shyama Prasad Mukherjee who reminded ‘Hindi enthusiasts’ of the greater literary achievements of his own mother tongue.
Till date, the Ministry of Home Affairs has a ‘Raj-Bhasha Vibhag’ (official languages division) not a ‘Rashtra-Bhasha’ (national language) one. It is only the Hindi chauvinists or ill-informed people who describe Hindi as ‘the national language’ or Rashtra-Bhasha, and target (no prizes for guessing) Nehru for not giving the ‘national language Hindi’ its due.
About the Kaithi script being more in use at the time of independence, frankly, I am more than stumped. I have already mentioned the Hindi work, ‘The Dialogue between a Christian and a Hindu’, written in Devanagari in 1751 by an Italian padre. Such examples can be multiplied countless times. Vanaik has obviously not even seen the Hindi publications of the CPI of those days, which were surely not printed in Kaithi script. Premchand, the great writer, was perfectly at ease both in Hindi and Urdu, and he wrote and published his Hindi works in Devanagari and not in Kaithi. As a matter of fact, even the manuscripts of Kabir’s earliest collections are in Devanagari and the copyists were from Punjab and Rajasthan. Yes, it is true that many of the 17th and 18th century manuscripts of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas have been found in Kaithi, but this fact does not make the poet or the script any less or more ‘Brahmanical’.
Achin Vanaik is both a well regarded scholar and a committed anti-communal activist. In this work, however, he more resembles a physician displaying his familiarity with the latest developments in his discipline or his competence in use of the latest technologies, but as insufficiently interested in either the real case history of the patient on the table or in talking to him with an open mind.
Hindutva Rising is without doubt a good ‘reader’ about Marxists talking and debating with each other. But as far as engaging with ‘communal realities’ and their making and theoretical underpinnings is concerned, it is as disappointing as it is ambitious.
Purushottam Agrawal
Writer, academic, novelist and critic, Delhi
