India: Political Ideas and the Making of a Democratic Discourse 9781350220744, 9781780320939, 9781780320922

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Acknowledgements

This book has been in the making for a long time, and I have incurred many intellectual debts in this period. I started thinking of this subject in the late 1980s, as I sat in conferences that expressed dissatisfaction with the languages of Western modernity, particularly for understanding India. However, it was conversations with Sudipta Kaviraj that compelled me to think about the nature of political theory in India. In the 1990s I was not persuaded of either the need for or the viability of what my colleague Gopal Guru refers to as ‘desi’ political theory. It took me another decade to clarify my own position on the question of difference: to spell out my unease with other readings of difference and indigenity and to construct a framework from which one might present an Indian political theory without succumbing to cultural essentialism or notions of incommensurable cultures. Through this entire period, discussions with my colleagues at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the experience of teaching political thought as well as philosophy of social sciences, helped me to reflect more carefully on these questions. This work would not, however, have been possible without the gentle nudge from and guidance of friends. Among the many people

viii  india from whom I have learnt much, I would like particularly to mention and thank André Béteille, Bhikhu Parekh, Susanne Rudolph, Lloyd Rudolph, Sarah Joseph, Vasanthi Srinivasan, Gopal Guru, Madhavan Palat, Dipankar Gupta, Aswini Ray and Noel O’Sullivan. Discussions, and often disagreements, with them helped me to clarify my position. Some of them spared the time to read parts of this work; their valuable comments, along with the much-needed assurance that this was something worth pursuing, kept me focused. The lunch group at the Centre, the bagels and the coffee provided the all-too-essential moments of relaxation, without which perhaps this work may have taken even longer to complete. So, to all my colleagues, students and friends (especially Shekhar P. Singh, Trinanjan Radhakrishnan and Vipin Krishna) who were a part of this journey, a sincere thank you. I would also like to thank Ken Barlow, senior commissioning editor at Zed Books, for giving me the freedom to conceive this work in the manner I deemed best, even though this was part of Zed’s World Political Theories series and planned somewhat differently. To Kika Sroka-Miller and the editors at Zed Books, my deep gratitude for their meticulous reading of the text and suggestions. The book is much the better for them, and for any limitations that remain I alone am responsible.  I do not know if this work will meet the expectation of my friends and possible readers. But I hope it will give them reason to consider that difference lies in the manner in which values get articulated and actualized in a given context and not in some permanent marker of cultural identity or uniqueness. It might also, I hope, compel them to consider that history is not a fetter upon our being, burdening us with the past, but a condition in which past inheritances are always available – as a resource and not as a fixed direction in which we must, of necessity, move. Gurpreet Mahajan New Delhi, 2013

Glossary

Ahimsa Atishudras

Non-violence. Those who were the most marginalized and placed outside the fourfold classification of the Hindu caste order, and traditionally treated as ‘untouchables’: a practice that has been legally abolished. Brahmanism An ideology that affirms the hierarchy of the four varnas as understood within Hinduism, and endorses practices based on notions of purity and pollution commensurate with one’s caste membership. Brahmin A varna that stands at the apex of the caste order in Hindu traditional texts. Its members traditionally constituted the priestly class. Harijan Literally implying ‘child of God’. The term was used by Mahatma Gandhi to refer to the Atishudras. Jyanam Knowledge of the Truth. Karma Actions performed in this life or a previous one, accompanied by the belief that these determine who we are and the circumstances in which we are placed. Karmayogi A person who acts with complete detachment and no sense of ego but consistently out of a sense of duty and with spiritual dedication. Kshatriyas The second varna in the Hindu varna system. Usually refers to those castes that considered themselves as warriors and/ or rulers. Kunbi The caste of cultivators in western India.

x  india Lohar Mali Sadhana Shakti

Castes who work as blacksmiths. An agrarian caste in western India. Determined and focused pursuit of a goal. Divine or cosmic energy/power in a female form, which is a source of creation and the destroyer of evil; sometimes also identified as Mother Goddess. Shudra The last of the four varnas within the Hindu caste order. Placed at the bottom of the hierarchy, the different castes included in this category were expected to serve the members of the other varnas. Sonar Castes who work as goldsmiths. Swadeshi Literally meaning ‘belonging to one’s country or land’; also represented an ideology that asked individuals to endorse and adopt that which emerged within the nation or its soil, while simultaneoulsy relinquishing anything that was of foreign origin. Swadharma Moral norms and practices of one’s own varna or caste group which must guide the actions of its members. Swaraj Self-rule; self-governance; self-determination; freedom. Tapasya Determined and austerity-driven pursuit of a self-determined goal, involving challenges and several hardships. Tyaga Sacrifice. Vaishya The third varna in the Hindu caste order, comprising those engaged in agriculture or trade and business. Varnashram A fourfold division of society into specific varnas, around which different castes are notionally clustered. The term has at times been used to suggest that this fourfold classification was a mode of occupational differentiation and not, as is popularly maintained, a rigid structure of hierarchy.

one Indian political theory: beyond cultural essentialism

The need for an indigenous social science, and more particularly an Indian political theory, has been expressed in many forums since at least the mid-1970s. Scholars from different disciplines and theoretical perspectives have pleaded for this agenda and argued that India must be understood in its own terms. It must be studied and analysed through the conceptual categories that exist in its own traditions. Although these scholars disagree on several crucial questions, such as what is quintessentially Indian, or how that might be retrieved,1 they nevertheless share the desire to own the knowledge that is available in their tradition – knowledge that they believe has been marginalized by the dominance of the Western paradigm of science. To reject the hegemony of the latter, they distinguish between the indigenous and the alien, the Indian and the Western, and position one against the other. In their more constructive interventions, they historicize Western categories and question their assumed universality. Through this mode of ‘provincializing’ (to borrow Dipesh Chakrabarty’s words) the Western, they voice a sentiment that has been articulated in many other decolonized societies against the ‘imperialism of categories’ (Joseph 1991: 959).

  india The search for authenticity (that the privileging of the indigenous represents) and the rejection of Western concepts and categories are not unique to India; they have other parallels and articulate a much deeper discontent with the hegemony of the West. But this does not mean that the search for an Indian political theory has been a mere extension of the wider dissatisfaction with the hegemony of the West. The urge to reclaim one’s tradition has much deeper roots in India, going back to the period before independence. Before Husserl published Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man and Kuhn pointed to the paradigm shifts in science, and Said’s Orientalism unravelled the power exercised through the construction of the non-West by Europe, many social and political leaders in India had underlined the need to draw upon one’s own tradition. This sentiment was expressed not only by individuals who traced everything of value to the ancient traditions of India, but also by those who were somewhat critical of that tradition. Rabindranath Tagore, for instance, was extremely wary of the spirit of nationalism and the stratified structure of Indian society that was sanctioned by tradition and authority, yet he too emphasized the need to reclaim one’s inheritance. ‘We in India must make up our minds that we cannot borrow other people’s history, and that if we stifle our own, we are committing suicide. When you borrow things that do not belong to your life, they only serve to crush your life’ (Tagore 1917: 128; emphasis added). This belief that genuine progress is only possible when one does not simply ‘borrow’ ideas and concepts that have emerged in a different context has since been echoed by successive generations; the more recent plea for an indigenous social science is just one expression of it. The project of constructing an indigenous social science and political theory, which coalesced during the last decades of the twentieth century, was rooted in a specific conception of difference and cultural membership. It assumed that each culture (and civilization) was unique; it had its own system of values, way of thinking and means of evaluating what was good and desirable. People living in that culture (and not those located outside it) had ready access to

political theory   this distinct frame of signification; they made sense of their experience through it and understood each other by drawing upon that pool of shared meanings. From this perception of incommensurable difference, its followers concluded that one could understand a society, make sense of the actions and utterances of people, only with reference to that unique world-view, or what Dilthey called the ‘objective mind’.2 Without the latter, one was likely to misunderstand a given society and its people. In India, those who were engaged in the search for the indigenous also expressed a political vision. They voiced disenchantment with the Nehruvian model of development – its emphasis on the scientific temperament and the need to produce modern, rational citizens of a nation-state. In relation to political theory specifically, they maintained that one can understand a society and design its institutions only when one speaks and understands the language of that culture.3 The problem, as they saw it, was that political science in India was trapped in Western frameworks of thinking. Political scientists were familiar primarily with ‘Western’ ideas and political thinking; their analysis relied on ‘Western’ concepts such as secularism, citizenship, rights, the state, sovereignty, many of which had no equivalent in Indian languages and were not a part of the popular political imaginary. This ‘failure’ of political theory could be rectified, in their view, by abandoning the reliance on ‘alien’ categories and simultaneously turning towards one’s own tradition, and retrieving from it concepts through which people think and act. A few scholars went a step further. To displace the Western canon that structured the study of political ideas in India, they tried to construct an Indian tradition of political thought – something that would not just displace the existing orthodoxy but also offer a concrete alternative to the prevalent modes of political theorizing (see, for example, Mehta 1992). These interventions, in all their different forms, successfully pointed to a lacuna in the teaching and practice of political theory in India: namely, neglect of the ideas and debates that had occurred

  india in India. However, the framework through which the project of indigeneity attempted to construct an Indian political theory was deeply flawed, both in its methodological assumptions and in its understanding of social and cultural reality. Indeed, one might even say that the productive potential of doing Indian political theory can only be realized when one relinquishes the search for an authentic, indigenous knowledge that rests upon notions of cultural essentialism and incommensurable difference. The most serious limitation of the quest for an indigenous knowledge/ social science in India was, and continues to be, its conception of incommensurable cultures. It absolutized difference, and in the process misunderstood the nature of historical consciousness and cultural membership. To begin with, it assumed that each culture was a discrete, territorially bounded entity that was internally cohesive, univocal and almost hermetically sealed; that each had its own value frame, its own language (that is, a mode of categorizing and making sense of the world), which was passed on from one generation to another. This notion of culture ignored the plurality that exists in every society and culture. It essentialized culture; by trying to recover some core concepts and categories that give a culture its identity, it invariably privileged the dominant voice within. At times, it made that voice more cohesive and audible, and in doing so bypassed other ways of life and thinking that were present in that culture. There is no doubt that communication entails a shared language, and people living within the same culture understand each other because that common language is to some extent available to them. But this does not mean that cultures have fixed and unchanging frames of signification that exist in the same form over time; or that words are univocal, with one clear signified. Even in a society that is somewhat isolated from the rest of the world, experience and social/political conflicts lead individuals to reinterpret the prevailing frames of reference. In the modern world, where an encounter with others is unavoidable, the processes engendering change and

political theory   plurality are continuously at work. Frequent and close interactions expose individuals to other world-views and ways of living, and this prompts them to reconsider, refine and innovate that which has been handed down to them in their culture. As a result, living in a culture is never like ‘rule following’. But, even more importantly, it implies that the present cannot be understood merely in terms of the ideas and meanings that structured the past. Meanings change, new ideas come in, familiar concepts get reinterpreted; they acquire new meanings or just fade away. For this reason, it is necessary to set aside ways of thinking that are anchored in notions of cultural unity and essence. Frameworks of inquiry that rest on the belief that ‘India has remained unchanged and uniform throughout all historical times, and she has preserved her own consistent outlook in all her philosophical system’ (Heimann 1937: 47), or those that seek to recover the ‘golden rule’ which every culture arrived at in what Jaspers referred to as the ‘axial age’, have to be consciously abandoned. For analyses that posit a simple continuity between the past and the present are unhelpful in apprehending the present. Just as reading Kant’s categorical imperative or the ‘kingdom of ends’ as the realization of the principle that can be found in the Bible – ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ – invariably overlooks the idea of individual autonomy and reason that is so central to Kant’s philosophy and to the making of the modern West, similarly studying India through the prism of the past offers an incomplete and distorted picture of reality. For instance, if one reads the idiom of spirituality (which is frequently invoked in the twentieth century) by linking it to the idea of mukti or transcendence (ideas that existed in the ancient Hindu texts), one is likely to miss the engagement with the political, the here and now, that is central to these assertions. Looking for an essence, or for authentic Indian concepts, is therefore a misplaced project and cannot, and must not, be the ground for constructing an Indian political theory. In fact, an Indian political theory can be meaningful only when the concept of a culturally embedded self,

  india which informs the project of indigeneity, is abandoned in favour of the notion of a historically situated self. The primary difference between these two conceptions of the self is that the former assumes the existence of incommensurable cultures, while the latter foregrounds a fusion of horizons. If the culturally embedded self is seen as the inheritor of the unique language of a culture, thinking and acting through the meanings that are available in that culture, the notion of a historically situated self assumes that individuals are constituted through the productive interaction between two horizons: the prism of the culture in which they live (though this is itself a product of continuous interpretation and reconfiguration), and the horizon that marks their historical universe (the zeitgeist, as it were). The play of these two horizons shapes the historically situated self. To put this another way, the idea of a historically situated self suggests that individuals, as historical subjects, carry their cultural inheritances with them, but these only structure what Gadamer, following Heidegger, refers to as the ‘fore-structure’ of one’s understanding. As the self encounters internal and external others, it reinvents itself, never fully forsaking the ‘fore-structures’ of its understanding or taking on the life of the other. It charts its own path, which cannot therefore be described simply as ‘derivative’ (Chatterjee 1986) or understood in terms of what existed before or over a long period of time. This is the nature of historical consciousness, and it is in this sense marked by différance, an excess, which cannot be captured through a specific set of categories that is available to us in a given tradition or through the objectified experiences of the other. This conception of the self offers a new and different starting point for constructing an Indian political theory. Instead of searching for some uniquely Indian categories, or raising issues of origin (such as where the idea first originated, or whether the concept exists in the vocabulary of a given culture), it prompts one to examine the way ideas, no matter where they come from, enter into public discourse and shape the political imagination of the people. This is

political theory   the understanding with which this book engages and around which it constructs a picture of Indian political theory. There are, as indicated, strong methodological reasons for grounding Indian political theory in this conception of a historical consciousness – something that has come to us from philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger and Gadamer. The fact that the social and political leadership in modern India has operated implicitly with this self-understanding makes this standpoint even more compelling. Throughout the struggle for freedom, as well as in the Constituent Assembly which framed the Constitution of independent India, concepts such as liberty and equality, state and bureaucracy, were used, unconstrained by anxiety about their origin. The leadership invoked these concepts to think about their own social and political situation and aspirations, and in doing so imbued them with new meanings. A ‘fusion of horizons’ was clearly discernible in modern India. British rule in India had not only yielded the experience of political subjugation, it had engendered an intense encounter with another world-view – one that brought in the language of equality and rights, of progress and scientific rationality, which had shaped the modern Weltanschauung. These ideas challenged the socio-cultural practices and the ways of thinking that were prevalent in Indian society at that time. Although the Indian leadership did not accept the British assessment of India or its views on modernity, they nevertheless did not dismiss that framework of thinking entirely. During the struggle for independence and in the Constituent Assembly they used concepts and terms that were – and continue to be – a part of the modern democratic imaginary. They spoke of the right to self-determination and political liberties, of creating a free and equal society, of the ideals of justice and fraternity. However, even as they used concepts that expressed the modern sensibility, they did not simply mirror the Western liberal imagination. Engaging with the specific nature of Indian society, its immediate political history and predicament, its cultural past and inheritance, they layered familiar concepts (which

  india existed in many democracies in the world) with new meanings and signification. When the preamble of the newly framed constitution of independent India identified equality, liberty, justice and fraternity as the shared ideals of the political community, the members of the Constituent Assembly were not imitating what existed already in the Western democracies. This was not simply a derivative discourse. As historical beings these individuals were located in and aware of their past, their tradition, but the received frameworks were mediated, on the one hand, by the ideas and experiences that characterized their present world and, on the other, by their political judgement and vision of the future. As such, the ideas that surfaced defied neat categorization; they could not be labelled indigenous or foreign. The specificity of the Indian has therefore to be understood in terms of this difference: that is, through the distinct meanings that are associated here with concepts that mark our historical time. The pages that follow attempt to present this difference by pointing to the way in which the concepts that are central to democracy – freedom and equality – are thought of and actualized in India, and how issues of religion and diversity are conceived. The chapters do not identify one essential idea or foundational philosophical orientation that can encapsulate the Indian reading of equality or freedom. They point once again to the difference that exists internally within India. The political leadership, be it in the period of colonial rule or subsequently in the deliberations around the framing of the constitution, did not speak with one voice. They understood and imagined India differently. Whether it was the question of equality or diversity, or of determining which structures of inequality required urgent attention, which diversity needed to be accommodated, and in what form, on all these issues they expressed differing views. Taking note of these differences, each chapter presents competing ideas on the subject under discussion. It selects a few influential ideas, points to the co-presence of different perspectives, and suggests that the difference is never decisively settled. Even when some views prevail

political theory   for a while, for instance in the constitutional framework, contrary ways of thinking surface over and over again, in the issues that confront political institutions and the questions that are posed to the judiciary. It is the tension between these diverse perspectives that shapes the imagination and the practices of democracy, giving them a distinctiveness vis-à-vis other representations of democracy while simultaneously suggesting that this must be viewed as a journey, a process, that is far from complete. This work tries to map the journey of ideas: it presents frameworks of thought that have shaped the collective political imagination on the issues of equality, freedom, religion and diversity. It discusses ideas that have prevailed and served to fashion the political institutions of independent India, and the implications of these frameworks over time. The four conceptual categories – equality, freedom, religion and diversity – discussed in the book are identified as the new ‘unities’ (to borrow Foucault’s term) through which we can understand contemporary India and apprehend the particularity of her experience (Foucault 1989: 23–54). To analyse these unities this work moves deliberately away from the conventional modes of studying ideas in relation to the work of a particular individual. Instead it takes statements dispersed in time and space and places them together when they offer a particular and coherent notion of the discursive object. The authors of particular assertions surface as ‘nodes in a network’ (Foucault 1989: 26), contributing to our understanding of a specific reading of the concept. This manoeuvre is not intended to endorse Roland Barthes’s proclamation of the death of the author; rather, it is prompted by a more modest belief that a systematic analysis of the work of an author is necessary when one wants to answer the question, what did X say? When the primary task is to learn what was the intended meaning of the author, or to remove misconceptions about what may or may not be attributed to a person, then it is absolutely essential to adopt

  india a mode of individualization. One may also need to focus on the individual author while engaging with specific intellectual traditions and ideological frameworks, but to understand a concept, a political discourse, one is compelled to go beyond individual representations of that idea to see how different views, from diverse locations and sites, come together to offer a picture of that object. The individual author is relatively unimportant here; what matters more is the set of meanings associated with the discursive object and through which it is presented before us. Ideas through which a concept is understood come from specific individuals, but such questions as the political or ideological position of the author, the centrality of that idea in the entirety of his writing, and the philosophical framework of inquiry used by the individual, are not significant here. One might readily take a little liberty, be eclectic in retrospectively grouping together (this is, as Foucault explained, part and parcel of constructing a discourse) ideas that come from people who do not agree on many things. The author is, in this sense, somewhat incidental to one’s understanding of that idea; s/he enters primarily as a sign of what is being said through it rather than as a symbol that must be read in terms of its own expressive value (see Gadamer 1979: 132–9). This is the methodological understanding that guides this book’s engagement with Indian political theory. As indicated, the study identifies four conceptual categories for discussion: equality, freedom, religion and diversity. These are not the only categories through which we can make sense of contemporary India, but they are certainly crucial for understanding the distinctiveness of its democratic discourse. As a democracy, India has charted its own path. This distinctiveness will, I hope, be evident in the pages that follow. It might be added that this study is not intended to be an exhaustive or comprehensive presentation of the debates that have taken place in India even on these four identified subjects. It identifies and highlights some perspectives that have shaped the public and political imagination,

political theory   as well as the institutions and practices that constitute present-day India. Instead of assessing the normative claims embedded in the positions discussed, it tries to understand how we in India came to be what we are, the path we chose, the alternatives that we closed off and the consequences that this trajectory yielded. The primary reason for privileging this mode of inquiry is that historical beings do not have access to a detached, unencumbered reason that can reveal the truth and determine what should be. However, confronting the challenges that a chosen path has presented and exploring the possibilities that exist can give a direction to the choices one makes and the future one envisions. History has made one acutely aware of the dangers of an abstract and unfettered reason which can claim to speak for everyone. But an embedded reason, which is grounded in and emerges from concrete historical experience, can nevertheless serve a practical and critical interest; it can nurture a democratic imagination. The form in which Indian political theory is conceived and approached here will hopefully reflect this understanding and contribute to the project of cultivating a democratic consciousness.

two Equality

Colonization brought the issue of inequality/equality sharply into focus in India. If the everyday experience of not being treated like British citizens, of not enjoying the same rights and privileges as them, made equality a central concern of the emerging national consciousness, the encounter with liberal rationalism and the ideas of the Enlightenment (that came along with the Empire) turned the gaze inwards. It compelled the people of India to take a critical look at the structure of hierarchy and inequality that existed within the Hindu community.1 It also prompted them to consider why India, despite its past glory and ancient civilization, had not been able to make the progress that could be seen in modern Europe. Each of these questions directed attention to the question of equality, though most of the time it was not the idea of equality but the prevailing forms of inequality in Indian society that were analysed.2 From the mid-nineteenth century a range of public figures – writers, social reformers and political leaders – addressed questions of inequality through their writings and interventions. Indeed the second half of the nineteenth century saw the publication of two influential essays on this subject: Jyotirao (Jyotiba) Phule’s Gulamgiri (Slavery) published in 1873 (see Phule 2002: 3) and Bankim Chandra

equality   Chattopadhyay’s Samya (Equality) published in 1879 (see Chattopadhyay 1977: 115). Although not the only writings on this subject, these essays offered two distinct representations of the idea of equality/ inequality – representations that formed two ends of the spectrum within which this issue came to be discussed in the decades to come.3 Not all social or political leaders in the twentieth century referred to these writings, yet the two social imaginations that were expressed in these essays surfaced over and over again at different moments in India’s political history. In the early part of the twentieth century B.R. Ambedkar and M.K. Gandhi gave a new voice and articulation to these two different notions of equality/inequality; and subsequently, even as one social and political imagination prevailed at the time of the making of the constitution, interpretations of the constitutional provisions relating to equality leaned heavily on the other. Ideas that had surfaced in the late nineteenth century remained a point of inspiration and, at times, even reference; hence it is only appropriate to begin the analysis of the idea of equality/inequality with these writings. A striking attribute of the discussion on equality during the colonial period was that it was almost always understood as the absence of existing structures or relationships of inequality and oppression. While most writings assumed a fundamental equality of all persons as human beings, they attempted primarily to identify the prevailing structures of inequality or dominance, and associated equality with the absence of these relationships. Only rarely does one get a clear enunciation of the idea of equality independently of the existing structures of exploitation and subordination. In many cases one learns what equality might entail through the image of the envisaged future and the policies that are advocated in pursuit of it. The essay Samya by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay stands out as an exception in this regard. Not only did it identify the existing forms of inequality, it also suggested what equality might or might not imply. The one point that emerged clearly in his analysis was

  india that equality did not entail the erasure of all differences, and vice versa one could infer that the presence of difference was not in every instance a sign of inequality. Some differences, he maintained, were bound to exist, and complete identity or sameness in every respect could never be achieved; indeed it would be entirely unnatural. To quote Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, ‘Nature has sent us to this playground of the world after making different laws of … diversity. My bones are thicker than yours, and very hard – I have more strength in my arms than you have in yours – I can knock you out with one single blow; thus I am bigger than you are’ (Chattopadhyay 1977: 150). Differences of this kind existed among men and between men and women and they were an integral element of nature, if not an expression of the natural law. So, equality did not, and could not, imply the flattening of all such differences and diversity. Equality, he argued, was concerned only with those differences that were created by society and went against the natural law. These unnatural differences were a matter of concern and they must be questioned and eventually eliminated.4 If equality did not imply that everyone must be the same in every respect, the question arose: what was entailed by equality? Bankim Chandra’s response was that equality required sameness of rights; it was equality of rights rather than erasure of differences that informed the idea of equality. Nature had created all persons with the same rights, but society differentiated between men and women and denied one half (the women) these rights; this was unnatural and it violated the principle of equality. Unnatural differences of this kind alone had to be checked and dismantled. This also meant that some differences may continue to exist even when the same rights are granted to all persons. Bankim Chandra did not speak of division of labour or functional differentiation in society, but clearly, for him, not giving the same rights to all persons (and not the mere differentiation of functions) was the single most important expression of inequality. Bankim Chandra identified four kinds of unnatural differences that existed in India at that time: between rich (zamindar/landlord) and

equality   poor (peasant), man and woman, brahmin (upper caste) and shudra (lower caste), and bilati (foreigner/colonizer) and native (indigenous/ Indian population). Each of these differences was a matter of concern and needed to be dismantled through individual and collective action. Even here, with regard to these four socially produced differences, it was the presence of an ‘excess’ (Chattopadhyay 1977: 151) of unnatural differences that had to be avoided. He argued that a society was likely to have some differences of wealth and learning; there were bound to be some differences between the genders and between those who exercised authority of some kind and the rest of the population. It was primarily when these differences existed to an excessive degree – for instance, when women were simply restricted to the house, locked inside – that differences emerged as unacceptable inequalities that must be resisted and challenged. Bankim Chandra also recognized that excessive unnatural differences, in one form or another, had existed in most societies at some time. Their presence was not unique to India; hence they could not be explained away as a consequence of her social or cultural life. Unnatural differences, for instance, existed in Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. However, for Bankim Chandra, the important thing was that the sagacious rulers of Rome ensured that the differences between the plebeians and the patricians were obliterated (Chattopadhyay 1977: 151–2). To put it in another way, the difference that separated modern Europe from contemporary India was that the former, despite the presence of vast differences, was able to pull itself together and move towards a society that was, relatively speaking, more equal. Christianity had, he felt, played an important role in this transformation, but along with it education and the ‘diminution of disgust with earthly happiness’ (184) made it possible for these societies to make economic and scientific progress. By comparison, in India the presence of excessive inequalities had diminished the desire for knowledge and hindered progress.5 In fact it had resulted in the continuous enslavement of India to one external ruler after another, and this too had thwarted social and economic progress.

  india The presence of excessive unnatural differences was thus an important cause of the decline of a society, and for this reason a matter of deep concern for Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Taking the example of caste inequalities in India, he argued that caste-related differences, particularly between the brahmins (who are placed at the top of the hierarchy) and the shudras (who are placed at the bottom of the hierarchy) had resulted in the former having a monopoly over certain types of learning and knowledge. The latter lived in ignorance and relative poverty. They relied for their livelihood on hard labour. This sharp distinction between caste communities had weakened society as a whole. It deprived society of a large pool of talent6 and allowed rituals (invented to justify the superior position of the brahmins) instead of the pursuit of knowledge, to dominate the brahmin mind. The philosophy of the Arya Dharma that surfaced further diminished the space for the pursuit of knowledge. Besides leaving the large mass of people ignorant and deprived of learning, its emphasis on otherworldliness made the pursuit of earthly happiness undesirable. Collectively, these elements nurtured a disposition that was readily satisfied with what existed, making the people in general lazy and disinclined to work.7 The hot climate and the fertile soil had contributed further to this disposition. Besides detailing the consequences of unnatural and excessive caste differences, Bankim Chandra spoke at length about the exploitation of the poor peasant by the rich zamindars (landowners). The difference between the rich and the poor that existed in Indian society was identified, like the difference between the upper caste and the lower castes, as the ‘most serious one’ (Chattopadhyay 1977: 151). Although it was the depiction of the peasant Paran Mandal (as it surfaced in the pages of Samya) that captured the imagination at that time, perhaps the most important element of Bankim Chandra’s analysis was that he identified different structures of inequality. Differences of wealth and position that distinguished the rich from the poor, differences of caste that separated the brahmin from the shudra, differences between men and women, and the differences between colonizers and the

equality   colonized that were made within the Empire – these were separate sites of inequality. While there were connections between them, these constituted distinct structures of inequality and each had to be targeted and transformed. Diminishing the differences of wealth could not in itself minimize or eliminate gender- or caste-based inequalities. Nor could the struggle against the colonizers in itself result in the transformation of the economic system that exploited the peasant. The different sites of inequality had each to be challenged, as they constituted disparate structures of exploitation and oppression. For Bankim Chandra, not only were there different sites and structures of inequality; each kind of inequality had multiple constituents. For instance, the difference between the rich and the poor was being perpetuated not only by the feudal economic structure or existing forms of control over productive capital, but also by the nature of property relations, the existing laws of inheritance and corrupt middlemen. So to fight against even one particular kind of inequality – say, economic inequality – one required many lines of attack, some questioning the economic and social structure, others changing the existing laws, policies and the world-view of the people. Alterations in the laws of inheritance had to be accompanied by changes in land-use policy, the work ethic, philosophical orientation, the social customs and practices of the people.8 In sum, multiple struggles targeting the various sources of inequality were needed for the pursuit of equality. A more just and equal society could only emerge out of these plural forms of struggle and agendas for transformation. This complex understanding of equality made room for, indeed it underlined the need for, a variety of diverse strategies to combat and overcome the existing patterns of inequality. Groups could struggle against a particular kind of inequality (for instance, gender inequality or caste-based inequality) and, at the same time, different groups could pursue different strategies for challenging that particular inequality. The presence of different kinds of inequalities meant that the structures of oppression were many, so society could not be

  india divided along a single axis. With multiple sites of oppression there emerged, in this representation, multiple chains of hierarchy. In contrast to this notion of equality and hierarchy the writings of Jyotirao Phule offered another perspective on this subject – one where the caste system, with the accompanying ideology of Brahminism, was identified as the primary contradiction and the main source of dominance and oppression in society. Differences of status, wealth, opportunities and even gender were all seen as arising from this one source: the ideology of Brahminism. For Phule, this ideology nurtured the caste system, placed the brahmin at the top and the shudra (and those identified as the atishudras) at the bottom of the hierarchy; it constructed the purity–pollution distinction and accorded the brahmin monopoly over knowledge. It also sanctioned rituals and superstitions as a way of extorting money from the poor peasants, shudras and the atishudras, depriving them of the rightful gains of their labour; in addition, it legitimized the subordination of women by supporting such practices as child marriage, sati and a regime of sanctions on widows.9 From this perspective, there was one main site of oppression: namely, the caste system with its ideology of Brahminism. Both these elements had to be rejected in order to pull down the existing structures of dominance and subordination. To the extent that the ideology of Brahminism was justified in the ancient texts of Hinduism, it was the Hindu religion as well as its revered texts that had to be discarded. Jyotirao Phule’s analysis assumed that the interests of the brahmins and the shudras/atishudras were fundamentally different and that unless the ideology of Brahminism was abandoned there could be no possibility of the former coexisting with the latter. Although he maintained that the basic contradiction was with Brahminism, as this ideology was so deeply entrenched in the brahmin castes it appeared that the contradiction between the two caste clusters – brahmins and the shudras – could never be overcome. The brahmins had therefore to be displaced from their existing position of dominance; there were times when Phule spoke of reversing roles – that is, inverting the existing hierarchy to bring about social transformation.

equality   Three attributes marked Phule’s representation of inequality. (1) It divided society into two distinct groups: the brahmins on the one side, and the rest, particularly the lower castes of different kinds, on the other. Although it recognized the presence of many different caste communities, they were all pitted against the brahmins. Phule used the figure of Parashuram10 to underline the long-standing enmity between the brahmins and the kshatriyas and argued that distinctions between the atishudras and other lower castes like malis and kunbis had been created by the brahmins to reinforce their dominance. Hence it was the dominance of the brahmins that had to be challenged in society by all groups.11 (2) While it held the ideology of Brahminism responsible for the sufferings of the lower castes, it targeted the dominance of the brahmins as a community. This was done through a variety of different ways. Texts that were revered and held sacred by the brahmins were condemned; the Hindu myths were reread to construct a seamless story of brahmin manipulation, deceit and treachery;12 history was written afresh to suggest that the Aryan invasion led to the displacement and subordination of the original inhabitants – that is, groups which now constituted the lower castes. Diverse community histories and narratives of origin were set aside in favour of a single homogenized narrative of oppression, dispossession and exploitation. These efforts polarized society into two distinct groups, such that the caste-based pattern of stratification looked more and more like race-related discrimination and slavery. (3) It privileged what has since been called the politics of presence. Since it blamed the devious brahmins (almost without exception) directly for the creation of the caste system and the purity–pollution distinction, it maintained that this community could not be trusted to act for the welfare of the shudras and the atishudras. The concerns and interests of the brahmins and the lower castes were, it argued, different and irreconcilable; hence the lower castes must be given a separate voice and presence in different institutions. Phule wanted separate schools for the lower castes and suggested that members from these groups themselves should be appointed as teachers.13 In the ‘Memorial Addressed to the

  india Education Commission’ on 19 October 1882 (in Phule 2002: 102–12), Phule proclaimed: ‘Let there be schools for the shudras in every village; but away with all brahmin school-masters’ (105). Defending this assertion he said: ‘I think teachers for primary schools should be trained, as far as possible, out of the cultivating classes, who will be able to mix freely with them and understand their wants and wishes far better than a brahmin teacher, who generally holds himself aloof under religious prejudices’ (107).14 Phule’s message was unambiguous: members of the lower castes alone could understand and voice the interests of their castes and communities.15 Thus the analysis of inequality and the conception of equality that emerged from the writings of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Jyotiba Phule were significantly different. Not only did they assess the existing structures of inequality in dissimilar ways, the policies they advocated differed enormously. Phule pushed for group representation and envisioned a society where various communities would be present in key social and political positions in proportion to their size in the total population. Bankim Chandra desired that equal rights be granted to all persons. One can get a sharper sense of this difference by looking at their positions on education – something that both regarded as being necessary, if not also indispensable, for challenging existing patterns of hierarchy and exploitation. Bankim Chandra believed that vast differences in status and opportunities arose because the brahmins monopolized knowledge and deprived the lower castes of the right to education and learning. Hence, to ensure equal rights for all, education must be available to all castes and communities, men and women. This was, in his view, in the interest of society as a whole. The spread of education would, he claimed, give the required impetus to advance and prosper. Jyotirao Phule too stressed the role of education in the creation of a more equal and just society. But he did not speak of common interest. The right to education, like all other forms of participation in the public domain, had to be wrested away from the brahmins. Among other things, the brahmins had to be displaced from the positions of

equality   power that they occupied at that time. The relationship between the brahmins and the shudras was therefore envisaged, explicitly or implicitly, as one of antagonism. If Bankim Chandra emphasized the need to reform and re-energize Hinduism, Phule rejected Hinduism as a religion. Likewise, if the former saw a basic contradiction between the interests of the Indian population and those of the colonial authorities, the latter often spoke of the invaluable contribution of colonial rule in India. If Bankim Chandra saw British rule as yet another form of external control that subjugated the people of India,16 Phule exclaimed: ‘And then … God took pity on them [shudras] and the British Rule was established in India. The shudras heartily thank the British for this and are exceedingly grateful to them’ (Phule 1977: 44).17 Phule felt that on occasion the British had not done enough for the shudras/atishudras, but this sentiment of being let down suggested the high expectations that he, as the voice of the lower castes, had of British rule. The gains of British rule were not in doubt here. Their presence had disrupted the existing dominance of the brahmins over the shudras; even the missionaries had assisted in this task. That is why he cautioned the members of his community against being misled by the brahmins to turn against the British. What needed to be rejected was Hinduism and not British rule. In this lay the key to equality for the lower castes and liberation of society. This representation of colonial rule and of Hinduism was not shared by Bankim Chandra. For him, British rule, like rule by other external rulers, had subjugated the people of India (though in some respects it was better than rule by other foreign rulers). A just society needed to overthrow all forms of external rule; even more importantly, he maintained that in this struggle against colonial rule Hinduism could offer a ground for reconstituting a political community and forging a spiritual unity. Re-energizing and reclaiming Hinduism was therefore necessary: existing practices of Hinduism, particularly those related to women and the lower castes, needed to be reformed and changed. Hinduism offered a resource that could be channelled to build, resist and overthrow colonial rule.

