PARTONE

TheState. The Fate of a Concept

the revival fthe growinginterest in the natureof the staterepresents I of a maiorintellectual concem of the 1950sand 1960s:state- and I nation-buildingin old societiestumed new nations. Howevet the currentinterest in the statehas a differenttonal qualityto it, for during the last threedecades the world haswitnessed a major changein the contextin which studiesof the stateare conducted. The 1950sand 1960swere a periodofoptimism. Itwaswidely beliet/ed in the modern world, and in modern centresof the nonmodernworld, that every societyhad to passthrough clear-cuthistorical stagesand finally conform to the prevalentmodel of a propernadon-state-exactly as everyeconomy had to go through fixed stagesof growthto attainthe beatitudeof development.It wasalso believed that while passingthrough theseinescapable stages, each society had to restructureits culture,shed its reuogressivebits, and cultivatethose cultural traits thatwerecompatible with the needsof a modernnation-state. ,A------TWoforces seem to havechanged that eas(pEgreglvptv!$rf the relationshipbetween culture and the state.@ southern societieshave failed to walk successfullv arduouspath of -consiaet"t"@ the 'prcElg{=laid out so pott- Wb-rldWar II socialsgiences-and they havefailed to developinto viable nation-statesalong the line rY euiEuJapF. Tne sffie aylike some of specializedcoercive apparatus or privatebusiness venture Second, -culture in thesesocieties has shown monrsilknseftale,qegg bytle tea,ma an@pittedandthe pitted againstthe n6&andneJdJi-nd rationales olof the state,it is often the statethat hasgiven way to culture.This resilience The State:The Fateof a Concept . 3 2 . The Romance of the State The concept of the state that emerged from this experience had some of culture,also expressed in the spiritedresurgence ofethnic self-awareness distinguishing features.Among other things, the new concept assumed in many societies,seems to show that what wasonce possible within a closer fit tietween the realities of ethniciry nadon and state; it gavea small tribesand minoritiesis no longerpossible within largercultural more central role to the state in the society than the ancien rdgime had entitieswithout arousingstiff resistance.Cultures can no longer be done; and it redefined the state as the harbinger and main instrument bulldozedby the globalforces of modernity.Increasingly, cultures are lhatrigser refusingto sing their swansongsand bow out of the world stageto enter "l'ssgkh;A;hi.hi"th;il;t;;onG---eaniuein'f fo r an d p rotecto r o.f lqgd eln jnstilutio nE 3llo_qlAlgd,$tith i n du stri aI the textbooksof history.l@egun tojetum, like capitaligm-.these newly-assumedfunctions naturally madethe-modem ( Freud'sunconscious, to haunt the modern svstemof tt'ationGles. - n*eaion---i,.r"suspicious of all illtural differences,not on the grounds It ir tht. b..f.gio"i'ta t-hatiFe-iecent viciisitud'ei oFGe idea grounds "gai"rt of racialor ethnic prejudice,but on the that suchdifferences or constructionof the statein the dominant cultureof global politics intervenedbetween the'liberated' individual and the republicanstate must be explored. and interferedwith the more professionalaspects of statecraft. Evenmore important, thanks to the new institutional ordering that new of the stateand the expansionof colonial ) What we havelearnt to call the stateis actuallythe modern nation-state. went with the concept j It becamea seriouspresence in the Europeanlandscape only afterthe empires-which had alreadybecome globally visible-within a short i treatyof Wegpfulia in 1648.Though a contractualelement between an time theconceptof a nation-statenotonly marginalizedall otherconceps l--<:k;:-:=^* r rL | : L r r,^^ r,- Spplratusof powerand the ^ general-^- ^,^ public^..Lr - had^ already^ entered^-+^-^r civic-:-,: - space ^-^ -^ of the statein Europebut also beganto enter the intersticesof p,ublic by the thirteenth century in parts of Europe the treaty of Westphalia consciousnessall overAsia, South America and Africa. w(ru ?,{O{;o,' I 1 gaveformal institutional statusto the emergingconcept of a statein The increasingdominance and spreadinghegemony of tlrls idsi had I Europe.But eventhen the conceptwould neverhave attained the power two consequences.First, under the influenceofthe conceptof the nation- ' J it later did if the FrenchRevolution had not underwritten i/by linking st4$qpJa4.\gas increasinglyseen in a more idealizedform-as an. L=- I thestate,orstateh@ 6!gSa{grg-d arbiteramong different classes, ethnicities and interests. e spftiadofrepublicanism in Europeafter the FrenchRevolution Most statesdid not live up to the image,but few disownedit. Someeven ti severedoubts grew among European dlites about the sustainabilityof negotiatedthe transparentgap between principles and practicethe hard long-term legitimacywithin the emergingnon-monarchical states. way.For instance" some of them went democraticbut propoundeddear- Nationalismcame in handyat this point andwas qntematically promoted cut structurallimits on democrag.@and as the alternativebasis for such legitimacy.The Weberiancharisma n i n eteenthcen turies. a I ine was drawn-Eem6?6ocrq9]' -ing!fr eao--, previouslyconcentrated in the personof the monarch-supposedly aniclfiepoffi *ar"r.EiGl6j,sry-of"G-Jtai"ii-e to iniludethe "r mediatingbetween sacred and secularorders-was now distributed beliefthatireedanq-ssrm--etilf iiga-tgpgp"'iggi*6riiL"diinioaacy, among the population, though not equallyof course.Given theJpSS_ if necessaryby curbingthe panlapition iif the loweid?sCC3rarid*oihen o !!D-ee nt-Ia l-1zed p-o-441eh!eal -charism a, a lessspeci fi c, im personal in politics. Likewise somestates managed to becomemore tolerant of nationalismwas seen as the bestguarantor of the stabilityof the state. ethnicityonly afterghettoizing or driving out problematicminorities. This insecurityin the €lite for which nationalismwas supposed What Francedid to the Huguenotsor Polandto the Iewsbefore they to be the persistedin the cultureof the nation-state.From the very learnt to be more tolerant,others states like the United StatesorAustralia did lessconspicuously, but asruthlessly, to their aboriginaland black minorities. state.Some early nation-states,for instance,even proscribed uade unions for a while. And, of course,there itory of specificcultura wasalwap some godforsakenminority or other that thesestates could t I exdude.Such minorities had a placeonly in the few fragmentednations that militated against the broader meani wherethe constructionof the pastwasdominantlyplural and could not confinable within territorial boundaries.Occasionally, states vied with easilybe built on a romanticizedimperial memory. 4 . The Romance of the State TheState: The Fate of a Concept . 5 one anotherto emergeas the upholder of particularcultural values. colonial powerfound in the ideaof the nation-stateths clue to theWestt England and Franceboth spokeon behalfof Europeancivilization, even economicsuccessand poligicaldominance. The idea of a nativenation- whilst they wet to war with eachother and when both dedaredwar in state,thus, was increasinglyseen as the cure-allfor the ills of the Third the rwentiethcentury against Germany, they claimed againto be the World. Rarelydid anyonethink of an indigenousmodem stateas a in hard defendersof Europeancivilization. Nazi Germany turn tried contradictionin terms.Indeed no other idea,exceDt perhaDs the twin in somewhat to becomea symbol of Europeancivilization, albeit a notionsof mode .