Indian Political Studies: In Search of Distinctiveness

REVIEW ESSAY Indian Political Studies: In Search of Distinctiveness John Harriss, Aseema Sinha, Andrew Wyatt and Sinderpal Singh Keywords: India, state, democracy, party systems, political thought, foreign policy DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5509/2015881135 POLITICAL SCIENCE. ICSSR Research Surveys and Explorations. General editor, Achin Vanaik. Box edition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013. 4 vols. CAD$325.50, cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-809244-5. The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) has regularly commissioned surveys of the state of research in India in regard to diferent ields within the social sciences. As the general editor, Achin Vanaik, explains in his introduction, these four volumes, which aim to assess the “state of art” in political science in India, with particular reference to work that has been published in the period 2003–2009, come after a fairly long gap. They also depart from earlier surveys in that those who have been invited to contribute to them have been asked to provide not only summary accounts of major texts, but also to ofer “explorations.” They have been asked, that is, to contextualize the studies that they discuss—to link their themes and perspectives to the trends of change “on the ground” in India, and, where it is relevant, internationally. Authors were asked as well not to shy away from presenting their own evaluations, and to consider both the likely lines of future inquiry, and their own preferred ideas for future research. Vanaik himself relects upon the search for an Indian distinctiveness, which he sees as one particular uniformity across the four volumes. Between them, as he argues, they explore India’s distinctiveness in two senses. One is along what he calls the “low road,” of examining the distinctiveness of the Indian experience in regard to diferent aspects of politics and society. But there are also explorations on the theoretically much more ambitious “high road,” concerned with the conceptual and theoretical breaks that Indian political science has made from those of the dominant (Western) discourse of the discipline. He notes ideas that form part of a “redeined theoretical toolkit for investigating Indian reality” (xiv), such as communalism, © Paciic Afairs: Volume 88, No. 1 March 2015 135 Paciic Afairs: Volume 88, No. 1 – March 2015 communitarianism, secularism, subaltern, passive revolution, and the particular conceptual distinction between civil society and political society developed by Partha Chatterjee. He conveys, as Andrew Wyatt says (below), a very good sense of how various post-positivist strands come together to constitute a distinctively Indian approach to studying politics. It is perhaps a pity, however, that Vanaik did not push his discussion of the distinctively Indian approach further, as he might have done by comparing it with arguments of scholars who work in other parts of the world, outside the West, such as those of Erik Kuhonta, Dan Slater and Tuong Vu in their book Southeast Asia in Political Science (Stanford University Press, 2008), or of scholars who contributed to a recent special issue of this journal (“Context, Concepts and Comparisons in Southeast Asian Studies,” Paciic Afairs 87, no. 3). There follow reviews of each of the four volumes in the set. Together they do constitute an impressive overview. But it is perhaps a moot point as to whether the work that they discuss provides the means of understanding the changes that are now taking place in Indian politics and society. As the editors of the Economic and Political Weekly noted recently (vol. XLIX, no. 45, November 8, 2014, 7) the victory of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party in the general election of 2014 came about because it addressed “the new class demands of the transforming and transformed social classes,” while the opposition failed and continues to falter “perhaps because they conine their political programmes to a world of social classes and class relations which does not exist anymore.” Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada JOHN HARRISS POLITICAL SCIENCE. VOLUME 1, THE INDIAN STATE. ICSSR Research Surveys and Explorations. Edited by Samir Kumar Das; general editor, Achin Vanaik. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013. xxxv, 175 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-808494-5. This book maps the scholarly terrain on the Indian state. The book holds great promise, as the last survey was done in 1995. The volume seeks to understand the state through an analysis of the “social character” of the Indian state, the political economy of the Indian state, social policy, and law and rights. It is a well-edited collection from scholars based in India. In my view, this volume as well as the other three volumes in this collection should be judged by the following three criteria: irst, a comprehensive ability to map the recent and current literature on the Indian state and to uncover pieces of writing that change the way we