  india These were two fairly distinct analyses of inequality, which de­ lineated different ways of pursuing the goal of equality. The social and political imaginations that were embedded in these conceptions surfaced over and over again in different forms. In the early twentieth century the differences that marked these two representations were echoed in the writings of B.R. Ambedkar, on the one hand, and M.K. Gandhi, on the other. This is not to say that Ambedkar simply took up where Phule had left, or that Gandhi built upon the ideas of Bankim Chandra. On the contrary, these political leaders had a political and social vision that was in many respects different from that of Phule and Bankim; nevertheless the manner in which they understood the task of constructing a democratic and equal society reflected the differences that were embodied in the works of the earlier thinkers. Like Phule, Ambedkar argued that the caste system was the root cause of inequality in society. It was responsible for the oppression and the subordination of the shudras; and, what was perhaps even more important for Ambedkar, it violated the very principles of reason and fairness. It created a division of labour based on the occupation and social position of the parents/family into which a person was born rather than the natural ability and talents of individuals. It allotted ‘tasks to individuals in advance, selected not on the basis of trained original capacities, but on that of the social status of the parents’ (Ambedkar 1944: section 4[2]),18 and this was quintessentially unjust. In addition, the caste system sanctioned the purity–pollution distinction. It not only placed the brahmins at the top of the stratification system, giving them monopoly over learning and education; it authorized the practice of untouchability. This effectively resulted in the shudras being segregated and denied access to the most basic amenities in society. Although Ambedkar’s analysis of just who the shudras were differed from Phule’s account, and he did not employ the strategy of reversal to undermine the Brahminical reading of Hindu myths and history, nevertheless, like Phule, Ambedkar held the ideology of Brahminism

equality   responsible for the present predicament. Consequently, it was this system of belief that was the main target in his struggle for equality.19 To the extent that this way of thinking was sanctioned by the Hindu religion, particularly the shastras, it had to be rejected and challenged. One must ‘destroy the sacredness and divinity with which Caste has become invested. In the last analysis this means you must destroy the authority of the Shastras and the Vedas. … You must have courage to tell the Hindus that what is wrong with them is their religion – the religion which has produced in them the notion of the sacredness of Caste’ (quoted in Omvedt 2008: 70). As caste was the main axis along which society was divided, it constituted for Ambedkar too the primary contradiction in society. Within the structure of caste-based inequality it was the domination of the brahmins over the shudras that surfaced, once again, as the most serious concern. ‘The three classes, Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas, although not very happy in their mutual relationship managed to work by compromise. The Brahmin flattered the Kshatriya and both let the Vaishya live in order to live upon him. But the three agreed to beat down the Shudra’ (Ambedkar 1944: sect. 17). For this reason, the shudras stood in opposition to the rest of society. This meant that their interests were different from the rest of society, and their voice needed to be formally included. Mistrust of the upper castes, the fear that the absence of lower castes from key positions might sustain existing prejudices (and vice versa: prejudice might result in the continued exclusion of these groups), figured prominently in Ambedkar’s justification for separate representation and separate electorates for the depressed classes. In these respects Ambedkar’s analysis had considerable affinity with the representation of hierarchy and inequality that found an expression in the writings of Phule. But it was not similar in every respect. In Ambedkar’s writings, the story of caste-related prejudice and oppression was laced with the understanding that equality entailed identical treatment for all persons by virtue of their being part of humankind.20 Policies that segregated some individuals/groups

  india and denied them access to the same common resources constituted unacceptable discrimination. This denied individuals within the segregated groups a life of dignity and respect. At the same time (and this is where Ambedkar’s vision struck a different note), simply reversing the hierarchy and placing at the top those currently at the bottom was also not enough. Equality entailed that all persons, as human beings, receive the same treatment. In making this argument Ambedkar appealed to a universal ideal: the principle of like treatment for all or the idea of respect and dignity for all. The latter, in a way, gave substantive content to the universal ideal. It suggested that to be treated as a human being a person must have access to the common pool of resources. It was not enough that individuals (members of the lower castes) should have access to schools, public transportation, water and other essential facilities. It was vital that they be permitted to use the same wells and reservoirs for water, stay in the same hostels and study in the same educational institutions as the rest of society.21 Segregation that was accompanied by the belief that touching, or being touched by, some persons could pollute you was the source of inequality, so the ideology of keeping them separate (even if equal in some respects) was simply unacceptable. A life of respect and dignity was not possible when such forms of segregation and exclusion existed in society.22 Ambedkar was a strong advocate of separate representation for the depressed classes. Indeed it was his efforts that had resulted in separate electorates being proposed for the Scheduled Castes in 1930 as part of the Second Round Table Conference. Yet, even this plea for accommodating the particular was couched in the language of universality rather than correcting or reversing past injustices. Separate representation was considered necessary to ensure that the depressed classes get included: the anxiety being that in their absence prejudice would continue and these communities would not get fair treatment. Besides, the right to be represented and the right to hold office were each considered, by him, to be basic rights which must be given to all. It was to fulfil these rights, in the face

equality   of social prejudices, that separate representation was favoured. To put it another way, it was to make the promise of democracy real that special consideration was asked for and justified.23 There were, of course, some tensions between the language of universal citizenship and the policies that were considered necessary for challenging the existing hierarchies and prejudices. In particular, Ambedkar’s strong defence of a separate electorate for the Scheduled Castes came with the understanding that the members of this community alone could represent the group; this did not cohere readily with the notion of universal citizenship that was supported by the emphasis on sameness. One way in which these two elements could be reconciled was to consider separate arrangements as temporary necessities, rather than permanent structures. To some extent, this was the direction in which he moved as the chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution of India. Among Ambedkar’s contemporaries, Mahatama Gandhi was quick to recognize that the idea of authentic voice invoked by the claim for separate electorates was likely to divide society (more specifically, the Hindu community, which was the single largest in India) and constrain the possibility of building a sense of commonality or fraternity that Ambedkar himself cherished deeply. It could also stand in the way of different groups coming together and shouldering collective responsibility for removing the injustices and wrongs that existed in society. Today, political theorists like Anne Phillips point out that if one assumes that members of a group alone can represent the interest of that group, then minorities are likely to remain a minority forever. Even with 30 per cent of the seats being reserved for them, women would not, for instance, be able to frame laws that protect their interests. To push through new legislation, women (or any minority group) would need the support of others outside the group (Phillips 1995). For this reason, in a democracy, those who represent a specific community have to persuade others; they have to try and bring them over to their side. This requires dialogue, whose success depends upon representatives of specific groups listening to each other and

  india considering the possibility of moving beyond their initial position. The ideal of ‘fraternity’ that Ambedkar valued recognized in principle the need for, and indeed the possibility of, such a dialogue and communication, even if his insistence (at some moments) on separate electorates and authenticity of voice pushed in a different direction. Perhaps it was the compulsions of the history of caste distinctions and the persistence of the practice of untouchability that necessitated, for Ambedkar, the politics of presence. Even though his idea of presence and equality was more complex and nuanced, it stood on the same side as Phule. With the latter it shared the belief that the caste system was the primary cause of the oppression of a large section of the Indian population; it was the caste system that condemned these people to a life rife with indignities. Hence, in the interest of creating a free and just society, the caste system had to be abolished, or, to use Ambedkar’s term, annihilated. So long as caste distinctions – specifically the purity–pollution distinction – existed, freedom and self-rule were simply meaningless. So the single most urgent task was to create a society free of caste. In this effort to annihilate caste and resist brahmin domination, Ambedkar too saw British rule as a potential ally.24 The coming of the British had disrupted the hegemony of the brahmins, recognized the sufferings of the groups and offered them an opportunity to access socially valued goods like education. Much more was required, and Ambedkar realized that the British would not fight against the practice of untouchability as this might provide the upper castes a rallying point against them (see Chatterjee 2006), but despite these limitations colonial rule had created certain conditions that were conducive to the struggle of the lower castes against brahmin domination. Eventually swaraj (self-rule) was needed,25 but British rule had certain advantages over rule by the upper castes. Irrespective of the assessment of British rule, what remained a certainty was that Hinduism could not offer a basis for building a sense of community. The caste system prevented a sense of fraternity from developing among Hindus. Ambedkar felt that other

equality   communities, such as the Muslims and the Sikhs, had a sense of commonality, and this allowed them to reach out and help other members of their community.26 But this was not the case within Hinduism, where caste trumped everything. Caste barriers prevented a sense of commonality and intersubjectivity from developing among Hindus. Hinduism could not therefore offer a common ground; if a sense of unity had to emerge, then the caste system had to be annihilated. That was, in a manner of speaking, the condition for creating a free and equal society. If this was one conception of equality that prevailed in the early part of the twentieth century, then at the other end of the spectrum stood the voice of M.K. Gandhi, with its own distinct and different conception of equality. For Gandhi, the principle of equality was a constitutive element of a free and just society. In effect, this meant that equality could not be pursued simply by redistributing goods, resources or positions. A just and equal society required a system of distribution very different from the one that existed; merely reallocating wealth and positions, opportunities or posts from one section to another could not establish that society. The creation of a just society entailed restructuring the relationship between man and nature, man and machine/technology, and of course man and man (i.e. between men and women, on the one hand, and between communities and castes, on the other). Although Gandhi’s vision of a just society cannot be discussed here in any detail, what needs to be noted is that equality would flow from the reorganization of these different sets of relationships. In a just and equal society the essential needs of everyone would be met. To quote Gandhi: ‘Everyone must have a balanced diet, a decent house to live in, facilities for the education of one’s children and adequate medical relief’ (31 March 1946, in Gandhi 1969). This was not a complete list of individual needs; it was an indication of some of the minimum requirements for leading a decent human life. Eventually what would count as essential needs was contextual: it was relative to or in proportion to what was available to most others

  india in one’s society (Gandhi 1969: 44–5).27 And, even more importantly, fulfilment of the essential needs of all persons needed the reorienting of society, particularly its economic life, with the decentralized and self-reliant village constituting its central core.28 A decentralized village structure was only one aspect of a just society, its two other elements being (a) the exercise of self-restraint (that is, a willing and voluntary rejection of the artificial increase of needs29) and (b) a revaluation of different kinds of work – intellectual and physical labour. In a just society, occupational differentiation would remain: for Gandhi this meant that the varnashrama would exist but not in its present form, where some work was valued more than other forms and placed at the top of the hierarchy.30 The practice of untouchability had to be abolished or purged from the social structure, but the fourfold occupational differentiation represented by the brahmins, kshatriyas, vaishyas and shudras would continue, albeit in a way that all work was equally valued.31 Like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Gandhi maintained that the pursuit of equality did not entail the levelling of all distinctions and differences. Diversity is an integral part of the world and it ‘means neither inequality nor untouchability. An elephant and an ant are dissimilar. Nevertheless God has said they are equal in his eyes. The inner oneness pervades all life. The forms are many, but the informing spirit is one. How can there be room for distinctions of high and low where there is an all-embracing fundamental unity underlying outward diversity’ (in Tendulkar 1961: 230). Equality alludes to this underlying oneness of the spirit, and it was this ontological premiss of our existence (rather than the erasure of all apparent differences of form) that needed to be recognized in the pursuit of equality.32 Diversity and differences are bound to exist; they would stay in a society committed to the ideal of equality but they would exist in a form that was respectful of, and mindful of, the other. Just as in nature ‘No two leaves are alike, and yet there was no antagonism between the branches on which they grow’ (Harijan, 26 May 1946, in Gandhi 1999, vol. 90: 403), so also in society differences would exist

equality   in terms of mental abilities, inclinations and aptitudes. People would perform different functions, have different occupations, yet they would be equal. This was a vision of society yet to be established: a society premissed on the ‘equality of souls’, where everyone would be able to meet their essential needs. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay sought equality of rights; Gandhi spoke of the underlying equality of souls. These positions reflected differences in their philosophical orientation; yet, in their analysis of the Indian society they both recognized that the centres of exploitation (domination and enslavement) were many, all equally important and irreducible to one another. There was, on the one hand, the subordination of the people of India by the British colonizers, and, on the other, the domination of women by men, of the labouring poor by the capitalists, and of the ‘ex-untouchables’ (whom Gandhi referred to as harijans) by the brahmins. All these structures of domination and exploitation had to be challenged and rejected; all were unacceptable, the only difference being that all but the first involved relationships between persons who were part of the same nation. What was distinctive of the Gandhian world-view was that these relationships of domination and subordination had to be changed in such a way that the two parties would become partners who recognized their obligations to one another. It was only in the case of British sovereignty over India that he saw an irreconcilable difference of interests, and this propelled his struggle to end colonial rule. Transforming existing patterns of exploitation and subordination into more just and equal relationships within one’s own society was a task as important as the struggle against colonial rule. And, within the former, ensuring economic equality was as crucial as the need to eliminate the practice of untouchability. In each case, where the goal was to transform society the task was to convert the people involved and not to destroy either pole within a given binary. For Gandhi, capitalism had to be done away with, but the capitalist and the labourer would coexist in a new relationship defined by notions of trusteeship; the practice of untouchability was to be abandoned

  india but the varnashrama would continue, and the relationship between men and women (though not the distinction between them) would be transformed into one of equal partnership. Hence, each element in the constituted binary would exist, but not in opposition to one another. They would be bound together through a new ethic of responsibility. Gandhi’s affirmation of the varnashrama and his belief that people should perform occupations for which they were best suited according to heredity and training had the potential to reinforce existing prejudices and limit occupational mobility. It also did not fit well with the liberal view of free and equal individuals who make their own choices and determine for themselves what they would like to be. Some of Gandhi’s contemporaries noted this and criticized him for not carrying his critique of the prevailing caste system to its logical conclusion. Gandhi’s defence of the varnashrama and his conception of an equal and just society were riddled with inconsistencies; nevertheless, he (perhaps more sharply than most of his contemporaries) recognized that societies could not do away with some form of functional differentiation. Every society needs some division of labour. So the presence of differences could not, or must not, in itself be seen as discrimination. To put it another way, he recognized that differentiation was not the same as discrimination, and that every form of differentiation did not entail, or necessarily result in, discrimination. The varnashrama might not offer a reasonable or acceptable form of functional differentiation and one might even question whether the varnashrama was merely a form of work/ occupational differentiation, but the idea that differentiation and discrimination were not one and the same thing, and that every form of differentiation need not entail discrimination, was an important insight that lay at the core of the Gandhian framework. Against his critics, Gandhi maintained that if different occupations and forms of labour were valued equally and everyone had enough to meet their essential needs, then differences could exist without any discrimination or stigma being attached to them. However, this required structural transformation and along with it changes

equality   in the behaviour and thinking of the individual. The outer and the inner realms had to be altered and the basis of one’s action in society vis-à-vis each other and towards nature had to be changed in a way such that each recognizes his/her responsibility towards the other. This was a vision that dwelt more on the recognition of obligations towards each other than on individual rights and claims, and it frequently alluded to commonality of interests among different groups and communities. Gandhi stood at the end of one spectrum. At the other end lay, as was noted earlier, an altogether different conception of equality: one where the division of labour, encoded in the caste system, was seen as the source of discrimination as it distributed valued assets according to the family or group into which one was born. As this form of discrimination was sanctioned by religion and social custom, and it placed one group – the brahmins – at the top of the hierarchy, this framework emphasized the need for separate representation for those who were placed at the bottom. Instead of depending upon self-realization on the part of the brahmins, it often, particularly in the voice of Ambedkar, relied on the language of rights. It claimed respect and equal treatment, recognizing that this would involve a confrontation with the brahmins. While these two competing conceptions of equality offered different social and political imaginaries, nevertheless there were points of overlap and shared concern. Both were firmly opposed to the practice of untouchability; both wanted to see the lower castes included as full members of society and the polity. Yet their understanding of how these goals were to be achieved and what kinds of social and institutional changes should accompany them were significantly different. Most of all they yielded different legacies: if Ambedkar’s vision was invoked in the anti-brahmin movements in much of South India and by those who wanted to ‘annihilate’ the caste system and the sanctity of the texts/religion that justified the caste system, the Gandhian framework became the anchor of the social reformers, who underplayed the difference in interests between communities,

  india and emphasized the changing attitudes and beliefs of individuals, inculcating empathy and compassion along with the pursuit of institutional changes. When India began the task of framing its constitution these two dominant conceptions of a just and equal society informed the discussions in the Constituent Assembly. The idea that there were many different sites of inequality and oppression in society – something that figured centrally in the analysis by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Gandhi – was the point from which the deliberations began. But, within this larger understanding, it was caste-based inequalities (particularly in the case of previously excluded groups) that remained a constant point of reference. The different Drafts on the Fundamental Rights of Citizens and Minorities and the discussion that followed their submission identified three kinds of inequality: political, social and economic.33 Although few denied the existence of linkages between these different types of inequality, the separate identification of these domains suggested that each was seen as constituting a distinct structure of inequality which needed to be targeted separately. Implicit was also the belief that different policies and provisions were needed to counter different kinds of inequality and that dismantling inequality in one sphere would not be enough to usher in a more just and equal society. Addressing the different sites of inequality, the debate on political equality focused on provisions relating to equal protection under the law, while that on economic equality dwelt upon questions of private property, the zamindari system and inherited titles, and that on social equality concerned itself mainly with caste-based discrimination and, to a very limited extent, equality for women. There was general agreement that separate provisions were needed to deal with each of these sites of discrimination and that a general provision of non-discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste or gender was not enough. After all, in countries like America, policies of segregation had continued and the African-American community remained

equality   excluded despite the formal provision of equality in the constitution. So, even as a provision for non-discrimination was necessary, it was not sufficient. Specific domains and areas of discrimination had to be identified to underline what society, and the law, would regard as unequal and unjust.34 This understanding informed the ‘Objective Resolution’, which was tabled on 13 December 1946, four days after the first sitting of the Constituent Assembly. The vision of independent India that was outlined in the Resolution promised to all ‘people of India, justice, social, economic and political; equality of status, of opportunity and before the law’ (Shiva Rao 1967: 6; emphasis added). In the deliberations that followed, equality before the law or equal status as citizens was continually separated from equality of opportunity. Eventually Articles 14 and 15 of the constitution guaranteed the former, while Article 16 spoke of equality of opportunity. As equality of opportunity was protected separately and in addition to what might be called formal equality of all persons as citizens, it has often been read as guaranteeing substantial equality, which might then justify special consideration to level the field and ensure that no one has a head start. However, the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly reveal a different story. They show that equality of opportunity aimed to ensure the same treatment for all in the public arena, the market and society. Objections to this provision came on the ground that this would do away with special consideration and that would pose some difficulties. K.M. Panikkar, for instance, argued that, As is well known in all states and in most of the provinces, there is a well established policy of giving preference to the people of the Province or the State concerned in the matters of public employment. … All such preferences are declared illegal not only in respect of employment in the Union but in the units; and a justiciable right is sought to be created in this matter by providing that equal opportunities shall exist for every citizen of India for public employment. I agree that no distinction shall be made on the grounds of religion, race, caste or sex, but to provide that there shall be equality of opportunity in the matter of public employment, whether in the

  india unit or in the Union, without reference to local conditions is I think utterly impractical. (in Shiva Rao 1967: 186)

If Panikkar suggested that acquaintance with a particular language may be necessary, K.M. Munshi suggested that ‘[I]n public employment we found that reservations may have to be made for the minorities’ (Shiva Rao 1967: 221). Munshi had religious minorities and women in mind, and after two days of discussion he accepted that ‘Everyone is entitled to equal opportunity. We make some exception in favour of backward communities but the general principle to be accepted is that of equal opportunity (224). Ambedkar emphasized that when so many laws existed that excluded or prohibited certain groups from holding offices, private property or occupations, some provisions were needed to assert that all citizens have an equal opportunity to practise any trade, occupation or profession and the right to hold or dispose of property. Reservations in favour of some minorities could be made. I personally do not see why it is not possible to add a further clause: ‘Nothing herein contained shall prevent the Government prescribing a certain proportion of posts of public service for minorities’ – whoever they may be. Even among the members of the same minority there may be complaints of partiality, of provincial favouritism or personal favouritism. I have often heard the complaint that all posts of the Muslims go to the Punjab Muslims and few to Madrasi Muslims. Even among the minorities, we want equality of opportunity. (224–5)

The point that needs to be underlined here is that equality of opportunity (guaranteed by Article 16 of the Indian Constitution) was intended to end existing laws and social norms of exclusion in matters of public employment. Its primary aim was to ensure that all would have an equal opportunity in matters of public employment. Special consideration for a group (or backward classes, as is specified by the constitution) was to be an exception which may be necessary under certain circumstances. Clearly there were instances where special provisions existed for local populations, religious communities

equality   and certain castes. All such provisions were formally terminated by the guaranteeing of equality of opportunity, but an enabling clause was inserted that stated: ‘Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any provision for the reservation of appointments or posts in favour of any backward class of citizens which, in the opinion of the State, is not adequately represented in the services of the State’ (Article 16, clause 4). This was an enabling and not a mandatory provision (see Béteille 2005). It did not grant or fix quotas for any group or community. It permitted the government to consider if a group should be given special consideration in the appointments made in the public institutions. But such instances of special consideration were to be exceptions rather than the norm. If recognition of multiple sites of discrimination, along with the belief that a law guaranteeing non-discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste and sex was not enough to undo the laws and policies involving exclusion, structured the conception of equality (particularly the distinction between equality of status and opportunity), the emphasis on caste-based discrimination (which came from the writings of Phule and Ambedkar) drew the spotlight onto this specific structure of discrimination. The issue of gender discrimination had occupied social reformers and there were voices within the Constituent Assembly that repeatedly raised this question; nevertheless, it was caste-related discrimination and exclusion that received the most attention.35 Both Phule and Ambedkar, along with other voices articulating the interests of the lower castes, had pressed for separate voice and presence for these groups. Indeed, as was mentioned earlier, Ambedkar had advocated separate electorates for the members of the lower castes and Phule had made a case for the politics of presence. But the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly began by accepting the idea of joint (and not separate) electorates. The framers of the constitution, however, recognized the need to formally include the previously excluded and segregated populations, and for this they agreed to reserve seats for the

  india Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in all legislative bodies, in proportion to their size in the total population. Although a range of arguments were presented in defence of special treatment for these groups, in the case of Scheduled Castes Dr Ambedkar’s arguments prevailed. In particular his claim that fair and just treatment for populations that had been formally segregated and excluded by the actions of society and state was only possible when they were themselves included and present in decision-making bodies was accepted. In the case of Scheduled Tribes, reservation of seats was seen as a way of integrating communities which had remained on the fringes of the main Hindu society and which, in some cases, wished to retain their distinct cultural identity and way of life. Hence the reasons for separate representation for these two groups differed, but they were placed side by side to ensure that they had a voice and were counted. India began its democratic journey with the commitment that all citizens must be equal in the eyes of the law, and that laws which prevent some groups and communities from entering into specific spheres of social and public life should be terminated. All persons must therefore have equality of opportunity in addition to equality of status (legal status as citizens). There were in many parts of India quotas for different groups in administration and public positions. The constitution did not protect these quotas. Even though it included an enabling clause, allowing future governments to decide on this matter, it merely provided quotas (reserved seats) in legislative bodies. Seats or positions were not formally reserved in any other sphere. Although there was a great deal of discussion about what society as a whole (and more specifically the Hindu community) owed to those groups that it had segregated and oppressed, posts were not formally set aside in jobs or educational institutions.36 The thinking that gave form to the constitutional provisions on this issue changed substantially in the years to come. This is not entirely surprising. The constitution had not provided a fixed quota

equality   of posts for any community in jobs, but neither did it rule this out. It left the decision in the hands of elected governments: they were free to decide what form of special consideration was necessary for groups that were identified as ‘backward classes’. 37 In regions where anti-brahmin movements were strong and where quotas in favour of these castes/communities existed in the past, governments in office instituted quotas for these marginalized groups in public posts and appointments. Increasingly they drew on the distinction between equality of status and opportunity, which had been introduced in the constitution, to justify the reservation of positions for all those who were identified as socially and economically backward communities. In the case of historically discriminated communities, like the Scheduled Castes, it was easy to argue that years of exclusion had disadvantaged them; that is, a level playing field did not exist for them. Hence, they needed special consideration, even a quota of reserved jobs. This rationale could not be extended easily to all those who were identified as Other Backward Classes; for this reason reservations for this group have remained a point of much debate and contestation. It is always difficult, if not almost impossible, to determine when a level playing field exists. Collective group history, family circumstances, personal experiences and capacities – intellectual, emotional and physical – all contribute to the possibility of an individual enjoying equality of opportunity. However, in India the long history of caste-based discrimination and the equally strong expression of resistance to it since the late nineteenth century have made collective group history and group membership the single most relevant variable in determining opportunities. Caste was a readily available marker of group identity and shared predicament, so it became a tool for identifying groups eligible for special consideration in the form of quotas in educational institutions and public jobs.38 The history of quotas and reservation of seats and jobs is a long and complex one. Policies have varied over time, and even today state policies in different regions differ significantly. It is not possible

  india to delineate the many issues that this policy has raised, but with regard to the question of equality it is important to underline that the right to equal opportunity, which was initially envisaged as a tool for dismantling existing laws that barred some from entry into certain social and public domains, jobs, and so on, gradually came to be viewed as justifying the need for special consideration. In India the right to equal opportunity included an enabling clause permitting governments to reserve seats and posts for those backward classes that were not adequately represented. Over time the notion of backward classes has been replaced by that of backward castes, and, even more importantly, presence in proportion to the scale of one’s group’s size in the population has become the measure of adequate representation. From the initial urge to replace segregation with universal citizenship to the present scenario where presence in proportion to one’s group’s size in the population is perceived by many to be the critical test of equal citizenship, India has seen a steady proliferation of claims for quotas in higher education, public jobs and now jobs in the private sector. Collective group aspirations for a share in scarce available resources and opportunities, along with the compulsions of competitive electoral politics, have resulted in the steady escalation of claims – for recognition as beneficiaries of reserved quotas39 as well as for inclusion in a specific category of beneficiaries.40 Over the last three decades these claims have been accommodated through a series of constitutional amendments. The enabling provision for giving special consideration to backward classes in public posts has been supplemented with quotas not just in appointments but also in promotions and with quotas for socially and educationally backward castes in educational institutions. More recently, quotas for different sets of beneficiaries have been extended to cover private educational institutions, including those that receive no funding from the state. Concerns raised by the reservation of positions in specific spheres require a separate analysis (see Mahajan 2009, 2012). The point that needs to be reiterated here is that the inclusion of equality

equality   of opportunity as a separate right (in the Chapter of Fundamental Rights) was in a way an innovation of the Indian Constitution; the intention of the framers notwithstanding, subsequent readings and interpretations of this provision have revealed the tensions implicit in this specific articulation of the right to equality. Equality aims to create a threshold level of sameness among citizens; even when difference or special treatment is accepted it is for the sake of extending the same consideration to all. The plea for presence that came from Dr B.R. Ambedkar recognized this, but the subsequent translation of equal consideration as proportionate representation/ presence for different groups and communities shifted away from equal consideration to a new form of equality of outcomes. India’s journey in this regard is not unique. Increasingly elsewhere too democracies are beginning to measure equality of opportunity in terms of presence in proportion to the size of the group in the population. This tendency is perhaps built into the very idea of equality of opportunity understood as substantive equality, and it is this propensity that prompts theorists like Ronald Dworkin to speak of equality of resources rather than opportunities. The challenges and the tensions that arise from guaranteeing equality of opportunity as a right constitute a subject that remains somewhat neglected in India. Instead there are strong passions expressed both for and against quotas. Over the last decade another dimension has been added to discussions on equality. Drawing upon Amartya Sen’s writings, policy analysts are stressing the need to build capabilities. Whether this eventually marks a shift towards pursuing equality of resources rather than equality of opportunities remains to be seen. What can, however, be said is that building capabilities is likely to create greater space for the individual, and perhaps also for the household and region as a point of reference. Above all it is likely to address some of the concerns that policies relating to quotas and reserved seats and jobs have raised. Equality of resources eventually aims to minimize disadvantages of circumstance; instead of just asking when a level field exists, it assumes that when resources

  india necessary for the development of the self are available to all everyone would be treated as equal. The framers of the Indian Constitution had hoped for this kind of equal consideration; perhaps the push towards building capabilities will bring the discourse on equality in India into step with those intentions.

three Freedom

For a people living under colonial rule, freedom was a spiritual longing, defining what it means to be a human being. As the social and political conditions for the exercise or the enjoyment of freedom did not exist, this longing often employed a spiritual idiom to give voice to an inner desire that remained unrealized, if not stifled, under the British Raj. The desire to be free was not an aspiration to be an autonomous individual, it was the longing to be a self-determining political community, and it was this that was represented through the term swaraj. The term swaraj meant literally ‘the raj or supreme authority or domination of the swa or the self’ (Pal 1992: 216). But just when is the self the supreme self-legislating and self-determining authority? To this question there were many different answers, but almost all of them agreed that swaraj entailed the absence of external or foreign rule. The absence of an external and alien power,1 working to consolidate its own interests, was an essential but minimum condition of swaraj. In its more positive form, swaraj required that people must be in control of their destiny; that is, they should be free to shape their present and chart the course of their future as a collective body. This understanding was embedded in the word

  india swaraj from the very beginning when it was first used by Dadabhai Naroji in his Presidential Address at Calcutta Congress in 1906.2 He invoked this expression to voice the need for political freedom. As political consciousness grew the word came to express a range of political aspirations: from responsible government to home rule, from dominion status to complete independence from British rule. But the different expressions of swaraj were united by the aspiration to have a government of the people, working to protect the interests of the people. Clearly the British Raj did not offer such a government, and swaraj became a kind of battle cry giving voice to the deeply felt need for self-rule and political freedom.3 The political freedom that was being desired and fought for was, as Bal Gangadhar Tilak so evocatively put it, one’s ‘birth-right’ (Tilak [1917] 1990b: 315). For political freedom to have a concrete and real form it had to be recognized by law. But the basis of this claim lay in the very nature of man as a human being. Political freedom was presented as a ‘divine’ gift (Iyer 2000: 351–3; see also Jha 1975), a natural passion that cannot be, or should not be, taken away from any person.4 And, by inference, one could say that if this basic natural right was denied to a people5 they could legitimately ask for it and fight to get it back for themselves. Political freedom was, in this sense, a condition of human existence without which a person could not lead a decent life. And its denial or absence was completely unjustifiable, unacceptable and intolerable. Foreign rule saps the moral foundations of the subject people. It unfits them for thinking independently, it destroys their self-respect and their power of initiative; it prevents them from expressing themselves freely; it bars all kinds of effective organization and fosters habits of dependence. An administration may be thoroughly efficient, absolutely impartial and perfectly just (which the present British government by no means is) but it may yet be immoral and preventive of a healthy growth of democracy. (Rai [1923] 1966: 132; emphasis added)

It is for similar reasons that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi stated:

freedom   Personally I do not care for ‘independence’, which I do not understand, but I long for freedom from the English yoke. I would pay any price for it. I would accept chaos in exchange for it. For the English peace is the peace of the grave. Anything would be better than this living death of a whole people. (12 January 1928, in Iyer 1987: 254)6

Freedom, even in its limited form of political freedom, was here considered to be an essential condition of human well-being. Without it one could not imagine a good life, let alone the possibility of enjoying basic rights such as the right to speech, thought and expression. Under British rule, ‘the Indian press can hardly carry on a campaign of constructive ideas. They cannot even discuss theories because they may be dangerously suggestive. They cannot even discuss India’s past history because their discussions may be interpreted as veiled threats’ (Rai [1926] 1992: 11). But, even more importantly, the absence of political freedom and liberties meant that [T]he nation today is in a helpless condition, it does not possess even the right to err. He who has no right to err can never go forward. … Man, says an Arabic proverb, is error personified. Freedom to err and the duty to correct errors is one definition of Swaraj. … And such Swaraj lies in Parliament. That Parliament we need today. (Gandhi, 3 November 1917, in Gandhi 1969: 78)

Political freedom and self-government were therefore essential and indispensable conditions of the good life, and without them one could not imagine either individual or national progress. At one level, swaraj expressed this sentiment. It offered a rationale for a government that is responsible and responsive to the interests of the people. To the political leadership fighting for political freedom through a variety of different strategies and tactics, the British did not offer responsible government. The difference between British rule and rule by an Indian government was captured by Lala Lajpat Rai, when he stated: We are not at all confident that an Indian bureaucracy would be more efficient, or more partial or more conscientious than the

  india present British bureaucracy is, but we are confident that while no amount of public opinion can bend the latter, the former will have to bend. No Indian bureaucracy could have dared to pass a Rowlatt Act. (Rai [1923] 1966: 133; emphasis added)7