-I.dil,ily idiosyncraticfashion, and to someof the bestminds of the twentieth py Heidegger-the Nazi daim et century-Ezra Pound,Ihut Hamsun,Martin Evenmodern science and developmentbecame, for the Afro-Asian€lite did not seemparticularly exaggerated. the responsibilityprecisely of the nation-stateand two new raisonsil'etat. It is possibleto arguethat the story of the modernization of Asia that In the beginning,the new conceptof the statein Europeand its beganin the nineteenth-centuryis actuallythe storyof the intemalization corresponding institutional arrangementshad to contend with other, andenculturation ofthe ideaofthe modem stateby individualsas divene suwiving conceptsand structuresof the statethat differedfrom and were asRammohunRoy (1772-1833), SunYat-Sen (1866-1925) and lGmal antagonisticto the newconcept. These contending concepts and structures Ataturk(1881-1938). oft.enwent with culturally distinctiveexpectations and demandsfrom As a resulttoday, in most of the world any referenceto a stateusually the state.British colonialism, for instance,though it wasperfectly at home meansthe modem nation-state.All political arrangementsand all state with the conceptof the nation-statein Britain,operated in India within systemsare now judged by the e)ftentto which they servethe needsof- the broad culturalframework of the Mughal empirewhich had preceded or conform to-the ideaof the nation-state.2Even the varionqmodes of it. This it did axplicitly and self-consciouslyduring the early decadesof defianreqgainst the state are usually informed by thil standardized r the Raj,and more tacitlyand partlyunwittingly roughlytill World War I. _gcepprit. KarlMarx ( l818-83), while he spokeof theii6t-e withering During the first sixty-fiveyears of British rule it is doubtful that the new away,had in mind a nation-statewhich had first to be capturedby a ruling circlesin Indiahad an operational concept of a 'civilizingmission' dedicatedvanguard fully versedin the intricaciesof a modern-read on their part.They certainlydid not havea programmeof state-directed 'western'-polity.3And when the likesof Mikhail Bakunin(1814-76) socialchange and resisted,in virtually everyinstance, Indian attempts to introduce major social reformsin the country.As for its secular 2Thestandard historical, philosophical, and social-scientificscholarship on the state commitmentat that time,it suffictsto saythat the British-lndianstate ,rlsooffers little scopeto thosesavages in the southemworld who want to seethe modem, not merelyproscribed Christian missionary activities, but even lx)sr-seventeenthcentury concept ofthe stateas less than perennial.Nevenhelest studies participatedin religiousfestivals and runningsome Hindu temples,and rrpkrring the historical(and thereforepossibly transient) character ofthe stateare helpful, daimed a partof the donationsmade to the templeson thosegrounds. frlrc l:. Morgan,lnventing the People: The Riseof PopularSouereignty in Englanilaad Amnica (Nrw York:Nonon, 1988). Despitethese early compromises, gradually the concept of thenation- rllespite their anti-staterhetoric, the anarchistand Marxistuaditions havenothing statedid manageto disparageand cornerall the othersurviving notions lrut their touchingfaith in the Europeanconcept ofthe stateto offer to non-EuropeansIn of the stateoutside the Westas so many instancesof medievalismand f,ro .rfterreading Marr one fearsthat the prophetwould be seriouslyannoyed if European- primitivism.The processwas strengthened when, in one societyafter stylestates were not first establishedin the southemworld, beforethey wither awayas a another,indigenous intellectuals and political activists confronting the ( ()ns('(luenceof revolutionaryactivism. For elementsof a fundamentalcritique of the idea ()l tlrr st:r(c,therefore, one is sometimesbetter off studyingrather conservative thinkers like trl ( ),rkeshott,"fhe Characterof a Modern EuropeanState', in his On HumanConiluct, lSee, for instancqBernard S. Cohn, The CommandofLanguage and the language (()xftrrrl (llarendonPress, 1975), or the youngradical of his timg W. von Humboldt, of Command',in RanaiitCuha ( ed.),Subaltem Studias (New Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press, I.nnitsto SrileAction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I 969;fint written in 1792). 1985),Vol. 4, pp.276-329; and 'RepresentingAuthority in VictorianEngland', in Eric Morr rclt"v.urtfor the southemworld could be the insightsof non-academicintellectuals Hobsbawmand TerenceRanger (ed.), Thelnuention of Tradition(Cambridge: Cambridge likc lfcrrryI)avid'I'horeau, TheSelecudWorluofThoreau (Boston: HoughtonMifflin, 1975), UniversityPress, I 983), pp. 165-209;Radhika Singha , A Dapotismof Law:Cime andlustice or M.K. (landhi, I lind Swamj,in CollecwdWorlu of MahatmaGandhi, (Delhi: Govemment in EarlyColonial India (Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1998). oflndia,l9rrj), Vol. a, pp.81-103. . 6 TheRomance of theState The State:The Fateofa Concept . z and Piotr Kropotkin (1842-1921)spoke of the ills of the state,they Not that everyoneduring the lastthree centuries has dutifully iumped invariably had in mind the westemnation-state, The anarchistswere as on the bandwagonof the modem state.But they arethe exceptions.And ignorant as the Mamistswere contemptuous of the very different kinds tlreseexceptions have been systematically neutralized by the dominant of statethat lessermortals in the savageworld had lived or experimented cultureof knowledge.Given the ov,erallspirit of post-Enlightenment with. l:urope, it has been easyto re-readintellectuals such as William Blake ( | 757 - | 827), Henry DavidThoreau (L 8tZ- 62) and lohn Ruskin( 18t 9- It is only now, forty-fiveyears after World War II, that some social 1900)either as incurableromantic visionaries or asgrand eccentrics. analystshave again begun to takeseriously the growinginability of the l'hey arerespected as poets,critics and moral exemplars,but not as nation-stateto servethe needsof civil societyin largeparts of theworld. thinkerswho havesomething to sayaboutpublic life and the fateof civil As I havealready pointed out, therewerecritics of the statein nineteenth societythe world over.It hasgone against these intellectuals that they centuryEurope. Some, like Man<,expected the stateto wither awayafter sensedthe ism, playingits rolein historysome like teoTolstoy(1828-1910) found it science rdciew-* nd gg lyttsso:rleSS,-ltJ Y "rp3 a moral abominationwhich had to be kept in strictcheck, and some rnarglllqliZrrion of @eptionsof the like GeorgeSorel (1847-1922) and Kropotkinthought the starecould ll::: l,+11gs-j"aj'i:"li'* n'ue'i"' :uv, be done awaywith suaightaway.But they were all, without exception, bee evensligh$ffial of the Eurocentric.They showed little knowledgeof or respectfor rhe ulban-industrialand technocraticfuture ofhumankind is seenas outside n other partsof the world. the boundsof normalityand sanity. rsity there was consisted Thishegemony of the ideaof the modernnation-state has created a primarily in theorizing a vague idea of the nonwestem state which was political paradox in debateson the statetoday. Newer critics find the later formalized byscholars like IGrl Wittforgel as'Orienral despotism' conceptof the modernstate looking more and more tired and unreal, and by Max Weber as 'the pre-modern state'. andunable to copewith the newproblems and threatsto human survival. Predictably, this mythical premodem state propagated by the better- Yet,in the meanwhile,the concepthas acquired immense institutional known Europeanscholars looked remarkably like a primitive Afro-Asian powerand a wide basewithin global massculture. It has becomean version of the ancim rdgime.ltwas mythical becauseit analyticallysteam- axiomaticpart of conventionalwisdom or common sense.This paradox rollered the diversepasts of the nod-West,collapsing them into a single hasensured that organizedpolitical power cannot easily be mobilized, ideal type, which (as in Weber) instead of increasing an understanding evenin the southernworld, to resistthe pathologiesof the modern state. of thesesocieties, diminished it. After all, this was primarily an effort I:itherthe resistancehas to comefrom the fringesof the polity,or it has to make manageablediverse nonwestern pasts by incorporating them to legitimizeitself in the languageof the mainstream.Vested interests into a more familiar western past. Later,this processof incorporation which havegrown up around the ideaof the modern state,thus, define was scientifically sanctioned and institutionalized through Weberian not merelythe mainstreambut alsomost of the popularconcepts and political sociology,particularly its post-World War II Parsonianversion firrmsof dissent. which dominated the behavioural persuasion in western political The resuls areplain. In societyafter society, in the nameof protecting sciencetill the 1970s.4 or helping the state,rulers have begun to extractnew kinds of economic ,rnd political surplusfrom the ruled and haveunleashed on resisting aSatishArora, 'Pre-Empted Future? Notes on Theoriesof PoliticalDevelopment', in RainiKothari (ed.), State and NationBuilding (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1976), pp. 23-66. Fora morerecent attempt to locatesuch critiques in theoverall culture of the tolerate that violenceas globally-dominantknowledge sptem, seeThriq Banuri, 'Modemization and Its Discontents: 4 A CulturalPerspective on Theoriesof Development',in Fr€d€riqueApffel-Marglin and StephenMarglin (ed.), DomirwtingKnowledge: Darclopment, Culare and Resisunce, (Oxford: ', \r.rt( l).ll)crpresented at the Intemational conference on politicallnstitutions in theThird lf ClarendonPress, 1990), pp.73-l0l; andChai-AnanSamudavanija, TheThree-Dimensional \\i 'rlrf i^ rheProcess of Adiustmentand Modemization,Berlin, 4-7 luly 19g9,mimeo. g o TheRomance of the State TheState: The Fateofa Concept . 