Modern Dilemma

Is India truly modern entity?
Writer, sociologist DIPANKAR GUPTA debates

In India we have enclaves of fairly high consumerism but that does not make India modern. There are those who equate such sporadic expressions of consumerism and high technology with modernity, but this is largely an optical illusion. In any assessment of modernity it would be incorrect to make little parcels of society and treat them as if they were independent of one another. There can, of course, be stages in the development of modernisation, but even here the entire society is implicated. It is not advisable to separate these high consumption zones, separate them from the rest, and then identify them as the harbingers of modernity.

It is not as if modernity is an all or nothing phenomenon. But in analysing modernity there is no other option but to view society holistically. It is not as if one section can already have arrived at modernity while the others have yet a long way to go. Looked at closely, different strata in India are closely interlinked. Getting rich in Mumbai cannot be accomplished without working the levers that put the city’s poor and the working class to the wheel. Having said that, it also needs to be acknowledged that modernity will not exhibit itself in the same predictable ways everywhere. Thus, there can be different routes to modernisation, but there cannot be different modernities. Modernisation refers to a concrete, clearly identifiable social ensemble. To argue that there can be ‘multiple modernities’ is to take the easy analytical route.

To fully understand modernity and to be able to sympathetically guide it to maturity it is necessary to take into account variations in time and space. For instance, India’s entry on the path to modernity was different from that of Europe or America. India had some of the advantages of starting out as it did in the mid-twentieth century. Liberal democracy had by then distinguished itself by realising a wide array of freedoms. India therefore, began her independent democratic career with universal adult franchise, legal equality between the sexes, minority protection acts, and positive discrimination laws designed to help the historically disprivileged. The last, of course, was uniquely Indian at that time. As for the rest, India inherited all of them from the toils of liberal democracy in Europe and America.

Early modernity:
cultural intolerance and the individual
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Unlike early modern Europe, India could not pretend in 1947, that minority protection and universal adult franchise were pies in the sky. In Europe, as we well know, tolerance received scant attention in the formative years of democracy. Minorities did not enjoy any special protection: in fact, they were actually persecuted for their religious beliefs. America became a refuge for these persecuted peoples simply because Europe, England included, had little room for them. John Locke’s Letter on Tolerance would be a cruel misnomer if it were to be written today, so amazingly conservative is its tone. Contemporary notions of tolerance were foreign to Locke, indeed, he would have disapproved of them. Locke’s essay on the subject was largely about curtailing the powers of the church, and about the relationship between religious authorities and the state. In no way did Locke oppose the various deprivations that Catholics and Jews had to face in the England of his time. Till the Tests and Establishment Act was abrogated in the 1820s, Jews, Puritans and Catholics were legally handicapped. For example, severe restrictions were placed on those belonging to these communities when it came to being employed in the state services or even entering educational institutions like Oxford or Cambridge.

Ben Anderson’s remarkable book, Imagined Communities, forcefully argues that languages too did not enjoy any special privileges in the early years of democracy in Europe. Minority languages received no protection and only self-consciously wrought languages like English, French and Italian came to dominate different parts of Europe (see also Hobsbawm 1990). Cultural and linguistic ‘others’ were thus made invisible and pushed outside the margins. As the majority community now was all that was socially and politically relevant it was easier to talk of individualism within them.

Niklas Luhmann argues that the principle of isonomia creates equality within a stratum or class when there are great distances and barriers between strata (Luhmann 1982: 234). As minority cultures and languages had been forcefully undermined in Europe, only those who professed the state religion and spoke the state language were considered full-fledged citizens. Against this background, it is not at all surprising that individuals came to the fore and not the community. Since members of the majority and preferred community felt no threat from other communities, isonomia, or competition between individuals, began to characterise Western societies.

Considering the rather intolerant dispensation of early modern Europe it is not at all surprising that late-comers into modernity find it abhorrent to follow the European trajectory all the way. Yet, if we are to take advantage of our lateness, it is necessary that we at least learn from the end result of modernisation in Europe, regardless of what it was like when it all began.

Patronage and tradition:
India’s unmodern elite
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India cannot suddenly switch off its past and become modern overnight. It is easier to emulate consumption styles than to respect other people in the society. India is still very equivocal about the need to curtail religious practice from flowing into the realm of politics. Even its Constitution reflects this. While time has been telescoped as far as the granting of democratic participation is concerned, the norms of participation are still not very clear. As groups and communities had not been undermined or marginalised in India unlike in Europe between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, formal democracy did not bring with it a full-blown individualism. The tendency to participate through groups and communities had the disadvantage of favouring the continuation of cultural virtuosos and patrons in positions of power. Patrons and clients continue to characterise Indian politics. Community identity and loyalty play quite a significant role in India’s public life even after more than half a century of independence.

There is therefore not much point in trying to emulate Europe all the way. It was not possible for India to begin as an independent nation-state with cultural intolerance of the early European type. Rousseau and Hegel were the first major European thinkers who talked of tolerance of the modern kind. India came long after them, after the French Revolution, after the suffragettes, after the Chartists, after the anti-slavery movement in America, after the Fifth Amendment of the American Constitution, and so on. India also fought a long struggle for national independence when it had to first unite and then mobilise people across cultures, castes, languages and religions. The Constitution reflects this heritage of democratic advance and freedoms. It also reflects the anxiety about removing historic disprivileges against certain communities. Thus, at least constitutionally, from being the most stratified society in the world India has moved towards a greater equality.

Equality in politics did not bring in the individual in India. As equality was largely realised at the level of community rivalries, individuals sought to merge their community’s struggle for power. This, as was mentioned a little earlier, gave community virtuosos added prestige and many of them embarked on a new career as political power-brokers. This was not the only source of patronage, however. Patron-client relationships were further strengthened and, indeed routinised, by the enormity of resource scarcity in the country. Patron-client relationships in India today are no longer limited to the village format and to its traditional oligarchs. Democracy and the breakdown of the feudal economy have given rise to new patrons and to a set of clients. Thus,while the closed village economy ceases to be operative, the feudal mentality of patronage and dependence gets a fresh lease of life on account of vast economic and social disparities.

Almost everybody who belongs to India’s so-called ‘elite’ sections is involved in it. This is why it makes little sense to believe that this privileged sector would bring in modernity. It is not as if there is a sector in Indian society which id free of patron-clients networks. It is true that institutions like schools, hospitals, universities have the potentialities of being free from such pre-modern persuasions, and for this we must thank the Constitution. Yet, in terms of everyday functioning even they lack a modern approach and outlook. Political interference is rampant in all such institutions. Obviously, this can only be true if politics itself is based on connections and patronage. In India, we do not elect representatives but patrons. It is not ideology that matters so much as what a particular candidate can do as a patron, either directly or indirectly.

The Indian elite would like to believe that it is modern. That is why there is an excessive emphasis on comprehending modernity in pure consumption terms. It is consumption that seems to govern how we look at ourselves in terms of development, and even with respect to how we categorise the middle class. In the West a middle class way of life connotes adherence to rules and an emphasis on public institutions. In India it is quite the opposite. The Indian middle class is understood solely in terms of consumption, and even here it cuts a rather pathetic figure. Only about five million people (out of nearly a billion) own televisions, and just about 18.5 million people own wristwatches ( Business Today, 22.2.1996:86). An even smaller percentage of this class own motorised vehicles.

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