It is this unconcern for the rights, liberties and interests of the people of India that made British rule an ‘alien’ rule. To reiterate, political freedom, or swaraj, was desired and valued on the ground that it would provide a responsible government that pursues and promotes the interests of the people, protects their civil liberties and gives them an opportunity to determine their own future. And that was not all. Many votaries of swaraj believed that the protection of civil and political liberties – most notably, the right to speech and expression, the right to form associations, the right to organize and present one’s views freely – would enable the people of India to constitute themselves as a collective whole; that is, as a political community that can arrive at some conception of its shared interests through dialogue and discussion. In this latter framework, a representative and responsible government was considered necessary, for it would create space for self-expression and collective self-determination. The possibility of forming a political community that was able to understand and articulate its common interest, and then act to realize it, was a critical element, and this idea animated the longing for freedom. The distinction between having a government that was attentive to the sentiments of the people and creating a political community was made in the course of the struggle for independence in many different ways. Sri Aurobindo alluded to it by differentiating between the goal of changing a government and that of building a nation. Changing one form of government into another (for instance, an absolute monarchy into a limited monarchy or representative democracy) could ensure a stake in the system, but by itself that was not, for him, enough. Freedom required a willingness and a commitment to forge a political community – that is, a willingness to be a part of that whole; to act in harmony with the whole; and, at times, even

freedom   to be prepared to subordinate oneself/one’s interest to the common interest of that whole. Self-government was, in some ways, the crucial component of the idea of swaraj, but this was not the full extent of its meaning. Literally swaraj meant rule by the self; it entailed in addition to self-government the more challenging agenda of self-determination. The civil liberties and political rights granted in a representative democracy (self-rule) were expected to grant certain basic freedoms to each person, for instance the right to use one’s body and other resources in a way one likes without causing harm to others, but the exercise of these liberties required the ability to determine one’s actions. Having options and making choices was not enough for this; to be truly self-determining these choices had to be grounded in self-consciousness, an inner awakening. ‘The fight for swaraj means not mere political awakening but an all around awakening – social, educational, moral, economic and political’ (Gandhi, 26 August 1928, in Gandhi 1999, vol. 36: 230; see also Dalton 1969, Patel 1988). In the words of Swami Vivekananda, ‘To advance oneself towards freedom – physical, mental and spiritual – and help others to do so, is the supreme prize of man’ (3 January 1899, in Vivekananda, vol. V; emphasis added8). Political (external) freedom and spiritual (inner) freedom were thus closely intertwined in these visions of swaraj.9 While political freedom was in the long run to be nurtured by spiritual freedom, under the conditions of colonial rule, where political freedom was denied, spiritual freedom was perceived to be a way of preparing the self for the struggle for freedom. Spiritual freedom, in its many different usages, was presented as ‘inner freedom’, ‘self-dependence’ and ‘self-reliance’. While each of these ideas entailed the absence of external forms of determination, they were not merely negative in form. They pointed to a positive and constructive agenda. At the most basic level, being morally and spiritually free, or self-determining, meant being true to one’s being. However, the question of when one is true to one’s being is a subject

  india on which there were significant differences of view. At least three different interpretations of this idea surfaced in the public domain and shaped the imagination of the emerging democratic India. If one perspective maintained that being true to one’s self meant abandoning all forms of Western influence and being determined by the spirit or mind of India, the second suggested that it is by following one’s moral conscience that one can be truly self-determining; the third point of view argued that it is by tapping into the universal ethic of humankind that one can become free externally and internally. These three points of view charted somewhat different trajectories. Although they did not differ in all respects, they offered three different conceptions of political citizenship and of the nation – something that remained a matter of debate during the struggle for independence, the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly and even later in the post-independence years. From the early part of the twentieth century there were many prominent voices which maintained that freedom or, more accurately, swaraj involved being free from Western influence and being shaped by the civilizational core of India – often referred to as the country’s ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’. In other words, it involved choosing a path that was Indian and not just a replica of the Western model. The idea of swadeshi captured and expressed this sentiment. In the economic sphere swadeshi was a call for giving up goods manufactured in factories abroad and endorsing products produced in the villages of India;10 in the political sphere it asked for self-rule; and in the cultural sphere it pleaded for the endorsement of the ideals of Vedanta11 in the modern world.12 This last notion of cultural self-determination or swadeshi was most sharply expressed in the writings of Vivekananda and Aurobindo, although many others, such as Swami Dayanand, Tilak, Gokhale and Lala Lajpat Rai, were sympathetic to some aspect of swadeshi. It is not possible to dwell on the differences that existed on the subject. What is relevant for this analysis is to note that the cultural

freedom   dimension of swadeshi expressed the view that ancient Indian civilization was different from Western civilization and that it was this inheritance that must form the basis of collective social and political awakening.13 ‘India must, as Aurobindo stated, ‘remain India if she is to fulfill her destiny’ ([1908] 2002: 1041). Implicit in this was the belief that ‘each nation has its own peculiarity and individuality’ (Vivekananda 1897, vol. III),14 and that the Vedanta embodied the essence of India’s individuality. Accordingly, spiritual freedom lay in acting in accordance with the ideals of Vedanta. Sri Aurobindo articulated this sharply when he argued that ‘the final fulfillment of the Vedantic ideal in politics, this is true Swaraj for India’ (Aurobindo [1908] 2002: 1086). The invocation of Vedantic ideals invariably appealed to the cultural inheritance of the majority (Hindu) community and equated Indian civilization with the Hinduism of the Vedic period, although many of them used a more universalistic language and invoked ideals that had a much wider appeal and were not speaking only to this one community.15 But leaving aside this question (namely, whether this thinking was articulating a form of cultural majoritaritarianism), what is significant is that this framework offered two interrelated arguments through which the political was closely linked with the spiritual, and the formation of a political community with the quest for swaraj. First, it suggested that social and political freedom cannot be realized or sustained without a change in the thinking of the individual. Institutional change had to be accompanied by, if not preceded by, change in the way one understands one’s own being and its relationship to others. Inner freedom was therefore an essential condition of swaraj and realizing it required a spiritual journey. Reason (the individual faculty that has, since the time of Plato, been considered to be the source of knowledge and a means of arriving at the truth that lies beyond what is given to us in sensory perception) or human reasoning alone could not show the path or help us to arrive at the truth or self-consciousness. To some extent this is because man ‘does

  india not use his reason to arrive at a rational adjustment of his life with the life of others. … His natural tendency is to enforce the aim of his life even at the expense of or … in competition with the life of others’ (Aurobindo [1915–20] 1999: 197). A self that is habitually inclined to be self-centred and self-seeking had therefore to be prepared to act in the interest of the entire community. This entailed cultivation of discipline and restraint – elements that required tapasya and sadhana.16 There was a pragmatic dimension to this argument. It was evident that the struggle against colonial rule would require sacrifices of many kinds from individuals. They would be called upon to endure hardships and sacrifice their material well-being, and at times even their lives. A spiritual journey was a way of preparing the self for this task: on the one hand, of moving beyond pure egoism or the pursuit of self interest, and on the other, of disciplining the self to pursue the chosen goal. The advocates of this framework believed that ‘real’ or ‘true’ freedom entailed voluntary or willing subordination of the self to the interest and well-being of the whole. And – this was equally important – the recognition of the primacy of the collective had to come from the self; it could not, or should not, be imposed from the outside, by an external political agency or another individual. The spiritual journey was expected to guide the individual to understand the true nature of his being, to grasp the unity of the self and the other, and with it the obligations one had towards others.17 Pursuing Vedantic ideals, engaging with the philosophical principles of the Vedanta, was a means of arriving at this underlying truth of one’s being. It was supposed to reveal ‘that you and I and everything in the universe are that Absolute, not parts, of the whole. You are the whole of that Absolute, and so are all others’ (Vivekananda, vol. I).18 This jyanam (knowledge) was a necessary condition for the realization and protection of freedom.19 To put this another way, without recognizing that we are all part of that one consciousness, or that we are essentially members of a single whole, a political community could not be forged. A sense

freedom   of the fundamental unity and sameness of all beings, which came through the Vedanta and other modes of spiritual engagement, was considered to be an essential condition for the making of a political community.20 In a framework where the unity of the self and the other was emphasized, freedom of the self was closely intertwined with the well-being of the community, rather than the pursuit of one’s desires and interests. Also, by invoking Vedantic ideals these thinkers were not simply saying that India had achieved greatness in the past; rather, they were suggesting that the truth that India once possessed was available to us even in the present. One only needed to retrieve the truth that was illuminated in the Vedas and it could even today be the basis of true and complete freedom. However, even as Vedanta offered the core of Indian civilization, and in recovering that essence they hoped to stand in their own tradition and from that position chart the future of the nation, many of them recognized that recovering this essence entailed ‘the fulfillment of the ancient life of India under modern conditions’21 (Aurobindo [1908] 2002: 1086). The message or the truth of the Vedas, they believed, could be resurrected in the present context, its spiritual core understood and reclaimed, but without that spiritual core one could neither realize individual freedom nor form a free political community or nation. Standing in one’s tradition and acting from that vantage point was, however, just one, albeit fairly influential, understanding of what complete swaraj or spiritual freedom and self-determination implied. There were at least two other readings of the notion of ‘inner freedom’ associated with swaraj – conceptions that surfaced very clearly in the writings of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore – that must also be mentioned here as they played a crucial role in defining aspects of contemporary India. For Mahatma Gandhi, being true to one’s being meant acting in accordance with one’s inner voice, or what might be called moral

  india conscience, rather than simply following the tradition in which one is situated. Moral consciousness did not, however, stand in opposition to tradition. If anything it was, in a manner of speaking, the voice of reason or reflection that was neither wholly transcendental in nature nor completely detached from its context – its history or culture. It was a consciousness that emerged from an engagement with existing traditions and the truths that were embodied in them.22 At another level it was a consciousness that was acutely aware of its being a part of a larger whole: a community, a tradition, a species and, in the ultimate analysis, the universe. As such, freedom entailed recognizing this situatedness and the obligations that this form of being placed upon each of us. Freedom, in this sense, meant acting in a responsible way voluntarily; that is, recognizing for oneself what one owes to others. The absence of external hindrances was at best a desirable condition but not a sufficient condition for being free. Indeed there were moments when Gandhi maintained that the absence of external freedom was directly related to the absence of inner freedom (Iyer 2000: 351). Hence, it was the latter to which one had to aspire; the mere absence of external obstacles or the pursuit of one’s will could not be taken as markers of swaraj. Inner freedom was the necessary condition of swaraj, but it had to be achieved by cultivating the ‘power of spirit’. The latter was, within this framework, best represented by the ethic of ahimsa, or non-violence, which involved, in a manner of speaking, action motivated by love and compassion towards all others (Haksar 2012;23 see also Dalton 1969). A moral consciousness of this kind, which was compassionate towards others, which would see all others as part of its own being, had to be carefully cultivated. This could be achieved by recalling ‘the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny?’ (Gandhi 1958: 65). However, our capacity to direct attention away

freedom   from our personal and more selfish or egoistic interests and desires had to be cultivated. One had to prepare oneself for this through discipline and self-restraint to avoid the distractions of material life and engage in the quest for truth; to act in a selfless and courageous manner; to dedicate oneself to the service of others. Gandhi himself observed a strict regime of bodily practices – from fasting, practising celibacy to observing silence – and dietary prescriptions along with spiritual and religious performances to inculcate the necessary self-restraint and discipline. Critically this kind of spiritual journey had to be undertaken by each individual;24 it could not be externally imposed or instituted through some form of political authority that lay outside the self.25 Inner freedom that was achieved through these practices was both a necessary condition for arriving at the truth and a guide to how one must act in the social and political domains. It was from this bedrock of the inner that one had to move to the outer. This was a form of ‘spiritual politics’ (Srinivasan 2006),26 where the spiritual and the moral offered an anchor for an engagement with the political.27 In the liberal political imaginary, individuals (each separate and distinct from the other) engaged in the pursuit of their desires and interests require an external political authority (law or the state) to maintain a sense of order, peace and security (Mehta 2010). They require a system of rights to protect the space necessary for pursuing their own wants and choices.28 But in the Gandhian framework, where the moral was fused with the political (Pantham 1983), a formal regime of rights took a backseat; moral resolve to act in a way that was dictated by one’s conscience became the single most important ingredient for realizing freedom. The desired end of swaraj on the individual as well as the collective plane was self-dependence. To actualize this goal in society, Gandhi encouraged individuals to weave khadi and take care of their own needs to the extent that was possible.29 Since fulfilment of essential needs would always require some degree of interdependence and social organization, Gandhi argued for building a self-sufficient and

  india self-reliant village community which was able to produce the basic goods required by its members. Such a self-reliant village community would form the basic unit of a free and self-sufficient country30 and a world in which nations could coexist peacefully. Thus, every village will be a republic or panchayat having full powers. It follows, therefore, that every village has to be selfsustained and capable of managing its affairs even to the extent of defending itself against the whole world. … ultimately, it is the individual who is the unit. This does not exclude dependence on and willing help from neighbours or from the world. It will be a free and voluntary play of mutual forces. …In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be ever-widening, never-ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance, but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units. (Gandhi 1960)31

The discipline and restraint exercised by the individual in curtailing wants that could not be sustained in the society in which one lives, and working to recognize one’s potential would, in his view, lay the foundation of a free and equal community. This political and economic vision was different from the preceding conception of swaraj. Despite the apparent similarities, such as the emphasis on the spiritual journey and self-discipline, it appealed to the inner conscience of man rather than canonical truths. While Gandhi did not disregard the latter, he did not justify a course of action on the basis of that revealed truth. The continual appeal to an inner moral compass, rather than some ‘sacred’ texts or an understanding of the cosmos, created more space for the individual and gave this framework a much wider sphere of influence, extending beyond a given religious identity.

freedom   The third perspective, articulated most sharply in the writings of Rabindranath Tagore, was substantially different from the preceding two conceptions. It associated swaraj with the freedom of the mind and the pursuit of the universal ethic of humanity. Tagore positioned freedom of the mind against the ‘inertness of the mind’ ([1921] 2006: 417) which made individuals dependent upon and subordinate to external forms of authority – such as tradition and custom – and compelled them to be swept along ‘blindfolded by the force of things as they are’ (413).32 Freedom of the mind, on the other hand, sought to create (and value) space to think for oneself and express one’s views without fear. Through his reference to the idea of universal humanity, Tagore challenged the social and political boundaries that were constructed by society: boundaries that separate one person from another on grounds of religion and caste, language and nationality.33 Realizing true swaraj entailed overcoming these arbitrary lines of separation and seeing oneself simply as a part of one single whole – humankind.34 The universal human spirit was, then, both a reminder of our fundamental identity as human beings and the basis for assessing what existed within one’s society and the larger world. It offered a perspective/standpoint from which one might judge whether the opinions and collective ideas that prevail in every society – for instance, the idea of caste in India, or the notion of progress in modern Western societies – were consonant with the universal ethic of humanity.35 Tagore recognized that it would not be easy to overcome the barriers that separated men and the particularities that had come to define them. Breaking through the web of dualism in which the self was always pitted against an ‘other’ – for instance, one nation against another, science against nature – required that men be willing to move beyond commonly held allegiance to territory and sentiment, caste and community, and see themselves as a part of the human race, bound together by bonds of love and sympathy. This was sure to be difficult, but reason could help to discover the underlying unity

  india of all human beings; it could also help one to question what was simply handed down in tradition and custom. Reason was, in other words, an ally that could furnish a critique of the form in which the universal was currently defined in the ideologies of nationalism and scientific rationality. However, to perform this task reason had to be recovered and rehabilitated. Tagore maintained that one has at present extremely impoverished representations of reason. In the West reason had become a tool for the pursuit of power and wealth, governed by considerations of utility and engaged in the ruthless plunder of nature. In the East, too, reason had been bound and subordinated to custom and habit; it had lost its critical faculty and the ability to free itself from that which existed and move towards that which ought to be. In both these worlds, reason had lost its creative energy, so it could not lead one to true freedom. Reason that one could rely on, and base swaraj upon, reason that could transcend the narrow confines of ego and interest, could only be arrived at by opening oneself to the spiritual. Reason had, in other words, to be tempered by, and not separated from, the aesthetic and spiritual.36 Only through the mediation of the latter could reason come to recognize the limits of its form in each civilization while simultaneously acknowledging what each of them had to offer.37 Tagore often spoke of the ‘spiritual apprehension of truth’ (2004: 61):38 that is, opening oneself to the song of nature; appreciating and reflecting upon the beauty and the joy that the world expresses. This spiritual ‘joy is the outcome of detachment from self and lives in freedom of spirit. Beauty is that profound expression of reality which satisfies our hearts without any other allurements but its own ultimate value.’39 Apprehending the spiritual is here a mode of salvaging reason and recognizing the ‘wholeness of our being’ (170). ‘It is when man refrains from the sin which belongs to his nature as limited by the ego that he knows his own spiritual wholeness – it is then that he understands his nature. His nature does not concern the individual alone: it concerns Him of Whom the Gita says …

freedom   “He is humanity in Men”’ (172). It is this spiritual understanding that facilitates our ability to apprehend the universal and actualize it in our own being. Like many of his contemporaries, Tagore used the spiritual idiom to reach out to the universal, but his mode of arriving at that basic unity between the self and the universal was substantially different from that of many of his contemporaries. Unlike Aurobindo or Gandhi, who spoke of tapasya and sadhana, or Vivekananda and Dayananda, who offered a moral and social code of behaviour from their reading of the Indian tradition, Tagore focused on the role of education and the training of the human mind to achieve freedom. In lieu of a language of self-discipline and restraint he emphasized the need to align one’s sensibilities with the beauty and wholeness that were manifest in nature. The spiritual was here pitted against the acquisitive dimension of economic life and not against science or reason per se. Tagore believed that education could offer ‘freedom from ignorance from the laws of nature, and freedom from passion and prejudice in our communication with the human world’ (2006: 612). While these elements would enable the individual to challenge the vestiges of authority, on the more positive side education would inculcate ‘self reliance and self mastery in the spiritual world’. It would nurture a person for whom ‘no temptation, no delusion, can induce to surrender the dignity of the intellect into the keeping of others’ (Tagore [1921] 2006: 422). It was to build such virtues and potentialities that Tagore emphasized the need to develop the creative energies of a person from a young age and foster the sentiment of sympathy – something that, he felt, was not attended to within the existing systems of education and the modern Western civilization that encouraged competition and commercial interests.40 In brief, for Tagore too, a particular kind of self had to be prepared or cultivated for swaraj to be a reality:41 a self that was willing to give up the divisions created between human beings within society and allow everyone – the self and the other – to explore the freedom of their mind and spirit. The mere presence of external conditions

  india of freedom, in the form of government elected by the people, was not enough. This could give one (as was the case in the West) the appearance of freedom but not its truth. So long as the individual remained a slave to organized commercial interests and propaganda he or she could not be free.42 These conceptions of swaraj were different in many significant respects, but each of them challenged the conception of man and freedom that prevailed in the scientific rationality of the post-Enlightenment world. Unlike the latter, where freedom was associated either with the unhindered pursuit of one’s desires and wants or with the ability of the individual to construct a world in his own image (rather than ‘discovering’ a world that was already there, created by a transcendental/supreme being) (see Heidegger 1977; Rorty 1989), these conceptions of swaraj linked freedom with harmony and the absence of contrariness. Not only did they accept (for the most part) the presence of a higher truth, a supreme being, a soul (that is, a transcendental element); they believed that the opportunity to choose or to act as one pleases was not an adequate marker of freedom. There is a possibility that what we choose may not be valued by others or even by us over time; indeed, it is almost certain that this kind of freedom would result in the clash of wills and interests – and this would surely negate, if not destroy, freedom. In each of these conceptions of swaraj freedom was not just a dimension of individual action; it was a vision of a society in which people see themselves as a part of a larger collective, coexisting with others harmoniously. However, the collective, of which the individual was considered to be a part, was not visualized as an undifferentiated whole, devoid of internal differences. The votaries of swaraj confronted differences of perception, view and belief in the public domain, so they were mindful of the presence of distinctions. They knew that differences would not disappear, but they believed that a sense of commonality could be arrived at. If Tagore’s appeal for us to see ourselves as part of humankind was one way of visualizing the

freedom   whole, the spiritual journey of which Aurobindo and Vivekananda spoke was another mode of arriving at an understanding of the unity of our being. In the case of the latter, where the individual was so closely linked to the political community or the nation, there was some possibility of the collective, in the form of an elected government, claiming to speak for the individual, of the individual being drowned in the larger whole, of being called upon to make sacrifices for the latter. Indeed, the spiritual journey was supposed to prepare the self to subordinate its own interest and ego to the common good. But even in this understanding space was made for the individual in two different ways. First, the recognition of the fundamental unity of being and one’s duty had to come from individuals themselves. Each person had to undertake the spiritual journey to realize the truth of his or her being so that he or she could act on that basis. So, the truth that was to be the basis of individual actions was not a revealed truth, or something given externally. It had to be arrived at by the individual and not imposed by an external authority. Second, people like Aurobindo made room for the individual by differentiating between different sets of liberties (freedom for the nation and freedom for the individual), each of which was necessary and had a place in a free society. There is a national liberty of freedom from foreign control; there is an internal liberty or that freedom from the despotism of an individual, a class or a combination of classes to which the name of self-government is properly given; and there is individual liberty or the freedom of the individual from unnecessary and arbitrary restrictions imposed on him either by the society of which he is a part or the Government, whether that Government be monarchical, democratic, oligarchic or bureaucratic. … Individual liberty is necessary to national development, because, if the individual is unduly hampered, the richness of national life suffers and is impoverished. If the individual is given free room to realise himself, to perfect, specialise and enrich his particular powers and attain the full height of his manhood, the variety and rapidity of national progress is immensely increased. In so far as he is fettered and denied

  india scope, the development of the nation is cramped and retarded. A Government which denies scope and liberty to the individual, as all foreign governments must to a considerable extent deny it, helps to cramp the healthy development of the nation and not to forward it. (Aurobindo 1907: 171–5)

While these diverse enunciations of swaraj began with the individual self, they did not dwell sufficiently on the institution of the state or the relationship between the individual and the state. Emerging in the context of colonial rule they dwelt primarily upon the nature of the colonial state and the imposition of a foreign rule upon a people; they did not reflect on the nature of political authority as such. Even those, like Gandhi, who were wary of a centralized state/sovereign and spoke of self-sufficient small village republics, did not draw out the tension between the pursuit of individual liberty and the need for a political sovereign. To some extent this neglect grew out of the belief that freedom was not simply a matter of exercising one’s choice, or pursuing one’s desires and wants. Rather, in large measure, it was a manifestation of the view that the individual must act in a way that is mindful of the larger whole within which he or she exists. As such, they did not view with suspicion collectivities that were larger than the individual. The individual had a moral value, and for some the supreme moral value, but other entities, be it society, community, nature or humankind, also had a value which could not be ignored. For this reason perhaps the liberty of the individual did not, in these conceptions, trump all else. Against the fragmented nature of Enlightenment reason, where reason was separated from passion/emotion, these conceptions of swaraj invoked the category of the spiritual (not to be equated with the religious understood as codified or received truths/dogmas/practices) to refer to a perspective in which reason was moderated by the moral and/or the aesthetic so as to arrive at a truth which allows the self to transcend the limits imposed by ego and perspectivism. The spiritual was expected to offer an alternative basis of arriving at the universal.

freedom   Swaraj expressed this desire to recognize an underlying unity in which one begins with the individual and then moves beyond it to a larger totality.43 The advocates of swaraj almost always alluded to a larger whole, albeit they identified that totality differently: if some saw the totality (towards which the individual was expected to reach out and perhaps even identify with) as the community or the nation, others visualized it as the moral community of humankind. Thus, the visions of the future, and the political community to be formed, varied, but in each instance there was an urge to see the individual as part of the larger whole. The extent to which individual liberty must be protected against external intervention was an issue that was confronted more starkly when India gained independence and the Constituent Assembly engaged with the task of framing the constitution of independent India. Within existing notions of swaraj, the importance of political freedom and allied liberties such as freedom of speech, freedom to move freely and freedom to form associations had been recognized, but what remained relatively undetermined was the extent to which the democratic state may be permitted to intervene in and regulate these liberties. Colonial rule was an imposition and did not reflect the will of the people, so its authority to intervene was questioned by almost all, but could the same rationale apply to a democratically elected government that was based on the consent of the people? From the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly it seems that most of the members, including leaders who had challenged the power wielded by the colonial state, looked at the constitutional and democratic state differently. They were not critical or suspicious of all forms of political authority. If anything they believed that in independent and democratic India a strong state was necessary to ensure social change, development and, above all, the security and territorial integrity of the country.44 It was assumed that a democratically elected government would represent the will of the people and act to promote the collective good.

  india This representation of the state was possible because the presence of a totality within which the individual was placed informed the idea of swaraj. If one influential notion of swaraj prepared the self to recognize that its fate was crucially tied to the existence of that larger whole, the other called upon the individual to apprehend the moral law and act in accordance with it. Even though the individual was not asked to abandon his or her liberty, it was assumed that when ‘ultimate sovereignty rests with the moral law, the conscience of humanity’ (Radhakrishnan [1948], in Shiva Rao 1967: 15), then all – the people and the sovereign – were to be subordinate to it. Both points of view created a certain degree of trust towards the law, or at least they minimized mistrust of the state. While the prevalent conceptions of swaraj prepared the self to perceive the harmony between the interests of the individual and the larger collective (the democratic nation-state, in this instance), the desire to privilege the dignity of human life and to ensure equal treatment to all (in a highly stratified society) reinforced the need for a strong interventionist state. Indeed in the early stages of the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly it was argued that protection of basic rights and liberties required a strong state that was not unduly fettered by considerations of freedom of thought and expression. [T]he very basic right to life and liberty requires that the State keep up sufficient machinery at its disposal to prevent any would-be aggressor aiming at the life or liberty of any one in the community. The right to work, again, or employment necessitates such organization of the resources of the country, in a plan, as would secure adequately, remunerative work for all its citizens. The right to health and education presupposes the establishment and maintenance of sufficient schools, colleges, libraries and laboratories; as well as hospitals, nursing homes … for treating and preventing disease, which only the State or its delegate can provide for all effectively. … Even when the right in question is a simple assertion of individual freedom, e.g., freedom of expression, the State must

freedom   maintain and enforce such laws as will not jeopardize the equal freedom of others because of this guaranteed freedom of some. … Freedom of association may be fully declared and guaranteed. But if it is used to destroy the freedom of others – e.g., by totalitarian organizations – the State must maintain machinery to prevent such associations operating to the prejudice of other citizens. The same applies to freedom of conscience and worship, which guaranteed to all, cannot be permitted to any so as to deny to all others, the same right. (K.T. Shah [1948], in Shiva Rao 1967: 47–8)

This was not a framework in which the individual and the state were positioned against each other; if anything the emerging democratic state was viewed positively as an agency that would maintain peace and create conditions necessary for a good life in a society marked by hierarchies, conflicting group interests and agendas. This justified empowering the state, or at least privileging it over political freedoms and civil liberties. The latter had to be protected but they were not to stand in the way of pursuing the tasks that were entrusted to the state. So deep and strong was this point of view that a provision for ‘preventive detention’ was included in the constitution in the chapter on fundamental rights. Although the use of this provision was subject to some safeguards, nevertheless it was the most clear expression of the view that the democratic state was the embodiment of the collective will and must therefore be accorded priority.45 The idea that individual liberty must not stand in the way of the state performing its functions had informed the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly from the very beginning. So much so that the initial draft that was prepared by the Sub-Committee on Fundamental Rights guaranteed freedoms but subject to conditions that had an uncanny resemblance to the limitations that the colonial state had placed upon the exercise of these rights. The Draft Report prepared on 3 April 1947 stated: 9. There shall be liberty for the exercise of the following rights subject to public order and morality:

  india (a) The right of every citizen to freedom of speech and expression. The publication or utterance of seditious, obscene, slanderous, libelous or defamatory matter shall be actionable or punishable in accordance with law. (b) The right of the citizens to assemble peaceably and without arms. Provisions may be made by law to prevent or control meetings which are likely to cause a breach of the peace or a danger or nuisance to the general public or to prevent or control meetings in the vicinity of any chamber of a Legislature.  (Shiva Rao, 1967: 139; emphasis added).

In the course of the deliberations some members wanted to give the police even more powers. B.N. Rau argued that, If … there is to be no search without a court’s warrant, it may seriously affect the powers of investigation of the police. Under the existing law … the police have certain important powers. Often, in the course of investigation, a police officer gets information that stolen property has been secreted in a certain place. If he searches it at once, as he can at present, there is a chance of recovering it; but if he has to apply for a court’s warrant, giving full details, the delay involved, under Indian conditions of distance and lack of transport in the interior, may be fatal (quoted in Shiva Rao, 1967: 152).

Not everyone agreed with this point of view. A few members, most notably Shri Damodar Swarup Seth, Sardar Hukum Singh and Mohammad Ismail Sahib, pointed out that the limitations gave too much power to the executive, which made a ‘mockery of personal liberty’ (Ismail Sahib [1948], in CAD 2003: 725). After all, he observed, ‘power corrupts people not only under foreign rule, but also under self-government. Therefore … the citizen must be protected against the vagaries of the executive in a very careful manner’ (725). Others, like K.T. Shah, expressed concerns about the use of the term ‘morality’ (in Shiva Rao 1967: 157) as it was too vague and could easily be misused by the executive. But these voices were in a minority. Eventually the constitution that was adopted in 1950 gave

freedom   all citizens the ‘freedom of speech and expression’, the freedom to ‘assemble peaceably without arms’, ‘to form associations and unions’, ‘to move freely throughout the territory of India’, ‘to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India’, ‘to acquire, hold and dispose of property’, and to ‘practice any profession’ (Article 19). However, ‘reasonable’ restrictions could be placed on these freedoms in the interest of public order and morality.46 Although some members, including K.T. Shah, had raised the issue of protecting the freedom of the press, the Right to Freedom did not explicitly guarantee the freedom of the press. Eventually, this element was read into the structure of existing rights by the Supreme Court. In Brij Bhushan and Another v. The State of Delhi, 26 May 1950, the Court stipulated that the liberty of the press ‘is included in the right to freedom of speech and expression declared by article 19 (1)(a)’,47 and that pre-censorship of the materials to be published was a restriction of the freedom granted by the Constitution.48 However, the Court’s attempt to specify (and fix more narrowly) the limitations placed upon this freedom under the terms ‘public order’ and ‘public safety’ prompted a fresh round of legislation, in the form of the First Amendment to the Constitution. So in 1951 – that is, almost immediately after the constitution came into effect – the state was authorized to place ‘reasonable restrictions’ upon the exercise of the freedom granted under Article 19 in the ‘interest of the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of the court, defamation or incitement to an offence’.49 These were fairly open-ended sets of conditions. Just when was the security of the state jeopardized? What kind of protests posed a threat to the survival of the state? What violated the collective sense of decency or morality? These were all matters open to interpretation by the state, or, more accurately, the government in office. The full implications of the powers that were accorded to the state through this clause (Article 19, clause 2) became apparent during the period of Emergency50 (1975–77), but its presence was evident even during

  india normal times as government after government used the available space to clamp down upon the freedom of expression. From the order prohibiting the sale of the unexpurgated book Lady Chatterley’s Lover to the restrictions placed on the publication of Peter Heehs’s writings on Sri Aurobindo, governments in different parts of the country were only too willing to restrict, and even prohibit, artistic representations, literary works and even historical and political writings. Within liberalism, freedom of speech and expression can be justifiably restricted only when they pose a real and imminent danger of causing physical injury (harm) to others. In India a more expansive notion of ‘harm’ was invoked. Books, films and other forms of expression have been banned on the ground that it hurts the sentiments of the members of a particular community. The mere possibility of the expression offending the sensibilities of some by their irreverence towards that which they consider as ‘sacred’ has justified curbing the freedom of speech and expression. In addition to it, expressions have frequently been curtailed on the grounds that they violate the norms of public decency or pose a threat to the security of the state. What has made the situation more complex is that groups within almost all communities – the majority and the significant minorities – have invoked the available grounds for seeking restrictions on freedom of speech and expression. For example, the leaders of the Muslim community asked the government to ban the sale of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses; members of the Christian community sought a ban on screening The Da Vinci Code; groups within the Hindu community prevented the making of the film Water in Varanasi51 and wanted a ban on the film Fire. It is not just the larger religious communities but also smaller groups – sections of a linguistic community and religious denominations, particular caste communities – that have mobilized to seek similar restrictions even on historical and empirical work. The Gujjar community, for instance, sought a ban on screening of the film Bandit Queen, for misrepresenting their community; and ‘Sambhaji Brigade’, along with other political

freedom   organizations, demanded a ban on James Laine’s Shivaji – The Hindu King in Muslim India. Further, almost all political parties, when in office, have been eager to listen to these community sentiments and impose restrictions, and often a complete ban, on the identified expression. To take a few examples: seven states banned the screening of the film The Da Vinci Code, even after the film had been cleared by the Censor Board of Film Certification in India; James Laine’s book Shivaji – The Hindu King in Muslim India was banned in Maharashtra; Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was banned all over India;52 and, more recently, twenty-seven states of the country imposed a ban on Joseph Lelyveld’s The Great Soul.53 Indeed it is through these actions of banning books, films and other expressions that the politics of identities has often played out in India. It usually begins with a small group, claiming to speak on behalf of the community, expressing anger and hurt, and the government in office assuaging this hurt sentiment. As governments are keen to appear sympathetic to the concerns of different communities, individuals who raise these issues and aggressively assert that certain expressions are offensive and unacceptable receive the attention of both the government and the media. So there are payoffs, rather than penalties. The more important end result is that issues of symbolic representation come to dominate the public sphere;54 and the spectacle – the staging of protests, the shrill rhetoric, the burning of the book/film/effigy of the author/artist – successfully eclipses the space for reason to enter and prevail in the public domain. This is, however, only one dimension of the narrative around freedom of speech and expression. In the context of competitive electoral politics, political parties eager to seem attentive to community concerns have been quick to impose restrictions on free expression, but the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, has often given some reprieve to the concerned/targeted individuals. This is not to say that the courts have always protected freedom of speech and expression against executive or legislative intervention. Indeed on

  india many occasions the High Courts have accepted the rationale offered by the government in office. But the Supreme Court, particularly since the 1980s,55 has been more cautious in its approach. In fact it has tended to lean towards the side of freedom of speech and expression. Dealing with petitions seeking restrictions on grounds of ‘public decency’ and ‘morality’, the Supreme Court introduced a distinction between ‘vulgarity’ and ‘obscenity’ – the former inducing disgust and revulsion in the reader/viewer (something that could be used to portray a social evil), and the latter lascivious thoughts (Samaresh Bose and Another v. Amal Mittal and Another, 1986 AIR 967; see also Ranjit Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra, 1965 AIR 881). It further distinguished between mere obscenity and obscenity with a social purpose to argue that representation of such things as violence, nudity and sex may be permissible in some instances (Bobby Art International and Others v. Om Pal Singh Hoon and Others, 1996 AIR (SC) 846).56 On a number of occasions the Supreme Court took the view that if a film or a programme had been approved and certified by an expert committee or the authorized regulatory body, then the ‘inexpert criminal court must be cautious to rush in’ and they must ‘indeed fear to tread’ (Raj Kapoor and Others v. State and Others, 1980 AIR 258).57 The Court did not rule out an appeal to the judiciary at any stage; nor did it question the need for pre-censorship in the case of films; but it emphasized the need to contextualize the expression while considering the claim that it violates the public sense of morality, is obscene and misrepresents women. When there were violations of the specified norms of acceptable expression it directed the executive or the police to take necessary action instead of intervening directly and banning the publication of certain advertisements or the screening of certain prgarmmes (Ramesh s/o Chotalal Dalal v. Union of India and Others, 1988 AIR 775; Suo Moto v. State of Rajasthan, 2005 AIR (RAJ) 300; Pratibha Naithani v. Union of India, 2006 AIR (Bom) 259; Ajay Goswami v. Union of India and Others, 2007 SCC 143). At times the Supreme Court intervened to offer a more strident defence of the freedom of speech and expression. In the case involving

freedom   the painting of ‘Bharat Mata’ by M.F. Hussain, it stated: ‘There should be freedom for the thought we hate. Freedom of speech has no meaning if there is no freedom of speech. The reality of democracy is to be measured by the extent of freedom and accommodation it extends’ (M.F. Hussain v. Raj Kumar Pandey, Crl. Revision Petition no. 114/2007).58 Even more importantly, as the issue of offending/ hurting the sentiments of a community has so often been raised, the Court argued that ‘freedom of speech cannot be suppressed on account of threat of demonstrations and processions’ or ‘threat of violence’. The danger posed by the expression must be imminent, ‘equivalent to a spark in a powder keg’ and not merely conjectural and remote (S. Rangarajan v. P. Jagjivan Ram, 1989 SCC (2) 574, at 227). That is not all. It also argued that the freedom of speech cannot be ‘suppressed on account of threat of demonstrations and processions or threats of violence. That would be tantamount to negation of the rule of law and a surrender to blackmail and intimidation’ (S. Rangarajan v. P. Jagjivan Ram, 1989 SCC (2) 574, at 231). Although in this and many other cases the Supreme Court accepted the need to balance freedom of speech with social interests and concerns of security, it has on several occasions reasserted the belief that freedom of speech and expression must ‘be broadly construed to include the freedom to circulate one’s views by words of mouth or in writing or through audio-visual instrumentalities. It, therefore, includes the right to propagate one’s views through the print media or through any other communication channel, e.g. the radio and the television’ (Life Insurance Corporation of India and… v. Prof. Manubhai Shah Etc. Etc., 1993 AIR 171, at 608).59 The interventions of the Supreme Court have been extremely important, and in many cases have offered relief by quashing the bans imposed by governments and upheld by the relevant High Court. However, the cases that have gone all the way up to the Supreme Court are relatively few and the pronouncements of the Supreme Court have not checked either the demand for bans or the actions of the state governments in this regard. So bans continue to be imposed; but

  india this should not be taken to imply that there is little or no freedom of speech and expression enjoyed by the citizens of India. Over the years print and electronic media have grown enormously and flourished (Jeffrey 2000), and now social networking sites are fast becoming the terrain of free expression. One must also add here that most of the time bans are imposed in particular regions or states, which means that the work is available for viewing in another, perhaps adjoining, region. For example, The Da Vinci Code was banned in seven states, but was available for viewing in twice as many states; even when the film was banned in a few states, the book was available for the people to read; the film Fanah faced a social boycott in Gujarat but could be viewed elsewhere in the country; so the federal structure of India has mitigated the effects of these restrictions to some extent. In only a few cases has a countrywide ban been imposed, but the intent of these forms of censorship – of silencing the expression – is rarely, if ever, realized. In fact the staging of protests and official statements condemning the work give it the publicity that defeats the initial intent. In some cases, political campaigns that follow a ban or prohibition try to ensure that the work gets a viewing. These are just some of the ways in which the effect of prohibitions and restrictions has been minimized, contested, but not entirely eliminated. The list of books, films and exhibitions that have been banned, prohibited or restricted is very long, and the number grows when we consider the informal social boycotts and pressures that are mobilized to restrict the distribution/sale of a book or the screening of a film. While problems of this nature are surfacing the world over and the harm principle, on the basis of which the boundaries of what is permissible were drawn, is itself being scrutinized, nevertheless in India one has to ask whether the limited space available for the articulation of individual liberty has resulted from our understanding of swaraj. The votaries of swaraj had emphasized the value of the collective; they had spoken of individual responsibilities and obligations to that

freedom   larger whole. They began with the notion of an individual-in-society; they placed responsibility squarely upon the individual. Individuals were expected to realize the truth for themselves and determine what was right and appropriate. This understanding had to be arrived at by the self, and not imposed from the outside even by an enlightened other, let alone a social or political group or organization. It was this centrality accorded to the individual that made room for individual liberty within these frameworks and prevented the collective speaking on behalf of its members. This element changed in the post-independence period. From being mindful of the presence of the other, there was a marked shift to making the group speak for the individual. The effect of this move and the altered relationship between the individual and the collective have been manifest most sharply in matters involving freedom of expression.