9 for future generationsof their compauiots. Eventhose deeply suspicious democracywhich the citizens in their societieswould one day come to of the state'sdominant role in the economy areperfectly willing to trust deserve.That is, if the citizens got themselvesproperly educated in the it when it comesto national securityand intemational relations.Even as intricaciesof modern socialand economicinstitutions. the idea of the nation-stateloses a part of its gloss-as in West Europe A secondcommon threadin the relationshipbetween the stateand in the 1980sand 1990s-it strengthensits hold on the imagination of society is the direct link which the modein statehas established with many in theThird World who seein it one of the few instrumentsavailable mega-technologyon the one hand, and doctrinesof national security to ensureprogress and equality within the global system.That the state and developmenton the other.These linlc havebecome moreand more is also a meansof ensuringFirst World standardsof living for those who conspicuousto the victims of st4teviolence, thanks to consistentattacks havecontrol or accessto it in the Third World, is, of course,seen as an by many statesin the Third World on their citizensin the name of unfortunate and incidental by-product. developmentand national security,and the sJrstematico(port ofviolence and authoritarianism by somewestem states, both liberalcapitalist and IvVhatenplains this anomalous relationship benrrreenthe stateand society socialist,during the past 150years.6 in large parts of the world? The answer differs from society to society Theseelemens in the ideology of the statehave come under criticism but thereare some common threads. because,apart from becomingiustifications for newkinds of violence First,the idea of the nation-state entered most southern societies they havebecome conceptually hollow in real life. Let me give one or through the colonial connection, riding piggybackon the conceptof two examples.The changingnature of modem technologyhas ensured the white man'sburden. That experiencewas intemalized.When, after that the statecan provide securityprimarily only to itself not its citizens.T decolonization, indigenous€lites acquired control over the stateapparatus, If there were to be a nudear war betweenIndia and China for e,xamplg they quickly learnt to seeklegitimacy in a nativeversionof the civilizing and Nepal maintained its traditional neutraliry that neutralitycould missionand soughttoestablish a similarcolonial relationshipbetween no longerguaranteethe personalsecurityof a singleNepalicitizen. For the stateand society.s good or ill, our hypotheticalaverage Nepali citizenmust look for security elsewhere.The modem statecan alwap askthe citizento makesacrifices They found excellentiustification for this in the various $eges of modemization floating around in the post-WorldWar II worl(. P{F;rts=-) in the name of security; but it cannot alwaysdeliver that security. once made to colonial regimesfor their civilizing mission\ere osd Likewise even spectacularstate-conuolled development in a society demandedby thosecontrolling the indigenousstata as agents of mod- is no guarantorof the dwelopment of that society,however paradoxical statesin ernization and Buarantorsof ity. Theywere not called pay- this may sound. There are a number of the world where s though. Theywere cal developmentmeans only the developmentof the stateitself or, at most, the statesector. In fact, in a number of casesthe developmentof the state hasbeen the bestpredictor of the underdevelopmentof society.sSome in the Third World have systEfriiitdnJffustin€d themselvesthus. From FerdinandMarcos to lee Kuan Yew from Ayub Ktran during the second 6On the intimate connection betweenthe stateand the coercivemight of science,see period of military rule in Pakistanto Indira Gandhi during the Emer- for instanceShiv Visvanathan,'From the Annals of a LaboratoryState', in Ashis Nandy gency in India, not to speak of sundry despotsin South America and (ed.),Science, Hegemony andViolence: A RequiemforModemity (Tokyo: The United Nations pp. Africa, it has beenthe same story. None of theseworthies everbothered Universityand NenrDelhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1988), 257-88;and ClaudeAlrares, Science,Deuelopment andViolence: TheTluilight of Modenity (Delhi:OxfordUniversity PEss, to justifi themselvesas guardians of civil rights or democracy,though all l ee2). of them were indirect beneficiaries or products of movementsfor self- TSeeforinstance, Giri Deshingkar,'People'sSecurityVersus National Security', Sarninar; rule and democratic rights in the colonial period. At most, they justi- December1982, (280), pp. 28-30. fied themselvesas public bcnefactors removing roadblocls to a future there is a dosely associatedcategory of suchstates-Herb Rith calls them repressive- developmentalistregimes-which we are not consideringhere; in them, the state'srole as the ultimate development agencylegitimizes its authoritariannature and repressive 5See, 'Culture Statg and the Rediscoveryof tndian Politics',pp. I 6-33. policies. SeeHerb Feith, 'Repressive-Developmentalistregimes in Asia: Old Strengths, 10 . TheRomance of theState The State:'l'he Fate of a Concept . I I

scholarshave, consequentlt defined developmentas the slogan by andThirdWorlds.There are institutional checls in the FirstWorldagainst which the statemobilizes resourcesintemally and oart+l+i"gthemwithin the purviewof the state.In the process principleof scientificrationality (which rationalizes,in Freud'ssense of electoralpolitics organ ized aroundthesta€h-as worsened the relationship the term, all actionsof the statethat in tum seeksto rationalizq this time betweencommunities and ensured, in the nameof proFtress,the destruction in Max Weber'ssense of the term, the societyit lords over);and the state of hundredsoflifestylesan{ife-supportqntemstttittraqiuonalfy-q-ffi li@ asa meansof secularizingsociety. Thestate as the epitome of scientificrationality and thechief secular- oft rzrrrgage nr umes.Tne mooern to be spreadall overthe world wereoften violent and authoritarian.But statehas established such a doserelationship with modernscience and onething theydid not-or could not-do.F-ey,*iA;6frry to ..tdii\ technologythat it has now becomethe major sourceof attackon all areasof human life and they did not setup lotal systemsfor socialandl nonmodernsystems of knowledge.In the politicsof knowledgetoday, pol itical engineeri ng basedpqir th€€ry-dfTnexwableh istorical l3ys1 nobody canimagine one without the other.Reportedly, more than 95 Sucbstates.qeitherhqdthe lec!6logi€alvhe+ewitha\oL in most cases; cl tldphitfsophical huB\s to frount anysuch ambitious'effort. As a result, and of tfiis-q5oer cent, roughly two$iid is m-ilmryESetrchsponsored cmimsofstatevio|ence,hadafewescaperoutes. the state.Almost the entirecoercive power of the modem statenow Thestatg too, knowingthat its writ did not run beyonda point, had to -6;Es"f_!y 6m-mega-scienceandmega-technology,anddevelopingthe leam to live with human diversity,if not on ideologicalgrounds, at least statetoday means primarily equippingit with greatercoercive might with on groundsof realpolitikand pragmaticconsiderations. the help