Akeel Bilgrami - Two Concepts of Secularism

Two Concepts of Secularism: Reason, Modernity and Archimedean Ideal
Author(s): Akeel Bilgrami

Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 29, No. 28 (Jul. 9, 1994), pp. 1749-1761
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
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Two Concepts of Secularism
Reason, Modernity and Archimedean Ideal
Akeel Bilgrami
In- these times of ineradicable modernity, secularism of the Nehruvian kind, which has even lost its claims to be
founded on the dubious notion of implicit negotiation between communities, is bound to seem an imposition. However,
in reaction to this imposition it would be a mistake to formulate an alternative vision of secularism which harked back
nostalgically to the idea of a pre-modern India, especially when this imposition has not so much to do with modernist
intrusion as with its rarefied non-negotiable status.
MY subject is the familiar dialectic between critique of a certain conception of reason question has entirely to do with its self-
the concept of nation and that of religious itself. description. What does Chatterji think the
community;' and, though many of the Since this book has been studied closely account is ultimately in the service of? It is
conclusions drawn here are fundamentally by so many who have been working on these clear from the outset and the conclusion, that
generalisable,2 will,forthesakeofprecision subjects, I will not spell out the details of is from the first two and the last chapters of
and detail, restrict my focus to India. The Chatteri's analysis, except in the broadest the book, that the account is not merely
twin elements in the dialectic conspire toward stroke. Chatterji applies a framework for-his intended as a sketch of the scope and limits
my eventual theme of secularism, about investigations, which derives from Gramsci's of the nationalist movement. As I said, the
whose precariousness in India I want to offer dynamics of the coincidence of what he account is explicitly meant to show the deep
a philosophical diagnosis, and the very called the 'war of position' with the revolution
conceptual tie between the discourse of a
rudimentary beginnings of an alternative of capital. The 'warof position' is apiecemeal
nationalismthat amountedto apassiverevolu-
conception. I will approach these tasks with reorientation by the bourgeoisie of the state
tion and the ultimate target of the enlighten-
some indirection, via a consideration of the and its various elements, and it is done on ment paradigm, within which it sometimes
work of two recent influential writers. two fronts by different strategies of co- consciously, mostly unconsciously, worked
It is a disadvantage to begin a -paper with optation of both the previously powerful out the cunning of reason. But that con-
a sense of fatigue, but that is exactly the state classes and the popular element, thereby ceptual tie is not delivered by the book's
summonedbymyoverworkedstarting-point: neutralising both. For Gramsci the role (the analysis, illuminating though it is in other
the nation. Its distinctively mddern status as movement and adjustments) of capital are ways, and in the rest of the paper, even when
a category and a fact has made it seem natural central to the understanding of these changes, I move away from Chatteri to focus on Ashis
that it should be implicated in any critique for it is a sign of capital's sway over the state
Nandy, I will be arguing that that conceptual
or even investigation of the modern, indeed that the state and its exercise become the tie may, for reasons that are broadly
of any onher modern fact or category, ranging necessary condition of capitalist development philosophical, be undeliverable.
from the literary (the 'novel') to the economic itself. The oxymoron 'passive revolution' is Chatterji, as I said, is interested in the
('advanced capital'). This spreading thin of appropriate forthis coincidence becausethere dynamics of the process of passive
the concept of the nation has had the effect is a mobilising of the masses into a new- revolution, which is only right since, given
of inflating the ambitions of those who have found consciousness of their political role inthe necessarily guerilla manoeuvres of the
made it their historical analysandum in ways this transformation; it is nevertheless 'war of position', its ideological aspect (or
that have made the most acute analyses fall constrained by the fact that the transformation what Chatterji calls its 'thematic') is bound
short of their advertised goals. It is this is 'molecular', to use Gramsci's term, in to have a slowly developing dialectic.
necessary theoretical slippage that I want to which the role of the masses never extendsChatterji tracks this development in three
begin with. to an attack on either the fundamental salient moments, which he calls the moments
economic institutions or the structures of of 'departure', 'manoeuvre', and 'arrival',
political authority. This framework of the each with their representative ideological
In a historical work unusual for its passive revolution was applied with great figures, Bankimchandra, Gandhi and Nehru.
analytical rigour and sense of argument, illumination by Gramsci to the Italian In this three-fold succession, it turns out, I
Partha Chatterji undertook to uncover in Risorgimento; andChatterji sees initaparallelbelieve, that the moment of manoeuvre, the
the discourse and the development of Indianillumination of the ways in which the Gandhian ideological intervention, is the
nationalism a contradiction in the very nationalist movement in India undertook an moment where Chatterji's advertised aim of
deepest sense.3 He will show, he says, that anti-colonial revolution and transformation tying the unfolding narrative to a critique of
nationalism "produced a discourse in which which was also thoroughly passive in just the enlightenment paradigm has the most
even as it challenged the colonial claim to the sense that the bourgeoisie and its chance of uptake. I say this because. for all
political domination, it lso accepted the theiranti-tolonialnationalism,Bankimchandra
representative political and.intellectual figures
very intellectual premises of modernity onin the last phase of the colonial period and Nehru are too evidently and avowedly
which colonial domination was based", by mobilised the masses and adjusted the shaped by the arguments, knowledges and
which he means that the "cunning of reason",previous ruling classes to form a nationwide sloganised ideals of the enlightenment and
thedistinctively post-enlightenmentconcep- nationalist anti-colonial alliance, while its political revolutions. Gandhi's anti-
tionof knowledgeand its systematising social leaving just the requisite space for the modernist rhetoric is equally evidently and
and technological fall-out have, as he puts avowedly repudiating of these features of the
restorative post-colonial integration of state
it, "seduced, apprehended and imprisoned" control and capitalist development. enlightenment paradigm. Chatterji provides
nationalism. The ambition of the book's Though some may wish to quarrel with a useful summary sketch of this repudiation,
analysis is clear: what critique it will offer this use of Gramsci, I do not.4 It does seem showing that Gandhi laid stress on a commit-
of nationalist discourse will eo ipso be a to me to be clarifying and instructive. My ment to a concept of truth in the moral and
. Economic and Political Weekly July 9, 1994 1749
experential sense rather than on the liberal nomy will help fill the gap between the fact nothing to avert Chatterji's failure to deliver
commonplaces of rights and political of his essentially Marxian critique and his on a thorough-going critique of the
emancipation on the one hand, and, on the claims to a critique of the enlightenment. enlightenment paradigm that he had promise
other, the deliverances of science, including Here I should point out that if I am right to do. And this failure is, in its way, a rather
both. technology and political economy. about this then Aijaz Ahmad in some recent instructive one. By creating a gap between
But despite this exposition, it turns out that passing comments on Chatteri has mis- the sort of critique which is offered in the
in this crucial chapter of the- book, where located the fault-line.5 Ahmad suggests thatbook and the more distant philosophical
Chatteii might have kept the ultimate pledgeChatterji's too great emphasis on a cultural target it had hoped to hit, it urges upon us
of his overall theoretical enterprise, he is in nationalism and also his bitter hatred of the task of constructing some general schema
the end far too focused on Gandhi's place Nehru leads him to defend obscurantist by which that gap might be filled. I will
in the developing Gramsci-derived diMIectic, positions and this spreads over generally to return in the last section of this paper to this
to redeem that pledge. It turns out that Gandhiinduce in him (and others) a myopia aboui general question and will suggest that both
was after all just the moment before the the possibilities of a Marxist critique of the historical and philosophical considerations
culminating assertion of state capitalism in nationalist movement, which Ahmad himself suggest that any such schema will really be
Nehru's statist vision, feeding into that final favours. But that is exactly what I am too schematic to fill that gap in any convincing
moment by a capitulation to the demands of denying. In my reading, Chatterji has no detail, and that perhaps the ideal that that gap
capital, and even by a capitulation to the such consistent position, and in fact the partsmust be filled is a misguided one.
formal institutions of modem democracy. t of the book which actually contain a sustained
II
quote him on both these points: "Gandhian argument (as opposed to a rhetorical statement
ideology... could not admit that capitalists of his eventual theoretical goals) contradict I turn now to the other twin component
must be coerced into surrendering their Ahmad's assessment. In my reading, then, in my dialectic, that of religious community,
interests" and "the same problem appeared there is a gap between the proclaimed aims and to the work of another recent influential
when the question of suggesting a concrete and claims of the book in its flanking scholar for whom the question of the vexing
structure of self-government for the village chapters and what the dialectical critique gap that we have been considering does not
arose. Despite his fundamental disbelief in in the body of the book delivers. The crucial so much as arise. Ashis Nandy is nothing
the institutions of representative government,chapter to focus on I think is not the chapter if he is not consistent. The words on his pages
Gandhi suggested the election by secret ballot on Nehru, which Ahmad' s comments stress, leave nothing underdetermined; there are no
was perhaps the only practicable step." but the one on Gandhi. It is the latter in elements in his work running counter to his
What I am pointing to here is a gap created which Chatterji reveals the fact that he is undistractedanimustowardmodernity.6Even
by this particular way of framing the essentially dominated and overtaken by the when Nandy is not talkingexplicitlyofNehru,
limitations of the Gandhian ideological dialectic of the passive revolution and the Ahmad's charge of obsessive anti-Nehruism
intervention. For notice that the framing of
argument of the incipient demands of an applies far more deeply to Nandy than to
this criticism is entirely dictated by the eventually state-managed capitalism. So by Chatteri. This focused consistency makes
demands of the dialectic of the passive the time we come to the chapter on Nehru, him less interesting than Chatteri but much
revolution's war of position. And that there is no other way to read the anti- more influential among the general
dialectic has no ingredient in it wvhich by enlightenment stance in the bitter remarks intelligentsia, who, struck by the extremity
itself is sufficient to deliver a critique of the on Nehru's modernism except as a veneer of recent communalist tendency, want that
generality of the enlightenment paradigm of of rhetoric which hides the fact that the basic extremity to be matched in an exaggeratedly
reason and its consequences. For all the underlying critique is essentially a critique radical explanation of it, which turns out to be
dialectic says,thesecriticismsofthediscourse from the point of view of the unfolding of on offer by the unambiguous anti-modernist
of Indian nati6nalism, these discussions of the demands of capital, a critique whose historical analysis Nandy provides.
