Tag Archives: nation-state

An Old W(h)ine In A New Bottle

04 Thu Dec 2014

Posted by in India, Opinion and Response, South Asia

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There has always seemed to be some resentment among the non-Anglicised nationalists of India at the usage of Western terminology to describe India and her history. Western vocabulary is particular to the European historical experience, the argument ran, and the untranslatability of many core concepts of Indian culture means that India deserves her own frame of reference and cannot merely be a European Other. One can sympathise with this argument, but unfortunately, little has been done – at least in English – to further substantiate it with data and reasoning.

One term that has become louder as the political fortunes of the allegedly Right Bharatiya Janata Party have swelled is “civilisational state.” There does not appear to be much theoretical analysis of what this term means except that it is advanced as an alternative to the Western idea of the nation-state. The recent political upheavals around the globe are held as examples of the failure of the nation-state and – as in the case of the wannabe Caliphate – a call for civilisational ties over narrower, national ones. Furthermore, it is posited that the nation-state paradigm, at least as imagined by Benedict Anderson, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, or Anthony Smith, does not quite hold with India. Finally, the post-modernist trope of the novelty of the nation-state is dragged out – a concept so new and invented can surely not be suited to capture an old civilisation like India?

Unfortunately, many theories emanating from the Right can do with a little subjection to the fires of scholarly debate, particularly from different perspectives. The notion of a civilisational state, for example, is not only terribly flawed but it is also not original. The strength of the idea lies in its ambiguity more than in its merit and like the other intangible it is supposed to replace – nation – its supporters rally behind it for they can imbue the label with whatever they want it to mean.

First, the definitional problems of “civilisational state” – when Indian nationalists on the Right of the political spectrum use that term, it is a safe assumption that they imply a state based on Indic culture, or more accurately, dharma. Contrary to popular belief, dharma is not religion; it is a wider set of social practices and customs that have governed life in South and Southeast Asia. While dharma may not satisfy a legalistic standard of definition, that is so by design. However, a state is a legalistic entity – how is one to marry an amorphous ‘civilisation’ with a legalistic ‘state’? More crucially, does this mean that India should have territorial ambitions over other states in South and Southeast Asia who are also a part of the same dharmic culture? Is an open-border union like the European Union envisaged by this civilisational Indian state? And if not, what is the basis of the Indian state that is merely one stump of this common dharmic culture?

Second, the idea is certainly not new or unique to India. Civilisational states have had very little success historically. The Greeks, for example, who saw themselves as a civilisation and everyone else as barbarians, were a fragmented and fractious lot that spent more time warring against each other than against common enemies; despite Islam’s protestations about an ummah, the fact is that they have never been a united civilisational state. Just like the Greeks, Muslims fought against each other as often as they fought infidel “outsiders.” Christianity also tried its hand at a united civilisational state and even fought an ill-conceived war in the Middle East in the name of their faith. However, it too left little to show for all the effort. More recently, the Ottoman sultans tried to bind his subjects to a common non-Turkic identity but that was also not meant to be.

The one possible exception to this rapidly familiar trend of failed civilisational states is the Roman Empire. However, this too is an imperfect example and there are too many difference between India and Rome to get into here. Rome certainly followed the Greek example of self-barbarian recognition, but what united Romans more than a single, even heterogenous, culture was law and the force of arms. The civic culture of Rome was very different from India’s dharmic past though both do qualify as civilisational in a sense.

Third, what does civilisational state actually mean for quotidian life? What are its policies, what are its values, what are its citizens – or is it subjects – meant to do to follow its guidance? Unless this is clear, there is little value in discussing alternatives to the West or to the nation-state; one cannot merely be against something but has to be for something too. It is in the concretisation of this idea of civilisational state, one suspects, that the difficulties will arise. For example, Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the foremost scholars of Aristotelian politics and virtue ethics, which he advocates as a healthier mode of being than the modern liberal state. However, the most intractable problem for MacIntyre is that modern society does not reflect ancient Athens. We do not live in city states where the voting population is not more than 100,000 men. Scalability becomes a problem for even what is in many ways an intriguing suggestion. Similarly, even if the political order of ancient India was an exquisite balance of duties, responsibilities, and rights, even if law & order was rarely threatened, that system worked in a different time and may not apply to India today.