think about the Indian state. This should answer the question: What have we learnt so far about the state? The second criteria is whether or not the authors synthesize important questions 136 Review Essay: Indian Political Studies worth asking about the Indian state. Third, the volume should be judged for its ability to raise new queries and questions which could be the focus for future scholars. These criteria would help scholars identify important gaps in our knowledge and lacunae at both empirical and theoretical levels. The book falls short on all three accounts although it is a useful collection that achieves the irst two goals to some extent. This book on the Indian state is a useful compendium that relects the nature of writings on the Indian state. The introduction to the volume (by S.K. Das) maps the various paradigms on the Indian state in a comprehensive way. The literature review is divided into institutionalism, pluralism and state pluralism, marxism and neomarxism, new political economy, and cultural studies and discourse analysis. The literature on the Indian state focuses much more on the deeper social roots of the power of the state rather than what it does, or its institutional form. Gupta’s chapter also suggests that the dominant understanding of the Indian state is “in terms of state-society interface” (54). The institutionalism turn seems to have bypassed the scholarship on the Indian state. The broader state-in-society approach essentially focuses on how the state responds to social divisions, economic cleavages and evolves its development strategy. All the chapters in this volume privilege an analysis of state-society or state-economy interactions in shaping the output of state policy. This picture assumes that the state was so weak that it was overtaken by societal groups of either caste, or class dimensions. The state is an arena, an empty shell occupied by societal actors. Analytically, the model of society in these perspectives is richer and more complex than the model of the Indian state. Analysis of the working of ideas such as accountability, representation and democratic quality of the Indian state seems to be missing from this literature from India. Notably, the introduction to the volume introduces a new ield of studies on the Indian state: cultural analysis and discourse studies. Books from this approach “shift the focus from how we perceive the state to how the state perceives itself” (29). In this genre, S.K. Das characterizes debates in constituent assembly, speeches and policy and statements, landmark judicial pronouncements and even memoirs. A notable shift is the need to look at how the state is experienced and its meaning in its daily and everyday activities. Gupta also reviews the ethnographic perspective on the Indian state, where the everyday forms of corruption are negotiated. Gupta also notes the analysis of the state’s coercive and disciplinary character, and how it shapes identities itself (66–70). The chapter on social policy recognizes a marked trend of enhancing welfare in India. Consistent with the analysis of the class character of the Indian state, Bhattacharyya argues that the government’s social welfare policies are designed to gain the support of the poor, and of people left out of the economic processes that favour the corporate sector (115–117). Bhattacharyya recognizes a peculiar character of the Indian state, where 137 Paciic Afairs: Volume 88, No. 1 – March 2015 parallel domains of citizenship co-exist. One realm is a set of constitutional rights, which have been expanded since 2004. These relate to right to education, right to employment, as well as the right to information. The second realm refers to the actual practice of these rights. The formal political rights are not realized in practice, creating a gap between the two domains. The more recent social welfare schemes provide some discretionary rights to the citizens who are disenfranchised from their real practice of formal political rights, ensuring their support for the political system. The book’s survey of the important questions sufers from some gaps. It completely misses the regional turn in political economy and in studies of the Indian state. Studies of subnational variation across many policies present a challenge to homogenous theories of the Indian state (Aseema Sinha, The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided Leviathan, Indiana University Press, 2005; Atul Kohli, Poverty Amid Plenty in the New India, Cambridge University Press, 2012; Rob Jenkins, ed., Regional Relections: Case Studies of Democracy in Practice, Oxford University Press, 2004; Sunila Kale, Electrifying India, Stanford University Press, 2014.) Is the Indian state a homogenous entity as analyzed by scholars surveyed in this volume or, rather, a segmented state riven by competing visions of development and agendas? (Aseema Sinha, The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided Leviathan, Indiana University Press, 2005) The recent regional turn in Indian political science and political economy changes the way we visualize the linkages within the