four Religion

It was through the lens of religion that Europe represented India in its own consciousness. In the late eighteenth century, interest in the history of civilizations (Kopf 1979; Rudolph and Rudolph 2001) led to the discovery of India, or what Raymond Schwab refers to as the ‘oriental renaissance’ in Europe (Schwab 1987; Almeida and Gilpin 2005). Knowledge of the Sanskrit language and the subsequent translation of the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, eighteen Puranas, Bhagavadgita, Ramayana, along with the literary works of figures like Kalidasa, put the spotlight on ancient India – its religion and spirituality. These representations projected a seamless continuity between the past and the present, and, perhaps more importantly, defined the essence of India in terms of its religious and cultural practices. Not everyone assessed these practices in quite the same way. If some spoke of the greatness of the Hindu and Islamic civilizations and identified the former as the ‘noblest’ of the ancient people (Schopenhauer, quoted in Glasenapp 1973: 63) and India as the ‘native land of the human race’ (64), the point of origin of the human race,1 others referred to the stagnation that had become established in this society.2 Yet, despite such differences of judgement, religion remained in each the central category through which India was analysed and understood.

religion   The different evaluations of Indian society and civilization were nevertheless important as they yielded different colonial policies towards India. The more positive evaluations that spoke of two great civilizations of the world – the ancient Hindu Sanskrit civilization and the Persian Islamic civilization – coexisting in India wanted the subjects to be governed by their own laws in social, religious and family matters: that is, in affairs outside the sphere of economy. The other view, which was more critical of the religious and caste-related practices that prevailed in India, aimed to make the people of India ‘English in taste’ and ‘opinion’ (Macaulay 1835). However, in fairly dissimilar ways each of them intensified perceptions of religious identity and difference. The desire to allow the people of the two communities (Hindus and Muslims) to be governed by their own laws prompted the codification of the personal laws of each of these communities, so that the law of the Quran and the Law of the Shastras may be adhered to while dealing with the Muslim and the Hindu populations respectively. The process of formal codification, which was initiated by Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of the East India Company in 1774, pluralized the public sphere and the legal framework (Rudolph and Rudolph 2001). By constructing two discrete and distinct communities – Hindus and Muslims – it formally recognized the existing heterogeneity; but at the same time it engendered a process of homogenization. On the one hand, a number of groups, like the Mers and the Meos, who observed practices that were taken from Hinduism and Islam, were now identified and placed within a specific community (see Mayaram 1997, 2004); on the other hand, overlooking the differences that existed across caste distinctions and regions, a homogenous Hindu community and a Muslim community were constructed.3 The codification was an expression of the reluctance to interfere in the non-economic sphere, and this strategy helped to consolidate and win support for the East India Company. Nevertheless, the positive assessment of ancient India rediscovered the past and made it available to the people of India, and above

  india all prepared the ground for identifying the self through available textual sources rather than the plurality of lived practices. This shift in emphasis, from the practices observed by the different groups to thought as encoded in iconic texts, rigidified difference. Together, these elements drew a sharp boundary separating the two religious communities (Hindus and Muslims); at the same time they made individuals more acutely aware of their religious identity and a sense of being part of a community. The more negative representations of Indian civilization, which were critical of existing traditions, focused on changing society. At one level they invoked the language of modernity to question certain aspects of caste inequalities and practices related to women, and at another they projected themselves as virtuous rulers by creating separate dispensations to include different groups and minorities. For the lower castes, who were ordinarily deprived of social goods and economic opportunities available to members of the other castes within the Hindu community, they offered opportunities in the field of education through fellowships4 and other forms of assistance, and subsequently separate representation. The Muslim community (a significant religious minority in India) was also given group representation in elected bodies through a system of separate electorates. Separate representation was also given, at a later date, to the Sikhs. This linking of participation with community identity also reinforced religious identities and constructed a conception of difference. It brought people into the public and political arena as members of distinct communities and gave credence to the belief that members of a community have shared interests and concerns. Even though the professed aim of British rule was to create a modern, rational subject, through a system of education in which people would be exposed to Western learning, literature and science, the effort to construct an ‘anglicized uniformity’ (Rudolph and Rudolph 2001: 42) triggered a counter-reaction. It prompted the establishment of educational institutions such as the Benaras Hindu University and the Mohammaden Anglo Oriental College at Aligarh, each of which was dedicated to the

religion   creation of a different elite: one that was rooted in its own tradition while simultaneously being aware of the world outside. Thus, even though Indian society and civilization were assessed differently and colonial policies changed over time, each indirectly, at least, boxed individuals into their community. The subject population surfaced not as individuals but as members of different religious communities and, within Hinduism, of different castes. Community identities were pushed to the fore in yet another way. Colonial rule offered little room for the people of India to enter directly into the public arena and participate in the political process. As individuals were edged out of the public domain it was the community that provided space for engaging with the world outside the home. Although at first there was a proliferation of a number of small groups (often identified by the term samaj), over time it was religious community identities that became consolidated. The British policy of separate representation for religious communities contributed to this process in no small measure. It deepened perceptions of group difference, linked together the fate of community members, and reinforced the view that members of different communities had dissimilar interests. Collectively these measures brought some people together, but they also created divisions and distinctions between communities. It was this complex of conditions that gave religion, and with it religious identities and communities, a defining role all through the colonial period as well as in the years after independence. Religion emerged in the public domain in three different but interrelated ways: (i) as the site of and a resource for change; (ii) as a ground for political mobilization and the construction of identities; and (iii) as a mode of training the will and arriving at the true purpose of one’s existence. Spirituality figured centrally in the last form, but even here, as in all other forms, religion was closely linked with social and political life. Religious rituals and practices of the Hindu community had been the object of concern for a long time and the Bhakti tradition had

  india questioned and changed some practices. The encounter with Christian missionaries and the ideas of Enlightenment modernity, which came with the arrival of the British, only accentuated the urgency to take a critical look at one’s own social and religious practices, particularly those related to the status of women, the caste system, idol worship and pantheism. Against this backdrop a number of reform movements emerged from the late nineteenth century onwards. If some of them tried to change society by subjecting existing religious beliefs to rational scrutiny, others reread religious texts to counter the view that India was a highly stratified society, with deeply entrenched structures of inequality, steeped in superstition, primitive in its outlook, utterly lacking in a sense of subjective freedom and a sense of unity. From the mid-nineteenth century, reform movements from Brahmo Samaj to Prarthana Samaj adopted a rationalist outlook to question what appeared to them to be unacceptable rituals and superstitions. Relying on science and reason they worked for the education of women and refused to accept the authority of religion or tradition. By critically examining religious beliefs (like the doctrine of karma, which sees past deeds as having a causal effect on the present, and explains the present position of a person in terms of his or her past deeds) and practices like sati (self-immolation of a widow on the pyre of her husband), child marriage, polygamy, the caste system, they hoped to change society. They spoke of a common humanity, the ‘fellowship of all souls’ (Slater 1884: 63), and from this perspective questioned existing practices and beliefs that were sanctioned on the basis of religious authority. While this set of reform movements valued liberal education, other interventions that came from leaders like Swami Vivekananda and Swami Dayananda tried to revitalize Indian society by retrieving the spiritual truth that was, in their view, already available in the ancient religious texts. In particular they turned to the Vedas and the Upanishads5 to constitute a conception of the self that could refute the picture of Hinduism that was presented by the missionaries, and, even more

religion   importantly, to offer a basis for creating a political community that could hold its own against the lure of Western civilization. Swami Dayananda and Swami Vivekananda invoked the authority of the Vedas to argue that Hinduism was essentially a monotheistic religion, affirming belief in One Supreme Soul, or God. The former argued that the different gods and devatas that were part of the Hindu pantheon were simply embodiments of desirable qualities (Dayananda [1908] 1984: 203),6 and the ultimate Being that pervaded the universe was One. ‘Nowhere’, Swami Dayananda explained, ‘in all the four Vedas is there written anything that could go to show that there are more gods than one. On the other hand, it is clearly said in many places that there is only one God’ (203). Swami Vivekananda expressed a similar belief. He observed: ‘Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti – that which exists is one; sages call it by various names.’7 ‘He, the One, who vibrates more quickly than mind, who attains to more speed than mind can ever do, whom even the gods reach not, nor thought grasps, He moving, everything moves. In Him all exists. … This is another great theme of the Vedanta, this Oneness of life, this Oneness of everything’ (Vivekananda 1896, vol. II).8 Although Swami Dayananda and Swami Vivekananda did not agree on all aspects of Hinduism, they maintained that practices like idol worship were simply the ‘attempt of the underdeveloped mind to grasp higher spiritual truths’ (Vivekananda 1893, vol. I).9 They were not the defining feature of Hinduism. If anything, they were the fabrications of later texts, such as the Bhagvata Purana, and needed therefore to be discarded (Sharma 2004: 32). It was essential to get back to the Advaitya philosophy embodied in the Vedanta and affirm, quite unambiguously, the oneness of all beings and the totality of all souls.10 This reconsideration of the core of Hinduism entailed a reassessment of existing social beliefs and practices. Countering the view that women had a subordinate position in Hinduism, Swami Vivekananda claimed that the Hindu religion treated women as equals. ‘The next idea of the Aryans is the freedom of women. It is

  india in the Aryan literature that we find women in ancient times taking the same share as men’ (Vivekananda 1894, vol. IX).11 In Hinduism, divine creative energy was presented in the feminine form as Shakti and the killing of women was compared to the killing of a brahmin. He went on to argue that in the past women were allowed to read the Vedas and they participated in intellectual and religious debates. They were equal to men in society (Vivekananda 1894, vol. IX).12 These are just a few instances of the way in which the religious inheritance, its sacred texts, were read to challenge prevalent social customs13 and to redefine the self, more specifically the Hindu self. Religion became here a valuable resource that could be tapped to challenge hostile and negative representations of Hinduism, and thereby of India, in order to effect social change; and, even more importantly, to re-energize Hinduism and create a confident community that recognizes its obligations. Swami Dayananda culled from the sacred texts a set of moral prescriptions that should regulate interpersonal behaviour and relationships (see Dayananda [1903] 1984: chs 2, 3, 10); Swami Vivekananda recovered from the ancient Hindu texts the idea of the underlying unity and divinity of all souls, to create a community around the ethic of service to others. A few others, most notably Sri Aurobindo, used the language of religion to transform the abstract love for one’s community and nation into something more tangible and real – something that could then bring people together in the struggle against colonial rule (Aurobindo 1947: 13). Each of these invocations of religion and the sacred texts had a practical dimension: they sought to build a political community, assertive and sure of itself and its spiritual truths, and motivated by the ideal of a karmayogi (a person who seeks the truth and then acts on that basis). By grounding the political in the spiritual, by offering a framework for understanding the self and engaging with the collective, these social and political leaders presented religion as a positive force that could be the basis of building a community. Although they drew upon ancient Hindu civilization as a resource for imagining a political

religion   community (something that continually limited the possibility of creating an inclusive Indian identity), their views highlighted the role that religion could play in creating a new social and moral ethic – one that could give a sense of identity to an otherwise fragmented group. The idea that religion is a resource that can be used to reconfigure the social structure and to create a self-confident community has found many new expressions in the post-independence period. In different states of India, such as Punjab, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, the lower-caste communities, which were often excluded from many spheres of social and religious life, have used, and continue to use, the site of religion to challenge the dominance of Brahamanic Hinduism. They organize separate religious gatherings on major festivals and utilize these occasions to build a sense of solidarity among the marginalized groups. In some places they have constructed their own places of worship, ordained priests from their communities and reappropriated religious symbols to chisel a new identity for themselves (see Mahajan and Jodhka 2010). A few groups, following the example of Ambedkar, have reinscribed a new identity for themselves by forsaking Hinduism and converting to Buddhism. By announcing a date when they will publicly, and in large numbers, walk out of the Hindu fold and convert to Buddhism, they use religion as the space to mark their rebellion against existing structures of domination. Paradoxically enough, they maintain that the Hindu religion is the primary source of their subordination, even though as they bury one religion they nourish another. Religion remains, through all this, a site and a resource for change, albeit in a very different form. Turning to religion, and religious texts, as a resource for forging a conception of the self, of who we are, and what our duties are towards each other, was just one of the many ways in which religion entered into public discourse. Colonial policies involving the codification of separate community Personal Laws, setting up separate electorates for Scheduled Castes and Muslims, and reservation of seats for specific communities in different institutions brought in

  india religion in yet another form. They consolidated religious identities and made community the relevant category for participating in the political arena. As significant numbers of individuals entered into legislative bodies as members of specific communities, and often through separate electorates, the perception that each community had distinct concerns and interests was reinforced. Congealed community identities that emerged in this process became a basis for political mobilization – something that could then be tapped by different political groups for their own agendas. If some political actors could play on the insecurities of their community members, others could offer assurance that their political and religious needs would be protected. Either way, religious identities, and communities that they generated, became an active presence in the public arena, compelling everyone to take note of them and address their concerns. Religious community-based political mobilization surfaced as a response to colonial policies, yet it threw up political leadership that spoke for, and took up, the concerns of specific groups and communities. They submitted representations about the needs of their religious community and raised concerns which, in their view, were shared by members of their community. Muslims from Bengal, for instance, wrote that ‘All sorts of employment, great and small, are being gradually snatched away from the Muhammadans, and bestowed on men of other races, particularly the Hindus’ (Hunter quoted in Faruqui 1963: 14). On the other side, when separate representation through separate electorates was given to the Muslim community, leaders of the Hindu community, like Madan Mohan Malaviya, stated that similar consideration had not been shown to the Hindus in provinces where they were in a minority.14 The articulation of shared concerns in this form legitimized the deployment of community-targeted policies and implicitly, at least, made the community a site for the mobilization of the people. Over time religious community became a common, if not also an accepted, category of social and political life, and stronger political claims came to be made in the name of shared and discrete community

religion   interests. A call for special consideration and separate representation gave way to the demand for separate territory for each nation,15 and the desire to establish educational institutions that cater to the needs of particular communities was supplemented by the setting up of community religious and educational institutions – each dedicated to retrieving the heritage and learning of Islamic or Hindu (as the case may be) civilization. After independence, participation in the political process was not predicated on one’s religious identity, yet the latter remained a site for the mobilization of the electorate. In the competition for votes political parties found it relatively easier to win the support of the people by appealing to what appeared to be their shared community interests. There was, however, one significant difference from the practice in the pre-independence era. When religious identities were the basis of political participation, political and social agendas tended to dominate public discourse. Special privileges and opportunities were demanded and then justified on grounds of shared history and, at times, anxieties of a community. However, after independence, when participation in the political domain was delinked from community membership, it was commonly believed that communities are internally differentiated. This assumption that members of a community do not have shared political and economic interests gave credence to the view that what they hold in common are cultural and religious concerns. This yielded a new form of identity politics. Political parties, attempting to win the support of groups in electoral politics, took up and lent support to the religious concerns of specific communities: for instance, they banned the slaughter of cows, opened the gates of the Babri Masjid for prayer, legislated to curb the intervention of the courts in matters relating to personal laws, and decreed that the area around a specific temple was a holy area where certain kinds of food would not be permitted. During colonial rule, the construction and mobilization of religious identities were at times the unintended consequence of a political

  india strategy aimed at creating space for the expression of dissent. In the early years of the twentieth century Bal Gangadhar Tilak realized that religion, or more specifically religious festivals and cultural gatherings like Ganesh Utsav, offered a platform for bringing together people of different denominations and presenting the political agenda of ‘Home Rule’ to them. He revived the celebration of Shivaji’s coronation and used this occasion to talk about the life of Shivaji, and through this raised questions relating to oppression and self-rule. ‘All’, he argued, ‘have to learn from Shivaji that the vitality is not lost so quickly by the Indian races’ (Tilak [3 July 1906] 1990a: 172). The use of religious festivals and the reliance on principles that were derived from a reading of the ancient Hindu texts had the possibility of reinvigorating Hinduism; it could mould a community into a nation, but it also contained the potential for alienating other significant minorities. Although this is not an issue that I want to discuss here, what has to be noted is that religion offered a ground for mobilization, not merely to create the politics of identities but, beyond that, to form the basis for bringing people into the political and public arenas. Tilak used religion as an instrument to weave together different groups of people and to send a political message to them; yet even for him religion had a deeper purpose. Like Sri Aurobindo and many of his other contemporaries, he maintained that religion offered a social and moral ethic – one which could, or even should, be the basis of social and political life. Challenging the popular belief that religion, particularly Hindu religion, privileged a life of renunciation, he retrieved from the Gita the ideal of karma yoga: a life of action dedicated to the performance of one’s duties in a selfless manner. The conclusion I have come to is that the Gita advocates the performance of action in this world even after the actor has achieved the highest union with the supreme Diety by Gnana (knowledge) or Bhakti (Devotion). This action must be done to keep the world going by the right path of evolution which the Creator has destined the world to follow. … Shri Krishna himself says that there is

religion   nothing in all the three worlds that He need acquire, and still he acts. He acts because if he did not, the world will be ruined. If man seeks unity with the Diety, he must necessarily seek unity with the interests of the world also, and work for it. If he does not, then the unity is not perfect, because there is union between two elements out of three (man and Deity) and the third (the world) is left out. (Tilak 1935: xxv–xxvi)16

Religion was here a mode of realizing the true nature of one’s being and then acting in accordance with that understanding. This was yet another way in which religion figured in the public arena. Religion, as Lala Lajpat Rai explained, ‘guides and moulds a man, or a nation, and that elevates and ennobles them, that raises them to a high ideals, that evokes highest of sacrifices’ (Rai 1993: 45). ‘Real religion’ (45) had this potential, but this dimension of religion had, in this view, been lost; it had to be retrieved in order to prepare the self for the struggle for freedom. It was, in this sense, the nature of the task at home – the struggle for political freedom – that necessitated an appeal to religion. After all, ‘How can a nation destitute of faith produce martyrs’ (45).17 Lajpat Rai was not alone in thinking this way. Aurobindo, for instance, maintained that building a nation required moral strength, tyaga (sacrifice), self-discipline, organization – elements that could be nurtured through religion. It is not till the Motherland reveals herself to the eye of the mind as something more than a stretch of earth or a mass of individuals, it is not till she takes the shape of a great Divine and Maternal Power in a form of beauty that can dominate the mind and seize the heart, that these petty fears and hopes vanish in the all-absorbing passion for the Mother and her service, and the patriotism that works miracles and saves a doomed nation is born. (Aurobindo 1947: 13)

Religion had this potential: it could give substance to the collective, forge a unity with the latter, enabling individuals to move beyond the pursuit of narrow particularistic interests. It could also offer a moral code delineating and reminding people of their duty

  india ‘towards God and towards man’ (Tilak [1906] 1990a: 175). Religion was here taking on a role that reason could not, in their view, perform. Reason could at best draw attention to internal contradictions in the reasoning that informs our social practices; it could build a unity of humankind but not a political community. Reason lay in the individual and assumed the primacy of that individual, while the making of a community required that individuals see themselves as part of a larger whole. The capacity to identify what is good for oneself with the good of the collective required a spiritual basis and could not, in their view, flow from faith in reason. This understanding of the fragility of reason took many different forms. For some individuals religion offered a firmer basis for arriving at a code of social and moral life. It could prepare the self to move beyond the ego and recognize our obligations to one another; it could also offer a foundational ethic to resolve the moral dilemmas that one confronts in everyday life. For others, religion was not merely a source for arriving at the truth; it was a way of preparing oneself to act in accordance with the truth. Reason, or the human intellect, could show us the way but it could not cultivate the will and build our resolve to act as truth demanded. A distinction was being made here between knowing what the right action is and actually performing it. The latter need not, it was assumed, follow from the former; to act in the right way entailed training the will; left to itself the will may be weak and may render reason helpless. Religion could step in to fortify the will, helping it to apprehend the truth and to act in accordance with that truth. In this frame of thinking religion was not always associated with a particular faith or set of beliefs. It was a mode of training the will, or cultivating what Gandhi called ‘soul-force’. It entailed following certain practices and inculcating a certain discipline in everyday life. In his ashram, Gandhi called upon members to pursue truth, follow the code of ahimsa (non-violence and the doctrine of love and forgiveness), self-discipline (celibacy and control over the appetites), ‘non-thieving’ (taking only that which is necessary and enough for

religion   one’s existence and no more) (Gandhi [1939] 1964: 376; see also Gandhi 1932), fearlessness, along with swadesh, and treat others as equals.18 Even though the identified practices had an affinity with, and were at times drawn from, a particular religion, they were not reducible to any one religion. In fact one could choose another set of practices, or some and not all of these ‘vows’, to strengthen one’s resolve to be always truthful, fearless and respectful to all humanity. The point is that the capacity to confront the truth and to act in a fearless manner without any desire for personal gain were qualities that had to be cultivated, nurtured and energized. Conceived in this form religion was not always in conflict with reason; it could coexist with and even at times supplement it, enabling individuals to pursue that which they know, through their reason and intellect, to be the truth. Conceived as soul-force or spirituality, religion was also expected to permeate and inform actions in almost every sphere of life – the private and the public. However, for most advocates of this notion of religion, particularly Gandhi, the conviction to act in a certain way, to adopt certain practices in one’s life, was a personal choice. It had to come from within; the individual was expected to choose that way of life and make that commitment to him- or herself. It could not (and should not) be externally imposed or mandated. In this sense, even though religion was not restricted to the private sphere it was very intensely personal. This understanding of religion, which was present most vividly in the work of Mahatma Gandhi, operated with a conception that was significantly different from the more instrumental perspectives on religion where the focus was either on the construction and mobilization of religious identities or on the possibility of using religious texts as a resource for change. Religion was thus understood in a variety of different ways. At times it was associated with a spiritual truth, something that could be a source of a moral and social ethic as well as a means of preparing the will; on other occasions it surfaced as a site for the

  india formation and mobilization of identity. This dual, and somewhat conflicting, representation of religion framed the discussions of the Constituent Assembly on matters relating to religion. The demand for a separate homeland for the Muslim community,19 the Partition and the communal riots that followed heightened awareness of the fact that religion could be used for constructing and mobilizing identities. The instrumental use of religion created anxieties, but it did not eclipse more positive evaluations of its role. Members of the Constituent Assembly accepted that religion was an important source of personal identity, and the basis of a moral ethic. They struck a balance between these two different conceptions of religion by not trying to create a wall that would separate religion from (or keep it away from) public life. Instead of treating religion as a purely personal matter that must be restricted to the private domain, they accepted its public dimension and made room for it in the public domain. But, fearing the instrumental use of religion, and the possibility of generating conflict around certain issues, they subjected some aspects of the functioning of religious communities and institutions to state regulation. Although the clamour to make India a Hindu state grew stronger when the state of Pakistan was created to provide the Muslim minority with a separate homeland, this point of view found little favour within the Constituent Assembly. Fairly early in the deliberations members agreed that the independent state of India would neither have an official religion nor align itself with any one religion.20 The minority communities nevertheless required an assurance that they would be treated as equal and that the culture of the majority would not be imposed on them. The majority too had its concerns. It wanted not just the right to religious worship but also the free practice of religion to be protected.21 Members from the Christian community were concerned about the right to propagate22 and many more felt that protecting religious freedom required giving communities the right to establish and administer their own religious institutions. Eventually, the framework that was endorsed gave individuals the

religion   right to ‘profess, propagate and practice’ their religion (Article 25). Individuals and groups could set up religious institutions and charitable trusts, and minorities could establish educational institutions to protect and promote their language and culture. Each of these rights was subject to certain restrictions on grounds of ‘public order, morality and health’; in addition, the financial and secular aspects of the working of religious institutions could be regulated by the state. The state could introduce social legislation in favour of women and other vulnerable groups, yet a fairly wide degree of liberty was given to individuals and groups in matters of religion. Educational institutions established and administered by people belonging to a religious minority were eligible to receive funds from the state. It was agreed that there would be no compulsory religious education in any institution supported by the state and no tax would be imposed the proceeds of which were intended only for religious purposes. The specifics of the religion–state relationship is a subject I have dealt with elsewhere (see Mahajan 1998: 45–78), but of particlular note here is that a framework was devised to accommodate some of the concerns of different religious identities. A compromise was reached on most matters, which meant that not all demands were accepted in their original form. But the viewpoints presented by members of various communities on aspects of the religion–state relationship were discussed; and decisions were arrived at after considering their arguments and perspectives. The framework that was finally adopted assured religious liberty for all by giving minorities the right to protect and promote their cultural and religious identity. If the pre-independence period was marked by the mobilization of religious communities, the assertion of separate interests and group representation, the moment of the framing of the constitution was marked by another kind of identity-based politics. Instead of formal community quotas, an effort was made to include members of different communities in key committees, such as the Advisory Committee on the Fundamental Rights of Citizens and Minorities,

  india so that they were representative of the social fabric of India. The Indian National Congress had maintained throughout the struggle for independence that it stood for the people of India. But instead of assuming that it could speak for all social groups itself, it took the initiative to involve different communities by nominating members from those communities that were not adequately represented in the Assembly. It did not accept the need for separate group representation. The move to involve members of different communities may have lent the process legitimacy, but it also signalled the form of identity politics and accommodation that was likely to mark the polity in the years to come. The decision to nominate members of different communities to key positions in decision-making bodies was a way of endorsing the politics of presence, albeit in a form that was different from the one used by the colonizers – namely, inclusion through separate representation. It was a way of bringing in diverse communities, particularly the minorities, and it suggested that the highest positions in the country were not closed to them. This was a form of minority accommodation within the framework of common citizenship, and it was to become a distinctive feature of independent India. Over the decades successive governments at the centre, and often at the level of different states, have tried to perform a balancing act, attempting to include individuals from different communities in important decision-making bodies, such as the Cabinet, the Council of Ministers, the Office of the President and other key public offices. This form of informal inclusion has, however, gone hand in hand with an appeal to religion or religious interests to mobilize the support of a community. In electoral politics parties can campaign to win support for their programmes and agendas, or they can try to win votes by showing that they will take up, and protect, the interests of specific groups. In India, where the population had been mobilized on religious grounds, political parties frequently opted for the latter path. They took up religious demands, or what they considered would win them the support of a religious community.

religion   This form of mobilization almost always created restlessness among communities; when the interests of one community were attended to, other communities felt they were being neglected or treated unfairly. To take one example: shortly after independence, a number of state governments initiated legislation that adversely affected the minority communities. For instance, Assam in 1950, Uttar Pradesh in 1955 and Tamil Nadu in 1958 passed laws prohibiting the slaughter of cows (cows are considered sacred by Hindus); a few years later, Orissa in 1967 and Madhya Pradesh in 1968 introduced legislation to place more restrictions upon conversions. Both measures attended to the demands of Hindu religious groups and affected the minority communities adversely. However, such measures (which went in favour of the majority) were accompanied by legislation that intervened directly in the affairs of the Hindu community while refraining from intervening in the affairs of the minorities. The state introduced reforms in Hindu social practices and created an office to regulate the financial and secular aspects of the functioning of Hindu religious and charitable trusts. It also took the initiative to reform the Hindu Personal Law. But, despite the presence of gender inequality in almost all personal laws, it did not initiate reforms in the laws of minority communities. Thus, each time the interests of one community were pursued, the other saw itself being unfairly treated. Perhaps the unintended consequence of this form of identity mobilization was that a pattern was created, where the state was not permanently aligned with any one community but also was never completely distanced from any of them. If it leaned towards one community at a given time, it often moved in the opposite direction in another region or at another time. Thus, neither the interests of the majority community were consistently privileged nor the minorities ignored all the time. Different identities were kept alive and simmering. One party or another could always galvanize support by taking up religious issues, and equally they could appeal to a community’s sense of being unfairly treated. The government of the day could do the same. Towards whom elected representatives might tilt, or how

  india they might try to balance the perceived interests of the different communities, could not be plotted in advance; it all depended upon the specific social and political context. This was the peculiarity of the identity politics that emerged in the post-independence period, and it privileged the contingent and the political over all else. Although identity politics, seen as a way of appealing to and constructing identities, was at work all through the post-independence period, it took a spectacularly different form at the end of the 1980s. A new political discourse gained prominence at this time, one which spoke of a homogenized Hindu identity, demonized some minorities as ‘outsiders’ or ‘anti-national’, and justified the need to construct a national identity anchored in the culture of the majority (see Hansen 1999). An assertive majority identity had existed even in the pre-independence period, but in the post-independence period it had not had a significant presence. A consensus had emerged that India would treat all its diverse communities as equal, and create an environment in which they could flourish. Although the occurrence of sporadic but recurrent incidents of inter-community riots was a reminder of the inability to keep that promise, nevertheless the idea that India should be a Hindu state had little support. This changed visibly in the 1990s, with political parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party gaining popular electoral support and more and more groups justifying a special status for the majority within the democracy. The constitutional framework was founded on the belief that people of different communities had shared religious and, possibly, cultural interests but no common economic and political interests. Hence, in the political realm they were represented as citizens but in the social arena and family affairs religion was seen as ordering individual lives. This underlying assumption was challenged fundamentally in the identity politics that came to prevail from the 1990s when several Hindu organizations came together in an effort to create a cohesive Hindu identity and through it a consolidated political community. Hindus were numerically the largest community in society, but they were internally divided on lines of caste and sect.

religion   Hence their numerical majority could not translate into a political majority. Part of the effort of the Hindu organizations, along with the Bharatiya Janata Party, was to bring these different groups together, and create a sense of being one Hindu community. They did this by taking up the agenda of building a temple to mark the birthplace of the Hindu deity Rama. Since a mosque existed at the identified place, the construction of a common Hindu identity simultaneously polarized society along lines of religion – those supportive of the construction of the temple and those against it, the insiders and the outsiders respectively. Religious minorities in India had, on occasion, acted as a unified political entity, but this had not happened in the case of the majority community. The consolidation of the majority community had serious repercussions for the nation-state as a whole, because the cultural majority could now become a political majority, and stamp its identity on the public space irrevocably. This was an identity politics of a different kind, as it aimed to create an India that reflected the culture of the majority. This agenda of the Hindu organizations had only limited success, but it created the possibility of pan-India mobilizations on grounds of religion; it consolidated religious identities, not just the Hindu but also the Muslim, which was posited as the quintessential ‘other’. Religious identity came to be seen as the most important marker of a person’s identity; it is not surprising that when other political parties tried to challenge the agenda of cultural majoritarianism they too accepted religious communities as the category of social and political life. In 2006, the Congress-led UPA government at the centre raised the question of the economic and educational status of the Muslim community. By focusing on certain parameters of development, it attempted to set the agenda in non-cultural terms, but in the process reaffirmed the centrality of religious identity even more. By assuming that it is one’s religious identity that determines access to socially valued goods, like education and employment, this policy implicitly accepted religion as the essential marker of identity in the public domain. It also acknowledged implicitly that in the public domain it

  india is the cultural majority that prevails. The Hindu organizations aspired to create an India where the religious majority would dominate the different spheres of political and public life; the decisions of the Congress-led government were based on the belief that this was indeed the case (that is, the majority – the Hindus – were better off and the Muslims as a minority were disadvantaged in social and political life). The Congress did not agree with the agenda of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the associated Hindu organizations but it too made religious identity the basis of public policy and political life (see Mahajan 2010). This was a new form of identity politics – one that questioned the understanding of religion and community with which the founding fathers began.