Fourth, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations seems to have had its misprint in the minds of civilisational state theorists. Yet what they hold as examples of civilisational reordering is wishful thinking in the minds of a minuscule minority. The Caliphate, for example, has its enemies among Muslims as well as among infidels; furthermore, many of the groups who have sided with the terrorists have done so for selfish material reasons rather than any spiritual or historical-civilisational awakening. The case of Turkey being refused membership in the European Union is similarly misunderstood – though there is no doubt that some in Europe see a religious chasm separating them from Ankara, many raise legitimate concerns about the vast difference between Turkey and Western Europe in terms of social, political, and economic freedoms. Interestingly, despite the accusation that religion factors into decision-making in the EU or in the lives of Europeans, church attendance has been seeing a steady decline over the past fifty years. And not to point out the obvious, but despite the formation of a customs and currency union, European states are still having trouble letting go of their individual national identities. Civilisational statehood, it seems, is a potent political and social force only in the minds of its advocates.

Church attendance Church attendance - Catholics

If the advocates of civilisational statism intend to argue for the establishment of India as a Hindu country, they should do so without subterfuge or masking their motives in obfuscation. After all, there is nothing sacrosanct about the Indian state as it is now and it is indeed true that Western theories of nationalism based on language, religion, and ethnicity fail to adequately describe India. Perhaps those ideas of the nation are inadequate because India is a meta-nation. No matter, these are ideas to be discussed openly and fiercely. But for now, “civilisational state” does not seem to hold water.

This post appeared on FirstPost on December 08, 2014.

Thinking about Nationalism

02 Mon Apr 2012

Posted by in Theory & Philosophy

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Nations, like G-d, have proven to be quite elusive: intellectuals and scholars have proclaimed both to be dead, both have found ingenious ways of resurfacing in mainstream society, and yet nobody can seem to come to an agreement as to what either one exactly is. By 1900, nations-states, amorphous as they were, had become the standard unit of play in international politics, representing the aims and aspirations of a group of people that had, as Benedict Anderson aptly put it, imagined themselves into convenient groups. However, other criteria for separating groups had also been floated, primarily class and religion. These did not, however, inspire the bonds that would control territory or secure the political interests of a group. The death of the nation-state was proclaimed, perhaps in the backdrop of the two World Wars and the Holocaust, optimistically hoping that men would finally beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. The decolonisation that occurred in the aftermath of the Second World War, however, was fuelled by fierce nationalist sentiment. If anything, the wars only underscored the necessity for each imagined community to control its own destiny. The world distracted by the Cold War, this went unnoticed with the proclamation of universal ideals like democracy and socialism. For Anderson, it was only in 1979 with the Chinese invasion of Vietnam that burning yet under-emphasised nationalism was revealed. The fall of the Soviet Union also rekindled the embers of nationalism within the Soviet republics as well as in Eastern Europe. Although the recent rise of fundamentalism has been under the guise of religion, there exist, in fact, fractures within the movement along national and sectarian lines. Thus, nation-states seem more prevalent than scholars have posited or hoped for.

Indeed, while the meaning of nation has been hotly contested in academic debates on the nature of nationalism, it seems possible to discern three distinct trends.  The first is characterized not by a consensus on what constitutes the nation but by the agreement that such a thing exists extra-referentially and whose antecedents can be located in past social and cultural groupings. In contrast, scholars of the second trend, while also affirming the subjecthood of the nation, define it as a distinctively modern development that could only have emerged as a corollary of industrialization and the emergence of large-scale capitalism. Finally, adherents of the third trend, who are in the minority, argue that the nation is not a subject or object but a set of relationships and thus constitutes a dynamic network cluster in which power is created and through which it is channelled.  The nation, in this view, does not possess an actual moment-to-moment existence but must be reconstituted at the instant of each power transaction.  Thus it is a phenomenological object whose existence is contingent on the viewpoints and relationships of those who construct its boundaries.