even the most anti-enlightenment figure in terms fall fully within the paradigm of * What is it that we want explained? The
the nationalist discourse, issue in the end enlightenment categories of criticism. answer on the surface seems obvious. For
entirely from a perspective that coincides Chatterji's text (by which I merely mean 17 initial years the leadership of independent
with a roughly Marxist critique of capitalism the words on all its pages) thus simply India fell into the hands of Nehru and the
and its (occasicnally) accompanying underdetermines what his own position is, Congress Party. Nehru's vision of imodern,
democratic formalities; a critique, which for we
its aims are large and philosophical but secular India is usually conceded by even his
must remember has been roundly and its deliverances are a well worked-out most vocal critics to be a genuine and
repeatedly takento task forbeingtoo squarely critique of the conspiratorial role of honourable commitment. A companson with
within the enlightenment paradigm. Thusnationalist the thought in a very specific sort the long stretches of either anti-secular or
gap in Chatteri's argument that I-am insisting of shifting formation of political economy. undemocratic regimes in Pakistan after the
on being recorded. To put it very crudely, I am saying that at untimely death of Jinnah (who after leading
I do not doubt that the particularly just the point he might have said that Gandhi a communal nationalist movement adopted
Gramscian profile of the criticisms makes should have been more Gandhian, he says, much the same vision as Nehru's for the
their coincidence with the Marxist critique newly created Muslim nation), and alsd a
and is forced to say by his unfolding dialectic,
uneven at the edges, if we are used to viewing that Gandhi was not Marxian enough. The comparison with what might have happened
Marxism along thoroughly determinist lines rhetoric of his overall aims and the direction if other leaders such as Vallabhbhai Patel had
with no independent force for ideological of his dialectic lead to different theoretical been at the helm in India instead of Nehru,
interventions in the way Gramsci affords. places, and by the end of it the text provides must allow the conclusion that, to a
But my point here is not to observe a perfect no basis for a determinate interpretation. considerable extent, Nehru did succeed. B
coincidence. Even an approximatecoincidence Perhaps Ahmad will find the Marxian if we look around us today in the period
is enough so long as its properties of mere element in Chatterji's critique too before and after the destruction of the mosque
approximation rather than coincidence do idiosyncratic for his taste, and there may at Ayodhya,
be we can only judge the secular
nothing to spoil the observation of the gap an issue here of genuine interest about the success of his long rule as, at best, a holding
in Chatteri's argument. Nothing in the applicability of Gramsci's framework along process. To describe Nehru's success in terms
theoretical move of allowing ideology to Chatterji 's lines. Even so, I think the fact that of a holding process is of course to describe
share an analytic position on centre-stage Chatterji's critique is coincident with a it as a success of a very limited sort. So the
with the structural aspects of political eco- somewhat non-canonical Marxism does explanandum for which Nandy derives his
.1750 Economic and Political Weekly July 9, 1994
historical analysis is just the following in their traditional pre-modern spiritual and There is something convincing about this
question: Why is it that the Nehruvian vision societal formations, a vision accompanied argument but its explanatory virtues are
of a secular India failed to take hold? by all the destructive-modern institutional greatly marred by its narrowing and uncritical
Nandy's answer and the general sense of commitment to centralised government, anti-nationalism, its skewed historiography,
the intelligentsia, including but not by any parliamentary democracy, not to mention and its traditionalist nostalgia. What is
means exhausted by most in the academic heavy industry as well as metropolitan convincing in it is much more theoretical and
community, is that there was something consumption and displacement of traditional methodological than anything that surfaces
deeply flawed in the vision itself. On this ways of life. The echoes of Gandhi here are explicitly in the critique's articulation. But
there is a mounting consensus, and indeed vivid, and Ashis Nandy is explicit in before I get to that, let me first say something
I think it would be accurate to say that in describing this alternative secular vision in by way of scepticism about some of its
the last few years there is widespread and Gandhian terms. central diagnostic claims.
accumulated deflation of Nehru's stature, to This critique of Nehru is careful (though First of all, though there is no gainsaying
be found in the intellectual and political perhaps not always careful enough) to be the humanism inherent in Gandhi's politics,
mood of the country.' Though I have no critical also of contemporary Hindu nation- it is also foolish and sentimental to deny the
particular interest in defending Nehru's alism in India, as was Gandhi himself despite brahmanical elements in it. There is the plain
achievements, nor even eventually his way his Hinduism and his traditionalism. Nandy and well known fact that Gandhi, no less than
of thinking about the secular ideal, which is makes great dialectical use of the fact that the Chitpavan nationalist Tilak (however
in many ways muddled and mistaken, I want Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nation- different their nationalist sensibilities were
to briefly assess this mood because I think alist, arguing that Gandhi's politics and in other respects), encouraged the communal
that there is much that is excessive in its mainpluralist version of Hinduism posed a threat Hindu elements in the national movement by
claizps. I do also think that there is a strandto the elitist pseudo-unification of Hinduism using Hindu symbolism to mobilise mass
of.truth in it which may prove to be an which flowered in the ideology of upper- nationalist feeling. As is also well known,
instructive basis for how to re-think the caste Hindus and in orthodox brahmanical his supportofthereactionary Muslim Khilafat
methodological and philosophical basis for culture, as represented paradigmatically in movement had exactly the same motives and
secularism in India: but I will not be able the Chitpavans, the caste to which Nathuram the same communalist effect on the Muslim
to substantially develop any positive Godse (his assassin) belonged. population. I will not say a word more about
suggestions in this brief discussion. Now it should be emphasised that what is this since this point is very well understood
The contemporary critique of Nehru (and novel and interesting about this critique of by many who have studied the national
I will focus mostly on Nandy's work)' usually Hindu nationalism is that it is intended to movement, even cursorily.
begins by laying down a fundamental be part of a larger critique in two different More importantly, there is some strenuous
distinction in the very idea of a religious ways. First, it is intended as part of a general simplification in the critique's insistence that
community, a distinction between religions diagnosis in which Hindu nationalism is to nationalism was the bad seed that turned a
as faiths and ways of life on the one hand be seen as a special instance of the more more pristine Hinduism and Islam into
and as constructed ideologies on the other. communal ideologies in India.
general wrong that is identified in nationalism
This is intended as a contrast between a more itself-which is a modern state of mind- To begin with, there is thehardly deniable
accommodating, non-monolithicandpluralist in which the very ideal of 'nation' has built fact that Lenin pointed out quite explicitly.
religious folk traditions of Hinduism and into it as a form of necessity the ideal of a In a curious way Nandy shares with the
Islam, and the Brahmanical BJP and the nation-state, with its commitment to such Hindu nationalists he criticises an idea that
Muslim League versions of them which things as development, national security, nationalism is a single and transparent thing,
amount to constructed religious ideologies rigidly codified forms of increasingly the very thing that Lenin denies. In fact,
that are intolerant of heterodoxy within centralised polity, and above all the habit of nationalism is far more omnibus and frustrat-
themselves as well as intolerantofeach other.exclusion of some other people or nation in ing to analyse than either Nandy or the Hindu
The critique's target is by implication its very self-definition and self-under- nationalists allow, and for that reason it is
modernity itself, for its claim is that it is the
standing. There is apparently no separatingunlikely that it can be an explanatory concept
polity in its modem conception ofnationhood these more general wrongs' of nationalism at all. The variety of nationalisms, indeed the
and its statecraft which is the source of from
such what is wrong with Hindu nationalism, variety of ingredients that go into particular
ideological constructions that distort those for otherwise we would have missed the nationalisms at different stages and sometimes
more 'innocent' aspects of religion which more hidden explanatory conceptual sources even at the same stage, makes this inevitable.
amount to 'ways of life' rather than systems of this particular movement. And second, the As we have been routinely and rightly
of thought geared to political advancement. critique of Hindu nationalism is intended to reminded in other contexts, it would serve
The critique then suggests that once one be of a piece with the critique of Nehruvian no purpose, for instance, to lump together,
accepts the inevitability of these ideological secularism, Such a communal nationalism, say, Palestinian nationalism with Zionist
constructions, then there is nothing left to itself a product of modernity, owes its very nationalism: -or to lump together German
do in combating sectarian and communal nationalism in the following four periods:
existence to the oppositional but at the same
sentiment and action than to formulate a time internal dialectical relation it bears to before 1848, after 1918, under Bismarck,
secular vision which itself amounts to an that other product of modernity, Nehruvian and under Nazism. Closer to our specific area
oppressive nationalist and statist ideology. secularism. The claim is that the latter is an of interest, it would be pointless, for instance,
Thus Nehru. As they would describe his alien imposition upon a people who have to integrate in any explanation, on the-one
vision, it is one of a modernist tyranny thatnever wished to separate religion from politics hand Jinnah's and the Muslim League's
just as surely (as the narrow communalisms)in their every day life and thinking, and nationalism in its first two decades with, on
stands against the pluralist and tolerant therefore leaves that people no choice but the other, his nationalism after several
traditions that existed in the uncontaminated to turn to the only religious politics allowed frustrated dealings with the Congress Party
traditions of religions as faiths and ways of by modernity's stranglehold, i e, Hindu in the 20s and his return to India after his
life prior to modernity's distortions. That nationalism. Thus secular tyranny breeds failures in England. Even just these three
was Nehru's primary contribution then: a Hindu nationalist resistance, which threatens examples respectively show that nationalism
perversely modernist and rationalist Fvith the promise of its own form of tyranny. can displace a people from their homeland
imposition of a vision that was foreign to Such are the travails that modernity has or strive to find a state for a displaced
the natural tendencies of Hinduism and Islam
visited upon us. people; it can have an intrinsic tie to social
Economic and Political Weekly July 9, 1994 1751
democ~racy, liberal democracy, autocracy, resources of the economy and the various specific sort of naivete in the critique's
or fascism; it can work harmoniously with elements which concentrate it in their hands. historiography, which is altogether missing
other communities and its representatives in'In Pakistan these elements had more to do in Chatterji once he proceeds with the
an anti-imperialist struggle; or it can be as with system of land-ownership that yielded Gramscian framework in the body of his
divisive of a people in its anti-imperial agricultural surpluses which was siphoned book. Nandy's historiography hides the fact
struggle as the imperialism it struggles into the metropoles to keep the economy that all the basic elements in the construction
against is in the policies by which it rules attractive for comprador capital. There was of brahminism (especially in north India)
over the same people. All of these ingredients also in recent years the more maverick elementwere in place well before the deliverances
of nationalism are themselves explained by of surpluses generated by a thriving sub- of modernity. This should give us general
underlying economic and social forces and economy of gun- and drug-running. In the pause about the somewhat glib tendency to
interests in different periods, or sometimes erstwhile Soviet Union (to take another say that communalism like nationalisrh is a
warring with one another in the same period. purely 'modern' phenomenon.
example) the rampant i0clusivism that gave
The Indian National Congress, almost no quarter to regional demands for autonomy The idea of a monolithic, majoritarian,
was also
throughout its long history, has provided a based on an exclusivism of dominant pseudo-unifying Hinduism is, as we tend to
home for most of these ingredients of Russian interests at the centre, though the say today, a 'coistruct'. This is indeed what
nationalism and has, not surprisingly, elements of the economy that made for this Nandy says about it. But as construction
represented a variety of the underlyingexclusivism
social were more purely those of a often will, the process goes back a long way
and economic interests. We cannot therefore,
fantastic-sized state capitalist apparatus. into the recesses of Indian history and has
assumethatthefailures of Nehru's secularism I have no quarrel with this interpretation helped to perpetuate the most remarkably
are going to be usefully and illuminatingly of the inclusivity in nationalism that I was resilient ineglitarian social formation in the
diagnosed in any terms that give a central pointing to, as harbouring a deeper and world. It is the product of a sustained effort
and clear place to some transparently grasped underlying exclusivity in the agenda of ruling
over centuries on the part of the upper castes
notion of 'nationalism'. elites (in our examples, a Punjabi-dominated to sustain their hold not only on the bases
There is a sort of desperate last-ditch retort or a Russian-dominated ruling elite). But of political power but on the Hindu psyche.