of modernscience and technology.Once again, the brunt of this Under the dispensationof the modernnation-state, similar escape ( attaefa-m ilfanfy 6fknowledge\is felt more in the former Second routescan be kept open onlywhen the polity is fully democratic.Other- wise,the state'scontrol overa citizen'srights and freedombecomes much NewVulnerabilities',paper presented at the conference of theWorld Order Models Proiect, more total. With the help of modern technology,management sys- New York, lune 1979,and publishedin ChristianConference ofAsia, EscapeFrom tems and information control, sucha statecan successfullyplug the Domination:A ConsulutionReport on Pattemsof Dominationand People's Movemenu in Asia I escaperoutes that usedto be availableto the citizenof pre-modernor (Tokyo:April 1980). nonmodernsocieties. l2 eSeefor instance,in thecontext ofAfrica, Afsaneh Eghbal, 'lletat contre L ethnicite- ,l Un NouvelleArme: [.e Development Exclusion' , IFDA Dossier,luly-August 1983, pp. l7- 2 29, and RichardFalk, AWorld OrderPerspective on Authoritarianism',(New York:World loSeeAlvares, Science, Development anil Violence. OrderModels Proiect, 1978), mimeo. rlThisprocess has been described in somedetail in AshisNandy, ShikhaTiivedi, Achyut ln the southemcountries the mainrakond'etre of the statehas been development. For Yagnikand ShailMayaram, Creating a Nationality:The Ramjanmabhumi Mouemqnt and Fear an influential critique ofdarelopment:il; a processand an ideology,see Custavo Esteva, oftheself(NewDelhi:OxfordUniversityPress,1995).Seealso,VandanaShiva,TfteViolence 'RegeneratingPeople's Space', in Akenrativa,1987 , 12(l\, pp. 125-52, and what probably of GreenRevolution, (Penang: Third World Networkand london: Zed books, l99l ); Tariq arethe trvomost comprehensiveanalyses of the fateof the developmentidea from Arturo Banuri and Durre SameenAhmed, 'Official Nationalism,Ethnic Politics,and Collectirae Escobar,Power and Visibility: The Invention and Managementof Dwelopment in the Violence:Karachi in the 1980s',presented at the UN University-WlDERConference on Third World, Ph.D.dissenation, University ofC,alifomia, Berkeley, 1987; andThriq Banuri, EthniciryKarachi, 14-18 fanuary1989, mimeo; Ashis Nandy, The Politicsof Secularism 'Developmentand the Politicsof Knowledge:A CriticalInterpretation of the SocialRole of and the Rediscoveryof ReligiousTolerance', Altzrnatives, 1988, l3(3), pp. 177-94; and Modemization Theoriesin Development',in Apffel-Marglin and Marglin, Dominating AshisNandy The PoliticalCulture qf the lndianState', Daedalw, 118, Fall 1989, pp. I -26. r2Rabindranath Krcwleilge,pp. 29-7 2. Seealso'Culture, Voice and l)evelopment'pp. 15 I -70. Tagore,Nationalism (Madras: Macmillan, 1985). This is a collection 12 r TheRomance of theState TheState:TheFateofaConcept. :5:-_ It is easyto identifr many of the problems with the prevalent idea of Hindu monarchicalstates like Nepal. Nor does it adequatelyexplain I I the state. It is lesseasy, when dealing with a social organization as the cultural statusof statessuch as Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh, | + fundamental as the statq to foretell its future or guesswhat forms may Pakistanand Sri l-anka,separated from India not by civilizationalbut by [ ' ultimately emergein its place.Some scattered nonmodem or postmodem political boundaries. --? conceptsof statehavq however,begun to emergein responseto the Third, therehave been others to w\om the conceptof a moderateor crisisof the nation-statein our times.For while it is an open question civil statepromises some respitg if not a remedy.raIt is possible they what forms the postmodern statewill take rhereis little doubt that the feel, to recoverthe liberal,pace-setting role of the statethrough detailed dominant conceptof the statewill be drasticallyaltered. If not in re- monitoring of it by thosepolitically activeoutside the statesector, in sponseto intellectual doubts and criticism, at least in responseto the areassuch as environmenl peacq human righo feminism, altemative largerprocesses of democratizationand globalizationgoing on all over sciencesand technologies.In this fashion,the enrichmentof civil society the world. Of these globalizationis a much studiedprocess these da1a, and reformofthe statewillbring abouta redefinitionof is scopeThough eventhough the crisis of the modern statesprings primarily from the this is the way resistanceagainst state-initiated violence has crFtallized conuadictionthat hasarisen between it and the demandsfor democrati- in many societies,one wondersif the modern nation-statehas retained zation of the world of knowledgeand restorationof the dignity of peoples enough floribility to allow for such monitoring. Especiallygiven the peripheralizedduring the last two hundred years. consensusmost modern stateshave now built among largesections of FirsLthere have emerged the conceptsof multi-nal.ional,multi-ethnic the middle classesand the rirediaagainst the-idea of diversityand in and multicultural statesas correctives to the standardidea of the unitary favour of professionalorpertise. Both thesekindb of consensusallowthe nation-state.In the past,bureaucratic socialist states like the USSRor nation-statedemooatically to marginalizegrassroots initiatives ofrnrious Yugoslaviaused to preferthe first concept;western liberal societieslike kinds, especiallyif they do not happento be politleallyqr ideologically the United Statesand Britain the lattertwo. None of the threehas been colTect. an unmixed blessingand the strainshave begun to show.The conceptof Finally,there has been a re-emergencedanarchism o/various hues. the multi-national statehas not helped China or the SovietUnion to In the WesLthis responseis usuallyanaemic )nd{g1@nite and survives avoidethnic politics and strife;that of the multi-ethnic or multi-cultural camouflagedin someforms of environmentalismand alternative-science statehas not helpedBritain, France or Canadato live in peacewith their movements.When directlypolitical, suchanarchism somehow convqru minorities.Ethnic and religiousstrife was not unknown earliereither, the impressionof being a form of eccentricityor esoterica.In theThird butthe modemstateseems keen to prorethat itsdaim to geatertolerance World, it occasionallyhas some political dout, thanls to the factthat the I t( of diversity in thesetwo sectorsis a triumph of hope oier experience. anti-imperialistmovements, inpractice, often had to operatefrom outside F' l' secon l the statesector. Probably the bestinstance is the 'anarchism'associated mafor lnto havetried to redefinethe state.At with the name of MohandasKaramchand Gandhi.rs Many Indian l""rj rl&gF1lh=T pleadedfo-r the use of rhecongplglqdl4Lzational Gandhiansare still trying to live down that heritageand convertGandhism statein largecountrTes sutrsTirdi a.13Prima facie, the concept seems into a non-threatenin&official voluntarism actingas an adiunct of the to p@grapFital, cultural and stateboundaries Indian state.But Gandhi,nearly fortyyears after his death,has obviously that may be impossibleto obtain in reality.In the caseof India, it does retainedsome nuisance value and at leastsome young Gandhians have not seemto accountadequately for the political statusof independent l4Raini Kothari, 'Crisis of the ModerateState and Decline of Democrad, in Peter of lecturesdelivered in the 1930sin lapan and lndia. Often maudlin and unbearably Lyon and lames Manor (ed.), Tranderand Tfansformation:Political Institutionsin the New purplq it remainsthe first. and an impressivgcritique of the modem stateon the ground Commonunalth:Essal,s in Honourol W.H. Motris-lona (kicester: kicester University Press, of its totalism. Predictably,the lecureswere not panicularly popular in f apanand India. 1983);and D.L. Sheth,'Grassroots Stinings and the Futureof Politics',Alternatives, March l3RavinderKumar, 'Nation-State or Civilizational State?'(Nory Dethi: Nehru Memorial 1e83,e(r), pp. r-24. Museum and Library 1989). OccasionalPapers, mimeo. rsl'orexample, Gandhi, Hinil Swamj, pp. 81-208. 14 . The Romanceof the State come doser to those forwhom the retum to a revised form of a culturally- rooted, less monolithic, 'softer', nonmodern minimal state holds the most promise.