Three other peculiarities of the Indian framework need to be mentioned here. First, the constitution allowed religious groups to form political organizations and parties, and to articulate their concerns through these bodies. At one level this reflected the belief that people with strong religious beliefs should also have an equal opportunity to shape political agendas and put forward their point of view before the larger public. But at another level this was a gesture towards the minorities, giving them space to organize themselves and bring their concerns into the public domain. The members involved in framing the constitution may have believed that there would be only a few instances where groups of strong religious persuasion would form their own separate political organizations, so they would not be able to set the political agenda. However, in the decades that followed one finds that the presence of just a few religious parties, claiming to speak on behalf of a community, have made a crucial difference in the public arena. As and when political parties claiming to represent the interests of a religious community were present in electoral contests, non-religious parties tended also to raise religious issues and promise action on them. Often, in the effort to outdo their religious counterparts, these ‘secular’ parties would pick up demands

religion   that might otherwise have remained the concerns of a small, more fanatical, fringe of the community. Either way, instead of secular parties edging out religious parties and marginalizing them, they themselves initiated and supported demands that would appeal to a religious community (Mahajan and Jodhka 2010), thereby creating space for identity-based politics. Second, the constitution gave individuals the right to religious practice. This engendered difficulties of a kind that were quite different from the challenges that most liberal democracies had confronted while protecting freedom of conscience or freedom of belief and worship. Diversities of religious beliefs could be accommodated by making a plea for tolerance: so long as a Church identified its beliefs and mode of worship without imposing them upon others, no external intervention was necessary. But this logic of non-intervention could not prevail when practices were protected. Indeed when practices were protected the state had to enter the frame, sometimes as a regulator or a facilitator, and at times as an adjudicator and a norm-setter. When the practice involved something like holding a procession or immersing an idol, external intervention could be minimized. State authorities could, for instance, regulate the route and the time of the procession, or provide the necessary amenities at the venue for the observance of that practice, without directly intervening in religious matters and performances. However, when the concerned practice clashed with the practices of another community,23 then a more direct intervention would sometimes be necessary. Considerations generated by the right to religious practice added this dimension to the relationship between religion and state; it permitted some external intervention or regulation of religion even though the state was in principle not aligned with any one religion. Third, in the period after independence, the state entered into the picture not merely through the legislation passed by the legislature or the actions of the executive, but also through the interventions of the judiciary. In situations involving clashes between community

  india practices, individuals have frequently approached the courts to protect their right to observe a specific practice. In most cases the Supreme Court has taken a cautious but interventionist path. Instead of leaving the matter to community leaders, or accepting the self-perceptions of the community members, it has invoked what has often been called the essential practice test. It has tried to determine on its own whether a specific practice is indeed a mandatory practice for the members of a given community. To take an example: in the case involving the practice of slaughtering a cow on the occasion of Bakr-Id, the Court could have accepted the view of the Quereshi brothers that this was a customary religious practice for their community; it could have left the matter to religious leaders of the Muslim community; but both these alternatives raised anxieties about communal harmony. The Court could have prohibited the practice citing concerns of public order, but that would have been viewed as siding with the majority. So, to adjudicate on this matter the Supreme Court applied the essential practice test. It referred to Islamic religious texts and reached the conclusion that slaughtering a cow was an ‘optional’ practice and in place of the cow there were other animals that could, according to these texts, be sacrificed. On this ground it did not allow the slaughtering of a cow (M.H. Quereshi and Others v. The State of Bihar, 1959 AIR 731). This was not the first time that the Supreme Court had applied the essential practice test. On many other occasions, involving the majority Hindu community and its different sects, it had used (and continues to use today) this test. In all these cases the Supreme Court has interpreted the religious texts to determine for itself what was prescribed and which practices were mandated for members of that community. In doing so, the Supreme Court operated with a peculiar conception of secularism. It did not subordinate religious beliefs to any external criterion or principle but believed that religious reasoning enshrined in textual sources was available to all individuals – those within the community and outside of it. As a result it was willing to interpret religious texts and determine their meaning

religion   instead of deferring to the views of the community members or of the religious leadership. Direct intervention by the Supreme Court in religious matters is a marked departure from the practices that are commonly pursued in most liberal democracies. But its actions reflect the specificity of the Indian conception of secularism. It shows that separating the ecclesiastical from the political/state and restricting the former to the sphere of the private and the latter to the public were not the ordering principles in India. Religion was not here the exclusive domain of the Church, or of religious leadership. Secularism meant that these texts could be read and interpreted by other agencies, even ‘secular’ agencies, albeit not supplanted by external liberal reasoning. The meaning of religious texts, or at least what was prescribed by them, had to be recovered in terms of its own horizon of meaning and not what appeared reasonable to modern sensibilities. This way of dealing with matters of religion surfaced primarily (though not always exclusively) as a way of negotiating diverse practices that clashed with one another. Had one religion prevailed in the public domain, there would have been little need to determine if a particular practice was indeed essential. The prevailing diversity of religions necessitated the intervention of the courts in religious matters. What must also be noted is that in the post-independence period, protection of religious practices has been sought by a range of diverse communities – not merely recognized minorities like the Muslims and the Sikhs, but also a number of other groups. In the first two decades after independence, several groups approached the courts to seek exemption from the constitutional norm that applied to the Hindu community: namely, that all temples must be thrown open to members of all castes. These groups identified themselves as distinct and separate religions and on this ground claimed that this norm did not apply to them.24 In all such cases where the courts were asked to determine whether a particular group belonged to the Hindu community or not, the Supreme Court read and interpreted what Hinduism is. In case after case, it concluded that groups like

  india the Satsangis, the Arya Samaj, the Rama Krishna Mission, were not separate religions. In many cases it did so to apply the constitutional mandate of equality of all castes. Nevertheless, in taking these decisions the Supreme Court in­ evitably triggered a process of homogenization. By deciding that these groups could not be treated as separate religions it used a rather broad and assimilative conception of Hinduism. It identified Hinduism rather widely in terms of belief in the authority of the Vedas and the principle of reincarnation (cycle of birth and death).25 At times it even placed Buddhists and Sikhs within the Hindu fold.26 Homogenization was perhaps the unintended consequence of the Supreme Court’s interventions, but what was in a mindful and systematic manner applied was the essential practice test. Interestingly enough, the application of this test has not been seriously questioned by any community. While particular judgments have aroused passions and at times resentment, they have, at least on the face of it, been accepted by all the affected communities. This is perhaps because the Court has treated religion as a special sphere of activity; it has been willing to make concessions in this sphere that have not been extended to other kinds of activity. Commitments that are backed by religion have received a careful hearing and an effort is made to accommodate them. Even when their accommodation causes some inconvenience to citizens (for instance, when religious processions move through roads and narrow bylanes disrupting the flow of traffic), this is not seen as a sufficient ground for curtailing the free profession and practice of religion. In fact all other activities are regulated to accommodate the observance of religious practices. Even more importantly, in cases that have come before the Supreme Court it has protected the right of the religious head to excommunicate members to ensure discipline within the community (Sardar Syedna Taher Saifuddin v. The State of Bombay, 1965 AIR 853) and protected the rights of the religious institutions and their head (the Mahant) against undue interference from the state-appointed Hindu Commissioner of Religious and Charitable Trusts (HCRE).27

religion   In a series of cases that came before it in the 1960s and 1970s, the Supreme Court set the tone by seeing to it that the state-appointed HCRE did not interrupt or interfere in the day-to-day functioning of religious institutions or the performance of religious duties by the temple head. It insisted that the purpose of the charitable trust be given priority before funds are utilized by the HCRE for even socially desired purposes, like the setting up of inns and water facilities for pilgrims. In addition, the Supreme Court has also intervened to protect the rights of religious minority educational institutions in the face of state intervention. Even though it intervened to protect the rights of the employees and the students of these institutions, it stipulated that regulation by the state should not make the right of the minorities to administer their institutions meaningless. Indeed, to protect them, the Supreme Court restricted the intervention of the government in the routine administration of these institutions and protected the right of management to appoint the principal of its choice without intervention by other bodies. In most democratic societies the task of determining the boundaries of religious liberty (i.e. determining whether a particular action by the state or other groups in society contravenes the religious liberty of a person or group) falls upon the Supreme Court. In recent times, more and more immigrant communities are appealing to the judiciary to carve a space for the exercise of their religious liberty. In India this is the option that communities of all hues have exercised for some time now, and the Supreme Court has tilted towards the protection of religious liberty even when it came into conflict with individual liberty. This is the peculiarity of the religion–state relationship in India. In the West, countries have adopted different paths to ensure that individuals are not discriminated against on account of their religious identity. If some disestablished religion and/ or separated religion from the state, others extended recognition to more religions, and dismantled existing legal penalties for members of religious communities that were not formally recognized by the state. But almost all of them gave priority to individual liberty. In

  india fact religious liberty was often viewed as a dimension of individual liberty, which gave individuals the freedom to choose their faith and live a life in accordance with that chosen way. Even those who did not link these two kinds of liberty considered religious liberty to be essential for ensuring all receive equal treatment. In these different contexts the individual was prioritized and religious liberty was expected to extend the liberty of the person or ensure her fair treatment. In India, by comparison, religious liberty was not similarly individualized. The constitution may have given the right to religion to the individual, but, existing religions being primarily practiceoriented (see Spinner-Halev 2005), the constitutional protection given to religious practices brought the community in and gave it a prominent place. The sharpening of religious identities further re­inforced the role of the community and religious leadership. These elements steadily edged out the individual to whom attention had been directed during the early decades of the twentieth century. When religion was a resource for effecting social change, the appeal was as much to the individual as it was to the collective. Subsequently, when religion was viewed as a mode of transcending the constraints set by the finitude of one’s ego, or for assisting in the cultivation of the will, it was the individual who was at the centre of discussion. The appeal was to the individual, albeit not the Rawlsian unencumbered individual self. But the reality of community-based mobilization and the protection granted to practices shifted the focus away from the individual. Over time, the community surfaced as site of solidarity and solace, and this prepared the ground for trumping individual liberty and, at times, the expression of dissent within the community.

five Diversity

The diversity of India is tremendous; it is obvious; it lies on the surface and everybody can see it. It concerns itself with physical appearances as well as with certain mental habits and traits. There is little in common, to outward concerning, between the Pathans of the North-West and the Tamils in the South. … All of them have their own distinctive features; all of them have still more distinguishing marks of India … still more or less the same virtues and feelings of which old tradition or record tells us, and yet have been throughout these ages distinctively Indian with the same national heritage and the same set of moral and mental qualities. Nehru [1961] 1969: 61 Peoples of different races, languages, and cultures met on the soil of India; and, though we read of occasional clashes, they have settled down as members of a common civilization whose primary characteristics are faith in an unseen reality, of which life is a manifestation … and an anxiety for harmonising apparent contradictions. Radhakrishnan [1954] 1956a: 202 India is a continent of human groups belonging to different races, speaking different languages and professing different religions. Her behaviour is not at all determined by a common race consciousness. Even the Hindus do not form

  india a homogeneous group. … The unity of an Indian nation, therefore, must be sought, not in the negation but in the mutual harmony and co-operation of the many. Iqbal 19301

These were different images of India but they had one thing in common: they saw India as a land of enormous diversity. Each of them considered the presence of different religious and cultural groups to be a fact of India’s existence: something that could be neither ignored nor denied. In one, fairly dominant, view this attribute of the social reality was seen as the defining feature of the Indian identity, structuring the dispositions, nature and world-view of her people from ancient times to the present. We know of an instance in our own history of India, when a great personality, both in his life and voice, struck the keynote of the solemn music of the soul – love for all creatures. And that music crossed seas, mountains, and deserts. Races belonging to different climates, habits, and languages were drawn together, not in the clash of arms, not in the conflict of exploitation, but in harmony of life, in amity and peace. (Tagore 1922: 115)2

The peaceful co-presence (rather than conflict between or domination) of different races was here viewed as an aspect of Indian identity: that is, of what it means to be Indian. This sentiment has since been expressed in many ways: if some speak of the inter­mingling of cultures and the emergence of a syncretic tradition, others point to different religious communities living side by side for a long period of time with fuzzy identities (see Nandy 1990; Werbner and Basu 1999; Hasan and Roy 2005; Kaviraj 2010) . In the words of Sarvapelli Radhakishnan, ‘We have had in our country peaceful co-existence of different religions: it is not mere passive co-existence but an active fellowship, a close interrelation of the best of different religions’ (quoted in Minor 1982: 276). These representations of India, which came from different philosophical positions, valued the coexistence of diverse communities in society. For them the presence of cultural and religious diversity

diversity   was not just a fact of social life; it was a step towards creating a fraternity of humankind. Many of these analyses also presented the accommodation of diversity as the unique attribute of ancient Indian civilization, and with it of the Hindu way of life.3 Social and political leaders of different hues alluded to this attribute. Vivekananda stated: ‘We Hindus do not merely tolerate. We unite ourselves with every religion, praying in the mosque of the Mohammedan, worshipping before the fire of the Zoroastrians and kneeling to the cross of Christians’ (quoted in Radhakrishnan [1954] 1956c: 195). Sri Aurobindo described Hinduism as a non-dogmatic, inclusive religion, ‘the most tolerant and receptive of all religious systems … not sharply exclusive’ (Aurobindo 1997b: 133). Even Gandhi (who accepted that there is something valuable in other religions) said, I have found it [Hinduism] to be the most tolerant of all religions known to me. Its freedom from dogma makes a forcible appeal to me inasmuch as it gives the votary the largest scope for selfexpression. Not being an exclusive religion, it enables the followers of that faith not merely to respect all the other religions, but it also enables them to admire and assimilate whatever may be good in the other faiths. (20 October 1927, in Gandhi 1947)4

These perceptions about Hinduism were then, and are even now, supported by such arguments as Hinduism has no theological orthodoxy; there is no one text to which all Hindus subscribe and no one deity which all of them worship. They do not, and never have, attempted to proselytize others.5 Although in most of these assessments the presence of religious and cultural diversity was linked to the Hindu way of life, this was by no means the only ground from which diversity was affirmed. Gandhi, in particular, made a case for respecting differences from another philosophical perspective. He argued that each religion tries to grasp the universal; it embodies a specific path that one might endorse in the quest for truth. Like the branches of a tree, each religion is distinct but bound to others by the same concern. In this sense all religions have the same status and deserve respect.

  india This itself was a ground for accepting religious diversity, but Gandhi offered yet another reason for valuing diversity. He maintained that each religion (and culture) has something of value in it; hence, there was something to be gained from the interaction between cultures. Indeed, he believed that ‘no culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive’ (9 May 1936, in Gandhi 1947).6 ‘I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible’ (1 June 1921, in Gandhi 1960). In the Gandhian framework, respect for diversity was accompanied by the idea of a strongly embedded self: a self that was rooted in its own religious and cultural way of life. It stood firm, and resisted, as Gandhi would say, ‘[being] blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other people’s houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave’ (1 June 1921, in Gandhi 1960).7 To put it in another way, two ideas were closely interwoven here: (i) the notion of a culturally situated self and (ii) belief in intersubjectivity. It was assumed that individuals were located in a distinct tradition and religion, and they made sense of their lives and accessed its truth through this lens. Hence, this location was important for everyone – the self and the other. Just as one values one’s tradition/religion, it is reasonable to expect that others too value their religious tradition and the truth it offers them. One must therefore refrain from imposing one’s way of life upon others; and, on a more positive note, different communities must have the space to live in accordance with their conception of good. This was not a plea for ‘liberal’ tolerance; it did not ask individuals to put up with things that they would otherwise find unacceptable or repulsive.8 Rather, respect stemmed from an understanding of what one desires for oneself, and what one might reasonably expect others also to value for themselves. It is this assumption of sameness and interchangeability that created the possibility of thinking that ‘The followers of different religions are partners in one spiritual quest, pursuing alternative approaches to the goal of spiritual life’ (Radhakrishnan [1954] 1956b: 216).

diversity   A defence of cultural and religious diversity was thus very much in evidence in public discourses even in pre-independence India, and the voices in support of this idea came from different ideological persuasions. If in one strand of thinking diversity was considered to be an attribute of the Hindu way of life, in another it was associated with a specific conception of a situated human being. There were also dissenting voices that did not assess diversity in quite the same way. Within the Hindu community, there were individuals like Savarkar, who considered Islam and Christianity to be alien to India. These religions, their members and their activities were treated with suspicion, and they were called upon to show commitment to the territory of India, and that which the Hindus considered to be sacred.9 In this latter framework, the nation was closely linked to the culture of the majority community, and hence neither equal space nor equal status was accorded to all religious communities within the envisioned Indian polity. However, in the pre-independence period at least, these voices, which considered religious and cultural homogeneity to be a necessary condition of building a strong nation, were few and far between. What was perhaps more significant is that there were several voices from the minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, that viewed the fact of diversity differently. Some among them accepted that the Hindus and the Muslims were like the ‘two eyes of a beautiful bride’ (Khan 1972: 160), India, but each constituted a separate and distinct nation.10 While the two could coexist – indeed, as two eyes they were expected to live together and occasionally be of a common mind – the emphasis was on the distinctness of the two communities. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was not alone in expressing a sentiment of this kind. Maulana Madani and Maulana Anwar Shah Kashmiri also accepted the coexistence of the Hindus and the Muslims. They maintained that ‘just as India is a land of the Hindus, so too, is it the land of the Muslims.’11 Hence there could be alliances between these two communities. But as a minority they were all concerned about protecting their difference. Since ‘Hindus are in a majority in India

  india and the Muslims in a minority, it is also natural that the Muslims should be concerned about the protection of their religious and other rights’ (Kashmiri 1927). It was this fear that their interests may be ignored or collapsed into those of the majority, that the Muslims as a community may not be able to follow their distinct ‘educational, cultural and legal path’ (Metcalf 2007: 90), that compelled them to seek formal arrangements to accommodate their concerns as a minority community. There were differences within the community leadership as to whether these community interests related to matters that were purely religious in nature or to all spheres, secular, spiritual and cultural, but the emerging consensus was that diversity necessitated institutional arrangements that recognize the presence of a heterogeneous population.12  Most of the time, leaders who were part of the Hindu community did not ask for separate institutional arrangements for protecting the minorities. Even those who valued religious diversity did not seek formal structures for attending to the needs of the minorities as they believed that diversity was an aspect of their civilizational inheritance, characterizing their identity as Indian. In other words, for them, being an Indian meant living with religious diversity. Since this diversity had existed for so long, they assumed that it would continue to exist and flourish even in the future. There was therefore no need for special arrangements to protect the minorities. The latter would be taken care of and their rights protected, as this is the nature of the people of India. Retrospectively it is easy to say that this was an expression of the security that the majority community felt and it was not shared by the minorities. The latter wanted safeguards to protect their difference. The majority was not sympathetic to this demand, but the belief that living with diversity was an aspect of Indian existence also meant that this demand could not, or should not, be rejected. If living together required this form of accommodation then this could be considered and even accepted. The majority and the minorities began with a shared view about the diversity of India but they conceptualized the relationship be-

diversity   tween diversity and unity differently. For the minorities, unity was frequently predicated upon separate recognition of their contribution and needs. They were more mindful of the immediate past and history; they spoke of the specific location of their community in society and politics, to draw attention to the concrete policies and measures that were necessary to ensure equal membership in the polity. In the words of Allana Mohammad Iqbal, ‘The unity of the Indian nation therefore must be sought, not in the negation but in the mutual harmony and co-operation of the many’ (Iqbal 1930).13 This cooperation was in turn dependent upon each having the space for ‘full and free development on the lines of his own culture and tradition in his own Indian homeland’ (Iqbal 1930). Recognition of difference and not simply the good faith and promise of the majority was considered essential, and this implied that some formal arrangements, by way of special consideration, separate representation, space for community institutions and community cultural rights, must be put in place. Looking back at the moment of independence, what is striking is that it is the anxieties of the minority populations that structured the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly and the thinking about the constitution of independent India.14 But what allowed space for the accommodation of minority demands for recognition was the widespread belief that diversity has been a feature of one’s life in India. Concerns that dominate the debates around multiculturalism in the West today, such as the conflict between group rights and individual rights, the need to balance the concerns of diversity with those of intra-group equality and individual liberty, did not weigh too heavily in the deliberations in India. Once the large majority accepted that all major religions of the world originated from India or existed in India alongside others for centuries, it came to be seen as a condition of life there, and not something that had to be justified on the ground that is essential for realizing the liberal ideal of ‘revisability’ (Kymlicka 1991: 9–19) or for correcting the historically existing prejudices of the state. Under the circumstances, recognizing

  india the presence of diversity and protecting conditions that would enable diverse religious groups to survive and flourish became the primary consideration, overriding most other concerns. The violence that followed the Partition of India only lent urgency to this task. This was the distinctiveness of the Indian understanding of diversity, and it gave a peculiar slant to thinking on matters relating to religion, community and the individual.  Protecting diversity came to be linked with granting some degree of autonomy to communities to manage their own affairs and to live in accordance with their own way of life, with a minimum degree of intervention and regulation by the state. Communities became the primary actors or units, edging out the individual, and equality between groups the operative framework in social and political life. The question that was considered seriously at the time of the framing of the constitution was, what kind of rights and structures were desirable or necessary to give the minorities assurance? Whether specific forms of accommodation of cultural diversity would violate certain liberal principles or other deeply cherished commitments was something that received relatively little thought. Some members, particularly women representatives, did raise the issue of women’s equality and the impact that autonomy for communities along with protection of their practices might have for the status of women. These voices were given some consideration, but the primary concern clearly was to assure the religious minorities that their distinctness would be respected and their cultures and ways of life would have the space to flourish.15 The constitution ‘must contain the fullest guarantees for the protection of the rights and interests of the minorities. … What are the necessary safeguards for the protection of the rights and interests of the minorities? These judgments rest with the minorities and not the majority. The safeguards must therefore be formulated by their consent and not by majority vote’ (Azad: [1940] 2000: 71). This was the principle that guided the accommodation of minority

diversity   concerns at the time of the framing of the Indian Constitution. Early in the deliberation process, an Advisory Committee was set up to consider the Fundamental Rights of the Citizens and Minorities and an effort was made to include members of specific religious communities, the Scheduled Castes as well as some representatives from the tribal communities in the Northeast (the excluded and semi-excluded areas). Four points need to be highlighted here. First, in the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly, the Sub-committee on Fundamental Rights operated implicitly with the majority–minority framework. Even though the terms ‘majority’ or ‘minority’ did not feature in the final constitution in any significant way (the term ‘minority’ was used only in the text of Article 30), the idea that the Hindus were in a way the majority community and others were minorities guided the discussions all the way through. On different occasions, the Sub-committee on Minorities as well the Advisory Committee as a whole discussed the term ‘minority’ and what it alluded to: whether it referred to religious communities alone or even groups like the Scheduled Castes. Either way, minorities were thought of in relation to the Hindu majority. This is not to say that all the members accepted that Hindus were a single homogeneous whole. Yet, the internal differentiations notwithstanding, Hindus were taken to be a collective that could, from being a cultural majority, become a political majority; this would leave all other religious groups permanently as minorities (Shiva Rao 1967: 313). There was a shared understanding that some religious communities constituted the minority. But was this simply a numerical relationship? Was every group smaller in number than the majority to be considered a minority? The Jain community made many representations asking that they too be considered a minority, but this matter remained unsettled. Then there was the case of Namboodaripads, who claimed that they were a separate community who should be seen as a minority. Even though several issues of this nature came before the Constituent Assembly, just who is a minority

  india was never fully discussed or determined. So the majority–minority paradigm was used to frame the issues but not to settle the claims of a specific group.16 Second, religion, caste and tribe were not the only basis of differentiation within society. Language was also an important source of personal identity, solidarity and difference. This had been recognized during the struggle for independence, and yet, perhaps on account of the immediate history of religion-based mobilizations and the partition of the country, it was religious communities and not language-based communities that received attention and representation within the Constituent Assembly, albeit on an informal basis. Third, on matters affecting minorities, members of the Constituent Assembly reconsidered their views on several issues substantially. The deliberations of the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights and the Sub-committee on Minorities began by rejecting separate electorates for minorities, but accepted that representation should be given to identified minorities in proportion to their size in the population (see Shiva Rao 1967: 394–418). However, when the Constituent Assembly met after the partition of the country had become a reality, this demand was formally dropped by the chairman of the Sub-committee on Minorities. The events that followed Partition, the concern about the unity of the country, the views of some of the prominent leaders, were all considerations that weighed in this decision, but that is only to be expected in any process of deliberation. Following the discussions, it was the minorities themselves who withdrew this demand. They held on to many other demands relating to religious and cultural rights. Community personal laws, the wearing of kirpan by the Sikhs and the right to religious practice are just instances of issues on which the minorities did not relent, despite contrary views being expressed by prominent leaders. Minority members, like most members of the Constituent Assembly, it would appear, functioned with a public–private distinction, albeit in a form that differed from its liberal counterpart. They accepted that minority communities may have a cultural distinctiveness,

diversity   but as citizens of India their interests were the same as those of the majority. So the political realm could remain undifferentiated, while in the cultural sphere, affecting the private domain of one’s life – the family and community – their concerns could be different. This difference, which they embodied as members of cultural communities, had to be acknowledged and recognized. Hence, it is cultural and religious rights for the minorities that were most assiduously defended and claimed. Four, the constitution accommodated various kinds of diversity (religious, linguistic, and that of cultures represented by tribal communities, particularly those living in the hill districts of the Northeast, who had enjoyed a certain degree of cultural protection) differently – that is, through different institutional arrangements. Religious and linguistic diversity was accommodated through a set of cultural rights. Separate political rights were not granted to these minorities. Only tribal communities received political and cultural rights. A provision was made for separate representation for all groups that were identified as Scheduled Tribes, and tribal communities living in ‘excluded and semi-excluded areas’ in the Northeast were given some degree of self-governance through institutional arrangements created in the sixth schedule of the constitution. The case of the Scheduled Castes was different from all these other minority communities. They were not asking for the protection of their cultural difference; as victims of forced segregation and exclusion they wanted equal membership in the polity and access to public resources and opportunities available to the rest of the population.17 The fear that existing social prejudices might result in their continued exclusion was addressed by giving them separate representation in proportion to their size in the total population. The constitution only reserved seats for them in the legislative assemblies and provided some enabling provisions for their representation in other spheres. This is a subject that I have dealt with in some detail elsewhere (Mahajan 2009, 2012); the only point I wish to emphasize here is that while the term ‘minority’ included

  india many different kinds of groups and communities, the concern for diversity brought into play only some kinds of differences. It did not include within its ambit all disadvantaged or excluded groups, and some minority groups that were concerned about the fate of their cultural difference did not see themselves as lagging behind others or as ‘backward’ communities that were disadvantaged in all spheres of their life. The Sikhs, who saw themselves as a minority (and in the early stages separate representation was considered for them) wanted recognition of their contribution; the Parsis, for their part, were not speaking from the perspective of an excluded or backward community. This distinction needs to be emphasized to understand the shifts in the discourse on minorities that emerged post-1990s in India, as well as to recognize that the concerns of backwardness and diversity are different. At the time of the framing of the constitution, protecting cultural identity and diversity was a primary consideration, and at least some of the recognized minorities were identified in terms of their cultural difference and diversity and not backwardness. To accommodate religious and cultural diversity, the framers of the Indian Constitution evolved what is in contemporary times referred to as the multicultural framework. They did not use the term ‘multiculturalism’ (they spoke instead of ‘plurality’); nor did they envision strong group rights or consociational forms of power sharing. Yet the framework that emerged can be best understood as a multicultural framework as it valued diversity and made an effort to see that the state does not endorse the culture of the majority.18 If anything, they tried to provide conditions that would allow minority cultures to survive and flourish, giving members of minority communities the opportunity to live in accordance with their own way of life. As was noted earlier, considerations of individual liberty and women’s equality were given short shrift, while the right to observe one’s religious practices was protected. Community personal laws were to continue to govern all matters relating to family, even though the personal laws of all communities placed women in a

diversity   subordinate and vulnerable position. To promote their language and culture, religious and linguistic minorities were given the right to establish and administer their own educational institutions (Articles 29 and 30). In fact, this right was considered to be so important for protecting diversity that these institutions could receive financial and other assistance from the state. State support of this kind to minorities was also not seen as compromising state neutrality. This neutrality would, it was felt, be compromised if religious education was imparted in any educational institutions maintained partly or wholly by state funds. This was not an injunction against religious education per se. Educational institutions that did not receive funds from the state could impart religious education of their choice. Even minority educational institutions that did receive funds from the state could impart religious education provided it was not compulsory for all the students. These are just a few illustrations of the manner in which the concern for diversity prevailed and shaped the relationship between the state, the community and the individual.  The framework devised for accommodating different kinds of diversity at the time of the framing of the constitution has undergone some significant changes in the post-independence period. The single most important change has been with regard to the recognition accorded to linguistic diversity. The constitution had not given this form of diversity as much consideration as it did issues of religious diversity. Yet it had acknowledged linguistic diversity in two ways: (i) while declaring Hindi (and not Hindustani) written in the Devanagri script (rather than the Devanagri and/or Persian script) as the official language of the union, the constitution declared that ‘a State may by law adopt any one or more of the languages in use in the State … for all or any of the official purposes of the State’ (Article 129). It also gave recognition to some languages, other than Hindi, by placing them in the eighth schedule of the constitution; and (ii) like religious minorities, linguistic minorities also received the right to set up their own educational institutions. These provisions were

  india by no means enough for according due recognition to the range of linguistic diversity that existed in the country, as many languages spoken by a significant number of people did not receive recognition. Urdu, the language that had come to be associated with the Muslim minority, was not identified as an official language. Yet the presence of linguistic diversity was noted, and some cultural rights were given to these minorities.19 Shortly after independence, in the case of some linguistic communities cultural rights were supplemented by political rights. This change occurred when some linguistic communities demanded that language be the basis of drawing the boundaries of states within the federal system.20 The protests that occurred on this issue led to the formation of the State Reorganization Commission, and it was on the recommendation of this Commission that state boundaries were redrawn in a way that enabled territorially concentrated linguistic groups to become self-governing units of the union of India.21 It must also be mentioned here that the Commission considered many suggestions with regard to the accommodation of diversity. Among them was the proposal submitted by Dr Ambedkar arguing that language could be the basis for the reorganization of state boundaries, but this should not take the form of one language, one state. There could be more than one state with the same linguistic majority. For instance, Marathi speakers could constitute a majority in two, even contiguous, states (Kudaisya 2011).22 This proposal was not accepted by the Commission, and eventually a linguistic community living in one region came to be constituted as a single political unit. This mode of recognition, which converted a minority in the nation into a majority in that region, meant that a linguistic community gained some degree of autonomy to govern itself in matters that were placed in the state list in the constitution.23 They could use their language as the official language of the state, impart education in state-run schools in this language and use their language for all administrative communication in the state. The recognition of linguistic diversity in this form was something new and different

diversity   from what had initially been accepted at the time of the framing of the constitution.  Similar kinds of political rights have not to this day been accorded to religious minorities. For one, most religious minorities are territorially scattered and it was not therefore possible to make them self-governing units in a given region. Even where some communities were concentrated in a given region, as was the case with Sikhs in Punjab, giving communities the right to govern themselves in a territorially bound unit was looked at with suspicion. Sikhs subsequently became the majority in a designated territory when they modified their demand, from seeking a separate state for the Sikhs to demanding a separate state for the Punjabi-speaking population. Where religious minorities continue to enjoy self-governance is the cultural sphere, and over the years this dimension has been further consolidated. Religious minorities have also been accommodated in the political domain through informal arrangements. For instance, they have been appointed to the highest offices in the country, such as the presidency of India, and other important political administrative positions like cabinet minister and head of institutions and commissions set up by the government from time to time. It was difficult to accommodate the range of linguistic diversity that existed in quite the same form; it was primarily after the linguistic reorganization of state boundaries that communities that were linguistic minorities in the context of India as a whole came to matter in the distribution of political and administrative positions within each region.24 Given the range and extent of linguistic diversity in the country, recognition of this identity has not yielded a single line of division on an all-India basis. This is one reason why linguistic identities have been assessed differently from religious identity. The association of religious mobilizations with the partition of the country and subsequently with the sharp division along the lines of majority and minority that was visible the length and breadth of the country in the 1990s has yielded anxieties about the threat that religious identities pose to the unity and diversity of India. By comparison, most people

  india have come to accept that a strong assertion of linguistic identity can coexist with the presence of an equally deep national identity. In fact, in India, accepting the demands for linguistic reorganization has in most cases bolstered the sense of belonging to the national political community. Today, both linguistic minorities and, in some regions, tribal communities enjoy in one form or another special political rights. The nature of political and cultural rights granted to each is still not the same. All communities identified as Scheduled Tribes were given separate representation, in the form of reserved seats, in all legislative bodies in proportion to their size in the total population. Over time, positions have also been reserved for them in institutions of higher education and government employment. Within this group, the hill tribes in the Northeast region of India were treated as a special category. In the second wave of the reorganization of state boundaries that occurred in the 1970s, some of them (namely, Tripura, Meghalaya and Manipur) were given the right to govern themselves as they became separate political units, or states, within the Indian political system. In states where the tribal communities were an overwhelming majority, for example in Nagaland and later in Mizoram, they were given the autonomy to continue with their religious and social practices, customary laws and procedures as well as patterns of land ownership. Autonomy of this kind was not given to any linguistic community. In fact the nature and scale of linguistic diversity in India are such that many kinds of community claims have remained unrecognized. For instance, there were communities (such as Sindhis and Urdu-speaking populations) that were scattered and not territorially concentrated; there were many more groups who wanted recognition for their mother tongue and resisted the label of being identified merely as a dialect. Many languages spoken by tribal communities which did not have a script were doubly disadvantaged. As small and vulnerable minority groups, their languages did not receive recognition as readily as the languages of more dominant communities. In

diversity   addition, there was the issue of creating a script or using one of the available scripts (see Sarangi 2009). So, even as linguistic diversity was recognized, which diversity was recognized and when were matters that were settled politically (see DasGupta 1970). All communities could expect that their identity would be recognized and yet none was sure of receiving formal recognition. They had each to mobilize and campaign for it; in most cases such claims for separate recognition were not quickly or readily accepted. But governments were also reluctant to dismiss these claims outright. Recognition was, in this sense, a matter of negotiation, and a demand that was invariably taken up by political groups in the process of electoral competitive politics.  The constitution assumed that in India Hindus were the majority and other religious communities a minority. But was this the case after the linguistic reorganization of states? Could the Hindus be identified as the majority irrespective of their size in a state? What about groups like the Arya Samaj or the Rama Krishna Mission, who saw themselves as distinct communities: were they minorities? These questions have surfaced over and over again in the post-independence period. Eventually it was down to the judgments of the Supreme Court to give some direction, and clarity, on these matters. On the question of just who constitutes a minority, the Court has stipulated that Religious or linguistic minorities are to be determined only in relation to the particular legislation which is sought to be impugned; if it is State Legislature, then minorities have to be determined in relation to the population of the state. A linguistic minority … must at least have a separate spoken language; it is not necessary that their language should also have a distinct script. (D.A.V. College Etc. v. State of Punjab, 1971 AIR 1737, at 691) 

The idea that a minority must be identified as such in relation to the region whose legislation is in question has meant that in the state of Punjab the Arya Samaj, which had established the D.A.V College, could be considered a minority. Since the legislation concerned was

  india the Guru Nanak University (Amritsar) Act, which specified that the University makes ‘provision for study and research on the life and teachings of Guru Nanak and their cultural and religious impact in the context of Indian and world civilization’ (D.A.V. College Etc. v. State of Punjab, 1971 AIR 1737, at 689), other groups could be designated minorities. Although Sikhs are a minority in the country as a whole, the Court declared that, with reference to the given legislation in the state, they constituted the majority and other religious groups would be considered as minorities. The reference point, especially for the purposes of educational institutions (for which the constitution provided rights to minorities), was thus to be the state but not another unit (e.g. a district) smaller than the state (as identified in the Indian federal system). Hence, Christians would be a minority in the state of Kerala, even if there was a higher concentration of their population in a given area within the state, and they would be entitled to establish minority educational institutions in the entire state; and Tamil speakers would be a minority in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh and they could establish minority educational institutions in that state even though they constitute a majority in another state of the federation. As a result, almost every group could be a minority in some place or another and avail themselves of the rights that were granted to them as a minority. These rights have to be claimed, however, as they do not flow automatically to a group, and are not always readily accepted by the state. The identity of the group as a distinct minority has to be recognized by the state or the relevant commission. Governments at the centre and the regional states have not been enthusiastic enough to accept these claims. Most of the time they try to resist claims of recognition. Indeed, groups that were themselves a minority in the past and demanded recognition follow the same path. As a majority in the region, they tend to block the recognition of internal minorities (see Dasgupta 2001). The situation is further complicated when we are dealing with religious groups. It is not clear whether Hindus would be deemed a minority in Nagaland

diversity   where the majority of the population is Christian. The Supreme Court has suggested the need to refer to the concerned legislation against which the difference is being asserted; but this means that just who is a majority or a minority is not completely determined or known in advance. It is contingent upon a number of variables and can be the subject of dispute. Equally, it would seem that on linguistic grounds almost all persons could be part of a minority in some part of the country. One reason why communities seek minority status in India is that it gives them certain rights: for instance, the right to establish and administer their own educational institutions. But just how much freedom this right gives is another subject that has come up for adjudication repeatedly. In a series of judgments, the Supreme Court has tried to draw the boundary beyond which the state must avoid direct intervention. In matters of internal administration, such as the appointment of the school head (principal), the Court has maintained that jurisdiction must lie with the minority institution and its management (A.M. Patroni v. Kesavan, 1965 AIR Ker 75). If management of the school is not given very wide freedom to choose the personnel for holding such a key post … the right to administer the school would get much diminished. Hence, it is for the management of the minority educational institution to choose the modality for selecting the qualified persons for appointment. Therefore, the management of a minority institution is free to find out a qualified person and has got very wide freedom to choose the personnel for holding such post. (The Secretary, Malankara Syrian Catholic College v. V.T. Jose & Others, 2007 AIR 570)25