of those who resist the Leninist insight I am Brahminical ascendancy had its ancient
notice that in granting its essential correctness,
invoking her against Nandy's generalised we are granting something that takes the origins ipi a priesthood which made its
anti-nationalism. The insight, remember, is burden of the exclusivism away from alliances,with kings and their officials as well
not merely that not all nationalisms are bad, nationalism to one or other set of economic as with tl'e landed gentry. Through thecontrol
but that 'nationalism' is not transparently interests, that is to say from nationalism to of religi6us ritual and the language of ritual-
characterisable. The retort is that for all this capitalism in its less and more statist forms. Sanskri-and with the force of the kshatriyas
lack of transparency, there is an undeniable This shiftin emphasis howeveris aconcession (the prbdominantly military caste) behind
defining exclusivity in nationalism. to my overall criticism that the real work here them, it gradually created a nationwide
The significance of this claim is highly is not being done by nationalism in the way hegenpony for the upper castes. Under both
questionable. One of the frustrating featuresNandy requires, but by the quite different the fe4dal rulers during the period of Muslim
that go into making 'nationalism' the categories by which exclusivism is now being rule aind later in the colonial state, upper caste
compendious and opaque notion it is, is that explicated. If that is what is doing the real Hind'us flourished in the state apparatus. And
some of its most narrowing and tyrannical work, it makes no distinctive point to say in the'colonial period this abiding hold over
aspects are a product of it being neurotically that it is nationalism that is the bad seed the centres of power, aided by the
inclusivist (as for example in the national and that accounts for the failure of Nehru's codifications of language and custom in the
image of Pakistan during Zia's regime). To secularism. With such exclusivism, we have Orientalist discursive space, allowed this
say, in these contexts, that nationalism is come such a distance from Nandy's critique brahminical ideological tradition to co-opt
defined upon exclusivity rings false because that we cannot recognise it as his position all efforts at the reform of Hinduism, from
the fact that it excludes some people or other any more. I do not doubt that Nandy has it the Arya-Samaj movement in the north to
is innocuous and academic, when compared in mind to integrate capitalism too with the Brahmo-Samaj movement in Bengal;
to the fact that what is most salient about statism, nationalism, modernity, and even intellectual and social movements which
it is that it produces a tin ear for the demands
secularism in a sipgle apocalyptic diagnosis. started with the avowed intention to raise the
of regional autonomy because of its But this does not mean that this interpretation status and the political consciousness of the
inclusivism (in the name of Islam, in our of an exclusivist element in nationalism can lower-castes deteriorated into either elitist or
example). In these contexts, that inclusivismbe assimilated to his critique. Even if there anti-Muslim organisations.
is its defining feature, the exclusivism is is no denying the fact that the economic This general analysis may be familiar by
peripheral. interests surrounding capital which give risenow. But my reason for invoking it, as I said,
Now it is possible to respond in defence to the exclusivism are distinctly interests of is to stress that the construction began to take
of Nandy, and in a sense respond correctly, the modem period, and even if they are often shape much before the onset of modernity.
that in most cases of such inclusivism there accompanied by secular postures, the weight And it does no favours to historical
is an underlying exclusivity having to do of analysis in Nandy's integrated diagnosis understanding to let the periodisation inher
with the fact that a set of dominant economic is not on these interests but on very differentin the very category of 'modernity' and its
interests at the centre find it necessary to elements. As a result, this interpretation which opposites (however we describe them,
exclude regional interests, particularly the stresses these interests need not in any way whether as "pre-englightenment' or 'post-
interest of the regional masses, even as theybe implicated in his overall critique of m.odern') shape from the outside how we
insistently include them superficially into modernity and secularism at all. must\diagnose and explain particular social
the ideal of the nation (in Pakistan's case via So I will return to his position proper rather phenomenon. When any such political or
an appeal to Islamist ideology). That is to than this defence of his position, which is social phenomenon (such as brahmanisin)
say, the inclusivist, unifying nationalist image no defence at all, but its abandonment. has a deep and longstanding antecedent strain,
is an ideological perpetration in order for an These roughly Leninist remarks, though it is better to adopt a historiography that
underlying exclusi vist agenda for a dominant, highly relevant, only begin to uncover the places upon it particular and different
centist. Punjabi ruling-elite to maintain their misidentifications in Nandy's diagnosis of historical explanations for why the
hold over the bureaucracy (and the military), the failure of Nehruvian secularism. Lying phenomenon with some abiding core
and thereby eventually of the investible behind the uncritical anti-nationalism is a characteristics shifts its .saliencies or takes
1752 Economic and Political Wcekly July 9, 1994
on new complexions (e g, in the case of Hindu nationalism, we are less likely to think internal dialectical opposition tou Nehru's
nationalism, from Weimar to Nazism, from of these modem consolidations of it as secularism, for it seems quite wrong under
Jinnah's~rly phase to his later phase, etc); effaceable for a return to a more traditional these circumstances of electoral democracy
or why it increases its levels and thresholds Hindu mentality that Nandy favours. The that are here to stay to see a yearning to bring
of urgency in different historical periods. To current idiom which has it that such social religion back into politics as something that
take an example of the latter: despite the long phenomena as brahminical Hinduism are is an 'innocent' protest against the tyrannies
history of the brahminical construction, the constructed, and to which I have succumbed,of Nehru's secularism. it misdescribes matters
'particularly frenzied communal passion of must now have its bluff called. 'Construction'
to say that the yearning itself is innocent but
the Hiidu nationalists that has been unleashed implies that there are constructs. And modernity disallows the yearning to be
in the last three years can partly be explained constructs are notfigments, though the anti- fulfilled by anything but a divisive
as a violent, and in many respects fascistically objectivist philosophical commitment that communalism. The right thing to say is that
modelled, effort to arrest the quickly leads to the rhetoric of 'constructivism' in in these circumstances of an ineradicable
accumulated ideological effects of recent the first place may templt us to think so. Theymodernity, particularly if one views
efforts to undennine brahminical hegemony,cannot then be thought of as effaceable, nor modernity as a fallen and sinful condition,
and to expose the dissimulations of a unified,
even easily malleable, simply by virtue of the yearning of a religious people to bring
majoritarian Hindu society by adopting *having been diagnosed as constructions. their religion into politics cannot, simply
affirmative action policies in favour of the They are as real and often as entrenched as cannot, any longer be seen as obviously
backward castes. I make this point with a anything that any more traditional idiom and innocent. For its entry into politics is fraught
very specific theoretical end in mind, which objectivist philosophical tendency described. with precisely the dangers that Nehru and
is to show that local historical explanations So the more subdued and low-profile his followers saw, dangers that have been
can be given for the changes and the rise and understanding of historical periodisation realised in scarcely credible proportions of
fall of intensity in what is a longstanding suggested above should instruct us that we menace in the last three years.
social phenomenon. Nandy's own appeal to would do better to recognise constructs, not Though the underlying flaw in the prevalent
various aspects of the modern and colonial as figments, but as fused into the polity, and anti-Nehru intellectual climate is to
period in the understanding of Hindu into the sensibility of citizens, and misdescribe the sense in which religion may
nationalism should, I believe, be read as local increasingly consolidated by modern enter politics in India, given the realities of
in precisely this way rather than in the way developments; and therefore instruct us in a slowly consolidating bourgeois democracy
he presents them (though obviously it is a turn to look instead for constraints to be and modern state, this is by no means to
good deal less local than the particular placed upon them rather than to think in suggest that the Nehruvian insistence on a
explanation I have just rehearsed of the most terms of their eradication or effacement. separation of religion from politics is feasible
recent communal outbursts). This reading The separatist electoral politics which were either. Indeed, my acknowledging that his
lowers the high-profile given to periodisation first introduced by the British and whose secularism amounted to no more than a
in Nandy's implicit historiography, and hence vote-bank mentality is now entrenched in a holding process is an acknowledgement of
allows us to say something very different functioning formal democracy, as well as all theunfeasibility of that separation in acountry
from his main claim. It allows us to say that the other institutions of modem statecraft with the unique colonial and post-colonial
to the extent that categories such as and an increasingly modern economy, are history of communal relationships that India
'modernity' have explanatory force at notall, exactly
it disposable features of the Indian has witnessed. Neither the pre-modern
is only because this or that aspect of modern
political sensibility. It goes without saying conception of an innocent spiritual integra-
life and polity offer local explanations of that there may and should be fruitful and tion of religion and politics, nor the Nehruvian
local changes in non-local phenomena (such sensible discussion about enormously separation of r?ligion and politics can cope
asbrahminism)tfiatoftenpre-datemodemity. important matters regarding the deliverances with the demands of Indian political life
Now this last point has no small effect on of modernity-about matters such as: should today.
howwemustthinkofNandy'sown alternative there be so much stress on capital-intensive
III
to the Nehruvian secular ideal, for which he technologies; should there be so much
is right to resist the label 'secularism'; in fact
centralised government, etc. But even if we What I see as a strand of truth in the
which he is happy to call 'anti-secularism'. laid a great deal more stress on labour- contemporary critique of Nehru is roughly
If the construction of a unified, brahminical
intensive technologies, even if we stressed this: Nehru's secularism was indeed an
version of Hinduism, which (on Nandy's decentralised local governrnentandautonomyimposition. But the sense in which it is an
own account) is the basis of Hindu much more than we have done so far, this imposition is not that it was a modem
nationalism, pre-dates modernity, a question would not coincide with Nandy' s conception intrusion into an essentially traditionalist
arises as to what new complexion it did of a pre-modern political psyche where there religious population. It is not that because
acquire in colonial and post-colonial India? will be no potential for the exploitation of as I said the population under an evolving
The answer is that what electoral politics in one's communal identity in the political electoral democracy through this century
the provinces under the last many decades spheres of election and government. These willy-nilly has come to see religion entering
of British rule, as well as certain forces in spheres are by now entrenched in Indian politics in non-traditionalist modem political
the national movement, brought into this society and just for that reason the sense in modes. It is an imposition rather in the sense
construction is a growing mass element. And which religion is relevant to politics today that it assumed that secularism stood outside
industrialisation in a domestic and comprador cannot any longer be purely spiritual or the substantive arena of political
capitalist framework introduced a more quotidian and ritualistic as Nandy's somewhat commitments. It had a constitutional stat
variegated caste-complexion through a co- selectively Gandhian politics envisages. It is,indeed it was outside even of that: it was in
opting of the commercial castes into the in turn, just for this reason again that the preamble to the Constitution. It was not
constructed hegemony of a unified Hinduism. Nebruvian secularism thought it best to in there with Hinduism and Islam as one
This answer is by no means complete, but separate religion from politics, because given among substantive contested political
the instructive underlying moral I want to the existence of these spheres it thought the commitments to be negotiated, as any other
stress is that once we give up the primacy linking of politics with religion could only contested commitments must be negotiated,
of periodisation and accept the fact of the be exploited for divisiye and majoritarian one with the other.