A well-known scholar of European nationalism, Miroslav Hroch, defines nation as a large social group integrated by a combination of several kinds of objective relationships and their subjective reflection in collective consciousness. These relationships include a memory of some common past, treated as a ‘destiny’ of the group, a density of linguistic or cultural ties enabling a higher degree of social communication within the group than beyond it, and a conception of the equality of all members of the group organized as a civil society. Although the national unit is here characterized by social and political relationships, it is still a subject that exists a priori and must be endowed with the characteristics of nationhood.  In fact, Hroch’s dynamic account of nation-development presupposes the nation as the subject of a linear, teleological model of Enlightenment History and implies the inevitability of its development in the modern era.  In a similar way, Anthony Smith also affirms the existence of the nation as an subject, situating its origins in the existence of ethnic communities (ethnies) that share the following attributes: 1. a collective proper name, 2. a myth of common ancestry, 3. shared historical memories, 4. one or more differentiating elements of common culture, 5. an association with a specific homeland, and 6. a sense of solidarity for significant portions of the population. Clearly both Hroch and Smith locate the materials for the building of a nation in its mythic past and, while not denying the createdness of the nation, they affirm the nation’s continuity and its material existence.  For Smith and Hroch, then, the nation seems to represent continuity rather than rupture with the past. This school obviously sees a steady presence of nations even through the twentieth century since the criteria by which they evaluate nationhood was hardly ever eroded despite occasional ideological movements.

In contrast, scholars of the second group, such as Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, John Breuilly and Eric Hobsbawm, characterize the nation as an artifact of modernity, to which it is inextricably linked. Gellner defines in Nations and Nationalism a nation as a body of individuals that have been initiated into a common high culture by the processes of industrialization and the institutions of modernity. This primarily cultural definition emphasizes the crucial role of the transition from agrarian to industrial society as the key constitutive event in the life of the nation since it is only then that culture ceases to be the device that defines specific social positions and becomes, instead, the boundary demarcation of large and internally mobile social unity, within which individuals have no fixed position and are rotated in the light of the requirements of production. Anderson echoes Gellner’s description of the nation, characterizing it, famously, as a limited, sovereign imagined community that came into being with the advent of print capitalism, the death of traditional religions and their idioms, and the shared colonial experience that provided a cement of sorts for new national groups as well as the colonizer nations themselves.

Another strand of scholars in this group emphasize the political rather than the cultural characteristics of the nation.  For example, Breuilly argues that the nation is a distinct, politically autonomous group the identity of whose adherents is primarily defined through their political allegiance to the nation.  He goes on to argue that a nation and its attendant nationalisms should primarily be viewed as a matter of performance through politics, particularly through the functions of coordination, mobilization and legitimacy.  Similarly, Hobsbawm describes the nation and nationalism as a political program that holds that groups defined as ‘nations’ have the right to, and therefore ought to, form territorial states of the kind that have become standard since the French Revolution. In addition to their insistence on the modern nature of the national phenomenon, what all of these scholars share is their unconscious confirmation of the nation’s essential Being in the Heideggerian sense, that is, as something that is bounded, however imperfectly, and that constitutes an internally consistent subject of study despite its immense complexity. This line of thought opens up the possibility for the death of the nation—the erosion of political authority would necessarily imply for these scholars an erosion of nationhood. Thus, the growth of NGOs and supranational entities is at the expense of national cohesiveness; political sovereignty is a zero-sum game.

Conversely, the scholars in the third group describe the nation in terms of its effects rather than its essences or antecedents.  In his seminal work, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, Subaltern Studies historian Partha Chatterjee characterizes the modern capitalist nation-state as a procession of Gramscian “moments” each defined by a different type of power relation.  The moment of departure lies in the encounter of a nationalist consciousness with the framework of knowledge created by post-Enlightenment rationalist thought and (re)produces within the national bourgeoisie the dichotomy between the East and West.  The next stage, the moment of manoeuvre, requires the mobilization of popular elements in the cause of an anti-colonial struggle and, at the same time, a distancing of those elements from the structure of the state.  Finally, in the moment of arrival, the nationalist discourse attempts and generally succeeds in glossing over all earlier contradictions, divergences and differences and incorporating within the body of a unified discourse every aspect and stage in the history of its formation.  In a later work, Chatterjee further elaborates on the notion of the nation as a process of power-producing contradictions, in which the Indian nation-state came into being by dividing the world of social institutions and practices into two domains—the material and the spiritual.  The material domain is the “outside,” the world of public life in which the colonized are forced to interact with the colonizers who shape the public discourse to conform to their vision(s) of reality.  However, in the privacy of the spiritual domain, the nationalist discourse had the breathing space to begin to develop its own narrative, since it is in the private space that nationalism launches its most powerful, creative, and historically significant project: to fashion a “modern” national culture that is nevertheless not Western. After independence, the colonial nationalist contradiction between public and private was reproduced in the newly independent state and continued, in a fundamental way, to define the very being of the nation as a set of cultural, legal, political and social processes.