state. This is not a call to move our attention to the local level but to ask how the actions of local actors are shaped by the national structure of incentives as much as by the local variables. These questions, addressed in the writings on subnational variation, suggest the need to expand a subnational analysis to ask: how does subnational structure of power afect the nature of the national political economy? These questions are not addressed in this volume. Overall, this collection of essays gives a good idea of research and writing on the Indian state, from Indian scholars, with some signiicant gaps in the review of the recent writings on India. New questions worth pursuing in the future are not yet addressed in this otherwise solid and competent collection. Claremont Mckenna College, Claremont, USA 138 ASEEMA SINHA Review Essay: Indian Political Studies POLITICAL SCIENCE. VOLUME 2, INDIAN DEMOCRACY. ICSSR Research Surveys and Explorations. Edited by K.C. Suri; general editor, Achin Vanaik. Box edition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013. 352 pp. ISBN 978-0-19808495-2. The general introduction by the series editor, Achin Vanaik, describes the purpose of the series, of which this is the second volume. The authors of the chapters were permitted to draw on earlier work as they saw it and asked to give their contribution a personal stamp, so that in addition to a straightforward survey, which would be of limited value, readers would get a further layer of interpretation and synthesis on the topics under discussion. Vanaik’s chapter makes it clear that “political science” was not to be deined narrowly. His own personal stamp is to argue for social forces to be taken seriously in the study of Indian politics, political economy and foreign policy. He also conveys a very good sense of how various post-positivist strands come together to constitute a distinctively Indian approach to studying politics. In their chapter, Neera Chandhoke and Rajesh Kumar thoughtfully map out the various ways in which Indian democracy has been interpreted and understood. Also, they note that government by coalition has changed the character of Indian democracy, by allowing, among other things, regulatory institutions to be more assertive, just as representative institutions became less decisive. Of particular importance has been the activism of the Supreme Court, which is discussed in detail, with reference to the debate on the progressive character of the court. Chandhoke and Kumar conclude that the court has been progressive, if rather cautious, as “the judges tend to keep within the frame of what is politically permissible” (33). The question of substantive democracy, the holding together of political and economic rights, is the subject of an extended discussion in the latter part of the chapter. The institutional structure within which Indian democracy functions is discussed further in the chapter by Manjari Katju, which identiies important weaknesses in the civil service, police and panchayat raj. The Election Commission is said to have worked rather better but the procedure for selecting and regulating the conduct of commissioners could be reformed to strengthen the integrity of the institution. Katju concludes that the constitution has been remarkably durable in a polity and society that have changed a great deal since 1950. The extensive literature on Indian federalism is comprehensively reviewed by Balveer Arora, K.K. Kailash, Rekha Saxena and H. Kham Khan Suan. They discuss the second generation of challenges for Indian federalism. The turn towards a national coalition government and economic reforms have brought about important changes. Their core argument is that the study of Indian federalism needs to move beyond the study of institutional structures and put more emphasis on the multilevel government process. As they observe, the basic institutional structure has changed little over time, but the practice of federal government has changed in important ways since the late 1980s. 139 Paciic Afairs: Volume 88, No. 1 – March 2015 Suhas Palshikar takes up the challenging task of surveying the literature on all the national elections, and many state elections too, since 1977. He takes issue with critics who dismiss the electoralism of Indian democracy, arguing that elections are an important part of the democratic process in which elites are held to account and mass popular participation takes place. Palshikar closes the chapter with a discussion of the ways in which the study of elections might be extended by using panel studies, comparisons within and between states. He also suggests that further work into the current activity of intermediaries and vote brokers would be interesting. K.C. Suri reviews a broad literature on parties and party systems. He proiles various explanations for the fragmentation of national and party systems. Suri provides a useful overview of the literature on national, regional and left parties in India. His treatment of ideological appeals is neatly balanced. He cautions those who bemoan the absence of ideology, urging them to remember that plenty