The Complex Modernity of the Postcolonial Indian State
Posted on : February 21, 2022Author : Aniruddha Mukhopadhyay
Introduction
The dichotomous relation of tradition and modernity is a western construct. Liberal developmental theories and Marxist theories of social change underestimated the agency of tradition to evolve and adapt to modernization in India. For the former, increased political awareness was to put individual calculations prior to community consciousness, and for the latter, economic differentiation would replace caste with secular, class politics – but neither qualified.
Western modernization had dual objectives – the elimination of the ‘non-modern’ and the construction of objective pre-conditions of modernity. Wherever the Western imperialists found an absence or deficit of such pre-conditions, it exported the same at the expense of indigenous traditions since the two were apparently “irreconcilable”. However, such exports were unable to displace Indian tradition. The preponderance of social authority in India, the communal foundations of postcolonial sovereignty, and the material base of caste and ethnic separations, resulted in a dialectical, non-antagonistic relation between Indian tradition and modernity, giving rise to a unique form of ‘traditional modernity’.
Interior-Exterior Interplay
In India the response to western modernity was bifurcated – a modern exterior and a traditional interior. Let’s consider the INC-led nationalism which was overtly a political project. It struggled to achieve political power, functioned through party sessions and assemblies, and finished off with overpopulating a Constituent-assembly. This was the modern exterior which extended to State-sponsored industrialization, universal suffrage, Nehruvian secularism, etc. However, underneath all modern outlays, there lay traditional inlays. The Congress was funded by feudal landlords like Jats and Jotedars, its composition dominated by upper-caste Hindus, and it’s mass mobilizations composed of forest-dwellers, small-holding to the landless peasantry, and religious minorities. Traditional hierarchies not only enter State-functions but also shape its opposite and auxiliary forces. For example, in the Indian Farmers’ Protest Movement (2020-21), majority of Dalit agrarian laborers were marginalized due to their occupational captivity to the fields. When the Haryanvi Sarv Khap lent its support to the movement it did so to their Punjabi Jatt counterpart, not to the Dalit mazdoors who are equal stakeholders of the regressive laws.
The Brahmanical Trappings of Decolonizing India
While the origins of the tradition-modernity dichotomy are in western ethnocentrism or the belief that rationality and modernity is the “only way”, the discourse has developed its extreme counterpart from the roots of traditional parochialism inside postcolonial societies. The anti-western Postcolonial discourse in India has been overwhelmed by Hindu (Vedic) traditionalists and nationalists who advocate that underlying Indian society and its modern imports, is a substratum of an essentialized Indian tradition that is culturally superior to both western modernity and other competing subcultures. This is a politically intended and sometimes unintended, the byproduct of the ongoing practice of “decolonizing” postcolonial societies (Aditya Nigam, 2020). Thus, the advocates of this thought merely contend that the dichotomy exists because tradition is superior to modernity and not otherwise.
“Decolonizing” principles that place tradition above modernity have their popular justification in the Indian experience of modernization. The apparent universal duty of western imperialists to civilize the primordial third world was something that a class of traditional elites internalized. These upper castes, English-educated, beneficiaries of modernization either overtly supported imperial capital (e.g., the Indian entrepreneurial classes) or tried reforming Indian tradition using western structures (e.g., the Bengal Sati Regulation 1829 passed by Lord Bentinck, Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act 1856 passed by Lord Canning). These developments resulted in economic and social inequalities, respectively, that persevere till date. The dynastic and distributive politics of the Congress system; the globalised market of Norplant injectables and abortifacient pills that retains the medical and social secrecy around women’s sexual self-determination in third world slums (Tharu and Niranjana, 1994); the upper caste diaspora and its contribution to the creation of “brand IIT” (Tharoor, 2006)- these are some of the effects of modernization that reflect the hegemony of the westernized elites in India. The Hindu majoritarian antipathy for western modernity utilizes these inequalities of modernization in order to popularize a recourse to traditional values.
Consequently, the anti-western majoritarian discourse tries to redefine contemporary social changes and developments in India with the use of pre-colonial narratives that romanticize a homogenized traditional past. Consider, the Arya Samaj, an organization that preaches the supreme authority of the Vedas, the practices prescribed therein and the apparent irrelevance of all other cultures, including Hindu subcultures that deviate from Vedic codes. Contemporary organizations like the Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY), an outfit of the RSS, apparently strives to remedy the biases of colonialism present within Indian history by injecting a Hindu nationalist perspective to it.