In an even stronger critique of the nation as a subject, Prasenjit Duara in his work, Rescuing History From the Nation, argues that it is the creation of a linear history based on Enlightenment ideas of progress that secures for the contested and contingent nation the false unity of a self-same national subject evolving through time.  Rather than a false unity, Duara proposes that national identity be reconceptualized as an often-conflicting “fluid network of representations” through which the national self is constructed.  In this schema, nationalism is rarely the nationalism of the nation, but rather marks the site where different representations of the nation contest and negotiate with each other. Finally, in Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai posits a new set of identity relationships that transcend the national.  He suggests that thinking about modern identity requires a profound reformulation of the ways in which we construct the idea of the self. He proposes the idea of identity landscapes or “–scapes” as a framework for exploring the identity disjunctures that result from modern phenomena, such as mass migration, global capitalism, the juxtaposition of global and local perspectives, and the worldwide dissemination of information on an unprecedented scale.  These landscapes are thus posited as the building blocks of multiple worlds that are constituted by the historically situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around the globe. In this paradigm the nation is an imagined set of relations that transcends physical boundaries and is reformulated in each instance according to the context of a given situation.  It is an association, an exchange of will and affect, and a node of power dynamics rather than a thing or a subject—this simple observation might seem obvious, but it is crucial to developing an understanding of where the nation comes from and how it structures and functions in both society and the individual.

Along the lines of Appadurai’s “–scapes,” one of the central works that have tried to re-imagine the international order is Michael Hardt’s and Antonio Negri’s Empire. The authors do well to distinguish between nation-states and political sovereignty: in the era of globalisation, although nation-states have weakened, political sovereignty has not. Hardt and Negri argue that because the primary factors of production and exchange—money, technology, people and goods—move with increasing ease across national boundaries, the nation-state has less power to regulate these flows and impose its authority over the economy. Despite this transformation, political controls, state functions, and regulatory mechanisms continue to rule the realm of economic and social production and exchange. The nation-state is weakened, according to Hardt and Negri, not because of ideology as was posited earlier, but because of the appearance of multiple supranational power structures such as the World Trade Organisation, United Nations, and most poignantly, the European Union.

Although these authors put their faith in a delocalised global order that at once preserves local difference and maximises global economic potential, their claims are more based on assessments and projections of trends into the future rather than historical evidence. Their claims that the nation-state has been weakened because of emergent supranationality and global economic interdependence, because rulers no longer can oppress their subjects with impunity as they used to because of growing internationalism, fails on multiple accounts. First, historical evidence is scant in supporting their claims—similar arguments were made before the outbreak of World War I, and the economic interdependence and the presence of international treaties and bodies did nothing to lessen the carnage of 1914 – 1918. Second, Hardt and Negri assume that international bodies can and will act against rogue nation-states. The League of Nations and its orphan child, the United Nations, is a sad reminder of the limitations of internationalism. Nation-states do remain the sole arbiters of their subjects’ collective destiny in most cases. Furthermore, in a nuclear world, the atomic bomb gives a nation-state sufficient power to withstand international pressure.North Koreais an excellent example of this. In all this flouting of international order, the primary actor has remained the nation-state. For better or for worse, the nation-state system has been the most enduring model for international security. Third, fourth-world nationalisms, i.e., the unrealised nationalism of an imagined group, have yet to move the international community. The plight of the Jewish people until 1948, or that of the Kurds today, despite brutal massacres, does not gain the required opprobrium from the international community. However, the successful establishment of a nation-state gives groups a voice in the international system; hence Ho Chi Minh’s trip to Versailles in 1919.

It is not our purpose to discuss the antiquity of nations but their persistence. As to the former, few stellar works have been recently written, notably by David Goodblatt and Adrian Hastings. Herman Lebovics has in his latest two works, True France and Bringing the Empire Back Home, exposed in the French case the resilience and weakness of the French national project over multiple changes in the world order. Although he seems to imply it, he never explicitly states the obvious: the amorphous nature of the nation is the source of its strength. The different aspects of France that are exposed in the dialogue between Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen and Jane Kramer’s Europeans highlight this further. While Weber strives to bring out the late modernisation of the French interior, its induction into “Frenchness,” Kramer exposes the innumerable fissures that run through Europe’s communities and yet keep European nations together. Although Kramer does not intend to argue for the resilience of nations, that is in fact exactly what she does, particularly in her masterful essay of the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his xenophobes. In having the ability to adapt to circumstances—imperialism, decolonisation, globalisation—nationalism revitalises itself every generation. The mistake of scholars trying to forecast its demise is that the image of the nation-state is too static in their minds. In all likelihood, the nation-state will continue despite—because of—its definition being in a state of constant flux, to be the fundamental unit of political sovereignty in the 21st century.

