Contradictions of Conservatism

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Studies in Indian Politics Contradictions of Conservatism 6(1) 1–14 © 2018 Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav Sudipta Kaviraj1 DOI: 10.1177/2321023018762661 http://journals.sagepub.com/home/inp

Abstract This article identifies the difficulty in defining conservatism and then goes on to illustrate the contradiction inherent in conservative thought.* The central problem addressed by the article is the absence of conservative thinking in modern India. Contrary to the practice of labelling certain strands of thinking as conservative, Indian political thought of past two centuries hardly has any serious conservative tradition. Looking at the ideas of Malaviya, Gandhi and Hindu nationalists, this article shows that while some of their positions did come close to conservative thinking, they did not systematically pursue conservative thinking. A key reason for this is the colonial rupture that negative possibility of serious engagement with past.

Keywords Conservatism, Hindu nationalism, Malaviya, Savarkar, Gandhi

What is Conservatism?

The object of this article is not to explore the form of thinking that is generally called conservatism, but to clarify our language. Just as there is a need to use precise concepts to characterize objects in the social world, we need a conceptual language that grasps forms of thought with accuracy, before we engage in the process of critical assessment. I suggest in this article that what is generally designated as conservative political thought is fraught with ambiguity. Instead of being something transparent, which we know, and must either politically fight or support, conservatism is an enigma that has to be resolved.2

* This and the following three articles (Bhargav, Chibber et al. and Verniers) form the second part of the articles on Conservatism in India in continuation of the articles published in the last issue of SIP (5.2; 205–61). Like the earlier articles, these articles too draw from papers presented at Paris and Berkeley, where the project on Conservatism in India was initiated by Christophe Jaffrelot and Pradeep Chhibber and also at Columbia University and Ashoka University where the final workshop was funded by Alliance, a consortium associating Sciences Po in Paris and Columbia University. Editors. 1 Professor of Indian Politics and Intellectual History, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, Columbia University, New York, NY USA. 2 In recent years, political supporters of BJP and Hindu Nationalism in general have occasionally lamented the lack of a conservative tradition in Indian political thought. For example, Swapan Dasgupta has expressed this sentiment. But this is an unreflective claim which supports a political position before thinking about what its contents might be.

Corresponding author: Sudipta Kaviraj, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, 412 Knox Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA. E-mail: [email protected] 2 Studies in Indian Politics 6(1)

The trouble in taking a stance about ‘conservatism’ in Indian society is the difficulty of defining what it is. But even if eventually conservatism remains hard to define, and we do not find a body of political doctrine that can be definitely characterized by that description, by this exercise we grasp something interesting and troubling about the academic language through which we seek to grasp and evaluate our political world.3 When we are asked to think about the place of conservatism in our society, our impulse is cleave to an analysis of Hindu nationalist thought. But I want to pause and ask if this equation of Hindu nationalism with conservatism is entirely without theoretical difficulty. Is Narendra Modi a conservative? It is true that, if asked whether he wants to ‘restore’ ramarajya, he is likely to answer in the affirmative. But the idea of all such ‘returns’ is elusive, and riddled with difficulties. Ramarajya is not something that anyone has seen or recorded with accuracy, so that it can function as a political destination of some clarity—if we take the verb restore seriously. Conservatism, in one of its meanings at least, must refer to some definite state of affairs where it is the task of that form of thought and practice to conserve; but ‘conserve’ could be used only if that state of affairs was still the prevalent condition of society. What Modi or other members of the RSS or the BJP might mean by ramarajya which they would like to restore—to which we cannot apply the verb ‘conserve’ simply because that involves the implausible assumption that it existed in the recent past, and has been destroyed presumably by the long history of modernity and more recently, by the wanton assault of Nehruvian radicalism. What makes it hard to associate Modi with any simply conservative stance towards history is the fact he comes from a relatively low caste in the Hindu hierarchical caste order, the son of a chaiwalla—which he never fails to mention—and has risen through the decid- edly modern mechanisms of an electoral democracy, to hold the office of the greatest terrestrial power in the country. Such an irresistible rise to political eminence was inconceivable even 50 years back, despite the operation of a republican constitution since 1950. Modi or the political forces he represents does not deplore the historical change that has made this possible. Clearly, the BJP and political Hindu nationalism is not opposed to the transformation of one of the central tenets of the sanatan dharma. In fact, it is interesting to analyse the episode of the chaiwalla insult just before the 2014 election. It shows that, as far as social mobility out of caste disabilities is concerned, Modi is a progressive, and Iyer a conservative. Modi regards his rise to the highest office from the status of a tea seller background as a great historical good; Iyer, despite his impeccable secular credentials, regards this as a historical change to be derided in true aristocratic style. This simple example shows that conservatism can be seen in two ways—as a systematic doctrine about history and society, or, alternatively, as a fragmentary complex of contingently interconnected social attitudes, which can be distributed in surprising ways across the social spectrum.

What Do We Mean by Conservative Thought?