None of these dissenting new approaches,however, as yet pose a seri- ous threat to the dominant culture of the state,despite the widespread awarenessthat there is something rotten in the state of the state.None of the alternativesmentioned herehas capturedthe imagination of the Culture,State and the Rediscovery public, exceptover short stretchesof time. On the other hand, given the of IndianPolitics mounting problemswith the dominant model of the state,these fringe dissentersdo not look asinsane as they once did. It is possiblethat in the future they may developinto more formidable enemies of public order and conventionalpolitical rationality. In the meanwhile, the dissenterscan perhapsconsole themselves that no systernbecomes morally acceptablemerely becausehuman imagination has failed to produqe an alternativeto it at a given point in A societvcan understandthe relationshipbetween itsculture and time. A irc state in two ways. rne nrs--lily is 6-took foi ine means by L I-\,ffilEE cnlfme can be made to contribute to the sustenance and growth of the state.The state here is seen as operating according to ce{ain fixe{, universal, qsCiologicalrules. Elements of the culture that help-Gengthen the stateai-Ale?n as lobd; elements of the culture that do not help the proper functioning of the state or hinder its growth are seenas defective.A mature society,in this view, shedsor actively eliminates these defectiveelements, to improve both the functioning of the state and the quality of the culture. The second way of looking at the relationship between culture and the stafe is-to do sd fiiimlhe standpoint of the culture. This approach may regard the stateas a protector, an internal critic or a thermostat for the culture but not as the ultimate pacesetterfor the society'sway of life. The statehere is made to servethe needsof or contribute to the enrichment of the culture; it is never allowed to dictate terms to the culture. Even when the state is used as a critique of the culture and the culture is sought to be transformed,the final iustification for the criticism and the transformation is not sought in the intrinsic logic of statecraftor in the universal laws of stateformation. That justification is sought in the self-perceivedneeds of the culture and the people and in the moral framework used by the people. This dichotomy between the stateand the culture-oriented views of sociery of course,dissolves if one usesthe older idea of the state as part and parcel of culture (as obtains in many traditional societies)or if one refusesto acceptthe modem idea of nation-stateas the only genuine / Culture,State and the Rediscovery of Indian politics . lz l6 . TheRomance of theState componentbuilt into them. From TalcottParsons, Edward Shils and version of state(as is assumedby most modern political and social David Eastonto l(arl Deutsch,Samuel Huntington and Lucian pye it is analyststoday). In most nonmodem societies,among peoplewho work the samestory. So much so tha! under their influence,modern political withthe older ideaand notwith the modem ideaof the nation-statethe analystsand journalistsare forced to fall backon state-orientedanalytic culture-orientedapproach to stateis seenas natural and the state-oriented categorieqeven after the categorieshave shownpoor interpretativepoWer, approachas an imposition.r At the sametime, in modern societiesthe asoften happenswhen figureslike M.K.Gandhi, Ayatollah Khomeini, nition-state-orientedapproach seems natural and rational,and the anlture- MaulanaBhashani and Iarnail Singh Bhindranwale(to give random one unnatural,irrational or primitive.The choice,therefore, oriented examples)become politically consequential. boils down to one betweenthe culture-orientedand the nation-state- This is part of a largerpicture. Thke, for instance,studies of the cultural oriented. Still, for the sakeof simpliciry I shall usehere the expression contortsof economicgrowth done during the sameperiod. The main state-orientedor statistto meanthe nation-state-oriented,hoping that function of culture,according to thesestudies, was to facilitateeconomic the readerwillnot confuselhis conceptof 'statist'withthat usedin debates growth. Aspectsof culture that stood in the way of suchgrowth had to betweenthe socialistthinkers and the liberalsbelieving in a minimal be ruthlesslyexcised. In 'stagnant'cultures,that is, in cultureswhich did state. not nurture a thriving modern economy,the engineeringchallenge was I am not consideringhere either the nature of the stateor that of to rediscoveror introducecultural elements which would triggeror sustain culture.These are vital issueswhich needto be discussedfully. For the economic growth and the spirit of the market that went with it. This I wish to avoidthem becauseI want to do iusticeto the culture- moment was the thrust of the psychologicalstudies of achigvementmotivation that believesthat a statecan destroythe civilization oriented approach done by David McClellandand company,and the studiesof protestant- ii is a part evenwhen-forgive the anthropomorphism-the of which ethics-likeelements in nonwesterncultures by a drove of social stateare'honourable'and even when it is'honestly' intentionsof the anthropologists.Even the tough-mindedeconomiss ofthe period,who a decayingcivilization. when a statebecomes ethno- trying to improve did not believein the relevanceof suchwoolly psychologicalor cultural approachbelieves, the remedy does not lie cidal, the culture-oriented anthropological work, neverfaltered in their tii"f tn""t a societyhad the state,since this providesno checkagainst the merely in capturing to giveprimacy to the needsof the modern economy,however defined, as ethnocidal in scopeas it wasbefore being captuied sratebecoming overthe needsof culture.So did the mercenariesamong them vending captured. the materialist-read economic-interpretation of history to ensurethe centralityof their dismalscience in the world of socialknowledge. In I India, at least,I havenot comeacross a singlework of anyManrist economist of the periodwhich challengedthe basicpriority of economicsand sought Forthe last 150years, westernized, middle-class Indians have leamt to to restore,even as a distantgoal, Man< s original vision of a societyfreed that orientsthe needsof the culture look at the first approach-the one from the bondageof economism.2 the state-as the very epitome of political maturity, to the needsof A similarcase can be madeabout science. Most science-and-culture achievementand development.Since the nation-state$'stem acquired studiesof the 1950sand 1960ssought to make the societysafe for its presentglobal predominance in the nineteenthcentury most politicd modern science.For this purpose,all nonmodern cultureswere to be itt theWist, too, hasforgotten the altemative.And sincea global science"rrilpir of politics becamefullyoperational afterWorldWar II, the state- 20ne ofthe fint Marxistthinkers in theThirdworld to culture has become the only way of looking at to explicitlyrecognize the primacy oriented attitude of culture wasAmilcar cabral (t924-za). seehis Retltrnto the political dwelopment source:selecud speulw culture the world over.Nearly all the studiesof (New York: Monthly ReviewPress, l9Z3). He, of course,drew upon the work of Aim€ and political cultureofthe 1950sand 1960shave this cultural-engineering c€saire and kopold senghor.one suspectsthat the African heritageof the rhree had somethingto do with their sensitivity.The disintegratingnative cultures they sawaround rhem were more threatenedthan threatening something which a Mao Zedong could lln UaditionalIndia, for instance,the statewas clearly expected to be a part ofculture not sayabout china. In India, unfortunately,even the Marxism ofclassicalscholan like and the king was expectedto seehimself not only a protector of dharmabut also as a D.D. Kosambiand D.P.chanopadhyayhas remained in essenceanotherversion wap of life and a promoterofethnictolerance.WhiletheArthashastra ofwestem protectorofmultiple Orientalism and colonial anthropology. may not provide a clue to this, the puranas,the folklore andlohacharado' 18 . TheRomance of the State Culture,State and the Rediscoveryof IndianPolitics . 