accumulation and consolidation of long- ends. It seems to me quite one-sided then to I should immediately warn against a facile
present tendencies in our understanding of place the blame for Hind\4 nationalism on itscsonflation. It may be thought that what I am
doing is pointing to an imposition by the Sikhs, and a harijan leader represents the speaking) quite comprehensively subscribed
state of a doctrine of secularism upon a untouchable community. And,thoground for nationalist party in a way that the Muslim
people who have never been secular in this the denial was simply that as a secular party League had ceased tc be. And on the basis
sense. And in turn it may be thought that thisthey could not accept that they not represent of that premise, t'hey could draw the
is not all that different from Nandy's (and all these communities." Secularism thus conclusion that an implicitly and tacitly
others') charge of an imposition made never got the chance to emerge out of a carried out negoiation between the
against Nehru, since states which impose creative dialogue between these different component element5 in the subscription w
entire ways of life upon a people are wholly communities. It was sui generis. This already inherent in the party's claims to
a project of modernity."' Let me leave aside archimedean existence gave secularism being secular. In oth vr words, the secularism
for now, in any case dubious, the idea that procedural priority but in doing so it gave of a party, premisedi on the assumption of
only modern states impose ways of lifeupon it no abiding substantive authority. As a such a comprehensive communal subscrip-
people, dubious because it seems to me a tion, had built into i- by its very nature (that
result it could be nothing more than a holding
wholly unjustified extrapolation to go from process, already under strain in the time of is what I mean by 'tacitly' or implicitly) the
the 'fact that the scale of imposition that its charismatic architect, but altogether negotiated origins I am denying to it. This
modern states are capable of implementing ineffective in the hands of his opportunist is a subtle and interesting argument which
is larger, to the idea that it is a novelty of familial heirs. It is this archimedeanism of I think had always been in the back of Nehru's
the modern state to impose ways of life. Thatdoctrine, and not its statist imposition, that mind in his rather primitively presented
is not the conflation I had in mind. The I think is the deepest flaw in Nehru's vision writings and speeches on secularism. And I
and (as I will continue to argue later) it has
conflation is the failure to see that in charging think the argument needs scrutiny, not
Nehru with imposing a non-negotiated nothing essential to do with modernity and dismissal. 12
secularism, I am saying something quite its various Nandian cognates: rationality, I say that this argument was at the back
orthogonal to the charge that his was a statist
science, technology, industry, bureaucracy... of Nehru's mind partly because it was often
imposition. Perhaps his was a statist Though I believe it with conviction, given pushed into the background by the rhetoric
imposition, but that is not what my charge the brevity with which I have had to make of a quite different argument, that Nehru
is claiming. Rather it is claiming that what *this criticism of Nehru I should add several voiced, which was roughly the argument of
the state imposed was not a doctrine that was cautionary remarks in order to be fair to the left programme, viz, that a proner focus
an outcone of a negotiation between different Nehru's position. For one thing, I do not on the issue of class and the implie-mentation
communities. This critique cannot be equated mean to suggest that Jinnah and the Muslimof a leftist programme of economic equality
with a critique of statism, leave alone modern League represented the mass of the Muslim would allow the nation to bypass the
statism, because it may be quite inevitable people at these stages of the anti-colonial difficulties that issued from religious and
in our times'that, at least at the centre, andmovement; he only represented the urban communal differences. Speaking generally,
probable also in the regions, even a highly middle class and was not in an ideal position this argument is a very attractive one.
negotiated secularism may have to be adopted to play a role in bringing about the sort of However, except for a few years in the 1 930s
and implemented by the state (no doubt negotiated ideal of secularism that I am even Nehru did not voice this argument with
ideally after an inflow of negotiation from gesturing at. Nor am I suggesting that these genuine conviction; and in any case, ir he
the grass roots). There is no reason to think various elitist fora at which Jinnah were thinking honestly, he should have known
that a scepticism about Nehru's secularism demanded communal representation could that it would have been empty rhetoric to do
along these lines should amount in itself to be the loci for the sort of creative dialogue so since he must have been well aware that
a critique of the very idea of statehood, between communities that would have been the right-wing of the party was in growing
because there is nothing inherent in the necessary. However, neither of these ascendancy in,Congress politics despite his
concept of the state which makes it logicallycautionary remarks spoil the general point central presence, and there was no realistic
impossible that it should adopt such a of my criticism of Nehru's position. That chance of the programme being implemented.
substantive, negotiated policy outcome, general point was to call attention to the Given that fact, the negotiative ideal of
difficult though it may be to fashion such horizon of Congress high command thinkingsecularism became all the more pressing.
a state in the face of decades of its imposition about secularism in the pre-independence And it is to some extent arguable that it
of a non-negotiated secularism. period, a horizon on which any conceptionshould have been pressing anyway.
Proof of the fact that my critique of Nehruof a negotiated ideal of secularism was not To return to what I am calling Nehru's
does not coincide with a critique of statehood so much as visible. Putting Jinnah and the argument from 'implicit' negotiation for his
lies in the fact that the critique applies to a elitist conferrings aside, the fact is that even secularism, I strongly suspect that scrutiny
period before independence, i e, before Congress Muslim leaders such as Azad were of the argument will show, not so much that
statehood was acquired. It is very important never given a prominent negotiating voice its premise (about the Congress Party's
to point out that Nehru's failure to providein a communal dialogue with their Hindu comprehensive communal subscription) is
for a creative dialogue between communitiescounterparts in conferrings within the false, but that the very idea of implicit ortacit
is not just a failure of the immediate post- supposedly mass party of which they were negotiation, which is derived from the premise
independence period of policy formulation members. The question of the need for such and which is crucial to the argument, is not
a dialogue within the party in order to
by the state. There are very\crucial historical an idea that can in the end be cashed out
antecedents to it, antecedents which may eventually found a substantive secularism in theoretically by any confirmational and
have made inevitable the post-independent the future never so much as came up. The evidential procedure. As a term of art or
secularist policies whose non-substantive transcendent ideal of secularism Nehru theory, implicit negotiation (unlike the real
theoretical status and non-negotiated origins
assumed made such a question irrelevant. thing: negotiation) yields no obvious or even
I am criticising. For three decades before However. the last and most important of unobvious inferences that can be observed
independence the Congress under Nehru the cautionary remarks I wish to make might which will confirm or infirm its explanatory
refused to let a secular policy emerge through
be seen as attempting to provide an answer theoretical status. Hence the argument is not
negotiation between different communal to this line of criticism of Nehru. It is possible convincing because there is no bridge that
interests, by denying at every step in the that Nehru and the Congress leadership takes one from the idea that an anti-colonial
various conferrings with the British, Jinnah' s assumed something which to some extent is movement and a post-colonial party is
demand that the Muslim League represents true: that the Congress Party was a large and 'composite' (a favourite word of the Congress
the Muslims, a Sikh leader represents the relatively accommodating and (communally to describe its wide spectrum of communal
1754 Economic and Political Weekly July 9, 1994
representation) to the idea that it stands for distribution of such things as political and more so than in any movement of synthesis,
a substantive secularism.'3 My point is that cultural autonomy, and even bureaucratic for the point is essentially Hegelian. Unlike
to claim that the mere fact of compositeness and industrial employment, education, etc. the pure liberal fantasy of a secularism
amounts to an implicit negotiation among the So, just to take one example in the vital established by an ahistorical, philosophical
compositional communal elements which domain of the law, negotiation among leaders ('transcendental', to use Kant's term)
would4ield such a secularism, is a sophistical and representatives of the different argument, the argument being proposed is
move whicW does nothing to bridge that gap communities may deliverthe conclusion that essentially dialectical, where secularism
in the argument. It is a mere fraudulent Muslims have better laws for orphans, say, emerges from a creative playing out (no
labelling of a non-existing bridging while Hindus have better laws for divorce historical inevitability is essential to this
argumentative link between compositenessand alimony; and so on. A civil code had Hegelian proposal) of a substantive
and, what I am calling, a 'substantive' it emerged in this way would very likely have
communal politics that is prevalent at a cer
secularism. The label 'implicit' just serves pre-empted the present controversy historical juncture..
tohidethefactthatthecommitmenttogenuine surrounding the idea of a 'uniform' civil When it is hard won in these ways,
negotiation (which alone could build the code. By giving participatory negotiating secularism is much more likely to amount
necessary bridge from the party's composite- voice to the different communal interests, it to something more than a holding process.
ness to a substantive secularism) was would have pre-empted Muslim fears about And this is so not merely because (unlike
manifestly avoided by the Congress Party.'4 the idea of a 'uniform' civil code and Hindu Nehru's secularism) it acknowledges as its
In any case, even if the argument was resentment at Nehru's failure to endorse that very starting-point the inseparability of
justified at some point (which is highly idea. Because of the archimedean rather than religion from politics, but also because, at
doubtful), even if it wasjustified up to a point
,emergent character of India's adopted the same time, it does not shun a realistic
three and a half decades after independence, secularism, Nehru and other leaders found appreciation of the entrenched facts of modern
themselves inevitably providing special status
the fact is that since the 1980s it has become political life, which Nehru (unlike his
very clear that the premise underlying the to Muslim law. It was the internal logic of contemporary critics) was right to embrace
argument simply fails to be true of the its non-negotiated methodological character wholeheartedly. This way of looking at things
Congress Party. Since that period it can nothat it found this special status the only fair gives a philosophical basis to the widespread
longer claim to represent a wide spectrum treatment of India's most substantial minority, but somewhat vague anti-Nehru feeling
ofreligiouscommunities. In the 180s Indira thus yielding aggressive resentment among (shared by a variety of different political
Gandhi, and Rajiv Gandhi after her, because the Hindus which in turn bred reactionary positions today) that in a country like India
they could not count on a populist and fear of giving up the special status amo'ng we cannot any longer embrace a secularism
co miehensivesecularbaseafterthemanifest the Muslims. that separates religion from politics. And it
and predictable failure of the 'Garibi Hatao' An alternative secularism, emergent rather does so without in any way ceding ground
platform, slowly but more or less openly than imposed in the specific sense that I have to those who draw quite the wrong
cultivated the support of the majority defined, sees itself as one among other conclusions from this vague feeling: it cedes
community to replace that base of support, doctrines such as Islam and Hinduism. Of nothing to the Hindu nationalist, nor to the
first by turning against the Sikhs and then course there is still a difference of place andMuslim communalist,'5 nor even to Ashis
more subtly against the Muslims. As a result function in the polity between secularism Nandy's nostalgia for a by-gone pre-
today the premise, and therefore the argument and Islam or Hinduism. But once we see it modernism. The crucial importance of seeing
itself, sounds hollower than ever. Today as a substantive doctrine, this difference canthings this way lies precisely in the fact tha
more than ever, secularism of the Nehruvianbe formulated in quite other terms than theit counters what is a dangerously easy and
kind which the Congress Party has inheritedway Nehru formulated it. In my conception, uncritical tendFncy today, the tendency to
from its past as A sort of incantation soundswhat makes secularism different from these move from this vague but understandable
utterly unconvincing because it has even lostspecific politico-religious commitments is feeling of the inseparability of religion from
its claims to be founded on the (in any case not any longer that it has an archimedean andpolitics to one or other of these conclusions.