A first problem is a lack of clarity about what constitutes conservative political thought. What kind of thought are we trying to understand and assess? Political thought is a vast and tricky field not merely because there are so many kinds of political thinking, and their infinite subspecies. This is not the only trouble with studying political thought. By definition, political thought is a kind of thought that affects

3 I want to stress that my strictures are about the language of academic political science, and the study of political thought. Notably, ordinary political discourse—speeches by politicians, conversation among ordinary observers, commentaries by journalists writing in the vernacular—usually dispenses with a characterization that is strictly equivalent to this term. In Bengali, for instance, the direct equivalent for conservative will be ‘rakshansheel’—an awkward tatsma neologism; but how many times is it used in real political utterance? Kaviraj 3 politics—political life, and commonly political action. This raises some additional problems. Evidently, forms of political thinking are stretched across several levels in their intellectual existence—that is, in the way they exist in the real world. Political thought exists in ordinary peoples’ thinking inspiring and conditioning their understandings, assessments and judgements about political life. It exists in the textures of more formally intellectual political discourse—in newspaper editorials, comments, even in the analytical inflections of the news reports. It exists at times in the construction and functioning of political institutions—as in constitutional documents, in the way specific institutions like the legislature or judiciary function. Finally, they also exist and are expressed in the form of formal writing of theory— in the work of systematic political writers and theorists. All strands of political thought might not be equally present at all these levels. I think a feature of the hegemony of a kind of political thought in a specific society is reflected in the fact that some forms of thought might actually be overrepresented on some strata, and others might be hidden in the less formal levels of the structure of a political ideology4—if we designate as a political ideology, the entire structure of these dissimilar levels of thinking. Conservative thought presents a particular problem in modern India, probably in the modern world generally. Conservative thinking seems to be under-represented on the formal levels of theoretical statements; however, it is much more perceptible if we go down the levels to public discourse, and popular individual opinion.5 There is also a somewhat different problem—particularly acute among intellectuals—about deciding the relation between expression of opinion and real belief. It is fairly common in India to find intellectuals who are particularly strident in their declaration of ‘progressive’ beliefs indi- cating affiliation to liberalism or socialism, but who are entirely reconciled in their everyday social practice to a calm acceptance of service from an army of servants. This raises an important question regarding the identification of belief: are their declaratory statements, sometimes in print and public discourse, a true expression of their beliefs, when these ideas are clearly incompatible with their everyday social conduct? To the extent employment of servants conforms to a conventional hierarchical form of social life, these individuals should be seen as adherents of social conservatism to some extent, although in their self-image they would hardly see themselves as ‘conservatives’ or, in their own theatri- cal terminology, as ‘reactionaries’. As a social imaginary,6 particularly in fragmented ways, conservatism is a powerful strand in Indian society; yet, its presence in formal political discourse is rather elusive. After writers like Golwalkar and Hedgewar, it is hard to find authors who have sought to present a seriously conservative argument about the history of the present in India.7 Yet, as trends in ordinary political life shows, the presence of conservative ideas in political discourse—in public discussions, journalism, TV debates and of course in ordinary political speech of normal people—is quite common, and occasionally quite powerful. So, while thinking about conservatism in Indian political life what kind of thinking should be our object of analysis? Should we search for conservatism at the level of serious theoretical articulation of these ideas

4 For a discussion about the nature of political ideology, see Freeden (1996). 5 For example, in the last elections in the USA, liberal intellectuals were genuinely stunned by the depth of popular opinion, which could be termed conservative: seeking to preserve, or restore a social state of the USA that was prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s. The surprise was real: liberal opinion became complacent of its dominance, because it equated the unexpressed with the non- existent. Simply because directly racist opinions are not commonly expressed does not mean that these are not entertained by real individuals. In some ways, this is a paradoxical result of liberal legality: the more legal restrictions are imposed on racist or misogynist or other illiberal the more these go underground, and become difficult to detect. Following Bernard Shaw’s remark, that ‘decency is indecency’s conspiracy of silence’, it could be said that apparent liberalism is often xenophobia’s conspiracy of silence. 6 I use social imaginary in the sense used by Taylor (2004). Broadly, this represents a vague view of the world which sets limits to our conceptions of what is possible and impossible. 7 I deliberately omit Savarkar and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee because it is harder to fit them into a regular ‘conservative’ mould. 4 Studies in Indian Politics 6(1) with some extension and internal coherence? Should we seek conservatism in more fragmented forms— like the fierce justification of communal sentiments, or indirect defence of upper-caste privilege in TV discussions, commentaries and in social media?8 If we look for ‘theory’—even of the kind represented by Savarkar, conservatism appears to be weak and underrepresented [which are different states of affairs]. If however we search for forceful influence on people’s thinking about significant current issues, it appears to be powerful and its influence rising.

Where Does Conservative Thought Lie?

