Contradictions of Conservatism

Article 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 mem- bers 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’.

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