The Idli Vendor

21 Tue Apr 2009

Posted by in Opinion and Response

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Interlocutors:

Subramanian Venkatraman
Gaius Aemilius Priscus

Setting: Brihadeeshwara Temple courtyard, Thanjavur

Subramanian: Ho there, Gaius! *beams* Fancy seeing you here today of all days. Is it not the two thousandth-something anniversary of your beloved city today?

Brihadeeshwara Temple, Thanjavur

Brihadeeshwara Temple, Thanjavur

Gaius Aemilius Priscus: Salve, Subbu! *smiles* Yes, it is the 2, 762nd anniversary of the Città Eterna…and you know us Romans, we need the benign intercession of any and all willing gods to save our city. I mean, look at us…this is the 65th government since the end of the War, the fourth prime minister in three years, who is also the third non-elected one in succession! Jupiter has clearly washed his hands off us, maybe Siva can help *laughs*

Subramanian: Yes, well…we are not ones to speak on executive effectiveness, as you can see around you.

Gaius: This one man – one vote, I say. Cannot work in a country with such great diversity of material conditions.

Subramanian: Are you talking about India or Rome?

Gaius: India, but the principle holds true anywhere.

Subramanian: Wait…let me get this straight – you don’t believe in universal adult suffrage?! Thambi, this is the 21st century!

Gaius: Fat lot of good your century has done you. You have vote banks, minoritarian pressures, caste politics…what is it they say here, you don’t cast your vote but you vote your caste? This is what happens when you give plebeians the vote. Most have no clue what they are voting for; they only know their own desires and not the cost at which even their needs might be met.

Subramanian: Oh, come on! You think the educated and refined do not have prejudices? Don’t be silly, of course they do! What’s more, they can probably disguise their biases with the clever use of some social theorist of the day or the other.

Gaius: Subbu, education is just one possible criterion. It’s like a cut-off point that we have in exams for passing a student. One could argue it’s arbitrary, but where would we be without some standard of objective discrimination? It is useful even if not perfect…think of it as a heuristic device. Besides, there’s a better argument to be made for education as a criterion. An educated person is more likely to have met people of diverse backgrounds at his school and workplace and is therefore more likely to be aware of alternative views on an issue even if he doesn’t agree with them. Prejudice aside, I am talking about voting.

Subramanian: So am I. Let us imagine that you had a some sort of educational criterion for voting. I assume you’d want this for standing for office too. What’s to stop an educated class from appropriating the state machinery to serve their interests?

Gaius: First of all, you speak like these two groups do not belong to the same society. One cannot really survive without the other – the elite cannot survive without manual labour, and if the elite have an environment in which they can function well, who will be the part-beneficiaries of those extra schools, factories, and offices? It’s the mobility that counts more than the mere existence of strata. This is a symbiotic relationship Subbu, don’t forget that. You want good workers, you want loyal workers…that means you have to take care of them too.

Subramanian: I’m sure that is what all those cotton mill workers were thinking in late 18th and 19th century England *smiles*

Gaius: We have laws now to prevent such exploitation, macha! Besides, those mill workers might have wanted to vote and represent their interests but many of their reforms were introduced by others in the elite. The Reform Acts in England were hardly introduced by plebeians in the House! In fact, the lower classes have steadily increased their rights over time despite not having political representation for most of human existence. I may be biased here with my own, but I daresay Uncle Julius did a lot more for slaves in the Empire than Spartacus ever achieved.

Subramanian: No, I am not getting you started now on the glories of Rome, Gaius! But the laws guarding against exploitation – they can easily be modified…especially if these people have no political weight.

Gaius: Yes, and there are non-political reasons to maintain a dignified amount of labour protections. There is a basic sense of human dignity which I don’t expect people of this era to understand, but there are economic reasons too. Speaking of which, walk with me, I thought I saw a lady selling idli near the entrance.