The courts have also maintained that the responsibility for providing free primary education to all rests with the state and is not obligatory upon the minority educational institutions. The same is the case with reservation of places for ‘socially and economically backward classes’ – something that is mandated under Article 15(4) of the constitution. Minority institutions cannot be forced to reserve

  india places for these groups; they may take the initiative voluntarily and set aside quotas for specific populations but this is not mandatory for them (T.M.A. Pai Foundation & Others v. State of Karnataka & Others 2002, 8 SCC 481).  While giving the minorities freedom to choose the management, subject to the necessary qualifications required for the job, the Supreme Court has stipulated that in institutions that receive funds from the state the latter can intervene to regulate syllabi and conditions of employment and to ensure transparency in student admissions. The state cannot, however, ask the institution to set aside places for a government quota (Sidharajbhai v. State of Gujarat, 1963 AIR 540). Regulation of minority educational institutions was, in other words, permissible to protect employees against arbitrary administrative action, to ensure uniformity of service conditions for them and to see that the interests of the students are taken care of. For the sake of the students, the courts directed minority educational institutions to spell out the procedures for admission so that even those from the minority community compete on merit and none is discriminated against. To make a distinction between a state-aided and non-aided minority institution, the Supreme Court stipulated that the former must leave a ‘reasonable’ number of places open to the general population while giving preference to members of their own community (T.M.A. Pai Foundation & Others v. State of Karnataka & Others, 2002, 8 SCC 481). It was not necessary, in other words, for them to fill at least 50 per cent of the places with members of their community. On the other side, the percentage of places left open for the general population may also be determined on the basis of a variety of factors: the nature of the educational institution; the size and the educational needs of the community in the area in which the institution is established.26 The right given to linguistic and religious minorities to set up educational institutions of their choice has meant that every state has educational institutions (from the primary stage to higher education) which provide education in a language other than the official

diversity   language of that state. As a result, linguistic minorities that have their own educational institutions can impart education to their children in their mother tongue. Even the rest of the people in that state have the option of sending their children to these state-aided minority institutions where the medium of instruction is not the official state language. The availability of such options has, to some extent, mitigated the effects of homogenization that is engendered when a community becomes a majority in a region. Successive governments have, to various degrees, contributed to this process of heterogenization by giving assistance, often by way of land and funding, to these institutions. Another way in which governments have nurtured diversity is by setting up radio and television stations in various regional languages, and supporting literature and cinema in these different official languages through the institution of awards and direct monetary assistance.  These measures are by no means enough, but they are undoubtedly ways of recognizing cultural diversity. One might even go further and say that they have helped to deepen diversity. Today, the scale of regional press, print and electronic media is enormous (see Jeffrey 2000). This has given members of recognized linguistic communities an opportunity to be part of a cultural community even when they are living far away from the rest. Linguistic identities have, as a consequence, been strengthened and plural cultures have flourished. However, as was noted even earlier, there are still religious and linguistic communities that are struggling to get official recognition. The Jain community, for instance, has not so far been identified as a distinct religious group; the self-representation of several groups, such as the Arya Samaj and the Rama Krishna Mission, has not been accepted. They continue to be viewed as denominations or sects of Hinduism. Many tribal languages have yet to receive formal recognition. Languages like Urdu and Sindhi that are recognized in the eighth schedule of the constitution but are not the official language of any state are struggling to achieve the status of second language in specific states. So, even though religious and cultural diversity

  india has grown and flourished, there are still communities and cultures that are seeking recognition. The Indian experiment has yielded this mixed legacy. It has offered stories of successful accommodation as well as those of frustration. It is these paradoxes that compel one to rethink some of the assumptions of the multicultural discourse in India and elsewhere.  Most of the time, multicultural theories speak of cultural diversity – its protection and survival. While this is a suitable frame of reference while engaging with liberalism and its benign neglect of group identities and differences, it is evident from the Indian case that one cannot speak of diversity in the singular. The question that has to be considered is, which diversity must be accommodated and how? To some extent this is a challenge that confronts all societies when they consider policies of accommodation. However, in many Western democracies the issue has been addressed by drawing a distinction between ‘national’ minorities (those that have lived on a territory, which they see as their homeland, for a long period of time [Kymlicka: 1995: 3–30]) and immigrant populations, or by singling out communities, like the indigenous people, that were systematically discriminated against in the past. To take an example: in Canada, special consideration, in the form of community rights, has been given to the indigenous people (as they were victims of a process of colonization) and the French-speaking population, which is identified as a national minority. It is primarily the difference represented by just these communities that is accommodated and protected. Given the range of diversity that exists in almost all societies today, it is important to have some such framework for differentiating between the claims of different minorities, particularly when the aim is to protect and promote cultural diversity by giving communities some degree of autonomy to govern themselves. India, however, has not been able to determine a suitable criterion for differentiating between the claims of different minorities that desire to protect their cultural diversity. Since most communities have lived in India for centuries,

diversity   the distinction between indigenous and the immigrant communities could not be sustained. Given the colonial past, one could not identify a community that was singled out and historically victimized. As a result, just who receives recognition has been a matter that has been settled on an ad hoc basis, often depending upon the capacity of groups to muster political support. The absence of a clear criterion for determining which diversity must be protected has meant accommodating the claims of very many communities, representing different kinds of diversities (religious, linguistic and cultural), and this has posed a challenge. The difficulty has been compounded by the fact that no community could be unambiguously identified as the majority, not even the Hindus. Within the Hindus, the lower castes, which had been segregated and discriminated against for centuries, could not be categorized with the rest as a majority. They were perhaps the most vulnerable and marginalized group in society. The situation became even more complicated after the linguistic reorganization of states. Now, even among the dominant Hindu castes, Bengali-speaking Hindus have become a minority in the state of Tamil Nadu and Telugu-speaking Hindus a minority in other states. Thus, one could not operate with a clear understanding of who is part of the majority and who might be seen as minorities. This is a subject that has continually to be asked and adjudicated upon. Since minorities cannot be clearly identified in advance, and many communities can on grounds of religion or language or culture claim to be minorities, identities have been (and are) subject to frequent construction and even political manipulation. The desire to access minority rights (for instance, the right to establish and administer one’s own institutions or to govern oneself), or to become a majority in some area, has meant that individuals are constantly being mobilized and group boundaries being drawn and redrawn. This has strengthened identity politics, making real the fear that more and more groups may demand recognition as minorities. When one looks at the number of groups that are asserting their claim to

  india be identified as a minority, it is not surprising that there are many claims waiting to receive recognition; indeed, it is likely that new claims may emerge and there will never be a situation where there are no further claims for recognition as a minority. The problems associated with identifying a minority and the escalating spiral of recognition claims could appear relatively insignificant if cultural and political rights granted to minorities were enough to eliminate or significantly reduce the disadvantages they face in society. Unfortunately this has not been the case. The single most important variable responsible for the marginalization of minorities, particularly religious minorities (though in some areas linguistic minorities are also facing a similar predicament27), is inter-community conflict, in which members of a community are systematically targeted. The loss of life, property and livelihood, the forced relocation of members of a community, are all modes of severe discrimination and disadvantage. Countering this form of discrimination requires protection of the basic rights of citizenship so that the perpetrators of such violence are punished. It does not require special consideration in the form of any kind of community right. Indeed, cultural and political rights granted to protect cultural diversity do not address discrimination ensuing from systematic targeting and inter-community conflict. In India protecting cultural identity remains a priority; discrimination and the sense of being ‘minoritized’ (Gupta 1999) that emerges in the experience of being a victim of communal violence remain largely unattended to. Special rights given to minorities do not offer any protection against this form of acute discrimination and disadvantage. For this reason, it seems that in some cases basic rights of citizenship (rather than special rights for communities) need to be strengthened to minimize the discrimination faced by minorities.28 Protecting cultural diversity is not always enough and, what is even more important, minimizing disadvantages faced by minorities cannot always be conflated with protecting diversity. There are moments when promoting diversity, through such measures as recognition of language or cultural rights for religious minorities, may

diversity   minimize the disadvantages faced by a minority, but there are also instances, like those of communal violence, where recognition is not enough to check minority discrimination. There may also be situations where policies of recognition may themselves engender disadvantage through a process of minoritization. In India, for example, when the claims of some territorially concentrated linguistic minorities were recognized through the linguistic reorganization of states in India, cultural diversity was certainly promoted. But these policies of recognition produced a new process of minoritization. All states had people who spoke a different mother tongue from that of the majority in that region, and they became minorities, facing the same hardships as the minorities in the nation-state. Thus, even as recognition minimized the disadvantage faced by a linguistic minority within the country, it also left groups within that region vulnerable. Policies of recognition, particularly those that accord a community some degree of political autonomy to manage their own affairs, tend to create paradoxes of this kind; for this reason some protection for internal minorities is necessary. However, in India policymakers have not been attentive to the claims of such vulnerable groups within the community and the region; in fact adequate safeguards were not put in place for them when boundaries were redrawn to accommodate the concerns of some linguistic groups who were a minority in the nation-state. Even when some commitments were made to protect the interests of minorities within the region, governments at the centre and of the states have been rather lax in fulfilling these promises. Let’s consider some examples. In 1961 it was agreed in the chief ministers’ meeting that when there were forty students in a school or ten in a class whose mother tongue was different from the official state (regional) language, then the state would provide education in that mother tongue. But hardly any state has fulfilled this obligation; in fact on several occasions many have expressed their inability to meet this goal. Besides this, in order to encourage bilingualism and to avoid overt homogenization by privileging any one language, even

  india the official language of the nation, Hindi, a three-language formula had been devised. Under this, students were to learn one modern Indian language, Hindi (the official language of the Union) and English; and it was assumed that the Hindi-speaking states would offer another recognized official language (perhaps a language spoken in the southern states of India), while non-Hindi-speaking states might consider teaching another recognized Indian language. In actuality, most states have chosen the official language of the state (regional) as the modern Indian language and few have offered education in the language of the dominant minority within the state. Hindi-speaking states have tended to offer as their third language a classical language like Sanskrit rather than another language spoken in the southern states. Similarly, even though the states were committed to publishing official notifications in the language of the minority, particularly in districts where more than 15 per cent of the population used a mother tongue that was different from that of the majority linguistic community in the region, few states have actually provided even this minimum facility to the minorities. As a result, policies of recognition have yielded a complex and contradictory legacy. They have helped to promote diversity by creating space for different languages to be recognized as the language of a state, but at the same time have left groups within vulnerable. At a more general level, institutions that were, over time, created to address the concerns of the minorities on an ongoing basis have had very limited success. For instance, after the linguistic reorganization of states the Office of the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities was set up to attend to the concerns of the minorities within a region. It was a body to which minorities could appeal and make representations detailing the precise difficulties they face. Despite the importance of the task that was entrusted to this Office, even the annual reports submitted by it have not received formal consideration. In fact, most of the time these reports are not even tabled before parliament, let alone being discussed and considered by elected representatives. So, on crucial matters like education in

diversity   a minority language or recognition of a particular language, the Commission has not had much success. Its presence has provided an avenue for the articulation of minority concerns, and on a few occasions (when the state government is sympathetic) some remedial action, but that is about all.29 The same is the case with the National Minorities Commission, which deals with religious minorities. In recent times, along with the Human Rights Commission, it has taken up instances of minority discrimination and targeting, but in the final reckoning the effectiveness of the Commission, its ability to effect policy change, depends upon the support it gets from the governments in office.  Two factors emerge from the Indian experience. First, the sites of discrimination are many; hence no one policy, not even that of recognition, can adequately check the different sources of minority discrimination. Second, accommodation can never be a matter of a one-off policy. If minorities are to be protected, the difficulties faced by minorities in specific situations must be continually identified and addressed. Needless to say, India has been more successful in putting in place an institutional framework for accommodating diversity than it has been in addressing the marginalization that minorities face on a continuing basis. It devised, for instance, a framework for accommodating religious and linguistic minorities, but the marginalization that ensues from negative stereotyping of communities and from non-recognition of a minority language in the region remain continuing concerns that governments have not been able to settle or address satisfactorily.30 Also, despite the formal arrangements that the constitution provides for accommodating diversities, a great deal depends on the government in office. For instance, the constitution gives minorities the right to establish and administer educational institutions, and these minority educational institutions can receive funds from the state. However, giving a certain account of money to support them in equal measure is not essential or mandatory for the state. Consequently, each institution, and sometimes minority

  india group, is dependent upon the largesse or patronage of the state. Governments may decide to give land free or at concessional rates to some communities or minority institutions and not others; the concerned authorities may give recognition to specific institutions and not others. Political equations and the strength or clout of the group make a difference. This also means that issues of recognition and accommodation are always in play in the public domain; political leaders can woo sections of the electorate by promising particular concessions which are, at one level, a part of their entitlement. As a result, diversity accommodation has become inextricably intertwined with identity politics rather than issues of equality and difference. The accommodation of diversity has thus presented several challenges, compelling many analysts to consider whether it is possible to accommodate all forms of existing diversity, or, for that matter, whether some form of group/collective rights is the best way to protect cultural and religious diversity in society. In a context where groups mobilize and assert their distinct identity to gain access to social and economic goods in society the desirability of extending cultural rights to resolve conflicts is often limited, and the presence of so many different communities makes the territorial solutions unviable even when these groups are concentrated in a small region. Yet, despite these doubts and the many concerns that policies of accommodation have thrown up in India, there is still a strong consensus that individual rights in themselves are not enough, and cultural diversities need to be accommodated in some form. It is not therefore surprising to find that amidst a great deal of anxiety and unrecognized claims, diversities of many kinds have flourished in India and are even today very visible in the public domain. The significance of this accomplishment can be appreciated when we consider the difficulties that many Western liberal democracies face in achieving even this limited goal. One must also acknowledge that towards the end of the 1940s India was walking down an uncharted path, when it tried to ensure equality for all (religious and cultural groups) by accommodating

diversity   diversity. It is evident today that equality cannot be guaranteed by merely providing cultural or even political rights to groups, but retrospectively it is also clear that when claims are presented in cultural terms, then cultural aspirations have also to be accommodated while simultaneously attending to the other developmental interests that might accompany these assertions. It has taken the Indian state some time to realize this; nevertheless it is the willingness to accommodate diverse claims that has sustained the unity of India and strengthened its democracy. When the Constitution of India was framed, the readiness to accommodate diversity in the public domain, at a time when the dominant discourse of liberal democracy underlined sameness as the basis of universal citizenship, came from the belief that India has always lived with diversity; it has the capacity to live with differences. One might even say that coexisting peacefully with difference was a part of being Indian: it was an attribute, so to speak, of Indian identity. So the only relevant question was how best to be true to one’s self and ensure equal treatment to all by giving them the space to grow and flourish. Perhaps it might have been better to think about how to minimize the disadvantages that minorities face; instead, at that time and even now, the primary concern was and is to make space for all to flourish and live in accordance with their way of life. The institutional structure that was devised for this latter purpose – that is, for making space for religious and cultural diversity – made the community an important part of the political process. The implications this had for individual liberty became evident with the passage of time, but the commitment to accommodate diversity placed on the agenda of democracies, the world over, a new dimension of the concern for equal treatment to all – something that had not received sufficient or adequate attention previously. The framework for accommodating cultural diversity in India was, as noted earlier in the chapter, rooted in a certain self-understanding. It is ironic that this perception that had at one point in history provided the rationale for recognizing and accommodating difference

  india was later used to question just this conclusion on the ground that the majority culture was accommodative and tolerant, so no separate safeguards were needed for other religious and cultural communities. This was a significantly different reading of the idea of tolerance within Indian civilization. Yet one has to be prepared to accept that ideas are always open to new interpretations and appropriations, which is why they need to be given an institutional form. The latter brings out the full implications of the idea and also privileges certain readings of it. The framers of the Indian Constitution recognized this, so they did not stake the survival of diversity on the free and full realization of the supposed historical nature of the people of India. They provided certain rights for minorities and some facilities for all groups and communities. While these arrangements have thrown up several paradoxes, they have also contributed to the present condition. Religious and cultural diversity is today a social fact of Indian reality, one that can neither be denied nor taken for granted. But, as with all political values, it has nevertheless to be continuously negotiated and reaffirmed.

six The language of democratic discourse

Ideas that shaped thinking on freedom, equality, religion and diversity structured the discourse of democracy in India. Collectively, they laid the foundations for a democratic government and gave a distinct form to democracy in the country. The view that all persons are in principle equal and that a political community must have the right to govern itself, which was voiced throughout the first half of the twentieth century in India, prepared the ground for democracy. The desire to be free, politically independent and self-determining created a body of potential citizens1 for whom a representative government was the only legitimate and acceptable form of government. There were several compelling economic and political reasons for questioning colonial rule, but the sustained stress on the need for a government that is responsible to the people (and not merely efficient), acts in their interests and gives them a chance to make their own mistakes justified the need for a representative government. It nourished the conviction that a government which does not give people a voice and an opportunity to participate in shaping their political future was unacceptable. The non-violent nature of the Gandhian movement had shown that social and political change was

  india possible through peaceful expression of difference and dissent. Along with the emphasis on political freedom, this created an environment in which democracy, conceived as a representative government based on the popular will, could take deep roots. Just what would be the form of representative government? Would it take a parliamentary or a presidential form? Would it have separate electorates or a joint electorate? Would it give separate representation to some groups and communities? These questions were open to discussion and further negotiation, but the belief that a representative government was the only acceptable and desirable form of government was, in a sense, closed and settled. The ideas around political freedom had generated the perception that a non-democratic (non-representative) form of government was simply unacceptable. While this thinking offered a general basis for democracy in India, the reflections on matters of equality, religion and diversity gave it a distinct form. For one, it brought the community and the social group centrally into the discourse of democracy. While liberal political philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke and Mill envisaged the political in terms of the relationship between the individual and the state (for both Hobbes and Locke it was individuals who came together, signed the contract and formed the sovereign state) (see Van Dyke 1995), in India the community (and not merely voluntary association) also configured the political. The community that entered into the picture varied; sometimes it was a religious or a language community; on other occasions it was a caste- or tribe-based collective. Whatever the specific form of the community, democracy involved a triad in which the social group in which one was born or some other kind of ascribed community occupied a critical place, alongside the individual and the state. As noted earlier, in India reflections on equality almost always dwelt upon existing structures of inequality, and this brought the community/social group into the discussion in two ways: first, confronting different structures of inequality entailed identifying groups that were discriminated against or marginalized; and second, resisting

democratic discourse   and fighting against prevailing structures of oppression required (and at times engendered) group mobilizations. Both elements made the collective (group/community) a relevant category that could not be excluded from the discourse of democracy. To the extent that the Indian state, after independence, responded to caste-based inequalities through some form of reservation (that is, setting aside a quota of seats in legislative bodies, jobs in public institutions and places on educational courses) and affirmative action, the group as a category gained further salience. Theorization on questions of religion and diversity further reinforced this element. Religious and cultural diversity had been viewed as a fact of social existence in India – something that had existed for many centuries. And that was not all. Several prominent leaders valued this diversity of cultures and accorded it the same place as the concern for political liberties and equality for all. Since diversity was considered to be the distinctive attribute of India, for them valuing it was the natural expression of who ‘we’ are as a people. This was an extremely strong and unqualified defence of diversity in which the co-presence of communities was regarded to be desirable almost unconditionally. That is, as a value diversity was not subordinated to the logic of liberalism, the principle of gender equality or individual autonomy. These principles mattered but along with diversity and not as conditions that must be met before diversity is protected. This categorical support for diversity invariably made room for the community; after all it was the diversity of religions and cultures that was cherished and not simply the diversity of views and opinions expressed by individuals in a society. In other words, protecting diversity involved the harmonious coexistence, survival and flourishing of different ways of life, world-views, beliefs and practices, as embodied by specific communities. The decision of the framers of the constitution to recognize diverse religions and grant equal respect to them only complemented and further extended the value of diversity. It too brought in the community and made it an important actor in the political domain. Had the dominant ideas pushed towards religious/cultural majoritarianism

  india or a separation of religion from politics/state, the story of democracy in India might have been a different one. The fact that so many social and political leaders envisioned a society in which the two major communities – the Hindus and the Muslims – would live together, like the branches of a tree (to use Gandhi’s phrase), made it possible to consider accommodating the diversity of religions and cultures that existed in India. At the time of independence, the equality of religions was formalized by protecting religious liberty for all: that is, by giving all persons the right to profess, propagate and practise their religion. This right was given to the individual, but, as practices were expressions of particular ways of life and systems of belief, it alluded to and protected the right of communities to carry on with the practices that were sanctioned by their religion and community. The community and the group thus entered into the picture in many different ways. Even in the first half of the twentieth century the community was a site of political mobilization; it was a location from which individuals entered into and engaged with the political domain. This did not change after independence. If anything, the space made for the community offered an opening for identity-based politics. Political parties frequently appealed to voters as members of specific communities; they took up the perceived interests of these collectivities and raised issues in a way that linked together the fate of several groups or fragmented existing conglomerates and groups. To some extent this was a relatively easy way to seek the support of large numbers of people in electoral politics, but it was also the direction in which the concerns of equality and diversity, as they had been articulated in India, pushed. Raising issues around existing inequalities as well as concerns about the liberty and security of religious communities inevitably appealed to a collective, and to individuals as members of specific collective entities. Ascribed identities, social and cultural, were in the process constructed and reconfigured continually and democratic politics came to revolve around just this.

democratic discourse   The community/group figured prominently in democratic discourse, but this does not mean that the individual was non-existent. Indeed, like the community, it remained one nodal point of the triad that shaped democracy in India. The individual (the self) was a constant point of reference in the ideas that dominated the social and political imagination from the end of the nineteenth century. Leaders seeking to change attitudes and perceptions prescribed a moral code of behaviour and social interaction for the individual. At times, they elucidated the fundamental unity of Being in the hope that it would compel the individual to rethink his or her practices and actions, for instance those related to caste distinctions. A few among them focused on the cultivation of the individual will: they spoke of the need to build the conviction, the resolve, to pursue the ethically desirable goal of service to humanity, and be prepared to pursue the good of the community/collective over that of the self/ego. The spiritual idiom, which was so frequently used in the political realm, was directed towards the individual. Its aim was to build individual capacities so as to curb the pursuit of private, selfish interests. Although the spiritual journey was geared towards arriving at the truth – namely, the underlying unity of all persons and the chain that links all beings to that One Being – so that individuals could recognize their ‘true’ purpose and goal, it was a journey that had to be undertaken by the individual for him- or herself. The self could not be substituted by another person; nor could one transfer one’s knowledge and wisdom readily to another. The truth had, in this sense, to be realized by the individual. This way of thinking placed the individual in the centre of the frame. But even as this aspect of thinking on religion and freedom put the spotlight on the individual, other dimensions of thinking on religion, freedom and equality gave prominence to the community. If, for instance, the emphasis on political freedom or freedom from external rule sought to construct a political community, the idea that freedom required that a person be true to his being, exercise freedom of mind and spirit or listen to his moral conscience centred on the

  india individual. The individual and the community thus remained two nodal points of reference, which together gave a determinate form to democracy in India. The state, as the sovereign body, comprising the representatives of the people, was the third element of the triad, and it is the relationship between them that fashioned the political discourse of democracy in India. The individual and the community could coexist as political actors because the individual was conceived primarily as an embedded self. The individual did not figure as a separate autonomous person but primarily as an individual-in-community. Even when the appeal was to the individual it was assumed, at least most of the time, that he or she was a member of some community/communities. This membership was constitutive of the self to the extent that it was the point from which the individual began an engagement with the world. In this sense, the community was not something that was completely external to the self, but nor was it identical to the self. The category individual-in-community underlined that the individual had responsibility towards others and towards the society as a whole. But this was not a case of placing duties and obligations over rights. There is no doubt that most political thinkers in India did not see the individual as a Rawlsian unencumbered self. The self was continually being directed towards a path that would compel it to acknowledge its obligations, but these obligations were not positioned against rights. If anything, they emerged from, and were at times conditions for, the recognition of rights. They suggested that claims one has as an individual also come with certain responsibilities. For instance, the claim to freedom (something that was said to be a person’s birthright) came with the obligation to pursue this goal by placing it before one’s personal interest. The only snag is that in the absence of a sovereign state the burden of this responsibility fell almost entirely upon the individual. It is difficult to conclude from this, as is sometimes done, that obligations were more important in this framework than rights. In fact, if one goes by the debates in the Constituent Assembly and the

democratic discourse   constitution that was framed, it is evident that rights were considered the priority. As citizens, individuals received rights; they could justifiably make claims that the state was required to honour and protect. Obligations placed upon the individual were more informal and were left to the individual to acknowledge and act upon. One might add here that the individual figured prominently in the social and political ideas in the pre-independence period as well as in the constitution of independent India, albeit in fairly different ways. In the former, the individual was the vehicle of change and a great deal of responsibility rested on him or her in this regard. In the constitution, on the other hand, the individual was the subject of rights. Whether it is political liberties, the right to non-discrimination on grounds of religion, caste or gender, or even the right to religion, the right was given to the individual. Indeed most of the rights began with the terms ’Every person’ or ‘No person’ or ‘All citizens’; only Articles 26 and 30 alluded to a collective. The community (whether a political community or a social/religious community) entered through the conditions that accompanied or qualified the rights. However, in the years that followed, the functioning of democracy, the electoral process, the tension between the clauses of specific rights and the wider concerns of equality and diversity expanded the space for the community. They gave greater leverage to the community: allowing it to trump individual liberty or speak on behalf of the individual. Either way, the individual was much too frequently edged out of the equation. To conclude, political imagination and democratic discourse in India were shaped by values that had an affinity with those that were (and continue to be) cherished by modern liberal democracies: values like equality of all persons, equal respect for all, equality before the law, the right to political participation for all citizens, the right to govern oneself, freedom of conscience and religious liberty. Yet, what made the Indian case distinct is that each of these ideas was layered with new meanings that set them apart from their liberal counterparts.

  india For instance, equality for all was taken to imply not just equality before the law or equality of all persons as citizens with identical and equal rights, but also equality of diverse communities and groups. To put it another way, equality for all referred not only to individuals but also to groups and communities. Among other things it meant the absence of caste-based inequalities/discrimination and equal liberty for diverse communities. Similarly, religious liberty involved not just freedom of conscience but also freedom of religious practice. This was a different reading of the principles of equality for all and equal liberty for all, and it gave democracy in India a distinct form. Perhaps what was even more distinctive was that in India the commitment to equality and liberty was not accompanied by liberal anxieties. Political freedom was strongly desired and fought for, but what should be done to protect the individual from the arbitrary action of the executive or other forms of legitimate authority was most of the time neglected or overlooked. A few individuals raised this issue, but the voices that spoke fervently about political freedom gave little consideration to the threat. Most of them assumed that a democratically elected government which represents the people would be different; it would not pose a threat to the liberty and the rights of its people. Even those, like Alladi Krishnaswamy Ayyar, who argued against rights being qualified unduly to accommodate community concerns wanted to give extensive powers of search to the police to protect the interests of the state (Shiva Rao 1967: 239). A few others believed that self-conscious, reflective individuals would, when in government, act responsibly in the interest of the larger society. Either way, liberal anxieties about authority – political as well as religious and social authority – were largely absent. Together these two elements prepared the ground for a more participation-centred rather than individual liberty-centred democracy. Charles Taylor has argued, in his essay ‘The Politics of Recognition’, that there could be two kinds of liberal society: that which does not endorse a substantive conception of good life, and that which does. The former is committed to treating all persons as equal, and

democratic discourse   privileges individual rights over all else. The latter is constituted around a shared conception of good, but extends the basic rights of participation to minorities and affirms equality before the law. Looking at the case of India, one might add to this a third category of liberal democracy: namely, that which neither endorses a conception of good life nor places individual rights before other values. India recognized and valued the presence of diverse religions and cultures. For this reason it did not affirm any substantive conception of the good life. It maintained that the state would be neutral, and not aligned with any one religion. Yet its desire to treat all communities as equal translated into special consideration for the minorities so that they could pursue and protect their way of life. The Indian Constitution did not merely extend basic rights of life and political participation to all; it gave them a considerable degree of religious and cultural liberty. And in protecting community personal laws, which related to all family matters, it did not apply a uniform set of rules to all citizens. As such, when India gained independence in 1947 it walked down an untrodden path. In the middle of the twentieth century, when most liberal democracies were trying to ensure equal civil and political rights as well religious liberty for their citizens, India tried to accommodate diversities while simultaneously extending basic rights to all citizens, men and women, as well as to people of different religions, castes and cultures. In pursuing this end it visualized a structure that remains even today somewhat unique in its effort to combine cultural heterogeneity with political integration. India created a framework for diverse cultures to grow and flourish but it continued to visualize the political arena and the political community as an undifferentiated collective. Unlike most analysts today, who suggest that claims of cultural diversity be accommodated through some form of special recognition, usually in the form of separate representation or some degree of political autonomy granted to minorities to govern themselves in a given region/territory, or by accepting other modes of power-sharing, India did not entirely accept

  india these forms of political differentiation. It gave communities the right to observe their beliefs and practices and the opportunity to ensure their survival, but it did not accept the claim that a group’s interest can only be represented by its own members. As a result, even though it pluralized the cultural domain, making room for diverse communities and their cultural codes, it did not do the same in the political domain. People entered the latter essentially as citizens. Even though exceptions were made in the case of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, members of religious communities were to participate essentially as citizens. This was a unique way of reconfiguring the private–public distinction and accommodating diversity. While recent theories of multiculturalism regard ‘differentiated citizenship’ and ‘presence’ as necessary conditions of equality, India explored the possibility of bringing the difference into the political domain informally.2 Formally, communities could form political organizations to present their interests in the public sphere, but it was left to democratic practices to make room for different communities. Over the years, the electoral process has brought the different communities in informally; political parties, seeking to form a government, invariably appeal to different communities for support. This is not to say that all parties are, or have been, equally attentive to the concerns of all minorities, but it has created a dynamic where when one party speaks for the majority, others invariably take up the concerns of the neglected minorities. Electoral politics is, however, only one form of informal accommodation, distribution of public offices being another site. As a result, undifferentiated citizenship has yielded results that are not starkly different from that of the politics of presence. Together these elements produced a new language of democracy – one whose terms were, at one level, familiar, and yet, in their meaning and actualized form, so different. This language was, to a considerable extent, an invention of the twentieth century and it shaped independent India. However, unlike most inventions it was not anchored in any foundational principle of theory. It evolved

democratic discourse   gradually, drawing upon the ideas of different thinkers, receiving a concrete form in the constitution, but continually absorbing influences that came in the course of democratic practices. Like an analogue to Indian political theory, it presented a frame that could neither be reduced to the indigenous cultural idiom nor understood entirely through the lens of the modern West.