dubious)notionofimplicitnegotiation among non-substantive status, but rather that it is It counters this tendency by a very specific
different elements in a heterogeneous an outcome of a negotiation among these philosophical consolidation of this feeling,
umbrella organisation. In such circumstances, specific commitments. This gives secularism so that these conclusions which are often
with no locus where negotiation between a quite different place and function in the derived from it now no longer seem
communities, however implicit, can be found polity, and in the minds of citizens, than compulsory. Or, to put it more strongly (and
or carried out, the very idea of secularism Islam or Hinduism could possibly have. Yet more correctly), this philosophical
is bound to seem an imposition in the special this difference does not amount to wholesale consolidation of this understandable feeling
sense I have claimed. transcendence from these substantive allows us to see these conclusions derived
In reaction to this imposition it would bereligious commitments in poliiics. If from the feeling as simply, non-sequiturs.
a mistake to formulate an alternative vision secularism transcends religious politics in I have talked much of a negotiated rather
of secularism which harked back nostalgicallythe way I am suggesting, it does so from than archimedean secularism, but barely said
to the idea of a pre-modern India. Since thewithin, it does not do so because it has a anything in positive detail about the nature
shimmering philosophical existence separate
sense in which it is an iryposition has not of the negotiation that is implied. That will
so much to do with modernist intrusion as from religious political commitments, nor have to be (and is) the subject of another
with its rarefied non-negotiable status, the because it is established by constitutional fiat paper. But its worth spending just a word
right reaction to it should be to acknowledge by a pan-Indian elite unconcerned and to note one or two questions and problems
that secularism can only emerge as a value unrealistic about the actual sway of religion that need particularly to be addressed.
by negotiation between the substantive in politics. It does so rather because after It is worth noting that there were moments
commitments of particular religious climbing up the ladder of religious politics in colonial India and in the national
(via a dialogue among acknowledged
communities. It must emerge from the bottom movement, when such negotiations were
up with'the moderate political leadership of
substantive religious commitments in approximated, such as (to take just one
different religious communities negotiating politics) this emergent secularism might be example) during a stretch of the Swarajist
both procedure and substance, negotiating in a position to kick that ladder of religious period in Bengal under the leadership of
details of the modern polity from the politics away. There is no paradox here of Chittaranjan Das, culminating in the Bengal
codification of law primarily to the a doctrine emerging from its opposite, no Pact. I say 'approximated' because here too
the merchant and professional classes were in opening up the possibility of a Muslim/ about as much connection between belief in
much more the represented voices in the lower caste axis and, in doing so, has revived the power of science and secular attitudes
negotiation; and even if that is to some extentthe possibility of many cultured, grass roots as there is between belief in god and moral
going to be inevitable in most of the political alliances which alone could behaviour. That is to say, none. The most
realistically envisageable contexts of the eventually unsettle the myth that India's scientific-minded can be party to a cynical
near and middle future, that is no reason secularism can only be imposed non- adoption of religion in politics, and the most
to abandon sight of the higherideal of a morenegotiably by .a pan-Indian ruling elite. devoutcan besuspicious of themixof religion
grass roots negotiation. On the other hand, and politics. Nandy is so obviously right to
IV
qua negotiation, it fell short in the quite think that the canonisation of science and its
opposite sense also of not having been I have tried in this paper to distinguish method, and perhaps even its technological
echoed at the more centralised levels'ofbetween the two notions of secularism by consequences in large-scale capital-intensive
Congress Party. So there is the opposite criticising the Nehruvian vision from a quite investments have failed to promote a secular
pitfall of negotiated secularisms emerging at different angle than Ashis Nandy's. Unlike polity, that it seemed to me hardly worth
provincial levels, but failing to abide because
Nandy, I did not argue that the failure of noting. That is why I focused on Nandy's
they do not suit centralised interests. Nehru's secularism flowed from its being an more controversial and interesting argument
There is also the palpable fact today that enlightenment-laden ideological imposition. against Nehru which linked his secularism
the centrestage (in terms of both vocal strengthJ have argued that it was characterised more internally with its opposite,. Hindu
and influence) in communal politics tends' by a deep methodological flaw, which made nationalism, and in turn situated the latter
to be held by an extremist leadership which it an imposition in a far more abstract sense. too as a special instance of a general
is unlikely-to find any appeal in the kind of It was a failure in the quite different sense phenomenon of distinctly modem times. It
negotiation that is necessary. That does mean that it pretended, both before and after does nothing to improve the genuine interest
that negotiation will have to be preceded by independence, to stand outside of substantiveof this argument (nor to alleviate its dubious
aconfrontation with Hindu nationalist forces and contested value commitments, and was viability) to throw into the argument what
primarily (because of their greater numbers thus not able to withstand the assault of the is a quite separable strand, viz, these
and strength) but also the reactionary reactionary and authoritarian elements in the considerations critical of Nehru's commit-
leadership in Muslim communities. This will value commitments that never pretended to ment to science. Nandy, however, may not
be no easy struggle, and will depend on the be anything but substantive and contested; see it this way. For him, Nehru's wrongs
patient integration of different marginalised the commitments, that is, of the nationalist regarding secularism are perhaps inseparable
interests. That is, it is unlikely that the Hindu, the communalist Muslim and the from the wrongs of that other commitment
conflictedcommunitieswillthrowupastrong nationalist Sikh. I want to close by drawing of modemity and the englightenment, the
and sustained moderate leadership prepared out a theoretical implication of this difference fetishistic commitment to scientific
to negotiate the details of a"secular ideal, between Nandy's critique and mine; this will knowledge. Thus for him to reject one is to
without the prior formation of diverse also allow me to briefly recover a point I leftreject the other as well.
alliances against the rising power of hanging at the close of my discussion of But this is simply to buy into Nehru's
brahmanical Hindu nationalism and the Partha Chatterji in Section I. confusion. The right criticism would have
reactionary Muslim response to it. The In a very important sense, an aspect of been to notice that Nehru confused the two
aspirations of the backward castes, of the Nandy's critique of Nehru, which I have not things. And if that is so, that leaves it open
scheduled castes, of the tribal communities, focused on, inherits a muddle that it uncovers (such is the beauty of confusions) that each
of women, and of moderate Muslims, amountin Nehru's thinking. There is a strand in of those two things is right, or that one of
to the aspirations of a substantial majority Nehru's thinking that Nandy emphasises, them is right,' or even that both happen to
of the Indian population and it is their allianceswhich is Nehru's apparent linking of the be wrong. But to say that both things are
which will have to be fashioned. No doubt scientific temper with a secular attitude. I wrong and necessarily wrong together
an essential part of this progressive effort have instead restricted my attention to (because they are both part of a post-
will be made in the formal political arena, Nandy's discussion linking Nehru's enlightenment paradigm) is simply to have
as it always has, by the political parties of secularism with the modem phenomenon of failed to see the strength and point of
the left. 16 But the very acknowledgement that nationalism and its accompanying statism. uncovering a confusion in Nehru's thinking.
these alliances will have to be as diverse as But this might seem unfair since his discussion A critique of something as being confused
I have catalogued them, suggests that the makes so much of modernity and the should not then go on to inherit the confusion
'left' itself will mean something that is not enlightenment, and essential to the idea of in its criticism. It is perfectly possible then
altogether recognisable in the traditional and these things, it might be said, is Nehru's to leave out of his critique of Nehru's
often exclusively 'class' analyses that have optimism about the scientific outlook's powercommitment to secularism, his critique of his
defined the platforms of the traditional leftto overcome communal commitments. That modernist commitment to science and
parties. The wholehearted adoption and is, it might seem unfair that in failing to technology, on the ground that these two
pursuit of the Mandal commission take up this facile optimism in Nehru, I commitments that are the targets of two
recommendations (and its wider implications have left out an integral part of Nandy's separate critiques have no inherent inferential
for political and economicpower) bycritique the left
of Nehru's modemism, and therefore link and were only linked by a confusion in
parties will, I believe, be a crucial first step
rejected Nandy's outright scepticism about Nehru's thinking. But Nandy, and others
in this process.'7 The report and its aftermath secularism too easily. My only excuse for who follow him,'9 do not leavethese separable
have no doubt had the effect of sidestepping not taking up this aspect of Nandy is that things separate, and see their critiques of
the strict primacy of a class analysis,'8 and to me obvious that this optimism
it seemed them as essentially linked. In doing so, they
have also raised the prospect of immediate on Nehru's part was based on a dumbfound- make essentially the same confusion. If we
struggle along caste lines, but that is an ing, though common, confusion. There is relieve Nandy of this inherited confusion,
unavoidable part of the overall struggle simply no dependable connection between then we can distil from him the leaner and
against brahminical orthodoxy and communalism and the lack of scientific more interesting argument against Nehru
nationalism. The fact is that it has directly temper, because communalism is a political that I have focused on in the paper, and found
called into question the infinite survival of phenomenon (with economic underpinnings wanting.
one of the most fantastic forms of social evil and cultural consequences) and not a matter Chatterji's-ambitions of linking a critique
in the history of the world. It is the first step of having an unscientific outlook. There is of nationalist discourse with the theme of the
1756 Economic and Political Weekly
enlightened -paradigm are not guilty of this conception as beginning in the west, not in the enlightenment's commitment to reason
inherited confusion, because when he writes the enlightenment but in everything that and science. As a result of thesecodifications,
about Nehru there he is not really concerned followed the pre-Socratics), then we will what was a relatively humane and
with his secularism as he is in the articles have no choice eventually but to wish to discretionary exercise of power, when power
I am discussing. was more arbitrary, became a monstrously
controland master nature in ways that amount
All the same, it is tempting to think this. to this technological frame of mind that distant and alienating phenomenon, no longer
In the last section, I criticised Nehru for a governs modern societies. This connection resident in identifiable personages who
philosophical failure to see secularism as is made by bald assertion. Leave alone the participated in such a range of discretionary
anything less than an archimedean ideal. lack of an argument, it does not even, with practices, but written rigidly into the public
This archimedeanism, it might be said, is just any assurance, capture an intuition. I can texts of governance, and eventually into
another feature of the idea of reason as we imagine someone finding it just as intuitive larger, unapproachable, even unidentifiable,
find it in the enlightenment, so my critique to say that "if nature was indeed so external bureaucratic machines in different sections
is not coming from so different an angle as .as objectivism and reason demands, perhapsof society. To take just an example, and to
Nandy's,orfromwhatChatteji had promised we will never do anything with it except see put it very crudely, for him the provincial
to deliver in his first chapter. Indeed, it may it as a wondrous and exotic object to be magistrates of old regime France, for all their
be said that once we stress the secular'strain handled with the utmost unassumingness." arbitrariness and cruelty, were party to a far
in nationalism of the time of what ChatterJi So no such bald, abstractly drawn, hand- more discretionary and humane exercise of
calls its '"m6ment of arrival", the Nehruvian waving, claim will bridge the gap between the law upon criminals, than the alienating
phase, this criticism of mine may be seen as a satisfying analysis of nationalism within and uncompromising rigidities emerging
just the supplementary element needed in aGramscianframework, andtheoverweening from the newly formulated penal codes in
Chatterji's dialectic that will allow him to goal of finding it a special instance of all the the enlightenment.