[Gaius and Subramanian get up and start ambling towards the idli vendor]

Subramanian: *grumbles* What is it with your love affair with idli?! One would think you’re the Dravidian!

Gaius: And you are a fake Dravidian for not liking idli…you prefer tea over kaapi too, infidel!

Subramanian: Anyway, voting is not merely about economics. Since we are talking about India, you have to see the context in which universal adult franchise was made a constitutional right. There were social components to it too.

Gaius: Such as?

Subramanian: Well, you mentioned caste earlier. Despite what many urbanites think, caste still plays a major role in India. Haven’t you noticed how in some houses the servants do not sit at the table but on the floor when eating? Or how some houses keep a separate set of utensils for giving food to the servants?

Gaius: But that could also include a less fortunate brahmin…we’re not exactly the moneyed caste, you know!

Subramanian: 1947, da! Yes, there may have been poor brahmins but the majority of the labourers, untouchables, or downtrodden were lower caste people. With little access to opportunity, they were the overwhelming majority of the underprivileged. Why and how this situation came to pass is a topic for another day but for the purposes of universal adult suffrage, the discrimination against these people would not have gone away if they had not been given the vote.

Gaius: [To vendor: Naalu iddliyum chutniyum konduva pattima] Subbu, that is nonsense! You think suffrage can eradicate discrimination?! Do you know how many rich and educated black people sometimes find it difficult to call a taxi in the United States? I agree money ameliorates things, but I think you are putting too much faith in suffrage. Besides, I fundamentally disagree with the implicit argument you are making that only a dalit can speak for dalit interests.

Subramanian: No, but think about it: if India approached democracy the way you seem to be suggesting, the only people who would have got the right to vote would be the educated and rich elite. I seriously doubt that there would have been any social justice agenda in the legislature.

Gaius: While I do enjoy your misanthropy Subbu, I would like to remind you that the Abolitionists were not all black men! Even here, in India, Ambedkar’s sterling role in guiding Dalit politics notwithstanding, you’ll have to agree that there was an outpouring of remorse among the Hindu upper caste elite across the political spectrum. From Namboodiripad to Savarkar. One could make a credible argument that it was the educated upper caste elite which made your Indian version of affirmative action possible.

Subramanian: No, they were not all black men, but how long did it take them to abolish slavery? How much longer to achieve the vote? And how much after that to attain even some semblance of equality?

Gaius: But two points, ma. One, reform movements do start from within; an outside impetus is not always required. As long as we are open to new ideas, we will be fine. Since we are standing in the shadow of the Brihadeeshwara Temple, consider the several reform movements within Hinduism itself. Raja Rammohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Madhavacharya…many have been entirely internal without external influence. As painful as some forms of discrimination may be, we have to remember that reform takes time and works best slowly. Society is, by default, a conservative animal…it cannot handle rapid change well. Just look at the rapid accumulation of wealth in your country…class, culture, or whatever you call it, comes after three generations of good humanistic education.

Also, look at many of the educated, elite brahmins you speak disparagingly of – Savarkar, Namboodiripad…they were all against caste discrimination. I doubt they were exactly the kind to be swayed by the Nehruvian liberal model of social justice!

Two, what do you have to show for extending the vote to all for over six decades? As you said, there is still caste discrimination so that problem has not gone anywhere. In addition, the inability of the majority of the electorate to understand larger issues has lowered the level of public discourse to topi, puppy, and the colour of the kurta! On the one hand you bemoan the lack of discussion on policy yet on the other, you dilute the intellect of the electorate?

Subramanian: It could have been – would have been – a lot worse.

Gaius: But don’t you now have discrimination within the lower castes now? If I remember correctly, the creamy layer of the lower castes are oppressing the even lower layers! How is that helping your case?

These quotas, this suffrage…they are like applying a Band-Aid to a bullet wound. Real democracy must come from within; the constitution is a document reflecting values already inherent in the people. The violence done to tradition by India’s Anglicised elite is incalculable. Not only was India not ready for democracy but the rupture with its own evolution was stupendously obtuse.

Subramanian: *frowns* People are stupid…about the intra-caste discrimination, I mean. But this Indic past…I am not sure Indians can always drag something out of their history to solve today’s problems.