Locating the presence of conservative thought is therefore a problem, at least a question, not a settled fact. Our social science has been conventionally uninterested in the question of language: it does not as a rule think that there is anything to think about regarding the language through which we grasp our social world.9 As much of our social science is done in English, the semantic connotations of its conceptual terms—state, law, society, economy, religion, secularity—are taken for granted, without examining the implications of such intellectual habits. This attitude does not view language as having a history, or being attached to life-worlds. It seems that there is no difference at all between thinking through the social world in vernaculars and in English: the languages are entirely and effortlessly equivalent. We do not usually ask if something like a state could be said to exist in either contemporary or pre-modern India, in the sense in which the term is taken in English social science discourse. Or, even, whether there are dependable equiv- alence between these and vernacular words. Analyses start from the presupposition that all the objects that populate the social world of the modern West must also exist in India’s exactly parallel universe, though we often concede that these objects must exist in this world in a somewhat degraded form. Democracy, secularity, party politics, bureaucracy—these do not quite mean what they mean in the West, which is equivalent to what they should mean. Democracy is interlaced with authoritarian practices: secularism is practiced by deeply religious figures like Gandhi, parties are often mere extensions of dominant families, bureaucracy hardly functions like a Weberian rechtstaat. That does not usually bother us; colonialism makes us fluent in a language of cheerful inferiority. But clearly, this suggests that there is an analytical problem behind the linguistic one. Conservatism comes from this stable of concepts. We happily designate politicians and parties and groups as conservative under this European description. Conservatism, even in its European version, is an inherently unstable and contradictory form of thought. First, in a strict sense, it is a form of thought that is characteristic of modernity. It is a form of thought which is both historical and non-historical. It strains against social changes which it perceives as having happened in relatively recent times: so it cannot but be historical, at least minimally thinking of two stages A and B: B is the stage in which it lives and A the one it admires, and therefore longs to revive. It is anti-historical because it wants to go back to a stage which it itself acknowledges as having been transcended in time. But conservative thought must also believe in a radical plasticity of societal forms twice over, because just as progressives believe that by concentrated collective political action they can attain a society that does not yet exist, identically, conservatives in this sense believe that they can, by collective action, go back to a stage that history has left behind. Conservatism in a milder sense is fairly

8 However, the examination of possible Russian interference with the last US elections shows some peculiar features of social media. The simple number of posts in social media does not necessarily mean that an identical number of real individuals hold such opinions. New media phenomena like trolling raise more interesting questions about the nature of the public sphere and its transformation. 9 This does not mean that Indian authors do not discuss problems of language. There is no shortage of analyses or references to theories of language from Wittgenstein, or Barthes, or Foucault or Derrida: but those do not immediately throw light on the specific linguistic problems we have to contend with. Kaviraj 5 common—which indicates simply a desire to retain the society that exists—without much change. The people we call conservatives are hardly ever contented with that mild programme.

Conservatism and Temporal Dislocation

Both in Europe and in India, conservative thought is produced by either the actual fact, or the perceived threat of imminent historical change—of the cataclysmic experience of a ‘world turned upside down’. As I tried to suggest earlier, conservative thinking is a deeply contradictory form of thought, because it is committed to two ideas that are impossible to reconcile. It is committed, on one side, to the idea that there was a state of society which should not or should not have changed: it is against forcible, coercive, revolutionary social change. Yet, it is almost always played false by history. Conservatism always suffers from a temporal dislocation: the location in time from, which it thunders ‘the world should not change: it would be an utter disaster if it does’, is already after the point of that cataclysmic change, after that threatening transformation has already occurred. This is as true of genuine conservatives in Europe as of putative conservatives in India: in fact, if we consider this element of a dislocated temporality at the heart of conservative thought, early modern Indian thinkers are better off in theoretical terms, precisely because there was—when they were writing—as yet very little modernity on the ground in Indian society. The central contradiction in conservative thought stems from this dislocation in time—its dislocated, awkward temporality. Conservatives in Europe were temporally placed after the French revolution: this is true of great conservative thinkers like de Maistre (2006), Bonald (for his work refer Blum, 2004) and Muller (1997). The central thesis of their thinking was that European society ought not to have changed through the revolutionary process—which they viewed as destructive and ethically illegitimate, and in that sense they were in favour of uninterrupted continuity and peace in society. Tragically, they were stating this view after the revolution had already occurred and introduced a period of cataclysmic violence in European societies whose effects were in many ways historically irreversible. Their temporal location forced them to ask for non-change at a temporal point, which was already in the past, and practically inaccessible. The gospel of non-change was therefore contorted into an advocacy of violent restitutive change that would, in effect, parallel the violence of the revolutionaries. This meant, however, that revolutionaries were more consistent in their philosophic stance, and conservatives—despite their stated and probably genuine revul- sion for violent change—were forced to become counter-revolutionaries. This is a contradiction that lies at the heart of conservatism: they would have wanted society not to change, but as it was forcibly changed by revolutionary transformation, the only way to go back to that lost point of unbroken continuity was through a similarly disruptive trauma directed against the revolution. Recently, the American commenta- tor David Brooks wrote of his puzzlement at the state of the Republican Party: he thought the party was overwhelmed by non-conservatives: the ‘tea party’ was not a conservative group, which spoke the language of peace and continuity; rather, they were right-wing radicals who wanted to have a revolutionary transformation towards restoring what they believed was their preferred past. There was no path to this destination without political radicalism. This paradox at the heart of conservatism helps us to think through some of the interesting puzzles about Hindu ‘conservatism’ in India.

The Distributed/Fragmented Character of Conservatism

Why do we have to seek out conservative thought from its places of hiding? Why does it hide? Is hiding a source of its strength? Why does conservative thought, specially related to Hindu religiosity, suffer from the hegemonic, but friable presence of a default, but unthought-out secularism? 6 Studies in Indian Politics 6(1)

Conservative is a description which requires an antinomial counter-concept to fully express its meaning. As a consequence, it is not surprising that conservative and progressive thought have in a surprising sense a common, interactive history, because they both develop through a dialectic of argumentative moves and countermoves. I shall briefly describe some interesting conservative moments in modern Indian social thinking—starting with the mid-nineteenth century Bengal.