fill the gap I had registered in Section I. But flaws of the enlightenment conception of I think this transformed conception of
this thought, though tempting, is just wrong. reason and knowledge; nor will if help in power, which flows at least partly from
There is nothing specifically post- linking my criticism of Nehru with a general cognitive sources and reinforces cognitive
enlightenment-about the archimedeanism I -critique of post-enlightenment modernity. control, over and above earlier forms of
am inveighing against. Any one who has any Each of these pairs of things are composed political control, has been of great underlying
acquaintance with the history of political of unbridgeably distinct propositions, and influence in the writings of Chatterji and
theory, say evei through a good secondary sometimes we should acknowledge that it is some of his colleagues in the subaltern
source such as Quentin Skinner's survey, far more interesting to register.a distinction school of historians. At any rate, the
will find it in various mediaeval doctrines, than to make implausible connections. evidence of the influence is pervasive in
in various republican doctrines prior to the And this is so not merely for the sort of those chapters of Chatterji's book that I
enlightenment, not to mention in every remote philosophical reasons I have just have been criticising, and it also coincides
sentence expressing every central or passing given, but because these philosophical reasons with much of Nandy's writing. Once again,
thought that Plato ever had on the polis. have significant consequences for political even- if we acknowledge that there is an
Quite apart from this, let us just ponder understanding and action. As is well known, important role for the cognitive element in
the matter for a minute purely conceptually a good deal of the recent attacks on post- power, I think it would be hard to make out
ratherthanproduceevidencefromintellectual enlightenment conceptions of reason have the requisite inherent connections being
history. Let us just ask what it'would take emerged under the influence of Foucault's claimed by Foucault. And on roughly
for the tempting thought I am rejecting to fascinating historical analyses of various analogous philosophical grounds as the one
be true. Answering this question would concepts and institutions of the modern I gave above. But I want now to stress
bring out a litte why it was so difficult Europe. Here again, we may acknowledge instead the more immediate political
for Chatterji to bridge the gap between his the power of these historical analyses at the reasons for not fetishising this opposition
initial statement of aims and the deliverances same time as we express scepticism of their to codification so that it becomes not just
of his actual argument. For the tempting claimed inherent link with the paradigms of a critique of particular consequences of
thought to be true, it would have to be the reason and science. (I repeat that the point particular sorts of codes, but a critique of
case that there is a determinate and of this scepticism is not to find entirely codification as such. In other words, not just
determining conceptual tie between the coherent certain metaphysical notions of a critique of this or that exercise of power
paradigms of objectivist notions of reason objective truth and reason and representation. in the post-enlightenment period, but a
on the* one hand and the specifically This essay is not intended as a familiar kind critique of power which was inherent in the
technological and controlling frames of mindof rearguard support for the enlightenment- very idea of codification that issued from
that are exercised in the modern states and for if it were that, it would be participating post-enlightenment conceptions of reason
societies we have so appallingly and in a familiar debate, whose framing and knowledge.20 It is politically vital to
uncritically constructed. I am not here methodology and premises I reject as resting resist this tempting generalising intellectual
contesting the finding of wrongs either in on the unjustifled extrapolated connections made because at our historical juncture
transition
claims of objectivist conceptions of reason, by both sides to the dispute. The point of is unalterable
that post-enlightenment modernity,
or in the technological frames of mind that even if these metaphysical notions are not there is no possibility of political agency left
shape modern societies. I am only expressing' coherent, that incoherence is self-standing, that does not build upon counter-codes or
a scepticism about their assumed connection, and has no inherent link with the detailed resistance. (Ironically-and it is an irony
i e, that these wrongs we find in them both critiques of nationalism and secularism, or that flows naturally from the gap in his
issue from some common source of fallacy. for that matter with the critiques of modernargument that I noted in Section I-implied
So far as I know no epistemological or institutions of crime' and punishment or of by Chatterji's own Gramscian critique of
philosophical position has satisfactorily made mental health.) Foucault's claim to such annationalist discourse is precisely such a
out a case for this connection. Heideggerinherentin link came from his conviction thatcountet-code of resistance, a code that is not
some late works made the bare claim that the idea of powerunderwent a transformationhard to tease out of Gramsci's writings.)
If one took truth to be so objective, and nature
after the enlightenment as a result of the The dismissal of the very idea of resistance
codifications of ways of life and thinking, that builds upon its own counter-codes to
to be so external to us, as reason under a
certain conception demands (and it is worth
which came from the general intellectual particular statist and capitalist exercises of
notice that he too has rightly placed this drive for system and order that constituted power, is one of the more glib and uncritical
legacies of Foucault's influence on current (I cannot say with absolute confidence whether
since the discourse itself was a reflection of
thinking; and it yields unconstructive, its own legiti mising of the "marriage between
in the passage I quoted, Chakrabarty is making
nostalgist theoretical positions to counter the the transition that I find untenable in other reason and capital". And so for him the ideal
specific forms of power that he and those writers, for his theme in that essay is somewhat remains the transcendence of discourse and
influenced by him have themselves often different from what we have been discussing of the cultural and spiritual productions of
usefully analysed. The disinissal is based on in them, but to my ear it sounds very much nationalism from the enlightenment ideal of
a very deep-going and underlying as if he is.)22 reason.
misunderstanding of the conditions of I regret having to close the paper with a Though, unlike the sociological
political and communal agency, but thatmust criticism that will not be able to elaborate determinists, he demands that there be a
remain the detailed subject of another much on a central point that it relies on, viz, proper focus in the study of nationalism on
overlong paper. the point about what goes into the notion of discourse and culture, it is not obvious what
I am not using the term 'nostalgist' as a political agency. The subject is too large and his own departure from sociological
term of abuse. At any rate if I am, then there
too integrated with other subjects not raised determinism amounts to, when at the end of
are many cases of self-abuse, because in this paper for me to pursue it here in detail. the study he concludes that the discourse
something like that term has become part of I can only hint here (what will seem failed to achieve autonomy from enlighten-
the self-description of some writers who are paradoxical, but is only superficially so) that ment categories of reason because "ever
party to the dismissal I am criticising. At the no account of political agency can afford to since the enlightenment, reason in its
end of his paper 'Postcoloniality and the leave out an ingredient which is a refinement universalising mission has itself been
Artifice of History: Who Speaks for 'Indian' of the theoretical phenomenon that is parasitic upon a much less lofty, much more
Pasts?',2i Dipesh Chakrabarty proudly abusively dismissed by various writers mundane, palpably material and singularly
describes the anti-modernist strategy he is (including some in the subaltern school of invidious force, namely, theuniversalisturge
proposing as based upon dreams. I quote: historians) under the label 'sociological of capital". Chatterji has raised a protest
"To attempt to provincialise this 'Europe' is determinism'.23 Their dismissal is based on against the doctrine of sociological
to see the modern as inevitably contested, an untenable dualism between determinism determinism, but he has not given us any
to write over the given and privileged and agency, a dualism no doubt encouraged as to what it really means to say that we m
narratives of citizenship other nafratives of as a form of reaction against careless and restore the rightful place of thought and
human connections that draw sustenance of unsophisticated versions of sociological agency against this doctrine. He no doubt
dreamed-up pasts [my emphasis] and futures,determinism, which should quite properly steers
be us to study nationalism more broadly
where collectivities are defined neither by dismissed. But the right response to these by studying its discourse as well, but apart
rituals of citizenship nor by the nightmare dismissible doctrines is to offer an account from that salutary broadening of disciplinary
of 'tradition' that 'modemity' creates. There of agency which allows precisely foragency's pursuits, he offers no advance in the
are of course no (infra)structural sites where emergence out of practical rationality and theepistemology of agency except to hint at an
such dreams could lodge themselves. Yet power of communities for reflective criticism,ideal of autonomy that discourse must acquire
they will recur so long as the themes of in which much of what counts as criticism from the capital-driven demands of reason
citizenship and the nation state dominate our and resistance both to authority and to one's ever since the enlightenment. What could
narratives of historical transition, for these own history is based inevitably on the counter- this autonomy be but something which
dreams are what the modem represses in codes of resistance that one shapes out of amounts to a systematic critique of the
order to be." what one's own history has made available "universalising urge of capital"? And how
Chakrabarty gets self-conscious about two at given times. could this critique fail to issue from some
things before he writes these words. He says When Chatterji and others have tabled more or less' systematic and positive
that the rest of his paper would have made their objection to what they call sociological theoretical conception (code') of both
clear that his "is not a call for cultural determinism, they have found that it views culture and material conditions? And, in
relativism or for atavistic nativist histories". political phenomena, such as nationalism, to turn, how could this positive theoretical
But these slightly embarrassed caveats be "invariably shaped according to contours conception be formulated except with the
misplace where someone should find his outlined by given historical models", and deployment of some of the concepts and
position to be implausible. The issue is neither they find in it all the rhetoric of necessity,categories that are at hand for us in the midst
about cultural relativism nor about nativism, some of which Chatterji catalogues: of our post-enlightenment modernity
despite the long and tired history of the "objective, inescapable, imperative, too- (reason)? The only alternatives are the
debates surrounding these. Rather, as I said, marked deviations,...impossible", etc. And nostalgic visions of 'dreamed-up pasts' or
this position and others of this sort have not soon after, he asks: "Where in all this is the of sheer transcendence.