Gaius: [To vendor: Nandri, iddali romba pramadam] *both walk back to their shaded corner in the temple courtyard*  It’s not about history, it’s about this blasted modernity that has ruined much. For example, look at the state – the Anglo-Saxons made it into a contractual relationship, like with an outsider, whereas the Greco-Roman ideal has always been a culturally informed state. Taoism was closely tied to state functions in China, for example, which, obviously, was slowly replaced by Buddhism from the Qing dynasty on. Similarly, Hinduism sees the state and the people as parts of the same organism. After all, what is the state if not an embodiment of the people? The moment you see it that way, this entire notion of rights changes.

Subramanian: Sure, in monarchies in Europe, China, and India…maybe elsewhere too. I don’t think those structures can hold in a democracy like ours.

Gaius: Well, don’t forget that Rome was a republic for almost five centuries before it became an empire. We had a constitutionally defined position as dictator and it worked quite well…until entropy kicked in!

Subramanian: *laughs* The eternal struggle between the classes, yes…Marx, you old plagiarer!

Gaius: How did we decide on who gets to vote back in the day? We allowed those with a stake in society – landowners, businessmen, and so on. Now these people were full citizens and they had a duty to fight in the army if necessary. In fact, service was part of the citizen’s deal – he paid taxes, fought in the army if necessary, served in civilian posts, and he got to have a say in how the society was run. That was what the cursus honorum was all about.

The lower classes had their tribunes and the upper classes their senators. Obviously, it was never so smooth, but it never is. Systems are approximate, you must realise that. Besides, the system would not work today in many of its aspects – imagine 600 million people joining military service in India, or imagine the millions willing to renounce citizenship to avoid paying taxes! The tiered system has some benefits, nonetheless.

Subramanian: So citizenship was conferred upon participation, upon contribution? So basically if I were a Numidian in the 4th century BCE, I could move to Rome, start a business, pay taxes, and vote?

Gaius: Of course not, don’t be silly! You have to be conferred citizenship, it was an honour, not a right. With this honour came new privileges and heavier burdens. These honours were not given to anyone – depending upon when during our glorious rule, only Romans were citizens, then Latins, and then Italians. It was right at the fevered end that citizenship was extended to everyone in the Empire.

Citizenship reflected the relationship between the individual and his society. Was he willing to contribute to making it a better place? Bleed for it? Sweat for it? And even then, there were always ties of blood. What role would you give your neighbour, for example, in advising you about your marital discord? He may be a friend, but he is an outsider and all decisions are yours and your wife’s.

Subramanian: But surely there is a case to be made  that anyone who resided in Rome and contributed to its well-being via investments, taxation, and law-abiding conduct was an asset to the Empire? In the modern context, what if an NRI wanted to vote?

Gaius: No, there is no case. Suffrage is not bought, it is not an open club; it is a right bestowed upon some – well, nowadays all – that are of the community. Modern India’s experimentation with multicultural citizenship has weakened this sense of identity. Nothing wrong in multiculturalism but giving minorities special privileges was not the Roman way…and no one can deny that Rome was vibrantly multicultural. But you need an anchor.

As for NRIs, they are citizens and have a vote as I understand it. At least now they do…and as much as it would please me to have absentee ballots from abroad, that is not exactly a major issue as some pretend. When you pay your phone bill or taxes, you go to the government don’t you? Similarly, if you want to vote, come to your constituency! Absentee ballots are more of a requirement for people with highly transferable jobs like the military, honestly.

Subramanian: And I am beginning to think that PIOs have no voting privileges under your system…

Gaius: It’s not my system, it’s the law! Why should foreigners vote? These people left India – and they may have had very good reasons – and acquired a foreign citizenship. What makes them think they have any rights remaining in India? Even if they come back, until they do not re-acquire Indian citizenship, I see no reason to allow them voting privileges. They left for personal profit and they’re back for personal profit…without renouncing their foreign citizenship. I suppose it could be argued that they have an option not to live with the consequences of the vote unlike other Indians and so it is not fair to allow them to vote. But I personally favour the civilisational argument.

From the perspective of a contractual state, a case may be made for them to vote if certain criteria are met but from the perspective of a civilisational state, they have left the fold. Europe has transformed from civilisational states to contractual states. Why and when takes us far afield from our topic today but the question is, for you Indians, what kind of state do you want?

Subramanian: And are we not already living in a contractual state?