19 retooled and mademore rational or modern.Thus, scientific criticisms the nineteenth century that a seriesof dedicatedHindu religious and of culturewere encouraged but culturalcriticisms of sciencewere dubbed social reformersfirst mooted the idea that what Hinduism lackedwas obscurantist.Occasionally, shallow criticismsof the social relations of the primacy which most forms of post-medieval,westem Christianity sciencewere allowed-in the sensethat the control overscience exercised grantedto the state.Even Islam, they felt, had a built-in spacefor such by imperialism or capitalism or by army generalswas allowed to be primacy.The Hindus did not. That waswhy, theirview the Hindus orposed.But this wasdone aspart of an attempt to protectthe tort and in were having it so bad. The sorrow of that generationof reformerswas the core valuesof modem sciencewhich were seenas absoluteand as that the Hindu seemedan animal peculiarlyhostile and insensitiveto the lastword in human rationality.As if, somehowthe forcesofviolence the subtletiesof the nation-statesystem; their hope wasthat the hostility and exploitation, aftertaking overmuch ofthe conte:Oxford University Press, theological works or through commentarieson the works of others.Sudipu l(rirai suggests 1980), pp. 47-69; andThe Intimate Enemy:Los and WV of Self Under C-alonblism that BhudevMukhopadhyaya ( less Bankimchandra, (New Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress. 1983). 1827-94), a known contemponry of wasthe first to explicitly acceptand plead for a modem nation-statein India. 20 r TheRomance of the State Culture,State and the Rediscoveryof IndianPolitics . 2l the absoluteprimacy of tie state,partly becausethe statewas not theirs penonality and culturq which had to be reformed as the fint step to and partly becauseeven their British rulershad not yet shown any Sreat political freedom.(The British in India, fortheir own reasons,endorsed ideologicalcommitment to the statesystem theywere running. The state this priority of the cultural over the political enthusiastically.)Many of for the firstgeneration of Britishrulers was mainly a meansof making thesesocial reformers, inappropriatelycalled Hindu revivalists,were later money,not a meansof culturalengineering. These rulers feared and to havemuch sympathyfortheanti-British terrorist movements. Butthat respectedIndian culture,which they tried not to disturb as long asit did sympathy was not accompaniedby any passion for wider political not standin the way of their money-making.Moreover, the Rajoccupied participationof the people.Indeed, theywere alwaln a little afraid of the a relativelysmall part of the subcontinentand certainlydid not give majority of Hindus who lived in the 500,000Indian villages.Hindu the impressionof beingthe paramountpower in the country.Indians rashtra,yes; but not with the full participationof all the Hindu pmja,at pressurizingtheir Britishrulers to intervenein Indian societycould not leastnot with that of the prajaas they were,and certainlynot with the internalizea highly activistor an awesomelygrand image of the states participationof all Hindus in the short run. The conspiratorialstyle Nonetheless,the first generationof social reformershad provided of the terroristswas handy here since it automaticallyresuicted mass the baseon which thesecond generation of reformersbuilt their adoration participationin politics.Even the constantinvocation of the Hindu past for the modem ideaof the nation-stateand their suspicionof all grass- by the revivalists-the practicewhich gavethem their distinctirrcname- roots politics.Certainly, these latter reformersdid not put any premium wasa criticismof living Hindus. It wasa compensatoryact. It hid the on participatory politics, which they acceptedtheoretically only as a revivalists'admiration for the West and for western Christianity and vague,populist possibility. Evenwhen they spoke of masspolitics as middle-easternIslam, seenas martial and valorous;and it hid the desirable,they sawit assomething that had to come later-after the desperatesearch for the samequalities in the Hindu past.The political Hindu had beenmorally and educationallyuplifted and after he or she consequenceof this admiration for the conquerorsof the Hindus was had learnt to takeon modern responsibilities.6This shieldedthem from the continuousattempt by many to re-educatethe 'politically immature', the awarenessthat they were unwilling or incapableof mobilizing anarchic,living Hindus, so that the latter could rediscovertheir lost ordinary Indians for basicpolitical changes,induding full participation westernand Islamicvalues and playtheir properrole in the globalq6tem in the anti-imperial struggle. of nation-states.SwamiVivekananda, when he envisioneda new raceof Thevotaries of a Hindu nation-state,thinking that theywere pleading VedanticHindus who would build a westernsociety in India, wasonly for a Hindu polity,were also mostly unaware that the nation-stateq/rstem being tme to the primacy-of-the-statethesis.T wasone of the more recentinnovations in human civilization and that it I am arguingthat the nineteenth-centurycharacters whom modern had comeinto being only about two hundredyears earlier in Europe in Indians haveleamt to call revivalistswere never truly anti-Westor anti- the mid-seventeenthcentury. They choseto seeit as one of the etemal Islam.Theywere only anti-Britishand anti-Muslim in the Indian conteKt. veritiesof humankind. Naturally,they diagnosedHindu inadequacy Their ideal, in important respects,was westem Christianity or WestAsian in state-orientedpolitics as the resultof a major defectin the Hindu Islam. And as for their conceptof the state,it was perfectlymodem. If anything they were fundamentallyand ferociouslyanti-Hindu.8 The sTherewas also probably a feeling among Indians that there should be limits to only good Hindu to themwas the Hindu who wasdead, that is,the Hindu which a colonial stateshould be invotvedby its subiectsin the matter of social reform. who had lived a few thousandyearsago. Theywanted to entertheworld Consider,for instance,the ambivalenceof RammohunRoy (1772-1833), who worked scenewithan engineeredHinduwho, butforhis ideologicalcommitment the wisdom of a aggressivelyfor the abolition of the practiceof sati but who doubted to dassicalHinduism, would be a westemman, a manwho would accept state-imposedban on it. 6AurobindoGhose ( 1872- 1950) in his revolutionaryyears, when he wasunder the populism. The hero of 7lt influence of Mazzini, was a good example of such romantic wasthe samestatist vision of India which orplains SisterNivedita's ( 1867-f 9lf ) SaratchandraChattopadhyay's novel Pather Dabr, Sabyasachi. is a faithful idealizationof discomfort with Ananda Coomaraswamy(1877-19a7) whom she consideredtoo this approachto political panicipation. The pathologicalpossibilities of the approach conservative. hrve beenexplored in some detail in RabindranathTagore's novels Gora, The Home and &Ihis has been discussedin Nandy, Thelntimau Enemy.See also The T\rilight of the World and Char Mhyay Cenitudes',pp. 6l-82. Culture,State and the Rediscovery of Indian politics o 23 22 o The Romance of the State concerned,Indian modemistsas well as radicalshave drawn upon the who not the rulesof the gamecalled the nation-statesystem and could ideologicalframework first popularized by Hindu nationalism.Itwas in be shortchangedeither by the westerneror by the Muslim. their model that the modem nation-statefirst becamean absolutevalue It wasthis heritageon which both the mainstreamliberal and the and acquiredabsolute primacy over the needsof the Indian civilization. official Maxist ideologiesin India wereto laterbuild. Strangethough it may sound to many,there uras a cultural continuity betweenthe early II primacy accordedto the stateand the strandof consciousnesswhich was later to seeklegitimacy in popular modem theoriesof the statein Yet, there has alwaysbern in India during the iast 150 yearsanother India. Both liberals and official Marxistslike to trace their origins to intellectualcurrent that haslooked differentlyat the needsof the society. the earlier integrationisttradition of social reform, the one beginning This curent seesstate-oriented politics asa meansof criticizing Indian with Rammohun Roy (1772-1833) and more or lessending with culturq evenas a meansof renegotiatingtraditional socialrelationships, RabindranathTagore(1861-1940) and Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866- but it refusesto seesuch politics astheraisond'Am of Indian civilization. 