Bhudev Mukhopadhyay

If we make this temporally dislocated structure central to our analysis of conservatism, we can understand why in the mid-nineteenth century it is easier for Indians to be conservatives than European thinkers. By the mid-nineteenth century, much of Western Europe—England, France, Germany, to a lesser extent Italy—were in the throes of deep historical transformation, which many conservatives suspected rather mournfully to be irreversible. To Indian thinkers like Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, or for Gandhi a few decades later, a more authentic conservative stance towards history was possible. Bhudev’s location in history was quite different, inside a society which had seen little structural change in its economy and social architecture, but which was deeply connected to a colonizing European power. Precisely this European connection showed them the meaning and consequences of the transformation to modernity— the comprehensive change which started in the polity or the economy and which then caused fundamental cascading changes in all fields of social existence. With this prospective relation to modernity, Bhudev could speak about his history in a tone of warning rather than, like European conservatives10 or romantics,11 in a tone of tragedy or mourning. Bhudev feared that the history of Europe showed to Indians ‘the image of its future’, if Indians were not vigilant and did not act consciously to obstruct its path. But that future was still a really temporal future: transformations of modernity were not already irreversibly upon them.12 From the conservative point of view, this was a rare opportunity of history: learning from European history, Indians could still choose the future they wanted to have. Both the con- tent and the tone of Bhudev Mukhopadhyay’s writing13 shows this mood of relative calm, an unradical reflection on the blessings of Hindu society, an argument to embrace the unchangingness of the world in which his contemporaries were ‘thrown’. It was an argument that urged acceptance of the world in which they found themselves, along with the unchanging placement of others. A conservative did not want to change the world as it was: it was a philosophy of contentment, not excitement. I want to point to just a single element of this contentment, because it helps me to push my argument further. It is not surprising that Bhudev accepts the historically given—or divinely ordained—place of social ‘others’, particularly Muslims in India’s large historical arrangement. History had placed Hindus and Muslims together and side by side in this world: and political activism should not try to alter this historical arrangement—

10 Like de Maistre or de Bonald or Edmund Burke. 11 Like Rousseau. 12 Although Gandhi wrote about similar themes a few decades later, this was still the predominant tone in the Hind Swaraj (Gandhi, 1909). 13 Bhudev Mukhopadhyay was primarily an essayist and a novelist, entirely like Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, his famous contemporary. His novels were historical, but these did not have the immense influence that Bankim’s social and historical novels enjoyed inside Bengal and later throughout India. His arguments on social theory, which, in my judgement, were more cohesive, extended and insightful than most of his contemporaries, were advanced in three series of essays: Samajik Prabandha [Essays on Society], Achar Prabandha [Essays on Religious Observances] and Parivarik Prabandha [Essays on the family]. See Mukhopadhyay (2010). Kaviraj 7 which to authors like Bhudev must have appeared as the sign of divine will.14 Accepting the results of history as the will of God was the defining mark of conservatism: and in Bhudev’s perception of the world there is a deep acceptance of history, and a fear that the power of British colonialism, and the more insidious power of instilling a modernist imagination in new Indian elites, threatened this unchanging tranquil world with quite unnecessary dissolution. Some peculiarities in his thought are interesting and revealing. Bhudev asserted that Indians did not need to learn much from the West, and they should definitely not absorb and imitate a comprehensive form of ‘Western-ness’ [pashchatya-bhav]—his word for the emergent modernity—except in two fields. The only two fields of knowledge where Indians should learn from Europeans—because there is no shame in sitting at the feet of someone who knows something better—were natural science and vartashastra—his translation of the science of political economy. Indians may have been excellent in natural sciences in the ancient past; but they were no longer. A great past was an empty boast, if people did not have present skills to continue those practices. Second, expanding the means of material life, interestingly, is a significant part of a good human life, and poor people should be rescued from economic destitution. Interestingly, Bhudev was invoking two of the greatest intellectual forces of the modernist transformation—the scientific revolution and the rise of a modern economy, with a naïve belief that these two forces could be entirely contained inside the bounda- ries of cognitive practices without affecting larger social life. He evidently did not worry that once allowed entry, these twin forces—modern science and the modern economy—would not remain mere knowledges, but transform all social relations associated with them and push Indian society irreversibly towards modernity, the dreaded destiny of Westernness. Bhudev’s thinking showed another interesting strand—on the question of forms of political power. Among the eight features of Westernness, representative government—the principal invention of liberalism—was accorded great significance; but Bhudev’s argumentative treatment of this particular feature of Westernness was very awkward—almost a sleight of hand. Acknowledging that this is a deeply desirable feature of any human society—a political mechanism that systematically avoided tyranny—Bhudev claimed there was nothing for Hindus to learn on this count from Europe, because, apparently, Hindu governance was entirely based on the principle that the king was a representative of his subjects. This was a strange and deeply ambiguous move: because the resultant argument could by implication go in two entirely opposed directions. It could be claimed, disingenuously, that Hindu forms of governance did not need rectification and continue unmod- ified, because they were already representative. In reality, this was quite implausible. The entire tradition of disputations regarding rajaniti in the long line of dharmasastras preferred kingship and refuted this claim. Or, it could be argued that Hindus should, without embarrassment, embrace liberal political institutions because these were already in principle sanctioned by their scriptures. Some of the deeper inerad- icable contradictoriness of conservative positions we have noticed earlier also occur in Bhudev’s version. It is true that his tone is calmer, not fierce like European conservatives; because, his society was still mainly untouched by modernity: modernity was a distant threat rather than a present calamity. Yet, the embrace of political economy and natural science showed that Bhudev did not see clearly the connection between these two major engines of propulsion of modern history. But his untroubled defence of the central principles of Hindu social-order rendered his position conservative in a much truer sense compared to later conservative figures.