Gaius: Here, I disagree and go against the common perception. There is this lovely book I was reading the other day by a chap called Chris Bayly in which he argued that we see the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution as a overpowering, unitary discourse. Which, of course, it was not. There is always a great deal of plurality in the ‘now-ness’ that is erased by meta-narratives, Subbu. Bayly says that because of this, we are surprised by the resurgence of religion in politics at the end of the Cold War when in fact it had always been there and we had not noticed.

To get to the point, no…I do not see India as a state but a nation-state. While the state may be the  contractual skeleton, the nation lends the sinews. Why should you care about India and not any other place that has similar or better contractual terms? To reduce the world to this utilitarian abstraction is nonsensical though many individualists do make this leap. But psychology shows us that we function best as communities, not individuals.

Okay, all this talking has made me thirsty…come, let’s get some kaapi from that idli vendor *stands up, stretches, and starts walking towards the temple gate again*

Subramanian: Amma, these bleddy firangs and their kaapi fetish! Well, you are right that we are straying way off course on this debate about state, contracts, and citizenship though I do see the connect with voting rights…or privileges as you may understand them. But let us get back to the narrower topic of Indians voting, particularly the disadvantaged.

You must admit Gaius, that in India, laws and reform movements have their limits. Laws can barely be implemented in cities, let alone penetrate the rural heartlands. In a situation where the untouchables would not have franchise, this could result in the continued propagation of this atrocious practice; their political mobilisation is important.

Erm…ah yes: you mentioned Namboodiripad and such, and yes, they were anti-caste discrimination. But what guarantees can there be that the entire administrative machinery will suddenly transcend their parochialism and turn reformist? You mention Hindu reformers, dear Gaius…so many reformers and yet so much untouchability?

Gaius: Haha! I could flip that around Subbu, and ask, so much political representation and yet so much untouchability? But seriously, what makes you think that political representation changes untouchability? Would education not affect that more as qualified people move to big cities in India and abroad? There is a far stronger argument – which I am sympathetic to, by the way – to be made for improving access to schools and universities. This benefits all Indians without discrimination. The real disenfranchisement, Subbu, comes from poverty. Look at the stratification within the dalits – it’s monetary, not caste based.

[To vendor: Ondu kaapi kodtheera, amma?]

Subramanian: Eh, foreigner! At least get the language right…this is the proper Dravida desam! [To vendor: Kaapi thaanga amma]

Gaius: In the words of the great Chris Tucker, “all of y’all look alike!” *laughs* Anway…this brings me to another point I wanted to make: to represent my view on adult franchise as an all or nothing system does it disservice. I’d argue that a tiered voting system is perhaps more suited. In all probability, even an illiterate farmer in Therekalputhoor or Rajakkamangalam knows more about his coconut groves than some babu in Dilli but the same farmer is unlikely to understand the nuances of India’s relations with Iran or France. In a more federal system, if the Union list and State list allowed states autonomy over their local administration – in the full sense of the word – that farmer would have a say in the policies that affect him directly but not in affairs that concern him only indirectly.

States can lobby the Centre for foreign policy initiatives – I’m sure you have a lot of thoughts on Lanka but less on, say, the Maldives. You might even have a third tier at the local level for local affairs, I don’t know…I am hardly creating a political document here, just voicing some thoughts. The educated – let’s say baccalaureate, first class, for now – can vote in national elections. I know news consumption is at an all-time low, that most allegedly educated people prefer to surf the internet for the latest skimpily clad starlet rather than reactor fuel assembly lattices, and this benchmark is problematic, but think of it as filtering out the riffraff rather than creating the perfect electorate!

Subramanian: Well, as long as you concede that the educated need not know anything, really, about the issues they might be voting on…

Gaius: Yes but the probability of them knowing more is higher than a village bumpkin…or an urban urchin.

Subramanian: And tell me, even if I agreed with you, how do you intend to implement this elaborate scheme in a country like India where they have difficulty maintaining even a regular electoral list?

Gaius: On that, I must concede defeat! But if the principles are sound, at least we can steer towards the general direction. There is no need to adopt ideas like sovereignty or franchise wholesale without any heed to applicability.

Subramanian: Then this is a good time for me to leave. While you’ve scoffed down idli and kaapi, my tummy is rumbling for its ragi! I’ll see you in the evening at the temple Echampati Gayathri concert this evening. Bye!

Gaius: Yes, I am getting dark in this blasted tropical sun too…ciao, paisan!