1915).This ignoresthe checkswithin the ideologicalframe of these However,though the maiority of Indians may have alwayslived with pioneers.Rammohun Roy, for instance,was a modemizer,but he located sucha conceptof politics,for modern India the concepthas survived the origins of the problemsof Hindu personalityand culture in the only as part of an intellectualunderground since the middle of the colonial situationand not in Hindu traditions.He believedthat the nineteenthcentury. pathologiesof Hinduism he wasfighting could be found only around Itwas onlyunderthe influenceof Gandhithat this currenttemporarily the institutional structuresintroduced by British rule and, therefore, acquireda certainself-consciousness and political dominance.Gandhi his own religiousreforms and the new Hindu secthe establishedwere hasbeen often called an anarchist.To the extentthat he suspectedand directedonly at'exposed'Hindus,not at partsof the societyuntouched fought statepower and refusedto granr it the primary role in guiding by colonialism.As he himselfput it: or conuolling political and socialchange he wasclose to anarchism. Also,while leadinga freedomstruggle against a foreignpower, he could of various Froma carefulsuwey and observation of thepeople and inhabitants get awaywith his antipathy to the state.This situation could not last in everycondition of life I amof theopinion that the partsof thecountry and beyonda point. Hisvery success dug the grave of his ideolory;his.antistatist peasanSand villagers who reside at a distance from large towns and head stations political thought quickly went into recessionafter Independence.The andcourts of laq areas innocent, temperate and moral in theirconduct as the demandsof statecraftin a newly-independentnation were peopleof anycountry whatsoever; and the further I proceedtowards the North such that national leadersnot only beganto look with suspicionat the Gandhian andWest [away from Britishlndial, the greaterthe honesrysimplicity and independenceof character I meet with.e emphasison cultural traditions, they alsobegan to encouragepolitical interpretationsof Gandhiwhich fitted him into rhe state-orientedframe In his own crude,unsure way Roy did try to protectthe architectonics of politics,neutralizing or ignoring his culture-orientedself asirelevant of Indian culture.He did not want Indian cultureto be integratedinto saintlinessor eccentricity.On this ideologicalissue, theywere in perfect the modern world; he wantedmodernity to be integnted into Indian agreementwith Gandhi'sassassin Nathuram Godse an avowedstatist. culture. His modern admirershave chosen to forget the checkswithin It was no accidentthat Godse,though called an ultra-conservativefelt him-weak though the checlawere. They have built him up asthe father threatenednot by modernistslike lawaharlalNehru, but by Gandhi.r0 of modern India and as a mindlessadmirer of everythingwestem. Thus,as far asthe role of the nation-statein the Indian civilization is It is only now that this recessivestrain of consciousnessis againcoming into its own in the works of a number of young and not-so-young gFor enampleRammohun Roy, Additional QueriesRespecdng the Condition of India', r0Ashis in lGlidasNagand Debaiyoti Burman (ed.),TlwEnglish works (calcuna: sadharan Brahmo Nandy,'Final EncountenThe Politicsof the Assassinationof Gandhi',in At the Samai,1947). Pan tll, pp. 63-8; seeespecially pp.64-5.Cf . Candhi'scritique of the railwap F.dgeof Psychology:Essays in Politiaand Culture(Nern Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, l99Z), and lawyersin Hind swaraj,in collecudwoths of MahatmaGanilhi (Delhi: Publications pp. 70-98; and 'CodseKilled Gandhi?', Resurgencafanuary-February I 983 (96), pp. 2B-9. Division,Govemment of India,1963), Vol. 4, pp. 8l-208. 24 o The Romance of the State Culture,State and the Rediscoveryof IndianPolitics o 25

scholars-traditionalists, counter-modernists,post-Mao Marxists, the oppressedand it must haveprecedence over the worldview of the anarchistsand neo-Gandhians.Evidently, an open polity has its own dominanl evenwhen the latterclaims to representuniversal, cumulative Iogic.At the peripheriesof the modern Indian polity itself, the demand rationality and sanctionsthe very latesttheory of oppression. for fuller democraticparticipation by people who carry the healy 'burden' of their nonmodern culture is becoming an important the accumulatedwisdom of a Deoole-emnirical and rational-iil componentof the political idiom. a'rehitechioiiiii,iFor;[[1r.-o1i11.gve1yde1a!I. It doesnot automaticaliy This consciousnesshas been endorsed by a political realitythat has of the growth of modem scienceor two facets:( 1) an increasinglyoppressive state-rnachine that constantly and imperils the survivaland waln of life of thoseIndians it hasmarginalized and and (2) the growing effortsof thesemarginalized sections to interpret vilth the help of staie power their predicamentin termsalien to the modernworld and to the state- obsolescenceof traditionalknowledge-q/stems and lifestyles.13 The non- cenuedculture of scholarship.rl Thereis enoughevidence for usto believe statistsbelieve that the traditions are under attack today becausethe that this strain of consciousnessmay begin to set the paceof public people are under attack.As dassical liberalism and czarist Marxism consciousnessin India in thecoming decades and the followingsection haveboth by now shown their bankruptcy,many liberalsand socialists is written asa guide and a waming for thosepragmatic spirits and hard- have increasinglyfallen upon the useof conceps like cultural lag and boiled modemistsof both the right and the left who might haveto close falseconsciousness to orplain awayall resistanceto the oppressionthat ranks to fight this new menaceto the modern Indian nation-state. comesin the guiseof modem scienceand developmmt. The primacy- The first element in this odd strain, the strain that viewsthe needs of-cultureapproach fean that more and moremodels ofsocial engineering of a civiliza imarv. is the belief that a civilization mriJliidlhE will be generatedin the modem sectorwhichwould demandfrom the ,tat"r-*--strument anc not o rs people greaterand greatersacrifices in the name of the stateand in the of cour rmed before name of state-sponsoreddevelopment and state-ownedscience and Indian civilizationcan be reformed.It doesnot argueout clrlturalreforms technology.The culture-orientedapproach believes that when the lowest or evencultural revolutions.But the needsof the statedo not determine of the low in India areexhorted to shedtheir'irrational', 'unscientific', such intei.ventions.The idea that a civilization can be destroyedor anti-dwelopmentaluaditions by the officialrationalists, the srhortation changedbeyond recognition reportedly for its own survivalin the iungle is a hidden appealto them to soften their resistanceto the oppressive of the nation-shteq/stem is givenup here.At the sametime the culture- featuresof the modem politicaleconomy in India.ra oriented approach believesthat if there is need either for a cultural revolution or for modestcultural changes in this society,it should begin t3ln the contoDharampal,hdian Scimceand Technologin the EigJwarh C*trwry:Some C.ontcnrprary European (New Delhi: Imper lndia 1971 parts (to translateinto Englishthe