14 Interestingly, it was the modernist Brahmos who were prone to rather frequent uses of the phrase—Isvarer karunay—by the grace/will of God. 8 Studies in Indian Politics 6(1)

Was Gandhi a Conservative?

This leads us into a question which has been familiar in interpretations of Indian thought for a long time—the difficulties of trying to fit Gandhi into the description of a ‘conservative’ thinker. But this discussion might suggest that we have addressed only half of the problem, because we have not addressed the conceptual side of it adequately. Much of that discussion has simply taken the concept ‘conservative’ as self-evidently clear, and focused the process of judgement on whether Gandhi’s thinking answers that description. It seems now that the difficulty was at least in equal measure conceptual. It is so hard to judge Gandhi as a conservative, partly because the term ‘conservative’ is itself historically unstable, and consequently connotatively unclear. Actually, Gandhi’s thinking reveals something interesting about the contradictory nature of conservative thought. Like most conservatives, Gandhi denies the ‘structural’ character of social forms. It is true that he wants to ‘preserve’ major parts of a pre-modern form of Hindu social life; but even in case of some of the most fundamental aspects of Hindu society, he offers a distinctly selective defence. One of the best illustrations of this attitude is in his thinking on caste. Clearly, the caste order is a fundamental part of the old, sanatani, social system that Gandhi wanted to conserve; but what he really wants to do to the order of caste is hard to fit into the strict description of conservatism. Gandhi sought to abolish untouchability, but preserve the sanatani caste order—which is clearly a contradictory programme. Besides, what Gandhi actually wants to ‘conserve’ is a highly romanticized system of lateral differentiation of occupational groups—hardly anything like the real caste system in history. Preserving the caste order as a whole, without modification, would have been a truly conservative objective; but Gandhi certainly does not desire that. His modification of the caste order, or his plans for the re-marriage of young widows, on the entirely reasonable ground that they can hardly be considered to have been married, constitute such profound modifications of the Hindu social customs, that we cannot accept his repeated rhetorical assertion that he is defending a sanatani Hinduism. We should not be misled by his own characterization of his thought as conservative or sanatani: in fact, there is little difference between what he desires and recognizable forms of Hindu reformism.

Two Strands of Hindu Political Thought

An analysis of Indian political thought in the crucial 100 years from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries shows something interesting about emerging figurations of political thinking. In this period, we can pursue our reading of ‘conservative’ thought more fruitfully under the banner of Hindu nationalism. If we alter our optics this way, we can begin to notice some interesting distinctions within Hindu nationalist thought which, though neglected, have a really long history; and these would help us understand political processes in our own time. A comparison with Bhudev’s thought is particularly useful, because that reveals what is new in Hindu thinking at the end of the nineteenth century. Bhudev’s thinking is of course deeply Hindu; and it could be described as proto-nationalist; but it is neither Hindu, nor nationalist in the sense in which later Hindu nationalist thought will become. On the question of defining his ‘nation’—that is, the political community to which he feels a deep connection and self-relation—the people he would call his own—his thinking is entirely pluralist, and included Muslims as equal members. So the lineage of his thought travels through Gandhi and Tagore. The central difference is that for conservative Hindus like Bhudev, religion was primarily concerned with cosmological and social- ethical themes, not with politics and the capture of the state by his own faith community against the others. Undoubtedly, the thought of Gandhi and Tagore remains deeply imbued by Hindu principles; but Kaviraj 9 notably, they are not characterized as ‘Hindu’ thinkers. The description ‘Hindu’—as far as political thought is concerned—is reserved exclusively for the other strand—which exaggerates the impression that all Hindus think alike, and that they are in favour of an exclusivist form of nationalism. Roughly, later strands of Hindu thinking are relatively uninterested in traditional concerns—like the nature of God, his presence in the world, man’s place in God’s nature and similar questions; rather they seek to influence peoples’ thinking about the two fundamental concepts of political life—the nation and the state.15 But even in this new line of thinking—which is accurately described as Hindu nationalist—there are two identifiable strands. The first strand of Hindu nationalist thought correctly surmises that in the universe of modern politics, which was slowly restructuring social life under high colonialism of the nineteenth century, the fundamental category underlying all political experience is the one of the nations. That category names the people who stand behind the state, which constitutes a set of legal institutions, to whom ‘sovereignty’—the ultimate political power—belongs. To stake a claim to that underlying sense of belonging is to control everything in political life—fundamentally, but also inexplicitly. This people- nation is rarely explicitly defined, but the way it is perceived in popular consciousness determines in every respect how the effects of political institutions fall on real lives of social groups. Savarkar, the first and most important representative of this strand consequently concentrates his political thinking on attempting to define the nation itself, the people whose sovereignty is expressed in the state, as Hindu in his sense (Savarkar, 1923). It is not surprising that Savarkar comes out of a terrorist line of patriotism which thought intensely about the nation, its character, its proper affect, the obligation that is members bore to it, and was almost totally uninterested in the institutional designs of state-making. Even if they use the concept of a nation-state, there is an irremediable asymmetry at its heart: because the nation is defined with clarity, but the state receives an entirely perfunctory analysis. A second strand is represented by the works of authors like Madan Mohan Malaviya, who, by contrast, comes out of the highly institutionalized setting of Congress politics. Twice he served as the President of the Congress; and in his addresses, shows himself deeply concerned with institutional procedures (Malaviya, 1919). In sharp contrast to Savarkar, Malaviya’s thinking works through the legal intricacies of institutional politics—especially, the powerful new procedural language of majority/minority—to articulate his views about the place of religious communities inside the sovereign people. Malaviya’s presidential addresses reveal a distrust of the moves by the leaders of the Muslim religious minority—a strand of Hindu nationalism which thinks the same thoughts but in a distinctly different language—a language of legal techniques, distribution of costs and benefits—a cold language of calcula- tion, to use a European distinction, rather than a ‘hot’ language of blood and soil. There is a tendency in political analysis—by academics and commentators—to stress only the overarching similarity between differing strands of Hindu thinking which encourages us to immerse these two styles of thinking in the same ‘school’ or ‘ideology’; but it is equally important to detect their distinctions. Otherwise, we fall into the historical inaccuracy of failing to observe a distinction where one exists, and this leads to the political error of exaggerating the force of Hindu thinking by conceiving of it as a single, indivisible political force. The second strand represents thinking by leaders who are already inserted into an institutional system already shaped by some liberal principles. This does not erase the ideological direction of their initiatives, but still is constrained by the restraining effects of liberal political mechanisms. The first line of thought is indifferent towards these institutional mechanisms of political life, and therefore more prone to unrestrained populism. In Savarkar, beyond the entirely abstract and general invocation of the majority of Hindus, there is hardly any mention of the intricate and intense discussions about legal status and rights of minorities and majorities occurring at the time. Consequently, that form of nationalism is