Notes

one 1. If the indigenous has to be retrieved, or culled from the Indian tradition, then where does one begin? Which tradition or school of thought might be appropriate? Should one take the Advaitya philosophy that so many social leaders in the early part of the twentieth century saw as the ground of what constitutes the Indian? Or should one regard the principles of Samkhya philosophy, which surface in McKim Marriott’s construction of an indigenous social science, as the articulation of the authentically Indian? Or should one move away from textual traditions altogether as they are the monopoly of the dominant groups in society and are bound therefore to reflect only their perspective (see Guru 2011)? On these and several other related questions, the votaries of indigenous social science differ. 2. The ‘objective mind’ refers to the ‘manifold terms in which the common background subsisting among various individuals has objectified itself. … Its realm extends from the style of life to the forms of intercourse … to custom, law, state, religion, art, science, philosophy ’ (Dilthey 1949: 118). 3. It was assumed that people speak the language that is embedded in that culture; hence, understanding Indian culture or tradition was equated with understanding the people of India.

two 1. India was home to many different communities; Hindus were the largest community, comprising more than 80 per cent of the population. As

notes   caste-based differentiation and hierarchy were a peculiar feature of Hinduism, it is this community that became the focus of attention. 2. To put this another way, these analysts were not interested in asking such questions as, can all forms of difference and distinctions be eliminated? Why should one pursue equality? Or, equality of what? They began instead with the concrete forms of inequality that existed in society, and in the process prioritized the historical and the socio-political over the normative. In a way they reflected an emerging consciousness of what is unacceptable, without necessarily finding the need to justify this. In recent times, this understanding echoes in Amartya Sen’s writings, particularly in his suggestion that it is preferable to focus on minimizing injustices as there is a greater degree of agreement on what is unacceptable or blatantly unjust rather than on what constitutes a perfectly just order. 3. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Raja Rammohan Roy, Pandita Ramabai and Justice Ranade, among others, raised their voices against Hindu social practices that were clearly unjust to women. The twentieth century saw many other influential voices addressing issues of inequality: T. Periyar, Swami Vivekananda, M.K. Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar all engaged with this question, and many analysts regard their contributions to be important for an understanding of contemporary India. If one sets aside the question of genealogy, the conceptions of equality articulated in the writings of Bankim Chandra and of Jyotirao Phule offer two distinct views on the subject, and indeed most understandings of equality that inform the public imagination in the years to come occupy positions somewhere between the two. 4. For Bankim, differences of talents and skills, of physical and mental abilities, were natural, but considering one person as inferior to another, and treating him or her as a slave with no rights, was unnatural; and it was the latter that was a mark of inequality. 5. In the words of Bankim Chandra, ‘India stood on the road of decline because of wide caste differences’ ([1879] 1977: 153). On the one hand, the caste system kept a substantial part of the population illiterate, and on the other, the monopoly over knowledge that the brahmins enjoyed meant that no challenges were posed to them from within their own society. This made the brahmins complacent and they became more inclined to rely on rituals rather than knowledge. 6. Bankim Chandra argued that in India the shudras, who constitute the majority of the population, remained illiterate, as they were denied the right to education and learning. ‘Imagine, if England had a system where no one but the scions of the families of Russell, Cavendish, Stanley, and a few other selected ones were allowed to pursue knowledge, where would British civilization be? Leave the poets, philosophers, scientists

  india out, where would Watt, Stevenson, Arkwright have been? In India that is almost what happened’ ([1879] 1977: 153). 7. Bankim Chandra stated that ‘Habitual laziness and lack of enthusiasm is called satisfaction. Once the Indians fell into abject misery, they remained satisfied with it’ ([1879] 1977: 184). 8. Structural changes would not, according to Bankim Chandra, be enough because several causal conditions had come together to yield the present outcome. Besides, even though the zamindars and the peasants constituted two different classes, nevertheless not all zamindars were the same and they did not all act in exactly the same way. He wrote: ‘We do not agree with those who blame only the Zamindars. Many good deeds have been done by the Zamindars. That the villages’ schools are being opened, that people without any distinction of caste or creed or income are getting education in their villages is due to the Zamindars. At many places the Zamindars by building hospitals, roads, guesthouses, etc. are doing good to the common man’ ([1879] 1977: 175). So, even though some of them were oppressing their tenants, not all were acting in a like manner. 9. Phule held the Aryan Shastras and their institutions responsible for the plight of women. He argued that these institutions subjected brahmin women to enforced widowhood and permitted polygamy for men. Hence, in his response to the notes drafted by B.M. Malabari on ‘Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood’, Phule placed women alongside the shudras and the atishudras, suggesting that they shared a common adversary, the Aryan religion, which was responsible for their present condition (Phule [1873] 2002: 193–7). 10. Parasuram was said to be the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu and his figure appears in many Hindu texts, from the Puranas to Ramayana and Mahabharata. As a warrior saint, who is well-versed in the Vedas and willing to use the axe and the bow and arrow, he stands as the protector of the brahmins who killed the evil Kshatriyas twenty-one times over. 11. According to Phule, when some of the lower castes rebelled against the brahmins, the latter, to seek revenge, separated them from the others and ‘dictated that neither they nor their children should ever be touched by the other people, called mali or kunbi today. After this, all the trade and commerce ended and they were reduced to a life of abject poverty and had to resort to the practice of eating the flesh of dead animals in order to survive. When the other shudras, who proudly called themselves mali, kunbi, sonar, shimpi, lohar, sutar, etc. according to their professions, came to know of this they started to despise them under the influence of the Brahmans. They failed to see the trickery of the Brahmans. All the shudras belonged to the same fraternity; but

notes   the devious Brahmans had deliberately poisoned their minds against a section of their people who had dared challenge their domination and revolt against them’ (Phule [1873] 2002: 45). 12. Through a ritual reversal, Jyotirao Phule resurrected figures that had been demonized in Hindu myths. He argued that the brahmins had constructed a narrative to usurp the power of other groups and to establish in its place their own hegemony in society. This was the treachery of the brahmins and it had led to the wrongful dethronement and misrepresentation of such figures as Bali and the father of Prahlad, Hiranyakashyapu. So in his own writings he presented these beleaguered figures in a positive vein, and in this process challenged brahmin supremacy and theological understanding (Phule [1873] 2002: 47–70). 13. Phule was critical of the British for continuing to use brahmin teachers in schools and failing to recognize the need to bring in and give responsibility to the lower castes in schools and other government positions. 14. Phule offered other reasons as well for having non-brahmin teachers. He felt that brahmin teachers could teach the children of the lower castes reading and writing in Marathi; they could not build skills that these children would require for the various occupations that they were likely to perform later in life. He went on to argue that besides reading and writing these students must also receive elementary training in agriculture and sanitation, as that would be beneficial for them (Phule [1873] 2002: 107). 15. Giving a voice to the lower castes also meant that the presence of other communities should be commensurate with their size in the population; that is, they should be present but not more so than their size in the population. Since Phule was not writing in a political environment where electoral democracy existed, it is difficult to say whether proportionate representation/presence was being seen as a condition for realizing substantive democracy; all that can be concluded is that ‘presence’ was considered to be necessary for empowering previously dispossessed populations. It was a way of minimizing the hostility and the indifference of the system towards the plight of the shudras – elements that were necessary for challenging existing forms of oppression and domination. However, the idea that the lower castes would never get a fair deal if they were not themselves occupying administrative positions yielded a polarized society – one marked by deep mistrust of the upper castes, more specifically the brahmins. 16. Though, in comparison with the Muslim rule, he too felt that British rule was better for the people of India. 17. The fact that the British had not done enough for the shudras did not

  india weaken Phule’s belief that the British intervention and presence had played a crucial role in the emancipation of the lower castes. So much so that he suggested that if the ‘government is unable to obtain adequate numbers of people from all castes in proportion to their population, then only Europeans should be employed to work in those posts. Then the bhat employees will not be able to harm the interests of the government and those of the shudras. Second, the government should provide those European Collectors, who speak Marathi well, with pension for their life, and make them stay in the villages among the illiterate shudras, so that they can keep a close watch, through the shudras, on the tricks of the bhats and the Kulkarnis, and send detailed reports to the government on all that happens there. This will expose the shameless frauds of the bhats in the Education Department. … This will also enlighten the oppressed shudras and true knowledge will enable them to renounce the irrational domination of the bhats over them. I am quite convinced that they will never forget the obligations of the Queen, who alone can remove the binds of slavery tied around their necks by the wily Brahmans’ (ibid.: 87). 18. Available at http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/ambedkar; accessed 14 April 2011. 19. To quote Ambedkar, ‘it must be recognized that the Hindus observe Caste not because they are inhuman or wrong-headed. They observe Caste because they are deeply religious. … If this is correct, then obviously the enemy you must grapple with is not the people who observe Caste, but the Shastras which teach them this religion of Caste. Criticising and ridiculing people for not inter-dining or inter-marrying or occasionally holding inter-caste dinners or celebrating inter-caste marriages, is a futile method of achieving the desired end. The real remedy is to destroy belief in the sanctity of the Shastras. … Reformers working for the removal of untouchability, like Mahatama Gandhi, do not seem to realize that the acts of the people are merely the results of their beliefs inculcated in their minds by the Shastras, and that people will not change their conduct until they cease to believe in the sanctity of the Shastras on which their conduct is founded’ (Ambedkar 1944: section 20 (9–10); http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/ambedkar; accessed 14 April 2011). 20. Ambedkar envisioned a society based on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. Fraternity was as important, if not more so, than the other principles. But fraternity was not possible in a Hindu society. To quote Ambedkar, ‘Men constitute a society because they have things in common. To have similar things is totally different from possessing things in common. And the only way by which men can come to possess things in common with one another is by being in

notes   communication with one another’ (Ambedkar 1944: section 6[6]). ‘The Caste system prevents common activity, and by preventing common activity, it has prevented the Hindus from becoming a society with a unified life and a consciousness of its own being’ (Ambedkar 1944: section 6[7]). This was yet another reason why the caste system had to be ‘annihilated’ in order to create a modern democratic society. 21. This emphasis on sameness, or access to the same resources, was significant because one could conceive of institutions that were ‘separate but equal’. Indeed a singular emphasis on access or presence might push in the direction of, for instance, creating separate educational institutions that provide an equally good or high degree of training and knowledge. In stressing the need to give the lower castes, particularly the ‘ex-untouchables’, access to the same tanks, inns, schools and so on, Ambedkar recognized more keenly than many others that, in a situation of inequality and hierarchy, separate would always leave some unequal. The ‘depressed classes’ had first to get access to the same resources, facilities and institutions and achieve that minimum condition of being treated and considered as equal. 22. This is the picture that emerges from his accounts of the humiliation he himself suffered (for details, see Gautam 2000). 23. This was not a plea for proportionate representation. It did not associate equality with the belief that different communities should be present in proportion to their size in the population in each sphere of social and public life. For Ambedkar, special arrangements, like representation in key administrative positions, were needed to ensure that marginalized groups did not remain excluded and unequal in the public domain. 24. At the Round Table Conference, Ambedkar stated: ‘The depressed classes are not anxious, they are not clamorous, they have not started any movement for claiming that there shall be an immediate transfer of power from the British to the Indian people. Our submission is that if you make that transfer, that transfer … be accompanied by such conditions … that the power shall not fall into the hands of a … group of people’ (Ambedkar [1945] 2009: 64). 25. ‘Indeed, so far as we are concerned, the British government has accepted the social arrangements as it has found them.’ ‘It is only in a Swaraj constitution that we stand any chance of getting the political power in our own hands, without which we cannot bring salvation to our people’ (quoted in Gore 1993: 128). 26. For Ambedkar, Sikhs derive strength from the feeling that all Sikhs will come to the ‘rescue of a Sikh when he is in danger and that all Mohammedans will rush to save a Mohammedan if he is attacked’ (1944: Section 11 [1]). A similar sense of commonality and sanghatan was simply not possible in Hinduism.

  india 27. The criterion that Gandhi suggested was that we should not take that which we do not need ‘for our immediate use’. He wrote: ‘I am no socialist and I do not want to dispossess those who have possessions. … But so far as my own life has to be regulated, I do say that I dare not possess anything which I do not want. In India we have got three millions of people having to be satisfied with one meal a day, and that meal consists of a chapatti containing no fat in it, and a pinch of salt. … You and I, who ought to know better, must adjust our wants, and even undergo voluntary starvation in order that they may be nursed, fed and clothed’ (1922: 324–5; emphasis added). 28. The vision of a self-reliant village – one that will produce everything it needs – was expressed by Gandhi in the following words: My idea of village Swaraj is that it is a complete republic, independent of its neighbours for its own vital wants, and yet interdependent for many others in which dependence is a necessity. Thus every village’s first concern will be to grow its own food crops and cotton for its cloth. It should have a reserve for its cattle, recreation and playground for adults and children. … The village will maintain a village theatre, school and public hall. It will have its own waterworks ensuring clean water supply. … The government of the village will be conducted by the Panchayat of five persons annually elected by the adult villagers, male and female, possessing minimum prescribed qualifications. These will have all the authority and jurisdiction required (18 July 1942, in Gandhi 1999, vol. 83: 113). As Gruzalski points out, in such a model village work would be provided for all persons so that they can meet their essential needs. Reorganization of society and economy of this kind would also minimize the exploitation of one nation by another and excessive exploitation and appropriation by some nations at the expense of others (Gruzalski 2001: 41–71). 29. ‘It is because this process of multiplication of wants out of proportion to our surroundings was discovered to be going on with increasing velocity that non-cooperation was conceived. And thus conceived it was not non-cooperation with persons, but with an attitude that was responsible for the system which had seized us in its serpentine coil and which was reducing us to dust. The system had raised the standard of living among us, its creatures, wholly unwarranted by the general condition of the country’ (24 June 1926, in Gandhi 1999, vol. 35: 412). 30. Gandhi made a distinction between varnashrama (the law relating to differentiation of work) and the caste system. The latter involved hierarchy, where some work is valued and other despised. Inequality stemmed, in his view, from the caste system and not the varnashrama.

notes   31. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, Varnashrama is, in my opinion, inherent in human nature and Hinduism has simply reduced it to a science. It does attach to birth. A man cannot change his Varna by choice. Not to abide by one’s Varna is to disregard the law of heredity. … The four divisions are all-sufficing. … The four divisions define a man’s calling, they do not restrict or regulate social intercourse. The divisions define duties, they confer no privileges. It is, I hold, against the genius of Hinduism to arrogate to oneself a higher status or assign to another a lower. All are born to serve God’s creation, a Brahman with his knowledge, a Kshatriya with his power of protection, a Vaishya with his commercial ability, and a Shudra with his bodily labour. This does not however mean that a Brahman, for instance, is absolved from bodily labour or the duty of protecting himself and others. His birth makes a Brahman predominantly a man of knowledge, the fittest by heredity and training to impart learning to others. There is nothing, again, to prevent the Shudra from acquiring all the knowledge he wishes. Only, he will best serve with his body and need not envy others their special qualities for service. But a Brahman who claims superiority by right of knowledge falls and has no knowledge. And so with others who pride themselves for their special qualities. (Gandhi 1964: 360) As noted earlier, Gandhi believed that varnashrama constituted a form of functional differentiation marked not by a relationship of contradiction (as was the case in the category of class) but by mutuality of interest: I believe that every man is born in the world with certain natural tendencies. Every person is born with certain definite limitations which he cannot overcome. From a careful observation of those limitations the law of varna was deduced. It established certain spheres of actions for certain people with certain tendencies. This avoided all unworthy competition. Whilst recognizing limitations, the law of varna admitted of no distinctions of high and low; on the one hand, it guaranteed to each the fruits of his labours, and one the other, it prevented him from pressing upon his neighbours. This great law has been degraded and fallen into disrepute. But my conviction is that an ideal social order will only be evolved when the implications of this law are fully understood and given effect to. (Gandhi [October 1935] 1960; www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/ chap20.htm; accessed 20 August 2012). This analysis and defence of the varnashram distinguished his position sharply from that of Ambedkar, and, despite the criticisms that came,

  india Gandhi’s views remained unchanged on this subject. The caste system (but not the varnashrama) was, in his view, contrary to the interests of Hinduism and in violation of its essence. To use his words, I have frequently said that I do not believe in caste in the modern sense. It is an excrescence and a handicap on progress. Nor do I believe in inequalities between human beings. We are all absolutely equal. But equality is of souls and not bodies. Hence, it is a mental state. We need to think of, and to assert, equality because we see great inequalities in the physical world. We have to realize equality in the midst of this apparent external inequality. Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and Man. Thus caste, in so far as it connotes distinctions in status, is an evil. (4–6 June 1931, in Gandhi 1999, vol. 52: 256) Within the caste system, of course, the practice of untouchability was ‘the greatest blot’ upon Hinduism (Gandhi, quoted in Tendulkar 1961: 223; see also Gandhi 1999, vol. 59: 225). 32. Bankim had located equality in the demand for equality of rights. Gandhi, by comparison, emphasized the ontological unity of persons as human beings. This was a significant difference: in the Gandhian vision equality was a condition of our being that we must become aware of and not simply a relation between individuals. 33. K.M. Munshi’s ‘Note and Draft Articles on Fundamental Rights’, presented on 17 March 1947, spoke of equality of opportunity in all spheres, political, economic and social (in Shiva Rao 1967: 74); B.R. Ambedkar’s ‘Memorandum and Draft Articles on the Rights of States and Minorities’, presented on 24 March 1947, spoke of equality before the law, equal civil rights, equal access to facilities in society – such as wells, streets, tanks, educational institutions, theatres, accommodation in inns, and of course separate representation as well as fellowships and educational facilities for the Scheduled Castes (Shiva Rao: 1967: 87–95). 34. André Béteille points out that Ambedkar felt that in a country where constitutional morality was not deeply entrenched, detailed laws were necessary (Béteille 2008: 35–40). This was certainly an important consideration. But there was also a strong belief that some kinds of inequalities may continue to exist and remain unchallenged if they were not separately identified and targeted. 35. Questions relating to economic equality were raised and discussed. But these concerns gained greater prominence subsequently. The Constitution of India began by recognizing the right to property as a fundamental right, but in 1977 the 44th Amendment changed this status to a statutory right.

notes   36. The caste system was an acknowledged practice of the majority Hindu community. Hence groups that had been segregated and that had suffered the effects of the practice of untouchability within this community were identified within the category of the Scheduled Castes. Eventually, in the process of negotiations with the members of the Sikh community, a few groups from this community were also included within the list of identified Scheduled Castes which were to receive the benefits of the reservation policy. But, by and large, members of the Scheduled Castes were identified from within the Hindu community. 37. This category included groups other than the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, which were seen as lagging behind. The constitution did not, however, stipulate any criterion for identifying just who is ‘backward’. Over the years state governments have set up Backward Classes Commissions to identify groups that were socially and economically backward. These Commissions evolved a variety of different criteria for this purpose, and sometimes, even within the same state, different criteria were used by successive Commissions to identify Other Backward Classes. As a result this has remained a fluid category, with more and more groups seeking inclusion in it. Today, some groups belonging to different religious communities, including Christians and Muslims, receive benefits as a part of the Backward Classes. 38. The First Amendment to the constitution made it possible to reserve places for ‘socially and educationally backward’ communities in higher education, while Article 16 had already permitted special consideration for ‘Backward Classes’ in public appointments. Thus the range and scope of reservations has steadily increased with the passage of time. However, the Supreme Court of India has on many occasions focused on the letter of the law and asked that the identified beneficiaries of places in educational institutions need to be not just ‘socially backward’ communities but socially and educationally backward. 39. The list of Scheduled Castes, as just explained, primarily contained groups from within the Hindu community that had been victims of its caste-based practices. Over the years, some sociologists and activists have maintained that caste exists as a social category in all religious communities even when there is no sanction for it in religious or theological terms. So, groups from other religions must also be included in the list of Scheduled Castes. Today, the central government as well as most states recognize the category of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and it is within this group that some backward sections (often identified in terms of their occupation) from the Muslim and the Christian communities have been included as beneficiaries of quotas. 40. Even though reservations are given to SCs (Scheduled Castes), STs

  india (Scheduled Tribes) and OBCs (Other Backward Classes), there are pending demands for inclusion in one of these categories, and even among those who are included there are demands for inclusion in a specific category. The Gujjars in Rajasthan, for instance, who are included in the OBC list, are protesting for recognition as STs (rather than OBCs); in some states, backward sections of the Muslim community are asking for a separate quota within the OBC list, and sections of the SCs are similarly asking for sub-quotas within the existing framework of reservations/quotas. Questions relating to the identification of beneficiaries thus continue to be a challenging problem faced by governments; they remain as controversial and contested as the extension of reservations/ quotas in different spheres.

three 1. These terms were frequently used to refer to colonial rule. 2. Not all the votaries of swaraj asked for full independence. In the early years of the twentieth century, many of them pleaded for some voice and representation within the framework of British rule. 3. The distinction between self-rule and alien rule (i.e. rule by an external authority) had itself to be arrived at. It was not, and should not be seen as, a given. ‘[T]he very first thing in the culture of the ideal of Swaraj [self-rule] is discrimination between the national self and that which is not the national self. The idea of Swaraj has been revealed to us only recently and why? Because for over a hundred years we never looked at the British government as Pararashtra, as a foreign government’ (Pal [1907] in Goswami 1998: 627; emphasis added). 4. Political freedom was seen as a natural right that human beings possess by nature, so it could not be denied to them or taken away from them by any legal or political authority. It was, in this sense, a ‘divine gift’, which they could claim for themselves against all forms of external authority. This idea that political freedom defines who we are as human beings surfaced over and over again in the speeches and writings of social and political leaders, from Aurobindo and Tilak to Gandhi. Explaining the meaning of swaraj, Aurobindo said: ‘Swaraj is life, it is nectar and salvation’ ([24 January 1908] 2002: 834). Tilak argued that ‘freedom is the very life of the individual soul which Vedanta declares to be inseparable from God but identical with him. This freedom was a principle that could never perish’ (1918: 354; emphasis added). Gandhi wrote: ‘self-expression and self-government are not things which may be either taken away from us by anybody or which can be given to us by anybody’ (quoted in Iyer 1987: 353). 5. There are two reasons for not using the term ‘nation’ here. First, as many historians have argued, the nation was still in the making.

notes   The political consciousness of being one unified whole was gradually emerging at this time, and it was not an empirical reality. Second, while a significant part of the political leadership believed that India, with all its cultural and political diversity, could be a single unified community or nation, there were voices of dissent. On the one side were those who spoke of different religious communities – particularly the Hindus and the Muslims – as constituting different nations, and on the other were members who maintained that the lower castes (the shudras and the atishudras) could not be part of Hindu society. They stood outside that whole. Under the circumstances it might be more appropriate to use the term ‘multi-nation’ rather than ‘nation’. It is due to these considerations, and the debates that have occurred on this subject in India, that the term ‘nation’ has not been used. 6. The distinction between independence and freedom expressed Gandhi’s discomfort with the philosophy of individualism and its emphasis on individual autonomy. Freedom, envisaged here as political freedom, was a more specific goal, seeking the overthrow of British rule. As will be evident later, Gandhi accepted the idea that each individual is a moral person, free to choose and make his or her decisions and be responsible for his or her actions. But he refused to draw the boundaries of that being narrowly; the individual was part of the larger body of individuals, of society, the human race and, in the final analysis, nature and universe. 7. The Rowlatt Act of 1919 placed severe restrictions on the political liberties of the people of India. It curtailed the freedom of the press and gave the British authorities the power to arrest without trial any individual suspected of plotting against the Raj. 8. Available at www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_5/ epistles_first_series/089_mother.htm. This is his response to the question about personal salvation. Vivekananda here associates freedom with seeking mukti, and the latter with freedom for all in all these dimensions. He goes on to explain, ‘Those social rules which stand in the way of the unfoldment of this freedom are injurious, and steps should be taken to destroy them speedily. Those institutions should be encouraged by which men advance in the path of freedom’. 9. The difference between ‘outward’ freedom and ‘inner’ freedom was starkly made by Gandhi. He pointed out that individual liberty, understood as the absence of external hindrances, was the target of outward freedom. Inner freedom, on the other hand, rests on ‘self-dependence’ – something that is not seriously considered when we are speaking of individual liberty (Gandhi [2 March 1929] in Iyer 1987: 227–8). 10. While this was the form that the idea of swadeshi was most closely associated with, Goswami points out that this contributed to the

  india nationalization of capital. The call for swadeshi spurred the establishment of, for instance, the Tata Industrial Steel Company (TISCO) in 1907; the Bank of India and the Canara Bank in 1901; the Bank of Baroda, and the Punjab and Sind Bank in 1908; and the Central Bank of India in 1911 (1998: 628). 11. In a general form Vedanta referred to the ideals or the essence enshrined in the Vedic hymns; but more specifically it alluded to a set of philosophical principles that were derived primarily from the Upanishads and the Brahman Sutras. In the early part of the twentieth century it was Advaitya Vedanta (a philosophy of non-dualism) that was invoked by most votaries of swaraj, to argue that the individual spirit (atman, seen as man’s true consciousness and source of knowledge and happiness) was a part of the Infinite Supreme Consciousness (Brahman/God/Supreme Being). That is, there was a fundamental unity of all consciousness, along with the identity of finite individual consciousness with the Infinite Consciousness. (For a more detailed discussion, see Deussen [1906] 2009; Deutsch 1973.) 12. The idea that complete freedom entails the rejection of Western concepts and mode of living reverberates through the twentieth century, albeit in many different forms. Whether it is the idea of ethno-social science or the need to use indigenous categories to understand India, complete independence comes to be closely associated with the recovery of the ‘indigenous’. The one significant difference, however, is that in these latter-day representations (e.g. Nandy 1989; Madan 1987; Marriott 1990) the local and the indigenous are no longer understood in terms of the ideals of Vedanta. 13. ‘If India becomes an intellectual province of Europe, she will never attain to her natural greatness’ (Aurobindo [14 April 1908] 2002: 1041; emphasis added). 14. ‘Each represents, as it were, one peculiar note in this harmony of nations, and this is its very life, its vitality.’ In the case of India, ‘religion and religion alone is the life of India, and when that goes, India will die, in spite of politics, in spite of social reforms, in spite of Kubera’s wealth poured on the head of every one of her children’ (Vivekananda, 25 January 1897, www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/ vivekananda/volume_3/lectures_from_colombo_to_almora/reply_to_ the_address_of_welcome_at_ramnad.htm). A similar view is expressed by Aurobindo, who argues that ‘All political ideals must have relation to the temperament and past history of the race. The genius of India is separate from that of any other race in the world’ ([1908] 2002: 1086–7). 15. Tapan Raychaudhuri, for instance, has argued that Swami Vivekananda was interested in energizing all Indians as well as the rest of the world (Raychaudhuri 1997).

notes   16. Elsewhere, speaking of the limits of the reasoning mind and its logical practicality, Aurobindo argues: ‘man’s true way out is to discover his soul and its self-force and instrumentation and replace it by both the machinations of mind and the ignorance and disorder of life-nature ’ ([1970] 1987: 1058). 17. Implicit in this was the belief that in the tussle between individual will and what Rousseau referred to as the general will, the latter may not, and ordinarily does not, prevail. For the latter to triumph there must be a deeper understanding of the unity of the self and other – something that was, for this school of thought, offered by Vedanta. 18. ‘Vedanta and Privilege’, www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/ volume_1/lectures_and_discourses/vedanta_and_privilege. htm; accessed 12 February 2012. ‘The God in you is the God in all. If you have not known this, you have known nothing. How can there be difference? It is all one. Every being is the temple of the Most High; if you can see that, good, if not, spirituality has yet to come to you.’ 19. This idea of the fundamental unity of all beings was expressed by many individuals at this time. Sri Aurobindo, for instance, explained: ‘The Being is one, but this oneness is infinite and contains in itself an infinite plurality or multiplicity of itself. … The infinite multiplicity of One and the eternal unity of the Many are the two realities or aspects of one reality on which the manifestation is founded’ ([1970] 1987: 660). 20. At one level, this conception of the unity of being challenged the existing structure of society. While Hindu society appeared to be, in everyday life, internally divided and fragmented, the Advaitya philosophy of the Vedanta spoke of a spiritual unity of all beings. Yet not all votaries of this point of view rejected the caste system that was a major source of internal social divisions. Aurobindo, for instance, grounded the notion of the caste system in the idea of swadharma, arguing that, while the general rule of mind and action is the same for all men, we see too that there is a constant law of variation and each individual acts not only according to the common laws of the human spirit, mind, will, life, but according to his own nature; each man fulfils different functions or follows a different bent, according to the rule of his own circumstances, capacities, turn, character, powers. …This swadharma is of four general kinds formulated outwardly in the action of the four orders of the old Indian social culture, c¯aturvarn. ya. … The works of brahmins, kshatriyas, vaishyas and shudras, are divided according to the gunas (qualities) born of their own inner nature, spiritual temperament, essential character. … ‘One’s own natural work is better, even if it looks from some other point of view defective’. (Aurobindo 1997a, vol. 19: 508–10; sriaurobindoashram. org/sriauro/download.pdf; accessed 15 March 2012)

  india See also Aurobindo [1916–20] 1999: 200, ‘Swabhava and Swadharma: Essays on the Gita’, www.searchforlight.org/Gita/Swabhava%20and%20 Swadharma.htm; accessed 15 March 2012. This was just one way in which the caste system was reclaimed and restructured, and Aurobindo was not alone in suggesting the necessity of some form of differentiation in society and affirming the need for something like the caste division. Even other leaders, like Vivekananda, who spoke against untouchability and other caste practices upheld the value of institutions that had stood the test of time and served a basis for organizing society in the Vedic period (Vivekananda, vol. 4: 296). The Vedic era was, for Vivekananda, a symbol of the achievements of Indian civilization and a reminder of the spiritual essence of India – something that distinguished India from the West. 21. ‘Swaraj cannot be accomplished by a nation bound to forms which are no longer expressive of the ancient and immutable self of India’ (Auro­bindo, ‘Swaraj and the Coming Anarchy’, http://beta.sriaurobindoashram. org.in/php/SriAurobindoAshram/-09%20E-Library/-01%20Works%20 of%20Sri%20Aurobindo/-01%20English/-03_CWSA/-06-Bande%20 Mataram/-190_Bande%20Mataram%205-3-08.htm. 22. Gandhi recognized that one was born into a religion and a tradition; one lives in it, encounters the world through it and begins to think about the Truth. However, he believed that the different religions were like the branches of a tree, reflecting different experiences, histories and purposes, but offered a glimpse of the Truth. So the task before one was to tap into the truth that informed one’s tradition, open oneself to the truth that emerged out of other religions and then, armed with that truth, to return to one’s own tradition to see if the practices sanctioned in the name of that tradition were indeed justifiable or acceptable. 23. Vinit Haksar (2012) explains that in this framework even necessary and justified use of violence was spurred by compassion or love. 24. ‘Such Swaraj has to be experienced by each one, for himself’ (Gandhi [1910] 1921: 59). 25. A spiritual journey of this nature not only prepared the self to achieve inner freedom, it also strengthened a person’s resolve to act in accordance with the truth that one has thus arrived at. It empowered the individual and accorded his actions some moral authority and legitimacy. The paradox, however, was that the inner freedom (arrived at by the cultivation of the moral consciousness) that empowered the self to act in a responsible way also had the capacity to silence the other, particularly when the latter had yet to embark on a spiritual journey and gain self-consciousness of the truth. Gandhi was, in a way, aware of this dilemma. He wrote, ‘I have a strain of cruelty in me, as others say, such that people force themselves to be dragged against their will

notes   out of sheer fear or in the attempt to please me. … Even Gokhale used to tell me that I was so harsh that people felt terrified of me’ (quoted in Dalton 1969: 383). Perhaps this is the irony of a moral consciousness that undertakes a spiritual journey: it makes the self free but simultaneously creates an aura that compels others to comply with, or at least accept, the truth that it has arrived at. While this was not a necessary consequence of all forms of moral authority, however, one that was combined with self-discipline, sincerity and integrity certainly pushed in that direction. 26. Some scholars refer to it as a form of renunciatory politics where the ascetic way of life becomes a mode of realizing freedom. Gandhi, like Aurobindo and Vivekananda, used the religious idiom and invoked the figure of the samnyasin and the goal of moksha, and in this process drew upon aspects of the available ‘Indic’ traditions (Mukherjee 2010). But the idea that engagement in political life may require some form of sacrifice was not a peculiarly ‘Indic’ idea. In Ancient Greece, Plato suggested that the philosopher kings should not have private property or family so as to avoid the temptation of pursuing individual interest instead of the good of society. The path that Gandhi outlined was obviously different from those suggested by Plato or Rousseau, but the goal was the same, namely to abandon the pursuit of material gains or personal interest and focus instead on common good or welfare of the people as a whole. To the extent that the goal was not disengagement from the world or renunciation, but a reorientation of the self, I have chosen the phrase ‘spiritual politics’ employed by Vasanthi Srinivasan, in an analogous context (see Srinivasan 2006). 27. It is necessary to reiterate that the moral did not denote a set of rules or commandments that must be observed; rather, it referred to a set of practices that prepare the individual to arrive at the truth themselves. It could not therefore be readily institutionalized, but had the possibility of being an exemplar that one might refer to. Akeel Bilgrami argues that in such a framework if someone disagrees with you or ‘if someone fails to follow your example, you may be disappointed but you would no longer have the conceptual basis to see them as transgressive and wrong and subject to criticism’ (Bilgrami 2003: 4163). 28. Within the liberal framework the moral and the political were separated and placed in separate spheres. If the moral dealt with the personal and offered a set of rules/commandments that one must abide by in life, the political was the arena where different interests compete with each other. Hence, some form of external authority (such as the state) was necessary to maintain peace and order. For Gandhi, moral injunctions were not merely prescriptions about what one should do, or what constitutes good action. It was a mode of training the individual will

  india to arrive at the ethic of ahimsa, and it offered the ground for intervening in the political and the collective (see Pantham 1983; Mehta 2010). It was the orientation with which individuals must act in society as well as the basis on which collective decisions must be taken. The need to think from the vantage point of the other is an idea that figures centrally in the writings of several twentieth-century philosophers, from Hegel and Derrida to Kierkegaard and Levinas. Within liberalism, too, John Rawls suggests the need to frame laws from the standpoint of the least advantaged members of society. The difference is that for Gandhi, being mindful of the other required a spiritual preparation. It is something one has to arrive at and not something that is immediately given to us by our natural inclinations or rational self. 29. For Gandhi, khadi was a symbol of the unity of the Indian people, of its economic freedom and equality; in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, it was the ‘livery of India’s freedom’ (quoted in Heredia 1999: 1498); Parekh refers to it as the ‘vernacular model of action’ (1975: 211). 30. As noted in the previous chapter, swaraj here entailed a certain kind of political and social structure: one where the village would be a complete republic, independent of its neighbours for its essential needs; a decentralized economic and political structure. 31. Available at www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap51.htm; accessed 20 February 2012. 32. ‘In other words, we have systematically pursued a course of blind routine and habit, in which the mind of man has no place. We have been reduced to the helpless condition of a master who is altogether dependent on his servant’ (Tagore [1921] 2006: 417). Elsewhere, Tagore wrote: ‘The tendency of the mind is economical, it loves to form habits and move in groves which save it the trouble of thinking anew at each of its steps. Ideals once formed make the mind lazy. It becomes afraid to risk its acquisitions in fresh endeavours’ (1917: 67). Freedom, needless to add, resided in forsaking this kind of security and walking in ‘the highroad of adventures full of risk of new experiences’ (68). 33. Tagore was extremely critical of the ideology of nationalism and the present form of the nation. He described nationalism as ‘a cruel epidemic of evil that is sweeping over the human world of the present age, eating into its moral vitality’ (1917: 28). In the modern world, the nation had, he believed, become a perfect organization of power: The Nation with all its paraphernalia of power and prosperity, its flags and pious hymns, its blasphemous prayers in the churches, and the literary mock thunders of its patriotic bragging, cannot hide the fact that the Nation is the greatest evil for the Nation, that all its precautions are against it, and any new birth of its fellow in the world is always followed in its mind by the dread of a new peril.

notes   Its one wish is to trade on the feebleness of the rest of the world. (Tagore 1917: 42). While Tagore wrote extensively on the dangers posed by nationalism, he was equally critical of other forms of division – particularly the race and caste distinctions that marked most societies. Speaking of India, he wrote, ‘in her caste regulations, India recognized differences, but not the mutability which is the law of life. In trying to avoid collisions, she set up boundaries of immovable walls, thus giving to her numerous races the negative benefit of peace and order but not the positive opportunity of expansion and movement’ (Tagore 1917: 138, archive.org/stream/nationalism00tagorich; accessed 8 December 2012). 34. ‘Only those will be able to get and keep Swaraj in the material world who have realized the dignity of self-reliance and self-mastery in the spiritual world, those whom no temptation, no delusion, can induce to surrender the dignity of intellect into the keeping of others’ ([1921] 2006: 422). 35. ‘Therefore, man will have to exert all his power of love and clarity of vision to make another great moral adjustment which will comprehend the whole world of men and not merely the fractional groups of nationality. The call has come to every individual in the present age to prepare himself and his surroundings for the dawn of a new era when man shall discover his soul in the spiritual unity of all human being’ (Tagore 1917: 122–3). 36. ‘This truth, implicit in our own works of art, gives us the clue to the mystery of creation. We find that the endless rhythms of the world are not merely constructive; they strike our heart-strings and produce music’ (‘The Creative Ideal’, in Essays – Creative Unity, http://tagoreweb. in). 37. Tagore often spoke of the possibilities that would arise when the West meets the East, but without the trappings of self-interest; and, viceversa, when the soul of the East acknowledges the truths of creation that science has been able to unravel for us. For this reason, simply recovering past tradition or imitating the West was insufficient. Neither of them fulfilled the ideals that we ought to pursue as members of universal humankind. The task therefore was to reassess each, perhaps even to retrieve the creative forces of our own tradition, but without alienating our hearts and minds from those of the West. To quote Tagore: I feel certain that, if the great light of culture be extinct in Europe, our horizon in the East will mourn in darkness. It does not hurt my pride to acknowledge that, in the present age, Western humanity has received its mission to be the teacher of the world; that her

  india science, through the mastery of laws of nature, is to liberate human souls from the dark dungeon of matter. For this very reason I have realised all the more strongly, on the other hand, that the dominant collective idea in the Western countries is not creative. It is ready to enslave or kill individuals, to drug a great people with soulkilling poison, darkening their whole future with the black mist of stupefaction, and emasculating entire races of men to the utmost degree of helplessness. It is wholly wanting in spiritual power to blend and harmonise; it lacks the sense of the great personality of man (Tagore 1922: 98–9). 38. To quote Tagore, ‘Science has its proper sphere in analyzing this world as construction, just as grammar had its legitimate office in analyzing the syntax of a poem. But the world, as a creation, is not a mere construction; it too is more than a syntax. It is a poem, which we are apt to forget when grammar takes exclusive hold of our minds’ (1922: 125). 39. ‘The Creative Ideal’, in Essays – Creative Unity. 40. It was with a view to exploring and developing such an alternative form of education that Rabinranath Tagore initiated his experiment at Visva-bharti. For details, see Tagore, ‘The Centre of Indian Culture’ [1919], in Essays – Creative Unity. 41. ‘We must give ample proof of our work before we get Swaraj and we have got ample opportunities also to perform our task. If we wait for the Swaraj and then start our work, probably our cherished mission will prove futile. When a person waits for a fountain pen to write down an epic, the epic is never written. So, the prior necessity is work, and then of course we will get Swaraj’ (Tagore quoted in Dasgupta 1993: 94–5). 42. Tagore maintained that the mere presence of external conditions of freedom, in the form of government elected by the people, was not enough. This could give (as was the case in the West) the appearance of freedom but not its truth. ‘I would urge my own countrymen to ask themselves if the freedom to which they aspire is one of external conditions. Is it merely a transferable commodity? Have they acquired a true love of freedom? Have they faith in it? Are they ready to make space in their society for the minds of their children to grow up in the ideal of human dignity, unhindered by restrictions that are unjust and irrational?’ (‘The Spirit of Freedom (A Letter From New York to the Author’s Own Countrymen)’, in Essays – Creative Unity). 43. This was a conception of freedom that shared little with liberal philosophies that were sceptical of the quest for a larger whole, a totality, which could be valued as much as the individual. 44. This idea of strong external authority in the form of the state did not figure prominently in the notions of swaraj just outlined. But it was

notes   also not clear whether a state representing the will of the political community should receive powers to intervene and regulate the affairs of men. If the presence of a self-disciplined self made such a state unnecessary, the same rationale suggests that there was little to fear from a political sovereign that was not given to self-seeking and egoistic pursuit of personal interest. It was this ambiguity that created space for deliberating the role of the democratic state. Eventually, bowing to pragmatic considerations as well as concerns about the tyrannical nature of local communities (voiced by Ambedkar and also Patel), that tilted the balance in favour of a strong centralized political authority. 45. The provision for preventive detention was meant to be an exception, to be applied in extraordinary circumstances. However, almost a month after the adoption of the constitution the parliament passed the Preventive Detention Act 1950. While the Act was formally withdrawn in December 1969, in 1971 parliament enacted the Maintenance of Internal security Act (MISA). When MISA was terminated in 1978 by the Jananta government, the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Act (COFEPOSA) was enacted. The point is that in one form or another extraordinary laws of this kind have been in effect all through the post-independence period (see Desai 1986; Singh 2007). 46. Almost immediately after the adoption of the constitution, the First Amendment Act 1951 allowed the state to impose restrictions in the interest of the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, and in relation to contempt of court, defamation and incitement to an offence. 47. Brij Bhushan and Another v. The State of Delhi, 1950 AIR 129, at 611; available at indiankannon.org/doc/43023; accessed 20 August 2012. 48. The chief commissioner of Delhi had on 2 March 1950 directed the English weekly Organizer ‘to submit for scrutiny, in duplicate, before publication, till further order, all communal matters and news and views about Pakistan including photographs and cartoons other than those derived from official sources or supplied by the news agencies’ (at 3). The Court held that while creating public disorder undermines the security of the state and concerns generated in areas notified as ‘derogatory disturbed areas’ (at 18) cannot be ignored, nevertheless ‘freedom of speech and expression is one of the most valuable rights guaranteed to a citizen by the Constitution and should be jealously guarded by the Courts’ (at 19). The ‘imposition of pre-censorship on a journal is a restriction on the liberty of the press which is an essential part of the right to freedom of speech and expression’ (at 25) (Brij Bhushan and Another v. The State of Delhi, 2 March 1950, indiankannon.org/ doc/237273; accessed 20 December 2011; see also Romesh Thappar v. The State of Madras, 1950 AIR 124).