of parties appeal to identity-based ideologies of caste, region and religion. Suri then argues that ideology should not be overemphasized either, noting the growing interest in how parties use clientelist appeals to gain support. In the closing chapter Neera Chandhoke outlines what might be expected of representatives in a liberal democracy and makes a convincing argument that elected oicials in India have for the most part failed in these tasks. She concludes by arguing that while many civil society organizations do important work they cannot adequately represent citizens or make up for profound failings in the state. This volume was put together at a time when an electoral revival of the BJP seemed extremely unlikely. In some ways this is unfortunate because many of the questions raised by the contributors address the politics of a pluralistic (if not fragmented), moderate, and welfare-oriented political system. That said the contributors cannot be faulted, least of all by me, for failing to foresee the BJP victory in 2014. In other ways the BJP victory makes this book even more interesting to read, as it deals with transcending themes relevant to the causes and consequences of the BJP victory. It bears remembering that the BJP won the 2014 election as part of a coalition that included regional parties. The Modi government still has to work within a federal framework, acknowledge the social pluralism of society and improve the quality of governance in India. The contributors need to be commended for surveying an impressive span of recent literature on Indian politics and raising very interesting questions about the state of research in the ield. This edited collection will be of use most of all to advanced undergraduates and those starting research careers, but even more experienced readers will locate new and stimulating material in the extensive bibliographies to the seven chapters in this book. University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom 140 ANDREW WYATT Review Essay: Indian Political Studies POLITICAL SCIENCE. VOLUME 3, INDIA POLITICAL THOUGHT. ICSSR Research Surveys and Explorations. Edited by Pradip Kumar Datta and Sanjay Palshikar; general editor, Achin Vanaik. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013. 320 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-808222-4. Achin Vanaik, in his general introduction to the four volumes, argues that Indian political science has been theoretically innovative not by setting up entirely new concepts but rather by “redeining … ‘older’ Western-derived concepts so as to make them more capable of grasping the Indian experience” (xiii). And he suggests that the task of exploring such innovation is taken up particularly in this volume on Indian Political Thought. As the editors of the volume say, studies of Indian Political Thought (they enter into an engaging discussion of the distinction between Thought and Theory), have generally been based on an author-centred approach: study of the work of great individual thinkers. They themselves, however, have taken a thematic approach, and have chosen a small number of themes that, they believe, enable exploration of “the new areas of research attendant on new deinitions of the political, for instance, the shift in one of the grounds of political studies in India, that is from tradition-modernity to diferentiated modernities” (16), whilst at the same time being broad enough to allow for the taking up of conventional concerns such as with rights, citizenship and the state. It is probably signiicant that the chapters on “Nationalism,” “Cosmopolitanism,” “Demystifying Democracy in the Dalit-bahujan, Adivasi and Feminist Discourses,” and on “Ethics and Politics” are by younger scholars (at least if one may judge by the fact that all are listed as being assistant professors). The irst chapter, by Prathama Banerjee, on “Time and Knowledge,” raises questions about the writing of history and discusses conceptualizations of time and of periodization—particularly the rethinking that has gone on in India about tradition and modernity. As she says, there has been “a unique politicization of the idea of time in our context … because of the intensely charged question of modernity” (56), and it is unsurprising that this is a theme that recurs in other parts of the book as well. The next two chapters, however, seem to stand rather to one side of its main themes, bringing the reader a survey of recent work on political thinking in early India, by Kumkum Roy, and another on that of the “middle period,” by Nandita Prasad Sahai. Each of these chapters follows a similar structure, considering “texts, practices, material culture.” The heart of the book is in the four chapters listed above. The irst of them, by Rinku Lamba, on nationalism, ranges more widely than might be expected, engaging as well with writing on the state, on democracy and on secularism. This is carried on primarily through critical discussion of the work of Partha Chatterjee, the thinker who is referred to more frequently in the book as a whole than any other. Lamba discusses responses to Chatterjee’s