15 I have tried to elaborate this line of argument more fully in Kaviraj (2009). 10 Studies in Indian Politics 6(1) less likely to respond to restraints. Even in contemporary politics, this difference has a significant ves- tigial presence.

Conservatism After Independence

After independence, Indian political discourse was marked by a perplexing absence of any self-recognizing form of conservative opposition. By the end of the nineteenth century, there were hardly any serious conservative strands represented in the political public sphere. If we do not consider Gandhi as part of a conservative tradition, and if we exclude Savarkar for reasons I have adduced before, hardly any serious conservative position is articulated in the public sphere of political debate. Arguments from the economic right wing against Nehru’s policies are not conservative in the precise sense, because they are enthusiastically in favour of industrialization and welcome consequent upheavals of social life including the effect this was expected to have in erasing caste practices.16 The only critique of Nehru that was remotely similar to Bhudev Mukhopadhyay’s line of thinking in its basic principles was carried in the last chapter of P. V. Kane’s massive work on the history of the dharmasastras (Kane, 1933). With accurate historical instinct, Kane included a last long chapter on the constitution in his history of the dharmasastras, correctly suggesting that the adoption of the constitution was a major part of the history of the ideas whose past narrative he was chronicling.17 Despite appearances, the constitution formed part of the story of the dharmasastra—probably its endpoint, although Kane did not put it with quite that finality. But even Kane’s response illustrated the hegemony that a Nehru–Gandhi pluralist vision of Hindu society carried at that historical conjuncture. Kane claimed Hindu thought to be equally pluralistic, equally receptive to the idea of popular sovereignty, and equally eager to excise oppressive internal practices by reform. Paradoxically, Kane’s analysis implied that ‘conservative’ Hindus should reconcile themselves to Nehruvian reforms, rather than oppose it. They should not, by implication, take a truly conservative position against historical change. The trajectory of Hindu nationalist politics after independence was totally different from Kane’s line of conservative response. Hindu nationalists strenuously opposed Nehru’s pluralist policies—particularly his explicit argument that minorities required special protection under the constitution; that they should not only enjoy all the usual citizens’ rights, but additionally, they were entitled to rights that the majority did not need. As I have argued, this was a fundamental conflict of principles on the question of pluralism, not on conservatism strictly defined. It is confusing to portray the conflict between Nehru and the Jana Sangh or the RSS as one between progressive and conservative conceptions of Indian society. It was clearly a conflict between pluralist and exclusivist conceptions of the nation, and this nation’s relation to the state. Leftist political rhetoric and Nehru’s discourse persistently portrayed the Jana Sangh as ‘back- ward-looking’, reactionary, and right wing. On the whole, Hindu nationalists refused to take the bait. Rather, Hindu nationalist writers produced a discourse which spoke in a distinctively modern, if exclusivist, language of exclusive rights of the Hindu community—as a majority in India, and a minority in Pakistan. The fate of Pakistani Hindus was a primary concern of one of the founding figures of the Jana Sangh, Syama Prasad Mookerjee. None of the primary leaders advanced a discernibly conservative