properly thought through what the conditions working of the imagination, the intellectual So, my question is, can the notion of
of the possibility of political agency are. As process of creation? ...the problem does not political agency be explored in a framework
a consequence, another caveat he announces arise, because even when nations are that falls short of this heady brew of ulterior
before writing the words I have quoted fails 'invented',itisoutiof necessity... Likereligion visions? That exploration would have to seek
to carry conviction. This is his remark: "Nor and kinship, nationalism is an anthropological a reconciliation between sociological
is this a programme for a simple rejection fact and there is nothing else to it." There determinism and agency; and. that would
of modernity, which would be, in many is, as he says, no place for "thought" and require a refinement of what we are used to
situations, politically suicidal". I am not sure "agency". understanding by the term 'sociological
what a simple rejection of modernity would Against this sociological determinism, determinism'. What makes for agency is not
be, but, as I have been saying. it does seem he demands that in the study of nationalism transcendence from our histories and
to me that the Foucault-inspired transition we also study its discourse and seek out, material conditions, but reflection and the
from a critique of specifically codified in particular, the possibilities of the possibility of self-evaluation and self-
exercises of power in modern societies to a autonomy of nationalist discourse. His criticism. It cannot be a threat to agency that
critique of codified conceptions of reason in the categories by which such normative
eventual brief, as I said earlier, is that anti-
politics, whether it is a simple rejection or colonial nationalist discourse in India never assessments of ourselves are made are
not, is philosophically ungrounded and, really achieved autonomy from the restricted by our historical position. And
indeed 'politically suicidal' since it can enlightenment categories of the colonial these restrictions are not always just a matter
have no proper account of political agency. masters, and this is perhaps not surprising of what our histories have made available
1758 Economic and Political Weekly July 9, 1994
to us; they also emerge from what we 'economistic' trade-union activities of a realms themselves are crying ouit for other
ourselves may decide is feasible or efficaci- section of the working-class in a capitalist descriptive categoies to describe them than
ous, givEn local historical circumstance. Of society) should be charged with false- the categories 'inner' and 'outer', and even
course we may dream with much less consciousness can now be seen as an the category 'two'. Here, where we need to
restriction than that, but if the notion of attribution of responsibility and blame to it, record a connection, Chatterji registers a
freedom i; tied to free action, then questions a normative assessment which presupposes distinction and a gap. This is of course very
of feasibility and efficaciousness loom large its agency rather than denies it. Thus one can much related to the fact (it is indeed partly
to restrict the range of the concepts we can accept the fact that consciousness can explained by the fact) that earlier where he
deploy. When we give to thought and agency sometimes be false and accept the should have rested content with a gap between
the power to resist material and cognitive and presupposition of this fact, viz, that his Gramscian critique and his critique of the
cultural domination, it is a non-cancellable consciousness is not self-standing but often englightenment praradigm of reason, he had
condition for such thought and agency that dependently linked with material conditions; announced a connection. I will leave it as
it is assessable by the thinkers and agents and yet make no concession to an agency- an exercise for the reader to spell out that
themselves in the light of codes constituted threatening and responsibility-threatening relation and explanation.
by the concepts at hand (and not at some determinism. One can have it both ways. Now, I am not denying that there has
other place) and shaped by their material The appropriate categories for the been an intellectual tradition of social and
conditions. I say this is a non-cancellable description of the thought that makeshistorical possiblethought that freely attributed false-
condition of agency, and mean it. The point.political agency (say, nationalist resistance) consciousness without framing it in this
is intended as analytic, not empirical. But it are not ones that describe it as an accumulated normative conception of agency, ie, it saw
is not trivial for being so. It is not just a stretch of spiritual counters in an inner them instead as purely descriptive
random stipulation about the nature of free repository of culture-though this is exactlyattributions to aperson orclass, and theref
agency and thought, but a non-arbitrary how Chatteri has come around to describing as attributions that presupposed no
philosophical proposal that political agency a central strand in anti-colonial nationalism responsibility on his or its part. I am merely
is related to our determining conditions, not in India in his more recent book.24 No doubt, saying that, in doing so, it did not give itself
as a whole new field of transcendent exercises there were great spiritual and intellectual the philosophical right to see these (often
of volition but as a normative and reflective contributions to nationalism of the kind perfectly just) attributions of false-
point of view which we may bring to bear Chatterji discusses, but it is distorting of consciousness
the as leaving unthreatened the
on our own actions and thoughts, even if notion of agency to place these contributions agency of persons, communities and classes.
those actions and thoughts have determining in a descriptive framework governed by a The question of why, contra this tradition,
conditions, and even if these assessments are dichotomy between an inner spiritual domain we should attribute responsible agency to
internal to our own available conceptual and its outer opposite. Agency and the agent with false-consciousness is a delicate
resources. mentality that makes it what it is, is much question, which needs elaborate discussion.
The idea that agency is compatible with more perspicuously described, as I have been Let me only say here that the issue turns on
determinism in this way yields a liberating saying, in terms of normative assessment. fundamental questions about the very nature
theoretical perspective. For it allows us to The dualism of agency and determination is of the explanation of the behaviour of persons
talk of the possibility of thought and not a dualism within the metaphysics of or communities. The explanation of a social
imagination and spirit and their various politics, whereby there are separable realms behaviour is, as many philosophers have
cultural productions as both freely exercised of the inner and outer, but rather it is a pointed out, not a purely causal account but
and as capable of amounting to false- dualism of point of view, the point of view the task of making sense of people, in a way
consciousness. The dichotomies embraced whereby we understand ourselves as a product that constitutively requires assessing in the
by the critics of sociological determinism of both conceptual and material causes, and light of norms. This implies something whose
force a framework in which the very idea the point of view whereby we reflectively significance for political agency is
of false-consciousness could issue from evaluate ourselves. It is only if we redescribe considerable, but which has not been much
nothing but a crippling determinism, which agency in this way that we will find that we acknowledged by political philosophers. It
leaves no place foragency. In this framework, have given ourselves the right to say two implies that it is the nature of such
agency depends upon the idea of a self- things that would otherwise have seemed explanations that, when and if one understo
standing consciousness, and that is precisely unutterable together: First, to say, as before, such an explanation of oneself, one could no
what is under threat by the positing of false- that there is no agency without thought and be in an agnostic position regarding whethe
consciousness. It is often a necessary imagination, but, second, also to say that one ratified or rejected the normative light
condition for some stretch of consciousness thought and imagination can sometimes all in which it placed one. Since norms are
being false that it has inextricable links with the same be (by the lights of our own codes constitutive of the explanation (over and
what is not consciousness, the realm of the of assessment, when we adopt a evaluative above the causes), there is no way to make
material. It is only when consciousness fails perspective on ourselves) a bit of false- or comprehend an explanation of oneself and
to live up to what is demanded by specific consciousness. And once we see through to be indifferent to its normative assessment of
aspects of the material realm (e g, the real the possibility of saying the second of theseone. It follows from this that to the extont
and objective interests of a class) according things (not that we must always say it, for that agents with false-consciousness are
to some theory about that realm and about obviously not all thought and culture is false- capable of understanding the explanations of
its determining relation to consciousness, consciousness), then that removes the point their behaviour which assesses it as being
that we will count it as false. For these criticsand rationale for the sort of distinction so, they are in a position of responsibility
of such sociological determinism, this is a between the inner and the outer that Chatterji regarding it, since they are necessarily in a
surrender of the self-standingness of makes. The assessment of falsity of position of ratifying or rejecting what they
consciousness (and spirit and culture) to consciousness issues from a code (even if have come to see themselves as after having
material determination. But if instead we see it is a very roughly configured bit of theory)comprehended the explanation. This is not
agency as turning on normative assessment in whose elaboration there are often going a matter of a measurable step that agents may
and reflection, there is no reason to think thatto figure descriptions of elements that or may not take after achieving self-
a charge of false-consciousness brings with Chatterji relegates to the outer, material realm.
understanding. If norms constitute the
it an agency-threatening determinism. That If there are such dialectical links between explanations of their behaviour, then their
the social behaviour of a class (say, certain these two posited realmes, then clearly the own understanding of such explanations of
re;onomic and Political Weekly July 9, 1994 1759
themselves, with no additional step, puts As I have said, this idea needs a good deal Aijaz Ahmed, Arjun Appadorai, Sugato Bose,
them in the position of endorsement or more elaboration than I am able to give it Amitava Ghosh, Isaac Levi, Carol Rovane and
repudiation of what the explanation identifies here. I will, nevertheless, draw from it the Charles Taylor, for helpful comments and
criticisms on an earlier draft of this paper. The
them as being. That strictly follows from the consequence that I had threatened to draw,
paper has also benefited from discussions with
constitutive nature of norms in these because its general relevance to the subject
audiences present at the Barbara Stoller Miller
explanations. To say that norms are of this section are, I hope, now more clearly
Seminar, Columbia University, at the Centre
constitutive of explanation is to say that visible.
they for Transcultural Studies, Chicago; and at a
are not some extra pieces of value tacked on The possibility of political agency (such conference entitled 'Whither Post-Colonial
after a causal explanation has been given; as nationalist thought and action) requires Studies?' at Yale University, where I presented
it is to say that the explanation itself, qua resistance to codes, not transcendence from the earlier draft.]
code. And (if there is to be such a thing as
explanation, identifies the behaviour and the I I use the expression 'religious community'
agent as falling under a normatively reflection at all) such resistances are somewhat recklessly since it is in so many
formulatedcharacterisation. And norms being themselves assessed-for genuine freedom senses in which the Muslims (or Hindus) in
what they are, they extract commitment in as opposed to false-consciousness-by codes, India are as well as are not either religious
or a community. So I am hoping that the
one direction or other, once one comprehends only because code has not been transcended.
reader will not unsympathetically over-
them as explanatory of oneself, that is; once (I am stubbornly capitalising here to draw
interpret my use of the term as standing for
one sees oneself in the light in which they attention to my insistence that we should not some sort of social or other kind of reification.
present us to ourselves. I am not of course be cowed by charges of reification, simply Having warned against this unguarded use,
suggesting that these endorsements or because we wish to resist the wholly I will simply go ahead with it, since it seems
repudiations are easily achieved. Nor am I unjustified extrapolating generalisations in to me tamake for too awkward an exposition
to keep warning at each stage against it, and
suggesting that the process by which one post-Foucaldian critiques of reason and
also since it does seem to me be roughly
achieves them does not occur in stages, or modernity.) And these codes themselves are
correct to say that in some sense it is
even gradual stages. Reflection and self- conceptually configured by what is (politicised) religious communities that are
understanding are fragile and often painful conceptually available in our historical and involved in the communal conflicts that we
cognitive and conative achievements. I am material circumstances. If it is only by these have been witnessing in recent years.
merely drawing out the structural (codified and deterministic) lights that one 2 For the most fleeting of examples of such a
generalisable conclusion, see note 12 below.
consequences for agency and responsibility can make sense of the idea of a community's
3 Partha Chatterji, Nationalist Thought and the
from the normativity inherent in the study moral psychology and power to act and
Colonial World: A Descriptive Discourse?,
of social and political action. Incidentally. resist, then 'dreams' seems altogether the Zed Books, 1986.
exactly what I have just said about false- wrong description to put upon the exercises 4 In his as yet unpublisped Amal Bhattacharji
consciousness holds of people who are of such a conception of thought and agency. Memorial Lecture, 1992, entitled 'Fascism
attributed self-deception. We hold cases of Dreams may have a powerful subversive, and National Culture: Reading Gramsci in the
both false-consciousness and self-deception and even clarifying, role in moral psychology Days of Hindutva', Aijaz Ahmad criticises
Chatterji for detaching Gramsci's concept of
responsible in a way that we might not hold but they cannot constitute moral psychology
a 'war of position' from his political project
cases of psychopathology, precisely because and agency, or else agency would come apart and using it as "an explanatory model for
there is no such confidence that there is -a from reflection. The greatest theorist of individualist national careers, such as those
capacity for comprehension on the dreams wasg enough .of a Hegelian to make of Bankim or Gandhi or Nehru". This may
psychopath's part of the norm-involving clear that he made no such inference against be right, but for my. purposes I am going to
explanation of himself. 'moderniy' 25 proceed with the more sympathetic assumption
that Chatterji had it fully in mind to see these
The tradition of social and historical It is precisely this notion of agency,
individual careers as representative of larger
thought that I am criticising, thus, simply compatible with (indeed requiring) low- ideological intervening moments in the
failed to see the explanation of behaviour, profile notions of 'determinism' and 'cede', development of nationalism in India. I do not
including false-consciousness, as the task of that informed my own critique of Nehru's particularly want to deny that there may be
making normative sense of persons and secularism. For, unlike those critiques of something very problematic about the notion
classes and communities. It saw it as more Nehru that criticise him for being too-situated of 'representative' here, but again I am going
to- proceed with more sympathy and not see
purely causal explanation (even when it cited in the grand paradigmatic concepts of the
it as an idle interest in individual, nationalist
their beliefs and their goals) and therefore enlightenment and of modernity, my careers.