The propagation of the Sanatan Dharma or eternal religion has been particularly beneficial in softening the communo-ethnic fault lines within the Hindutva discourse. Briefly speaking, it advocates the intrinsic equality of all living beings in terms of being equally subject to certain universal moral values and to the seva or service to others. Unlike the political rigidity of Hindu revivalists and reformists, the Sanatanis claim that traditional Hinduism doesn’t need reform because it has a pristine accommodative outlook. The cultural influence of yoga and Vedic traditions, perpetuated by the missionaries and NRIs around the world, has helped in internationalising such a form of Hinduism e.g., the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), etc. Though they claim to be strictly non-partisan, the Sanatanis have an almost quid pro quo relation with the current dispensation. While the latter controls the State machinery, the former constructs the moral basis for a Brahmanical Samarasata (harmony) through targeted welfarism at the grassroots.
Certain scholars like Rajni Kothari have located the pre-conditions of Indian democracy in neither Western imperialism nor the postcolonial institutions, but in the values of “pluralism” and “tolerance” that our polity has apparently inherited from its own political tradition. While Indian political tradition in the pre-colonial era was no doubt differentiated into multiple units of political power, there never was a competitive system of balancing group interests, accountability, or consensus that we normally associate with a pluralistic polity. Instead, the intolerant and repressive codes of social authority, be it the Brahmins or the Ulemas, superseded the subsidiary authority of the State or the ruling caste, be it Hindu Antiquity or Islamic regimes. As Sudipta Kaviraj puts it, the fragmentation of political power into various units, unequal and intolerant to each other, can at best be a precondition of India’s (quasi) federalism. But then again, federal distribution of power can be associated as much with the puppet district and provincial congresses of the People’s Republic of China as with American democracy. It cannot be a substantive guarantee of democratic pluralism or tolerance.
Indian Secularism
The basic premise of Indian secularism is that religion is both a private and public function. State engages in this function to ensure inter-religious equality and intra-religious freedom. This is a clear case of India’s complex modernity. The modern State becomes an adjudicator of communal tradition, testing religious phenomena against modern parameters of liberty, equality, reason, and reciprocity of rights. However, in this process the State inevitably reflects the communal idioms that mobilize majorities and win elections. Thus, its adjudication instead of being religiously neutral, is at best a power bargaining with minority religions (or at worst, militant animal-rights activism).
Partisan Adjustment and Development Administration
In developing societies, competition between social groups determine public policy and its implementation. As a result, the success of a policy depends on how effectively it can adjust the partisanship between influential groups e.g., the Farm Laws had to be repealed because it lacked consensus within the Parliament and with its agrarian stakeholders. Finding a compromise between competing groups is thus more important than optimization of efficiency. While suboptimal adjustments can maintain long term stability with incremental growth in the short run, even the most efficient decisions can lead to political instability and inefficiency if they neglect the consensus of organized adversaries.
Maintaining disciplinary adherence to formal rules in the pursuit of policy-goals can be an efficient process in Western societies which have relatively greater job opportunities, resources, and higher living standards. The surplus opportunities and higher savings ensure that the opportunity cost of applying for a job is high. This results in job seekers to usually prioritise merit, discipline and personal preference over access to material incentives. However, in developing societies resources are limited and the living standards of jobseekers are low. Hence, such societies have high levels of structural unemployment because the amount of labor demanded is far exceeded by the labor supplied by the households. This has two consequences – firstly, people seek a particular job (say, in civil services) not because they like the nature of the job but because of its material benefits. Secondly, administrative rules, especially those of recruitment or promotion, are susceptible to be violated or “bent” for quicker access to socio-economic goods. Such practices may include the collusive corruption between party, government, and bureaucracy; party brokers bend rules of bureaucratic access for those who support their party; receipts of administrative welfare are positively correlated to the number of votes for the ruling party, especially if it’s an incumbent. Thus, the very conditions of a developing society require quicker and wider response to rapid social changes, unhindered by excessive rigidity of rules. While this may evidently lead to bureaucratization, the strength of a representative political executive constrains the civil-servants and ensures that centralization of power can at worst lead to a ‘party society’ (Bhattacharyya, 2009) e.g., rural West Bengal under the Left Front. People walk up to the boundaries of law and even cross it, in order to access, enter, control, and function in bureaucracy. Indeed, innovation and political graft go pari passu in oiling the bureaucratic machinery if it lacks other legal and effective incentives of performance.
Hindu Revivalism and Marginalized Traditions
The revival of the Congress system under Indira Gandhi and the recession of conflicts with Pakistan reduced the effect of confessional politics in India. However, with anti-Congress sentiments rising post-Emergency, Hindu revivalism served as both a political alternative to waning centrism, as well as an instrument of social mobility for middle-class Hindus from North India. Patriotic education and de-evangelization were features of the immediate Janata Party regime. Following Congress’ re-election, the country was grasped by Sikh extremism and counter-violence by State and Society. An important merger between communal relations and modern fundamental rights appears in both widespread proselytization and voluntary conversions of SCs into Islam and Christianity for upward mobility. Thus, neither the secular State and its confessional alternatives nor the ‘politically aware’ citizens are divorced from tradition.