16 Criticisms from Minoo Masani or C Rajagopalachari would belong to this ideological tendency—which could be certainly characterized as economically right wing, but hardly as socially conservative. By contrast, the policies of the Jana Sangh were not always economically right-wing. 17 Though it does not make a similar argument, it is interesting to note that Vajpeyi (2012) titles her Chapter on Nehru dharma and artha, in her book Righteous Republic. Kaviraj 11 agenda. In a sense Balraj Madhok (1982), pursued the political ideal of a more explicitly Hindu state, the demand of a putative Hindu majority; Mookerjee followed the interests of the wronged Hindu minority left behind in Pakistan after partition win demands flowing out of an monist conception of an Indian nation (Madhok, 1954).18 In time, Hindu majoritarian criticisms of Nehru’s policies blamed them as ‘minority appeasement’. Among the leaders of the Jana Sangh, S. P. Mookerjee represented a strand of thought closer to Malaviya’s, though he died without playing a significant role in shaping the ideological character of the new party. In its agendas and actions, the Jana Sangh sought to dispel the idea that it was a force against historical modernity. After the transformation of the Jana Sangh into the BJP, particularly as it sought to readjust itself, along with all other parties, to the enormous changes in India’s political economy caused by the growth spurt following on liberalization, Hindu nationalist politicians have projected an image of themselves as radical, as opposed to conservative in significant ways. They have scrupulously avoided creating an impression that they are against women’s rights, or their participation in high public life. Apart from an abstract celebration of B. R. Ambedkar,19 they have demonstratively supported selected Dalit politicians, notably in case of the election of Ram Nath Kovind to the office of the President. They have energetically followed the agenda of economic liberalization, and further capitalist transformations of the economy. None of these are conservative policies. In the 1990s, when the BJP was going through a period of ideological instability, some leaders suggested that, since the Congress had decisively repudiated Gandhian economic ideas, the BJP could adopt a Swadeshi critique of policies of liberalization.20 Eventually, that path was never seriously taken. It should be clear to any student of political discourse that the conversion of JS into BJP represented a major discursive transformation. The larger political objectives of Hindu majoritarianism—making the Hindu religious community dominant at the expense of all minorities, especially Muslims—remained unchanged, but its discursive techniques of argumentation and persuasion were entirely altered. From an explicit use of unapologetic majoritarian demands for a Hindu rashtra, the BJP shifted its arguments to a skilful deployment of the liberal resentment against discrimination—to claim that although Hindus formed a majority of the electorate, government policies were consistently discriminatory against their collective interests. This was supplemented by uses of a typical liberal-derived hyper-sensitivity to instances of offense to Hindu honour—from the attacks on exhibitions of paintings by M. F. Hussain to the recent demonstrations against the film Padmaavat. This was a very interesting movement in the lines of political discourse. From the 1970s, the political appeal of conventional leftist arguments regarding injustice and poverty declined precipitously; and these were replaced by arguments drawn from liberal principles of dignity and non-discrimination which claimed systematic persecution of lower castes by the Hindu hierarchy. Typically, these arguments claimed that lower castes were victims of long historical injustice; and the independent state did not do enough to eradicate these disadvantages. Remarkably, from the 1990s, supporters of Hindu nationalism fashioned an exactly parallel argument about mistreat- ment of Hindus—alleging conquest and humiliation by Muslim rulers in medieval times, and continued Muslim appeasement by the Congress establishment after independence. Arguments for Hindu identity politics were thus placed discursively parallel to arguments in favour of political assertion by lower castes, Dalits and women. Majoritarian arguments were clothed in liberal reasonableness, and evidently reached a larger constituency of Hindu voters.

18 Gives a detailed account of the last years of his life, and his political activities around the time of partition and immediately after. 19 It is notable, however, that some BJP politicians presented sharply critical assessments of Ambedkar’s role in the freedom struggle, see Shourie (2001). 20 Some vague ideas in that direction could be found in the works of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya (1965). 12 Studies in Indian Politics 6(1)

However, the internal differentiation within Hindu nationalist ideology has not entirely disappeared. In the 1990s, when the BJP coalitions gained office for the first time at the centre, this differentiation was often reflected in differences between moderate and extreme political factions. In the last elections, again this difference was revealed in the manner in which Narendra Modi’s supporters bypassed the internal mechanisms of party democracy to nominate him as the prime ministerial candidate, to forestall rather than openly defeat competition. But the fluctuations in policy and practices inside Hindu nationalism, or its internal differentiations, cannot be better grasped as degrees of conservatism, but as differences inside anti-pluralist modernism which often attracts large popular support. That is why I think it might be better to think of conservatism as a real and immensely potent social force, opposed to elements of serious social change—like Dalit emancipation, or women’s equality, or abolishing dowry—which is not gathered together as an ideological camp, or a political theory, but a cellular, dispersive hostility to social transformation. Its power lies precisely in the fact that it is dispersed, decentralized, uninstitutionalized, unnamed. It exists and produces effects through undeclared chains of similar social acts which are difficult to track down, name and assail. Political power is produced sometimes in strange ways, and acts through strange means. An absence of explicit names, overt argumentation and open organization can also be politically effective: conservatism works in modern Indian history primarily in that form which makes it both elusive and forceful.

What Conservative Thought Could be in India?