  india 49. Article 19, clause 2. In 1963, the Sixteenth Amendment to the constitution added to this list of limitations another ground: ‘the sovereignty and integrity of India’. Such were familiar grounds, often used by colonial rulers to restrict the political and civil liberties of the subject population. 50. Emergency refers here to a period of about twenty-one months (from 26 June 1975 to 21 March 1977) when the central government declared a state of ‘internal emergency’ in the country. Article 352 of the Constitution of India allowed the introduction of this measure when there is ‘imminent danger to the security of the country being threatened by internal disturbances’. During this period all civil liberties and elections were suspended and power rested entirely in the hands of the executive. The suppression of all democratic freedoms during this period met with resistance, but the lack of resistance to the introduction of these extraordinary measures by the judiciary and other branches of the government subsequently made citizens more attentive to the need to have strong civil associations that can be more vigilant in protecting basic liberties and political freedoms. 51. The film depicts the story of Hindu widows who were left in the city of Benaras (Varanasi). 52. India, it should be pointed out, was the second country (after Singapore) to take this action. 53. The list of books and films banned, for one reason or another, is much longer. And in many cases the central government or the state government and at times even the Censor Board have imposed a ban on the grounds that the expression is likely to threaten ‘public order’ (a euphemism for inter-community conflict). 54. In recent times issues relating to development (such as access to education, government jobs/employment, health) are being raised by minority populations. While concerns of religious-cultural identity and representation remain, the articulation of these development-related concerns has highlighted the divisions and differences that exist within the community as a whole. 55. In the post-Emergency period (i.e. after 1977) there was a heightened awareness of the threat to the rights of citizens from executive interventions. The critical self-reflection that followed was visible in the actions of the Supreme Court, both in judgments dealing with individual rights and in the new initiatives that it put in place for safeguarding the rights of all citizens. 56. Available at indiankanoon.org/doc/1400858; accessed 14 January 2012. 57. In the case involving a ban on the screening of the film The Da Vinci Code, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the Andhra Pradesh High Court revoking the ban. See news.webindia123.com/news/articles/ India/20060612/360782.html.

notes   58. Available at www.scribd.com/doc/68173316/41/In-the-case-of-AjayGoswami-v-Union-of-India-2007–1; accessed 10 February 2012. 59. Prior to this, in Sakal v. Union of India, 1962 SCR 842, the Court had observed that ‘the freedom of speech and expression of opinion is of paramount importance under the democratic Constitution which envisages changes in the composition of legislatures and governments and must be preserved’ (www.indiankanoon.org/doc/243002, at 866).

four 1. ‘Here is the source of all languages, all the thoughts and poems of the human spirit; everything, everything without exception, comes from India’ (Tieck [1800] in Halbfass 1988: 75). Herder, too, identified the Orient as the cradle of human civilization. The golden age of the human spirit, for him, could be seen in India. It is here that humankind receives its ‘first forms of wisdom and virtue with an ingenuousness, a strength and a mystery which indeed has … nothing, nothing at all of its kind in our philosophic, cold European world’ (Herder in Glasenapp 1973: 10; see also Almeida and Gilpin 2005). This sentiment was subsequently expressed, in equally strong words, by Max Müller. Posing the question, what can India teach us? he wrote: ‘all that we value has come to us from the East, and in going to the East … everybody … ought to feel that he is going to his “old home” full of memories, if only he can read them’ (Müller in Halbfass 1988: 108). 2. ‘The History of the world travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the beginning’ (Hegel 2001: 121). ‘In the political life of the East we find realized rational freedom, without advancing to subjective freedom’ (122; emphasis added). 3. Kumkum Sangari points out that there were differences across castes on such issues as punishment for adultery for women. The codification of Hindu Personal Law glossed over this ‘structured diversity’ and clubbed together people of various varnas to prescribe a single code for all (1995: 3381). Likewise, even though ‘Islamic religio-legal texts had not been univocal about polygamy’, this practice, which was common to the ruling groups, came to be endorsed (3382). 4. Financial assistance by way of fellowship for education and quotas for non-brahmin castes had existed in some princely states before (for more details, see Manor 1977; Jaffrelot 2005). 5. Another text that attracted the attention of social and political leaders was the Gita. At different times, Aurobindo, Tilak and Gandhi invoked this text to underline that Hinduism was not a philosophy of renunciation. At its core lay the notion of karmayoga, variously understood as disciplined and selfless action in pursuit of a higher truth. 6. ‘Whatsoever or whosoever possesses useful or brilliant qualities is

  india called a devata. … They are greatly mistaken who take the word devata to mean God. He is called devata of devatas – the greatest of all devatas. He alone is the author of Creation, Sustenance and the Dissolution of the Universe’ (Dayananda [1908] 1984: 203, www.aryasamaj.org/newsite/ Light_Of_Truth.pdf, p. 127; accessed 4 May 2012). 7. ‘Vedic Religious Ideals’/’Lectures and Discourses’ [1893], in Vivekananda vol. I, www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_1; accessed 12 July 2012. 8. God in Everything/Jnana Yoga [1896], in Vivekananda, vol. II, www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_2; accessed 19 July 2012. 9. ‘Paper on Hinduism’, in Vivekananda , vol. I, ‘Addresses at the Parliament of Religions’, 19 September 1893, www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/ vivekananda/volume_1; accessed 19 March 2012. 10. ‘There is one Self, not many. That one Self shines in various forms. Man is man’s brother because all men are one’, in Vivekananda, vol. VIII, ‘Buddha’s Message to the World’/‘Lectures and Discourses’, 18 March 1900, www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/info/ vivekananda/volume_8; accessed 4 June 2012. 11. ‘The Women of India’/‘Lectures and Discourses’ [1894], in Vivekananda, vol. IX, www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_9; accessed 2 February 2012. 12. Swami Vivekananda was not alone in appealing to the religious texts to challenge existing social orthodoxies. In a similar vein Raja Ram Mohan Roy had argued that practices like sati and child marriage had no religious sanction; they had crept into Hinduism and they needed to be purged from it to restore the Hindu religion to its true essence (Roy 1925). Against those who quoted the Shastras to support these practices, he cited the Upanishads to show that women did not die with their husbands in ancient India. 13. In post-independence democratic India, groups struggling to change existing practices have often invoked religious sources to challenge prevalent social customs that are justified on grounds of religion. Instead of relying on the language of individual rights (something that is, in their view, alien to many people, and in any case unable to challenge beliefs that are located in faith) they explore the plurality that is contained in religious texts and, through that, offer an alternative reading that is more supportive of the principle of equality of all. This is a strategy that was, for instance, used by some groups to bring about changes in the Christian Personal Law (see Agnes 1999; Vatuk 2008). 14. Madan Mohan Malaviya argued that the policy of reserving seats had given advantage to ‘the favoured minority of our Mahomedan fellow subjects. The Hindu minorities in the Punjab and Eastern Bengal and Assam have been left out severely in the cold’ (Malaviya 1910: 195;

notes   emphasis added). ‘In the Punjab where the Hindus were in a minority and not the Mahomedans, excepting one Hindu member who has been returned by the University, Mahomedans have succeeded in winning every other seat against Hindus. In eastern Bengal and Assam also Hindu candidates for election have failed and Mohamedans have succeeded in obtaining almost every seat: this is protecting the interest of the minorities with vengeance, nay, it is a case of the exclusion of the majority by a minority’ (194–5). 15. The demand for a separate territory for each nation – Hindus and Muslims – was articulated most sharply by sections of the Muslim community and its leaders. Just why the Muslim population felt alienated and why the attempts of the Indian National Congress to forge a unity among the two main communities had limited success is a subject that has been written about extensively, and need not detain us here. What must, however, be mentioned here is that Hindus and Muslims were not the only religious communities being mobilized at this time. The Sikh community was also beginning to assert its distinct identity and mobilize to articulate its group interests. 16. Available at archive.org/stream/srimanbhagvadgitarahasye-bgtilakvolume1&2/SrimanBhagvadgitarahasye_Bgtilak_Vol1_djvu.txt; accessed 12 March 2012. 17. Speaking of martyrs, he was referring implicitly to the fact that the struggle for independence would require people who would be willing to sacrifice their lives for the interest of the community. 18. For Gandhi, we need ‘constant effort to bring the mind under control’ (Gandhi 1932, www.mkgandhi.org.Yeravda/Chap03.htm; accessed 2 June 2 2012). 19. For a discussion of the demand for a separate homeland, see Robinson 1974; Hasan 1991. This point of view was continuously challenged by the Indian National Congress: see Pandey 2002. 20. This was a commitment that had been made by the Indian National Congress (which led the struggle for independence) in the Nehru Report of 1928. Its reiteration was not surprising despite the positive evaluations of the role of religion in individual and collective life, as leaders like Gandhi, who considered religion to be a valued good, did not envision any role for the state. In their framework the state was not expected to mandate practices that must be endorsed by all. The decision and the choice lay with individuals; they had to decide what kind of life they would like of lead. 21. K.M. Munshi and Shyama Prasad Mookherjee were among those who argued for the protection of religious practices (Advisory Committee Proceedings, 21–22 April 1947, in Shiva Rao 1967: 265). While some women representatives, most notably Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, opposed

  india protection to practices as it might prevent social legislation that can curb or prevent such practices as purdah and child marriage (letter of 31 March 1947, in Shiva Rao 1967: 146), and others like Alladi Krishnaswamy Ayyar argued that practices had been ‘the bane of our country’ and had been ‘responsible [for] class hatred’ (266), K.M. Munshi had pleaded that ‘many things may not be exactly worship but may be in a sense practice of religion’ (265). Going to the temple was a matter of worship but the immersion of the idol was a matter of practice and it need not be protected under the phrase ‘freedom of worship’. Implicit in this argument was the view that Hinduism entailed acceptance of certain practices rather than adherence to certain beliefs or worship. 22. The Christian community of course believed that propagation included the right to convert people to their faith. 23. To take an example: if celebration of a festival entails slaughtering a cow – an animal that is considered sacred by another community – and this practice is to be performed by groups or individuals in their neighbourhoods and other common spaces, a hands-off policy was not always enough. Open, face-to-face encounters involving a clash of practices could readily be a source of conflict and inter-community tensions. In India, even during the British Raj, practices like sacrificing a cow, playing music in front of a mosque, and organizing religious processions were occasions which often triggered inter-community riots, so protecting religious practices generated concerns of law and order. 24. Sri Venkatarama Devaru v. State of Mysore and Others, 1958 AIR 255; Seeni Thevar and Others v. M.S. Velayutha Raja and Another, 1992 2 MKJ 530. 25. Sastri Yagnapurushadji and Others v. Muldas Brudardas Vaishya and Another, 1996 AIR 1119, at 260–64. 26. In the words of the Court: ‘Even a cursory study of the growth and development of Hindu religion through the ages shows that whenever a saint or a religious reformer attempted the task of reforming Hindu religion and fighting irrational or corrupt practices which had crept into it, a sect was born which was governed by its own tenets, but which basically subscribed to the fundamental notions of Hindu religion and Hindu philosophy’ (Sastri Yagnapurushadji and Others v. Muldas Brudardas Vaishya and Another, 1996 AIR 1119, at 273). ‘Buddha started Buddhism; Mahavir founded Jainism; Basava became the founder of Lingayat religion, Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram initiated the Varakari cult; Guru Nanak inspired Sikhism; Dayananda founded Arya Samaj, and Chaitanya began Bhakti cult’ (Sastri Yagnapurushadji and Others v. Muldas Brudardas Vaishya and Another, 1996 AIR 1119, at 264). 27. See Ratilal P Gandhi v. State of Bombay, AIR 1953 Bom 242; The Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras v. Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Shri Shirur Mutt, 1954 AIR 282; Mahant Sri Jagannath Ramanuj Das v. The State of Orissa

notes   and Another, 1954 AIR 400; Sri La Sri Subramania Desiga Gnansambanda Pandara Sannadhi v. State of Madras, 1965 AIR 1683.

five 1. Available at www.martinfrost.ws/htmfiles/dec2008/iqbal-1930-addresshtml; accessed 7 April 2012. 2. Tagore 1922. 3. I do not want to consider here the veracity of this claim, and ask whether Hinduism is a tolerant religion, let alone the most tolerant religion. I would like only to register that one finds this reasoning across a wide political and ideological spectrum. 4. Chapter 62, www.mkgandhi.org/indiadreams; accessed 28 March 2012. 5. These are arguments that continue to be made even today. It is argued that ‘Hinduism does not even have a theological unity. It is a mosaic of different and at times conflicting philosophical schools and religious practices. There is also an element of struggle between various traditions which are now commonly grouped together as Hinduism’ (Deshpande 1985: 25). It is also not a proselytizing religion. As such, Hinduism is open, internally plural and accommodative of diverse practices within (Weiner 1992; see also Ayyar 1968). 6. Chapter 45, www.mkgandhi.org/indiadreams; accessed 28 March 2012. 7. The mingling of different cultures did not imply taking on aspects of another way of life, or eclectically taking some aspects of one’s religion and combining them with some practices of another. For Gandhi it was quintessentially an engagement with one’s own religious tradition; exposure to others was expected to give the self the necessary push to rethink what is given and perhaps even to reconsider and revise those inheritances. 8. For a discussion of this understanding of liberal tolerance, see Mendus 1989; Leader 1966. 9. ‘That is why in the case of some of our Mohammedan and Christian countrymen, who had occasionally been forcibly converted to nonHindu religions and who consequently have inherited along with Hindus, a common Fatherland and a greater part of the wealth of common culture – language, law, customs, folklore and history – are not, and cannot be recognized as Hindus. For though Hindustan is for them Pitrabhumi (Fatherland) as to any other Hindu, yet it is to them a Punyabhumi (holyland) too. Their holyland is far away in Arabia or Palestine’ (Savarkar 1923: 100; this text was published anonymously under the authorship of ‘A Maratha’). 10. ‘My friends, I have repeatedly said and say it again that India is like a bride which has two beautiful and lustrous eyes – Hindu and

  india Mussalman. If they quarrel against each other, the beautiful bride will become ugly and one destroys the other, she will lose one eye’ (Khan 1972: 160). 11. The Presidential Address of Hazrat Allama Anwar Shah Kashmiri to the Annual Session of the Jami’at ul-‘Ulama-i Hind, Peshawar, 1927, http:// indianmuslims.in/hindu-muslim-unity; accessed 4 December 2012. 12. ‘Hence, the best solution is that both communities should come to a just and fair agreement so that no one should feel apprehensive that after the country gains independence the minorities would be mistreated by the majority. If the fears of the Muslims are put at rest by such a pact, they should have no cause for fear’ (ibid.). 13. Available at www.martinfrost.ws/htmfiles/dec2008/iqbal-1930–addresshtml; accessed 7 April 2012. 14. These voices may have been numerically small but it is their fears that structured the discussion on fundamental rights within the Constituent Assembly. 15. Religion had been an important marker of social divisions. Religionbased political mobilization, the division of the country on grounds of religion and the subsequent communal violence in which members of a religious community were targeted focused attention on, and gave primacy to, matters of religion. 16. After independence, this is a subject that comes up over and over again before the courts. Even they do not offer a clear and complete criterion by which one could settle who is a minority. 17. In other words, the Scheduled Castes wanted to dismantle the existing structures of stratification and hierarchy. They were not asking for these differences to be protected (see Mahajan 2011: 7–8). 18. The state was to have no religion of its own; it could not collect taxes that were to be used exclusively for religious purposes; most of all, there was to be no compulsory religious instruction in educational institutions funded (fully or partly) by the state. These were not simply provisions that were separating religion from politics; rather, they were measures by which minorities were being assured that the state would not align itself with the religion of the majority. 19. Today there are twenty-two official languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. These include languages like Urdu and Sindhi, which are spoken by people living in different states, as well as a ‘tribal language’. 20. In the late 1950s there were a series of protests for linguistic reorganization of states. Potti Sriramulu went on a fast-unto-death demanding that Telegu speakers be given a separate state. Similar demands came from Marathi and Tamil speakers and subsequently even Punjabi speakers. It is the death of Poti Sriramulu, and the riots that followed it, that

notes   compelled the prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, to set up the State Reorganization Commission. In the first phase, the territories primarily of states that were previously designated as Part A (i.e. regions that were previously provinces of British India) were redrawn. 21. Dr Ambedkar, chairman of the Drafting Committee, explained that the federation was not the result of agreement by individual states. In this sense, it was a ‘union’; ‘it had all the features of a federal polity but it was indissoluble’ (CAD 2003: 43). India adopted a federal form of government but the constitution spoke of the union of India. 22. Retrospectively, one can see that this might have weakened, or at least complicated, the link between territory and identity, and perhaps affected the emergence of regional parochialism and loyalties. 23. The second wave of reorganization came in the 1970s, when separate states were carved out of the hill regions of Assam. 24. This is perhaps one negative dimension of the linguistic reorganization of states. It has tended to nurture not just pride in one’s identity and region but also a sense of ownership. The majority within the state often believe that it is members from that state alone, and at times the majority linguistic community, who must occupy public positions. While this form of linguistic chauvinism has been in evidence and in some instances has taken the form of a much more exclusionary and aggressive ‘sons of the soil’ movement (Weiner 1992), this is a phenomenon that continues to be witnessed at the regional level. 25. Available at indiankanoon.org/doc/81469; accessed 20 October 2012. 26. The Supreme Court had in the case involving St Stephen’s College stipulated that at least 50 per cent of the seats must be left for the general population by state-aided minority educational institutions (St Stephen’s College Etc. v. The University of Delhi Etc, AIR 1992 SC 1630). In later judgments it stated that the 50 per cent mark need not be strictly adhered to. Several other considerations had to be considered in reaching that judgment and this discretion may be exercised by the state government (P.A. Inamdar v. State of Maharashtra, AIR 2005 SC 3226; T.M.A. Pai Foundation and Others v. State of Karnataka and Others, 2002, 8 SCC 481). See also NCMEI, Case no. 1320 of 2009; available at cbcieducation.org/minority-status; accessed 31 March 2013. 27. Linguistic minorities have also been victims of violence in states like Assam which have witnessed a strong sons-of-soil movement. In recent times we have seen violence directed against non-Marathi speaking populations coming from states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the state of Maharashtra. 28. India began by accepting that it was a diverse country that had lived with diversity. This made the framers of the constitution more open to the need to accommodate, but they remained relatively insensitive to

  india the vulnerability of minorities that emerges from negative representation of communities, targeting of their homes and livelihoods and internal differentiation within the community. 29. For a detailed discussion of the Office of the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities, see Papia Sengupta, ‘Linguistic Diversity and Group Rights: An Assessment of the National Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities in India’, Ph.D. thesis, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. 30. This is why the emergence of an ascendant majority nationalism from the 1990s onwards remains a matter of deep concern, despite the constitutional guarantees provided to different communities.

six 1. Potential, as they were yet to become citizens; under colonial rule they were essentially subjects of the Empire. 2. The absence of separate representation for religious communities has often been read as a lack, a reflection of the weak commitment to accommodation of diversity. However, when one considers the dilemmas faced by the politics of presence – for instance, that elected members represent not just their community but also their party interests; that communities are internally differentiated; that minority communities require the support of other groups, including the majority, to pass legislation in their favour – one needs seriously to consider alternative modes of accommodation.

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Index

Advaitya, 75 African-American community, exclusion experience, 33 ahimsa (non-violence), code of, 50, 82 Ambedkar, B.R., 13, 22–7, 31, 34–6, 39, 77, 110 Andhra Pradesh, 114 Arya Dharma, 16 Arya Samaj Hindu group, 93, 117; D.A.V College, 113 Assam, 87 Aurobindo, Sri, 44, 46–7, 55, 57, 64, 76, 80–81, 99 authenticity, search for, 2, 4 Ayyar, Alladi Krishnaswamy, 134 backward castes, enabling of, 38 ‘backward classes’, special consideration, 37 Bakr-Id, 92 Bandit Queen, film ban sought, 64 Barthes, Roland, 9 Benaras Hindu University, 72 Bengali-speaking Hindus, 119 ‘Bharat Mata’, painting, 66 Bharatiya Janata Party, 88–90 bilingualism, 121

brahmins, 31; Ambedkar blamed, 23; anti- movements, 37; dominance challenged, 19, 26; ideology of, 18; learning monopoly, 20, 22; shudra antagonism, 16, 21 Brahmo Samaj movement, 74 British rule period, 26, 29, 41–3; ‘alien’, 44; Hinduism attitude, 27; see also colonialism Buddhism, 77, 94 Calcutta Congress 1906, 42 Canada, indigenous people, 118 capabilities, building of, 39 caste system, 18, 22, 24, 31; barriers, 27; British period, 21; communities, 19 consciousness of, 20; discrimination, 35, 37; distinctions, 16, 131; ‘primary’ cause of oppression, 26; censorship, community demands, 64; regional states imposed, 68 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 1 Chattisgarh, 77 Chattopadhyay, Bankim Chandra, 12, 20–22, 28–9, 32; Samya, 13–17 Christians/Christianity, 15; Kerala,

index   114; Nagaland majority, 115; right to propagate concern, 84 citizenship, rights protection, 85, 106, 120 colonial rule, 12; religious identity codification, 72; state characteristics, 58; struggle against, 48, 127; see also British rule era commonality, 27 communities, India: ad hoc recognition, 119; autonomy, 110; categories ‘imperialism’, 1; democracy discourse, 129, 131; electoral political parties, 136; inter-conflict, 120; linguistic, 112, 122; majority status seeking, 115; personal laws, 106; politicized, 130, 133; primary political actors, 104; separate representation, 79; tribal, 107; ‘unfair treatment’ politics, 87–8 Constituent Assembly, Indian Constitution framing, 7–8, 32–3, 46, 59–60, 85–6, 90, 103, 106, 108, 126, 129, 132; Advisory Committee on the Fundamental Rights of Citizens and Minorities, 85, 106; Draft Report 1947, 61; religious discussions, 84; Sub-Committee on Fundamental Rights, 105 Constitution, Indian, 4, 7–8, 39, 105, 125, 135; Drafting Committee of, 25; eighth schedule, 109, 117; First Amendment of, 63; framers of, see above; 1950 adoption, 62 conversions, state restrictions on, 87 cows, slaughtering practice, 92; prohibition, 87 culture: cultural majority, 90; essentialist notion, 4; meanings change, 5 Da Vinci Code, ban politics, 64–5, 68 Dayananda, Swami, 46, 74, 75–6 democracy, 8; community, 128–9,

131; discourse of, 127; imaginary, 7, 11 development, Nehruvian model, 3 différance, 6, 8 difference(s): differentiation forms, 30; recognition of, 103; rigidified, 72; unnatural, 14 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 3 discrimination, sites of, 123; gender, 35 diversity/ies, 8–10, 28, 135; accommodation of, 99, 108, 118, 123–4; criteria determining, 119; governments nurtured, 117; linguistic, 109–11, 113; protection, 104, 129; religious, 130; valuing, 100 division of labour, 14, 22, 30; caste system, 31 dualism, 53 Dworkin, Ronald, 39 East India Company, 71 education, 55; free primary, 115; linguistic minorities, 95, 109, 117, 122–3; minorities, 116, 123; quotas, 38; role of, 20 electorates, separate, 35, 77 elites, sectarian creations, 73 equality, 10, 12; colonial period debate, 13; constitutional provision, 33; difference compatible, 14; economic, 29; gender, 104; idea of, 13; Indian reflections, 128; ‘of opportunity’, 34–9; ‘of souls’, 28–9; religions formalized, 130; varieties of, 134; see also inequality essentialism, cultural, 4–5, 47, 49 Europe, ‘oriental renaissance’, 70 excommunication, religious right, 94 Fanah film, social boycott of, 68 Foucault, Michel, 9–10 ‘fraternity’, ideal of, 26 freedom, 8, 10; conditional, 63–4, 68;

  india individual, 133 ‘inner’, 50–51; ‘of the mind’, 53; political, 42; spiritual, 45 Fundamental Rights of the Citizens and Minorities, Drafts of, 32, 105 Gadamer, H.G., 6–7 Gandhi, M.K., 13, 22, 27–32, 42, 49–52, 55, 58, 82–3, 99–100; non-violent movement, 127 Ganesh Ustrav festival, 80 Gokhale, Gopal Krishna, 46 The Great Soul, states ban on, 65 Gujarat, 68 Gujjar Community, 64 Guru Nanak University (Amritsar) Act, 114 Hastings, Warren, 71 Heeh, Peter, 64 Hegel, G.W.F., 7 Heidegger, Martin, 6–7 hill tribes, North East region, 112 Hindi language: Devanagri script, 109; Sanskrit language, 122 Hindu Commissioner of Religious and Charitable Trusts (HCRE), 94–5 Hindus: community, 12; cultural majority, 105; lower castes, 119; majority assumed, 113; pan-India mobilizations, 89; temple building, 89 Hinduism, 21–3, 27; active, 80; assimilative conception, 94; bhakti tradition, 73; brahamanic, 77; hierarchy, 12; monotheistic, 75; nationalism, 101; 1980s political discourse, 88; non-dogmatic, 99; re-energized, 76; reform movements, 74; Sanskrit civilization, 71; Supreme Court interpretations, 93; Vedic period, 47 Hobbes, Thomas, 128 Home Rule, political agenda of, 80

Hukum Singh, Sardar, 62 Human Rights Commission, 123 Hussain, M.F., 66 Husserl, Edmund, 2 ideas, individual, 10 identity(ies): colonial religious reinforced, 78; community, 73; language, 111–12; politics of, 65, 79, 88, 119, 124, 13 immigrant populations, Western world, 118 incommensurable cultures, conceptions of, 4 India: Aryan invasion, 19; British colonial era policies, 7, 21, 41–3, 71, 73, 77; Censor Board of Film Certification, 65; civilizational core, 46; Constitution, see above; cultural domain pluralized, 136; democracy, 10, 127–37; diversity of, 98, 102–3, 124, 135; Emergency period, 63; essentialist conception of, 5, 47, 49; European representation, 70; excessive inequalities, 15; minoritization, 121; North East region, 107, 112; political theory, 2–6, 11; presidency, 111; tolerance idea, 126 Western influence ignored, 46 Indian National Congress, party, 86, 90 indigeneity: indigenous social science construction, 2; project of, 4 indigenous–immigrant communities, distinction, 119 individual rights, insufficiency, 124 individual-in-community, category, 132 inequalities: caste-based, 23, 129; different analyses of, 22; questions of, 12; structures of, 8; varieties of, 15, 17, 32 inheritance, laws of, 17 intersubjectivity, 100 Iqbal, Allana Mohammad, 98, 103

index   Islam, distinctness emphasis, 101 Jain community, 105, 117 Jaspers, Karl, 5 ‘just society’, 27 Kalidasa, 70 Kant, Immanuel, 5 karma, 74; yoga, 80 Kashmiri, Maulsana Anwar Shah, 101 Kerala, Christians, 114 Khan, Sir Syed Ahmed, 101 knowledge, brahmin monopoly of, 18, 20, 22 Kuhn, Thomas, 2 labour, Gandhian equality of, 31 Lady Chatterly’s Lover, censorship, 64 Laine, James, 64–5 land-use policy, 17 language(s), 106; Marathi, 110; Sanskrit, 70, 122; scripts, 109, 113; Sindhi, 117; Telegu, 119; Urdu, 110, 117 Lelyveld, Joseph, 65 liberal anxieties, absence of, 134 literature, Aryan, 76 Locke, John, 128 Madani Maulana, 101 Madhya Pradesh, 87 Maharashatra, 77 majority community: consolidation, 89; cultural majoritarianism, 47; minority paradigm, 106 Malaviya, Madan Mohan, 78 man–nature, relationship, 27 Manipur, 112 Marathi language, 110 Meghalaya, 112 Meos, 71 Mers, 71 Mill, J.S., 128 minorities: accommodation of, 86; assurances to, 104–5; claims differentiating, 118;

discrimination, 121; educational rights, 109, 114; institutions government support, 124; linguistic, 117; Muslim, 102; post‑1990 discourse, 108; recognition claims, 120; religious, 111; reservations for, 34 missionaries, Christian, 74 Mizoram, 112 modernity: language of, 72; monotheism as, 75 Mohammadan Anglo Oriental College, Aligarh, 72 ‘morality’, 62; bans in the name of, 66; consciousness, 50; code, 81 mukti(transcendence), 5 multiculturalism, theories of, 118, 136; Western debates, 103 Munshi, K.M., 34 Muslim community, 71, 77; colonial period, 72; homeland for, 84 Nagaland, 112; Christian majority, 115 Namboodaripads, 105 Naroji, Dadabhai, 42 nation, conceptions of, 46; nationalist spirit, 2 National Minorities Commission, 123 Nehru, J., 97 ‘nodes in a network’, 9 non-violence, 127 obscenity, 66 Office of the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities, 122–3 oppression, multiple sites of, 18 Orissa, 87 outcomes, equality of, 39 Pakistan, state creation, 84 Panikkar, K.M., 33–4 Parsis, 108 Partition, 84, violence following, 104, 106 peasants, exploitation of, 16 Persian Islamic civilization, 71

  india personal Laws, community, 77 Phillips, Anne, 25 Phule, Jyotirao, 12, 18–23, 26, 35 Plato, 47 politics: British era freedom, 43; commitment to community, 44, 48, 87; electoral, 130; identity, 88; and religion, 78–9, 86, 90; spiritual framework, 76 Prathana Samaj movement, 74 presence, politics of, 19, 86 press, freedom of, 63 ‘preventive detention’, 61 ‘provincializing’, Western paradigm, 1 public employment, 33–5; quotas, 36–8, 129; minority education, 116 Punjab, 77, 113; Sikhs, 111 purity–pollution distinction, 18, 22 Quereshi brothers, 92 quotas and reservation, 38 Radhakrishnan, Sarvapelli, 97–8 Rai, Lala Lajpat, 43, 46, 81 Rama, Hindu deity, 89 Rama Krishna Mission, 93, 113, 117 Rau, B.N., 62 reason, 47, 54, 82; deformed, 54; embedded, 11; Enlightenment, 58 recognition: policies of, 121; politicized accommodation, 124 regional states, 114; boundaries reorganizing, 112; linguistic boundaries, 110; linguistic minorities, 121–2 religion: activism potential, 79, 81–2; central Indian category, 70; constitutional protection, 96; used in festivals, 80; instrumental use of, 84; judiciary role, 92; liberty of prioritized, 95–6; noninstrumental perspective, 83; right to practise, 83, 91, 96, 108, 134 religious texts, Supreme Court interpretations, 92–3 representation: ‘depressed classes’,

23–4; government forms, 128; group, 72; separate, 23–5, 86 reserved seats, Scheduled Castes, 36, 107 resources: common pool of, 24; cultural terms claims, 125 respect, 100 ‘revisability’, 104 rights: conditional, 61; equality of, 14, 29; individual, 132–3, 135; language of, 31; religious restrictions, 85 rituals, brahmin dominance, 16 Roman Empire, 15 Rushdie, Salman, 64–5 Sahib, Mohammad Ismail, 62 Said, Edward, 2 The Satanic Verses, ban sought, 64–5 sati, practice of, 74 Satsangi Hindu group, 93 Savarkar, 101 scarce resources, collective group aspirations, 38 Scheduled Castes, 37, 77, 105, 136; separate electoral representation, 25, 36, 107 Scheduled Tribes, 107, 136; separate representation, 112 schools, caste, 20 Schwab, Raymond, 70 Second Round Table Conference, 24 secularism: identity-based politics, 91; Indian conception of, 93; self, 131; embedded, 100; freedom of, 49; ‘historically situated’, 6; notions of, 48; Rawlsian individual, 96, 132 self-determination, 45; right to, 7, 43 self-restraint/discipline, 51–2; language of, 55; religious training, 82 self-sufficient village, ideal of, 28, 51–2, 58 Sen, Amartya, 39 separate schools suggestion, caste, 19

index   separate territory, demands for, 79 Shah, K.T., 62 Shakto, 76 Shivaji, 65; ban sought, 64 Sikhs, 72, 94, 108, 114; kirpan wearing, 106; Punjab, 111 Sindhi, 117 social science, Indian, 4 socially valued goods, religious identity access, 89 ‘soul-force’, 82–3 spirituality, idiom of, 5, 131; ‘politics’, 51 state, the, 60, 132; as positive agent, 61; diversity accommodation, 125; minority educational institutions support/regulations, 84, 95, 109, 116, 123; religion relationship, 85; regional languages support, 117; religious practice interventions, 91; Reorganization Commission, 110; representation of, 60; security primacy, 63; strong, 59 subordination, structures of, 13 Supreme Court, 63, 65, 95, 113, 115–16; freedom of expression defending, 66–7; Hinduism conception, 94; interventionist role, 92–3 swadeshi, 46, 83; cultural dimension, 47 swaraj (self-rule/cultivation) 26, 42, 44–6, 49–53, 55, 68; conceptions of, 56; diverse enunciations, 58; positive form, 41; totality, 59 Swarup Seth, Shri Damodar, 62 symbolic representations, public dominance, 65

Tagore, Rabindranath, 2, 49, 53–6 Tamil Nadu, 87, 119 Taylor, Charles, 134 Telegu-speaking Hindus, 119 Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, 42, 46, 80 tradition(s), 49–50, 53–5 Tripura, 112 ‘truth’, ‘spiritual’ apprehension of, 54 understanding, ‘fore-structure’ of, 6 ‘unities’, 9 universality; appeal to ideal, 24, 53; language of, 24–5 unnatural differences, ‘excess’ of, 15–16 untouchability, practice of, 22, 26, 28, 30–31 Urdu, 110, 117 USA (United States of America), segregation, 33 Uttar Pradesh, 87 Varnashrama, 30 Vedas, 76; authority of, 75; Vedanata ideals, 46–9 violence, communal, 120–21 Vivekananda, Swami, 45–6, 57, 74–6, 99 West, the, hegemony dissatisfaction, 2; immigrants, 118 women: equality issue, 104; Hindu subordinate, 75–6; rights denied, 14 work, equally valued, 28 zamindari system, 32