In postcolonial India, modernization has been a means for the dominant ‘Great Traditions’ to expel or assimilate marginalized ‘Little Traditions’. Does that mean modernization has a trade-off with marginalized traditions? No; the patterns of distribution of economic capital overlap with that of social status, making modern resources a property of the dominant group. Thus, it is domination, and not modernity, that has a trade-off with marginalized traditions.
To substantiate this, I’d partly share a romantic yet empirical alliance with Rajni Kothari’s approach to tradition.
Even within the dominant tradition of Hindu antiquity, there were subcultures and counter cultures that departed from its regressive Vedic architecture – e.g., the Puranas dispersed Vedic readership to women and lower-castes, the Veerashaivas opposed child marriage and caste system, and plenty. However, Hindu revivalism by confessional regimes is more a Vedic revivalism that conveniently scrapes out these avenues of the dominant tradition that self-corrects through modern tactics. To this respect, understanding tradition as ‘non-modern’ becomes impossible.
The 5th and 6th Schedules and the Panchayat Extension in Scheduled Areas (PESA) Acts reflect how the postcolonial State deploys modern formats of subaltern identification. However, the eviction of Adivasis, delimitation of their credit sources, and a non-tribal Cabinet’s arbitrary control on these people through an excessively empowered Governor’s office, reflect how dominant traditions have overridden modernity to expel the subaltern.
The Intersection of Tradition and Electoral Behaviour
The intersectionality of caste and religion on the one hand with class on the other, is visible in India’s electoral behaviour. Although classical western theorists predicted that in India, voter preference for co-ethnic candidates would override the more secular metric of class (i.e. Indians vote their castes, don’t cast their votes), this has been largely contradicted in practice. As Yogendra Yadav argues, “When a party goes up in popularity or declines in popularity, it usually wins and loses votes across castes.” The work of Rahul Verma (2012) also shows that voter preferences in India mostly correspond to governmental performance at multiple levels and public perceptions about leaders.
The voter preference for economic incentives above caste or communal considerations intensifies for the lower classes. For example, the immigrant Matua-namashudras of rural West Bengal, despite being anti-Brahmanical and to the least extent communal, voted in majority for the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha Elections; this wasn’t what many call “subaltern Hindutva”, instead the Matuas, who are primarily Dalit immigrants from Bangladesh, responded to the BJP’s promise of giving them safe and easier citizenship under the NRC-CAA Acts. The middle classes, widely regarded as the clients of the State, have a general disregard for the policies of market regulation, revenue buoyancy and fiscal prudence. Hence, their antipathy for bureaucratic corruption and preference for economic liberalism pushes them towards the privatized regime of the right wing despite its heightened social illiberalism since 2014. Furthermore, modern electoral contests over vote banks require multiple parties to tap the same ethnic group, thus creating differentiated political preferences within a community.
Similarly, different social groups vote for the same party if they are satisfied with its performance and probability of winning. In constituencies where the voter preferences are neatly polarized, co-opting minority candidates can hardly institute cracks in the opponent’s bloc. Although ethnicity remains a significant basis of socio-political associations, it’s an insufficient explanation of voter behaviour.
Analyzing FPTP
The First-Past-The-Post system of elections in India inflates seat shares above vote shares if parties win multiple constituencies with correspondingly highest yet non-majority percentage of votes. This doesn’t however imply that the ruling party is necessarily the more pluralist one since an increasing number of centrist parties can divide unadjusted votes and give way to regional and confessional parties to sweep majorities. What western theorists called political awareness and class differentiation haven’t removed but strengthened the democratic participation of traditional associations e.g., the first-generation Dalit graduates ignited the Dalit Panther Movement in Mumbai, 1972. Instead of “cross-cutting” the social hierarchies, economic classes have overlapped these hierarchies to replace valence issues as significant vote reserves.
For example, the self-employed middle farmers once recognized as the Other Backward Classes (Castes), enjoyed the privileges of State protection as well as political representation due to their economic stability, numerical strength, and non-antagonistic production relations with other agrarian classes. Consequently, in the post-Congress era, winning parties have disposed of ‘catch-all’ strategies to either mobilize locally dominant traditions or adapt trans-border majoritarianism with sectarian plurality e.g., BJP’s Assam strategy to bring tribal sects into an expanded Hindutva rhetoric. In either case however, the FPTP necessitates both rationing and targeting traditional alliances for modern outputs.
Conclusion
It is clear from the above instances, that Indian tradition and modernity have an affirmative relation. The Western theoretical trade-off between tradition and modernity, even if viewed independent of its ethnocentric character, doesn’t explain the traditional leverage of the postcolonial Indian State. However, the above discussion has also exposed the potential trappings of tradition that can hijack Postcolonial discourse if scholars try to challenge Western determinism without a critical attitude towards India’s own traditional past.
References
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Aniruddha Mukhopadhyay
Intern, Asia in Global Affairs
The opinions expressed within the content are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Asia in Global Affairs.
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