Yet, it is entirely possible to conceive in abstract terms what conservative social thought could be. Indian intellectual culture has deep connection with several great religious traditions: Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Christian and Islamic. And though Gandhi was utopian in thinking that all religious faiths teach the same values, there is an important element of truth in that statement: and all these overlapping traditions could provide philosophical sources to fashion critiques of modernity. All these religious traditions could be mined to produce philosophic critiques of individualist metaphysics, of modern consumerist economics, of scientific predation against nature, of the insecurity of the modern social stem based on nuclear families. On some of the profound problems of modernity—on subjects of modernity’s greatest transformations, where it has forced human societies to create and inhabit entirely new conditions—conservative thinking could draw successfully from pre-modern Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic thought. Is surrendering all disciplines in society to the control of legality and the state a desirable state of things? Or was it better to limits the state’s functions severely as in pre-modern times? It is to be noted that the limitedness of pre- modern states was quite different from modern liberal laissez faire. Pre-modern political thought could thus offer a critique of the state’s overextension quite different from those drawn from liberalism. Is an economy of potentially unlimited production and consumption—which lifts millions out of poverty, but creates intractable new problems—better than what Gandhi would have characterized as an economy of restraint and frugality? What should be humanity’s relation to nature? Is nature a vast mine of extractable resources? Or should it be seen as existing in a relationship of balance with the human species? Should the impersonal bureaucracies of the state be the vehicle of social compassion or the unpredictable, singular, affective attentiveness of the religious individual’s charity? As the limits of modern theories like liberalism and socialism are acknowledged, exploration of pre-modern thought could provide inno- vative and unusual ideas to think with. On all such questions, Hindu or Muslim conservatives could provide serious and significant alternative arguments, which could compete with modern liberal and socialist answers. Reading Hindu nationalist authors in the twentieth century shows that they address Kaviraj 13 only a small segment of these potential questions: their attention is almost entirely focused on the demands of a majority community on the institutions of the state. Interestingly, arguments on this narrow set of questions actually do not draw upon pre-modern philosophical thinking, because it does not require them. Both the question and their preferred answers are irreducibly modern. The actual process of their thinking either does not use any pre-modern resources; or makes deferential references to ordinary Western academic ‘authorities’. Savarkar’s (2003, p.116) couplet describing India as both the pitrbhu and punyabhu is an unremarkable contemporary construct in elementary Sanskrit—without requirement of significant scholarship in ancient Indian intellectual tradition. Madhok’s work on the Hindu state starts with reverential reference to the common college books of modern political science (Madhok, 2012, pp. 10–12). Hindu political thought can make only a fraudulent claim to the dignity of ancientness. The real reason behind this surprising thinness of acquaintance with real contents of the pre-modern tradition lies in the history of our colonial culture. The cognitive rupture brought in by the colonial cognitive modernity was surprisingly comprehensive.21 Bhudev Mukhopadhyay belonged to a generation which had some real intellectual connection to the pre-modern intellectual culture. Paradoxically, many of the early modern intellectuals like Ram Mohan Ray and Bhudev Mukhopadhyay—who were well-versed in pre-modern Sanskrit knowledge were also deeply knowledgeable about the Persianate traditions of Islam. In fact, a common learning in Persianate Islamic culture was shared between intellectuals with very different religious positions—Rammohan Ray was a Brahmo reformer producing fierce polemic against Brahmanical orthodoxy. Devendranath Tagore, Rabindranath’s father, was a Brahmo religious leader who believed Kalidasa and Hafiz were the two greatest poets in world history. Bhudev was a Brahmin conservative who nevertheless considered Muslims as co-inhabitants of his land, and his svajati. By the time Bengali culture had evolved to Rabindranath’s generation, the Islamicate aspect of Bengali elite culture had nearly disappeared, and its Sanskrit component had declined below a critical minimal line. This trend enveloped the whole of India—with some regional variations. Intellectuals drawn to Hindu nationalism were cultural products of this modern educational system— with very few serious connections to pre-modern intellectual practice. At the few surviving centres of Sanskrit learning, distinguished scholars taught and worked in small and constantly declining numbers, entirely detached from the powerful educational system linked purposefully to the modern economy. Isolated, unadmired, neglected by modern scholarly communities, these increasingly rare intellectuals lived in a sullen subculture of mutual rejection, suspicion and hostility, surrounded by a modern cultural apparatus, waiting helplessly for a final nightfall of their history. The deep historical reason for their alienation and isolation stemmed from the fact that they were not adept at dealing with the apparatuses of the modern economy, its educational machine, and its eventual guarantor, the modern state. They came from a Brahmanical intellectual tradition which had a deeply anti-political character. As the modern world has mainly turned their back on them, they have, in return, turned their back on the fundamental problems of the modern world. Hindu nationalist political leaders, even after they have achieved electoral power have not shown much serious interest in Sanskrit knowledge systems or pre- modern social thought. Their admiration for pre-modern traditions of thinking remains necessarily merely political and entirely abstract. Modern Hindu nationalist thinking simply lacks the intellectual resources to articulate serious conservative responses to the profound problems of modernity. There is an interesting contrast here with the situation in the West. In the USA, not merely is the Christian right an important political force, important commentators reflect on contemporary problems from a Christian point of view. In more academic political thought, important critical thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, or Communitarians have used concepts and arguments based in Aristotelian or Christian

21 I have commented on the suddenness and comprehensiveness of this rupture elsewhere. See Kaviraj (2005). 14 Studies in Indian Politics 6(1) doctrines to articulate powerful critical reflections on modernity. By contrast, there is hardly any serious critique of modernity that draws upon the immensely rich resources of pre-modern Hindu philosophical traditions.22 In social life, Hindu and Islamic religious practices are present and forceful, but in the conversations of history, these voices have receded and become almost inaudible.

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22 There are three different cases where important academic figures have sought to argue for traditional forms of thinking: Ashis Nandy has been a persistent defender of a generally traditional position on some fundamental issues of modernity. Daya Krishna strove hard for a dialogue between modern philosophers who worked in the modern Western tradition and practitioners of Sanskrit philosophical traditions of thought. Ramachandra Gandhi (1984) attempted an exploration of some major theological and philosophical questions in his late writings.