conceptof bahiskritsamaj used by 'kcounr ); and direcrly passionately Sunil Sahasrabudhey).12Culture, in this approach,is the worldview of and by Claude Alvares,Homo Faber:Tbchnologr and Culure in lndia, Chinaanil theVr'at (New Delhi:Allied, 1979).See also ShivVisvanathan, The Annals of a LaboratorySute'; and VandanaShiva, 'Reductionist Science as Epistemic Violence', in llThe attemptto grapplewith this realityhas rwirad Gandhiansocial theory in India, Ashis Nandy (d.), kience, Hegarcny andViolence:A Rt4uim for Modnrity (Tokp: U.N. mostly among peoplewho reiectthe onhodox Gandhismof many of the direa disciples Univenity Press;New Delhi: Odord UniversityPress, 1988), pp.257-83; and Claude of Gandhi.The revivalhas as little to do with the perrcnal life and the penonal successes Alvares, Science,Dewlopment and Violence:Tlu'Iluilight of Modernity (New Delhi: Otrord or failuresof Gandhi as Marx s life and his successesand failureshave to do with Marx s Unircrsity Press,1991 ). laOn thought today.Modern Indiansnaturally like to givecredit for the revivaleither to 'Hindu developmentas it looks from outsidethe modem world, some of the clearest woolly-headedness'or to the falseconsciousness generated by'romantic propagandists' statementsare in ClaudeAlvareg 'Deadly Development', Danlopmentfurum, Odober 1983, like RichardAttenborough. 9(7);andScience,DanlopmmtandViolence;NsoseetheSpeciallssueonSurvirral,Lohayan r2SunilSahasrabudhey, Towards a Ner,vTheo4y', Seminar, May 1982 (273), pp. t9- Bulletin,1985, 3 (alsl; MadhyaPradesh Lokapn and lokhir Samiti, Singrauli, Vikaski 23; and'On Alien PoliticalCategories', Ganilhi Marg, Feb. 1983, l(tt), pp.896-901. Kimat (Ahmedabad:Setu, 1985); Anuro Escobar,Enauntering Dewlopment: The Mahing Sahasrabudheyis one of the few seriousMarxists in India who have self-consciously and theUninkingof theThiril World(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Vinod built into their models indigenouscultural categories. Raina,Aditi Chowdhuryand Sumit Choudhury (ed.), TheDLspsesvd: Viaims of Developrnent 26 o TheRomance of the State Culture,State and the Rediscovery of Indian Politics . 2Z

Third, the culture-orientedapproach presumes that culture is a dia- thosewho takeculture seriously fear that India is fastbecoming a national- lecticbetween the classicaland the folk, the past and the present,the securitystatewithan ever-otribes and language of culturebelieve that thesethree reasons of state-security,development groups.Ethnic arts and ethnicmusic then become,like ethnicfood, new and modernscience-are creating intemal colonies,new hierarchies and indicatorsof the socialstatus of the rich and the powerful.Correspond- recipient culturesamong the peoplq so that a small €lite can live off ingly,new areasof expertiseopen up in the modern sectorsuch as both economicand psychosocialsurpluses ortracted from the peopleas l8 ethnomuseologyand ethnomusicology.And culturalanthropolory then part of the processof modemization. Modemization,the argumentgoes, takesover the responsibilityof making this truncatedconcept of culture has not fallen into wrong hands; built into it are certain forms of communicablein the languageof professionalanthropology, to givethe domination and violenceThe concept of the expertor the revolutionary concepta bogusabsolute legitimacy in the name of cultural relativism. vanguardis part of the samestory or, as it looks tg the nonmodems, Culture in the present context covers,apart from 'high culture', part of the sameconspiracy.le indigenous knowledge including indigenous theories of science, lTFor educationand socialchange. The defenceof culture,according to those instancqBharat Wariavwallah, 'lndira's India: A NationalSecurity State?', Round Table,IulyI 983,pp. 274-85; and 'Personaliry who survival,is also the defenceof thesenative theories. DomesticPolitical Institutions and Foreign stresscultural Policy', in Ram (ed.), Congressin lndian Politics:A Pe$pectiue(Bombay: eyolutionist Ioshi Centcnary The defencemust challengethe basichierardry ofcultures, the PopularPrakashan, I 975), pp. 245-69; alsoDeshingka4 'People's SecurityVersus National theory of progress,and the historicalawareness with which the modem Securiq/. mind worls.15This radicaldeparture from the Englightenmentvision l8For some culture-sensitiveIndian intellectuals,the only valid definition of the modern admirersof nativecultures will neveraccept. conventionaldevelopment is the one given byAfsanehEghbal in the contextofAfrica in approachuies tojlemystifv therradirional her'U€tat Contre Lethnicit€-Un Nourvelle Arme: [.e DevelopmentExclusion', IFDA Fourth,the.culture-oriented Dossier,llJly-August 1983 (36), pp. 17-29: reasonof the shel-h-dfr6n-dfTecuiity'It does not deny the importance Developmentis a structurein which power, - statistsfeel that anyone who is a centralized in the form of a young of coliffisecuritylEv-'1h6'-n-gFthe sovereignstate, formally negotiatesinternational funds for rural populations not a statist jeopardizessuch security.However, the culture-oriented representingethnicity...no extemalaid, in the field ofdevelopment,can relate directly approachbelieves that nationalsecurity can become disjunctive with to ethnic groups caughtin the problematiqueof survival.All aid is fint absorbed plople's securityand may evenbecome a threat to the latter.16Some of and often plunderedby statepower. The Indian critic of darelopmentwill howeverfurther generalizethe principle and affirm that it holds for intemal resourceqtoo. A goodsummary description of the process i" *i" X""SJrena, 1997).Also see'Culture, Voice and Development',pP. l5l- tH-rg of developmentin Indian from this point ofview is in Alvareg'Deadly Do,elopmenr'. For 70 betow; Developmentand Violence,pp. l7l -81 below. a theoreticallyalert descriptionof the political contextwithin which suchdevelopmenul lsln the Indiancontext such a point ofview wasaggressively adrnnced by Gandhi.See pathologiesemerge see Raini Kothari, The Crisisof the ModerateState and the Declineof the pioneeringessay of A.K. Saran,'Gandhi and the Conceptof Politics',Gandhi Marg Bgrcnd Democrad, in PeterLyon and JamesManor (ed.) Ttarcferanil Ttansformation.Politkal 1980,l( I ), pp. 6?5-726. NsoThomasPantham, Thinkingwith MahatmaGandhi: Instiutiotr in tlw Nat C.amnorunalrft(kicester LeicesterUnirrcrsity Press, l9S3), pp.29-47 . LiberalDemocraa/, tuliticnlThany, 1983, 2(2), pp. 165-88;and Ashis Nandy, 'From Outside leA proper critique of the rhetoric of revolution has not yet emergedin India. the Imperium:Gandhi's Cultural Critique of the "West"', in"ltaditiots,Tlranny and Unpiu: Revolutioncould be considered,in cenain contexts,a reasonofa shadowstate, the state Esap in the Politicsof Awaraners(New Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1987), pp. 127-62, which would come into being after present l6ForinstancsGiri Deshingkar'CivilizationC,oncems', Seminar, December 1980, (256), the one is capturedby middle-class,urbane, upper-casterevolutionaries. The sacrifices that revolutionariesdemand servg in this sense. pp.72-17; and'People'sSecurityVersus National Sm-rrity', Seninar, December 1982, (280), pp.28-30. 28 . 'Ihe Romance of the State ulture,State and the Rediscovery oflndian Politics o 29

It is a featureof fte recipientculture *tt; through er"er,it is an undying superstitionof our times that only the moderns the modem stateqa.tem, that the s S of rhgrch3!.dlblpoJ"erfuI can handle the complexitiesor negotiatethe iungle of international ale grven lesseqphasi_s tha$e.rupemirions oftlg_Iggr*1nd lowly. politics, ensureintemal and extemalsecurity, maintain national integra- This is the inescapablelogic of developmentand scientifit iationality tiqn and inter-communalpeace. It is a part of the superstitionto believe today.Only the young, the 'immature' and the powerlessare left to attack tha\ politics is oculture of India. The guages.To eachof thesecultures, other culturesare an intemal opposition culture-orientedactivists believe that the latter form of unequal o