often fell into a pretentiously scientistic and criticisms acknowledge the determining fact5 See Ahmad, In Theory, Verso, 1992, p 321,
deterministic rhetoric. As a result, this of slowly evolving modern institutions and n 8 and the main text to which it attaches.
tradition prompted a cumulative dismissive attitudes. As a result, my conclusions are 6 The articles by Nandy I have focused on are
reaction to itself, and made itself vulnerable less ambitious but also, I submit, less 'The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery
of Religious Tolerance' in Veena Das (ed),
to such dismissive descriptions as preposterously nostalgic and potentially more
Communities, Riots and Survivors, Oxford
'sociological determinism'. But this reaction
constructive. My (admittedly primitive and
University Press, Delhi; 'An Anti-Secularist
itself is party to the same underlying failure
sketchy) proposal for an alternative Manifesto', Seminar, 314, 1985; and
to question the false dichotomy of conception of secularism seeks, by a posited
'Secularism on the Run', Mantham, June 1991
determination and agency, as can be seen in process of reflection and internal negotia- There is some overlap with Nandy's position
the fact that it finds the need to adopt tion, to arrive at a dialectical outcome in T N Madan's 'Secularism in Its Place' in
Religion in India, Oxford University Press,
descriptive categories such as the inner and uncountenanced either by Nehru or by the
1991, and I shall refer to this article in
the outer, the material and the cultural or extravagantly extrapolative critiques of Nehru
subsequent notes, when it needs special
spiritual. Such a shared underlying failure that I have been criticising. mention.
on both sides makes for a familiar oscillation 7 It is not just the political mood of course.
between what seem irreconcilable positions Notes Nehru's economic vision of a compromised
on the nature of political economy and culture, socialism, described in that problematic and
[This paper is a fragment of a much longer deliberately evasive phrase 'socialist pattern
between which we must choose and line up.
project. Hence certain points are made rather of society', has been the subject of very
But I think a reorientation of our conception sketchily here and need much elucidation and different critiques from the left and the right,
of agency as a presupposition of the normati ve qualification on the basis of a closer look at with the latter overwhelmingly victorious in
assessment of action shows that this historical detail as well as more elaborate shaping government policy in the last two
oscillation is quite uncompulsory. philosophical argument. I am very grateful to years, and less explicitly in the last decade.
1760 Economic and Political Weekly' July 9, 1994
8 But see also the article by T N Madan cited 16 In his book, op cit, and various important issue). I find the contours of their position
earlier for considerable convergence with papers since his book, Aijaz Ahmad, among a little too unshaded to claim that association.
Nandy on some of the points that will emerge other things. has made a powerful case for 23 See Partha Chatterji's dismissal of some
below. this claim, and we would all do very well to accounts of nationalism along these lines,
9 The word 'wrongs' is carefully chosen here study it in this time of frantic political and from which I quote in the main text below.
to track the didactic toneof Nandy's polemic. intellectual abandonment of the left. In trying to salvage a modified version of
10 This charge ofstatist imposition against Nehru 17 It is a fact, familiar to many third world 'sociological determinism' (which in its
is made very explicitly also by T N Madan countries and many other parts of the world, unmodified version is rightly dismissed), I am
in the article cited earlier. that gender-related affirmative action lags not at' all defending those accounts of
11 I do not intend this remark to be in the spirit behind the affirmative action tied to racial, nationalism. I think the accounts of nationalism
of recent works written in defence of Jinnah communal, caste and tribal minorities. I have he criticises are deeply flawed and some of
against Congress cancature, useful as that only singled out the Mandal commission them should be dismissed, and not merely for
project might be. See next note for the reason because as a locus for affirmative action it their sociological determinism. My point, as
why. has had a great deal of public attention and I argue in the text, is rather that, quite apart
12 One of the things that the longer project, of effect in the last few years and is therefore from those accounts of nationalism, if one
which this paper is\apart, does is look much a good starting-point of focus for the struggle takes too far the rejection of anything that
harderand longerat th'is argument, particularly against brahminism to fasten and build on. approximates the theoretical phenomenon that
on the claims of the Congress that its Muslim But in doing so I do not at all mean to in its crude formulations might be called
leaders were representatives of the Muslim downplay the need to bring to centre-stage sociological determinism, we would not be
community in a sense that amounted to the a similar political effort on the gender-related able to develop an account of political agency
community having negotiating status. This is affirmative action front. For, it is hardly or of the moral psychology of communities.
a very controversial and troublesome claim deniable that a centuries-old patriarchal Moreover, it is worth adding that this point
and needs a careful historical look at the role mentality as intrinsic tobrahminical Hinduism does eventually have theoretical consequences
of Azad and others in Congress politics. It (and orthodox Islam) as is its caste complexion. for Chatterji's own subject (nationalism) that
is one of the fundamental inadequacies of (the 18 This is not meant to suggest a substitution Chatterji does notconsider. I think it is arguable
otherwise very useful) recent defences of of one strict primacy with another. .The period that if there is any insight in the idea of nation
Jinnah against Congress caricature that they following Louis Dumont's classic work which as 'imagined community', then only some
do not look at this issue thoroughly enough, fetishised the notion of caste in the study of carefully nuanced and constrained version of
nor demonstrate why the position of Congress Indian politics and society is testimony to what would (now possibly unfairly) be called
Muslim leaders on the shape and direction how such a substitution can run aground. My sociological determinism can be the basis of
of the nationalist movement was not superior point in stressing the report is at least partly our assessments of those imagined
to his. To demonstrate it would precisely the pragmatic one of seizing the momentum communities that are plausible and well-
require an assessment of this argument relying that was created by V P Singh's decision, and grounded in given historical periods and
on this problematic idea of 'implicit partly one of broadening the left's theoretical contexts, and those that are not. Just simply
negotiation' within the 'composite' Congress stance and represented interests. The work contrast Kashmiri nationalism with Baluchi
party. which will integrate the different interests and nationalism (or some other contrast, if this
13 This point is generalisable.to a number of alliances I mentioned into a single analysis, does not seem appropriate), and see if the
anti-colonial national 'movements and post- giving pri macy wherever theory and histofical imagined communities of the one that seems
colonial parties in other parts of the world context demand it, is yet to be written, and more well-grounded can be ratified as being
with, mu'lti-communal and multi-tribal probably never will. But it is very doubtful better-grounded without assuming something
societies, as the African National Congress that any effort at such an analysis will be like sociological determinism. Stalin's famous
is discoVrering. altogether discontinuous with what the left characterisation of a well-grounded
14 There is scope for misunderstanduihg here. I has always stood for, which is why it is nationalism, which still strikes me as more
have no general scepticism against the inevitable that the political parties of the left or less convincing, clearly presupposes
qualifier 'tacit' or 'implicit' attaching to somewill still be the formal locus for political features of developing material formations
theoretical and explanatory notion. I have no action along the lines that are needed. that shape stabilisations of political
'doubt that in history and social theory, as 19 A rather. blatant example of this is the homogeneity and shared interests (over and
elsewhere, such qualifiers have an important discussion of Nehru in T N Madan's article above such things as cultural and linguistic
role to play in our understanding of various cited earlier. Madan, in fact, buys into yet commonalities) in ways that amount to a
theoretical phenomena. To take one example anotherconfusion that Nehru was also perhaps sociological determinism. It would be the
somewhat farafield from ourpresent concerns, guilty of (p 405), which is to throw into the crudest and most reprehensible form of
Chomsky's notion of 'tacit syntactic 'kitchen sink of justifications of secularism intellectual charlatanism not to take this
knowledge' has a very powerful explanatory not just the argument from the scientific characterisation seriously in putting such
role in generative grammar. But that role is outlook butthe argument of the left programme constraints on the idea of imagined
so secure only because the idea of tazit I mentioned earlier, which asks us to communities, just because of one's general
syntactic knowledge, as Chomsky concentrate onquestions ofeconomic interests distaste for Stalin's other political and
demonstrates, explains so much of the and equality. That too becomes part of a intellectual wrongs. The piety of this last
observable linguistic performance of single package of inseparable and essentially sentence should not have needed saying, but
individual speakers. That sort of demonstration linked arguments. I say it all the same because the last time I
is precisely what is not forthcoming for20the There is also of course the larger question as gave a talk on the subject, there was a gasp
idea of 'tacit' negotiation the argument to whether such codification is a strictly post- from the audience when I approvingly
I ar criticising invoke', enlightenment ideal and whether the concept mentioned Stalin's name in the
15 My us. of the term 'comrn. iist' here is also of 'power' did undergo the- sort of radical characterisation of nationalism.
risky in roughly the sense that I warned against transformation that Foucault describes. 24 The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and
in note 1; and I 'urge the reader to bear with 21 Representations, 37, Winter 1992. Post-Colonial Histories, Princeton University
me in the use of a term, which if I was patient 22 This transition is also avowed explicitly (not Press, 1993.
and long-winded enough, I would replace exactly in the terms that I have formulated 25 In saying this I am not stressing Freud's
with more elaborate descriptive categories. it, but in roughly similar terms) by Gyan rather implausible scientistic and biologistic
There is anotherWcaveat. The fact is that today Prakash in his article 'Can the Subaltern Ride? aspects. Those aspects of his thought and
more than previously, to a large extent, Muslim A Reply to O'Hanlon and Washbrook', rhetoric are quite irrelevant to the issue we
communalism' is precisely a comm'unalism Comparative Studies in Society and History,are discussing. The most anti-scientistic
because itis adefensive posture in athreatening Vol 34, No 1, January 1992. It should not interpretation of Freud makes no such
scene, both nationally and in many locali,ties. be inferred from my scepticism about the inference. I have written in some more detail
Clearly therefore it cannot be simply equated transition that I would associate myself about how to position Freud in the large
with Hindu nationalism in all contexts. But entirely with the position of O'Hanlon and questions of self-knowledge and moral
in the general enough'context of my somewhat Washbrook that Gyan Prakash is responding psychology in the chapter entitled 'Self-
theoretical discussion of secularism, I plead to (O 'Hanlon and Washbrook, ' After Knowledge and Resentment' in my book
that I be allowed this undifferentiated use of Orientalism: Culture, Criticism and Politics Self-Knowledge and lntentionality, Harvard-
the term. in the Third World', same journal, same University Press, forthcoming.

Akeel Bilgrami - Two Concepts of Secularism

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Akeel Bilgrami - Two Concepts of Secularism

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Two Concepts of Secularism: Reason, Modernity and Archimedean Ideal

Author(s): Akeel Bilgrami

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