work on nationalism, particularly criticism of the conceptual 141 Paciic Afairs: Volume 88, No. 1 – March 2015 distinction that he makes between its inner and outer domains. She also devotes a lot of space to an original discussion of Chatterjee’s arguments about the distinction between civil society and political society, and the implications of his particular conception of the latter for democratic theory— though the upshot of the discussion is somewhat obscure, at least to this reader. She considers, too, some of the work of Sudipta Kaviraj, regarded in part as a foil to Chatterjee, and that of Rajeev Bhargava, on secularism and the distinctiveness of modern Indian liberalism. Mohinder Singh’s chapter is a lucid exposition of the critical work on Western conceptions of cosmopolitanism of Indian scholars—notably Uday Mehta, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Rustom Bharucha (though Chatterjee appears once again)—and of scholars of India such as Peter van der Veer and Sheldon Pollack, and their own positive propositions, including such conceptions as those of “minority cosmopolitanisms” and “subaltern cosmopolitanism.” Krishna Swamy Dara then explains how Dalit-bahujan thinkers such as Gopal Guru have sought to both “de-brahmanize” both democracy and feminism, challenging conceptions of the political and of what is held to be “radical.” And the inal chapter by Rajarshi Dasgupta considers recent scholarship on Gandhian ethics, on the thought of Tagore, on the political sociology of the self, on “lessons in ethics from Indian epics,” and—more cursorily than might have been expected, given the practical importance of the ield—on environment and development. The book as a whole efectively relects the creativity of contemporary Indian political thought, and amply justiies Achin Vanaik’s contentions about its distinctive engagements with Western-derived thinking. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada JOHN HARRISS POLITICAL SCIENCE. VOLUME 4, INDIA ENGAGES THE WORLD. ICSSR Research Surveys and Explorations. Edited by Navnita Chadha Behera; general editor, Achin Vanaik. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013. 608 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-808540-4. This book is volume four of a four-volume series on “Research Surveys and Explorations” in political science commissioned by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). Behera’s introduction, spanning 55 pages, is an excellent review of the existing literature on India’s International Relations (IR). She has three main sections in her chapter. The irst interrogates the state-centric ontology of much of Indian IR. The second examines the “balance” between area studies and disciplinary IR within this literature. The third looks at how, especially since the 1990s, Indian IR has begun to expand its theoretical horizons. 142 Review Essay: Indian Political Studies In her irst section, she charts the way in which the Indian state’s “real” foreign policy problems immediately after independence inluenced the early Indian IR fraternity’s view of the state as a “national-territorial totality.” This, however, began to be increasingly challenged in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War and India’s economic transformation. Indian IR began to look more keenly at how the corporate sector in India shaped India’s interactions with the outside world. The role of the Indian media in India’s IR, especially with the media “revolution” and expansion beginning in the 1990s, has also received a fair amount of attention in the recent literature as has the role of non-governmental groups (NGOs) in the realms of global human rights, environmental degradation and gender equality. Her second section looks at how, traditionally, area studies and disciplinary IR has been conlated in the study of India’s external relations, with deep roots in India’s institutional and pedagogic structures. She then goes on to examine how, in the past two decades, this particular conlation has been challenged with the advent of self-conscious “theoretical” engagements in the study of Indian IR. These range from applications of theoretical paradigms beyond the dominant realist lens, ranging from neoliberalism, feminism, post-colonialism, neo-Marxism and constructivism. In her penultimate section, she takes up the issue of challenging the “Western” character of much, if not all, IR theorizing. Locating this discussion within the seeming global demand to know more about the “India story,” she creatively outlines two major possibilities for developing a niche for Indian IR in the core IR discipline. The irst is to understand the limitations of Western frameworks in understanding Indian interactions with the outside world. In this respect, she suggests “the need to draw upon India’s own intellectual resources and lived realities” (43) in understanding Indian interactions with the outside world. The second possibility is capitalizing on “ideas and propositions that are born in India but have ofered alternate ways to understand or resolve the problematiques of the mainstream IR” (43). