Is India a civilisation or a nation-state
Sailen Routray
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| (Sage Publications Inc) |
'Crisis
and Contention in Indian Society' is a collection of essays and talks
by sociologist T.K. Oommen, and is indicative of his continuing academic
engagement with substantive issues of national relevance in India. All the
chapters of the book grapple with the continuing crises in Indian society and
polity, and try to analyse the causes of and solutions to the same.
Most relevant social actors in the country,
especially those belonging to the various apparatus of the state, perceive
India as a nation-state, and not as the civilisational entity that it is. The
author identifies this as one of the chief causes of the many crises plaguing
post-colonial Indian polity and society. Because of the blind adoption of
models of state-building and nationalism from Western Europe, severe strains
have developed between nationality and citizenship in India that increasingly
manifest in crises and violence.
The explosive growth of the Hindutva
brigade has been one of the most virulent ways in which such strains have
manifested themselves over the last four decades. The author argues against the
notion that religion can form the basis of any kind of nationalism in India. In
Chapter 6 of the book, he successfully contests demands by Hindutva groups for ‘Indianisation’
of the Church.
But the book fails to engage itself with
the sociological processes that have led to the growth of Hindutva in the first
place. For example, in Chapter 5 of the book that deals with the post-Godhra
riots in Gujarat, we are offered insights into the changing nature of organised
violence against minority communities, but none regarding the causes of such
changes.
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| A map of India drawn in 1700 AD (Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons) |
Similar problems are encountered when the
author deals with issues surrounding caste. In Chapter 4 he tries to draw
parallels between race and caste as categories, and shows a certain parallelism
between the careers of these two concepts. But the important question here is
not to ask whether a certain parallelism exists at the level of history of
ideas or not, but to explicate the modes through which the careers of such
categories have been imbricated in our political and social history.
While dealing with ‘national’ challenges to
the Indian state, the author builds interesting and impressive typologies
regarding the various oppositional movements against it. He also argues for the
adoption of certain principles that might go a long way in containing such
challenges within the existing constitutional framework in India. For example,
he consistently and convincingly argues for the adoption of the linguistic
criterion (as opposed to caste or religion) as the basis for further reorganisation
of Indian states. He also persuasively argues for the creation of more states
in the Hindi belt in north India by recognising the rights of subaltern
linguistic groups such as Bhojpuri etc.
Despite the book’s wide-ranging concerns,
it does not grapple with the Maoist insurgency in the tribal belts of
peninsular India. Any book that purportedly deals with ‘crisis and contention
in Indian society,’ and fails to discuss the Maoist insurgency can only be seen
as incomplete. In spite of the limitations, Crisis and Contention in Indian
Society is a welcome addition to literature, and provides a
synthetic overview of the many ways in which the various entanglements between
nationality and citizenship in India seem to have produced more than half a
century of crisis and contention.
'Crisis and Contention in Indian Society' । T.K. Oommen । New Delhi, Thousand Oaks and London: Sage
Publications । 2005 । ISBN 0-7619-3359-X ।
Copyright of this review rests with the reviewer.
Copyright of this review rests with the reviewer.
First, I haven't read the book. So my comments are limited only to this review of the collection.
ReplyDeleteCivilization, nation and citizenship debate seems quite irrelevant after the creation of the country 73 years back. As is evident in the text itself that it assumes hindutva to be mainly unfolding since last four decades but ignoring the process since late 19th century, when an image (personification) of Hindus and institutions and literature around claims for hindutva as most eligible caretaker of this subcontinent began.
However, a single civilization itself can not be defined for a physical area as vast as this. At best, it can be assumed to be a collection of, partly related and partly segregated, numerous civilizations.
So what? Each nation (except for very small island nations) and its identity has overlaps with one or more civilizations. Moreover, since 1947, at least three generations have become adults, consuming these nationalistic stories (and myths) while in their formative years so much that this debate hardly makes sense or even interests them.
We are better off writing, reading and debating on the sociological aspects of current dispensation, which we are far from even starting to address like state of democracies around the world and in India, ever-expanding inequality (not only economical but as members of same species), technology (AI, Quantum Computing, genetic engineering etc.) enduced human's irrelevance
and natural systems' existential questions etc. which all have sociological and survival bearing that pose monumental challenges in very near future.
You may read more at:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/curating-new-down-living-paradoxes-digpal-bahadur
Thanks for your detailed response. Regards.
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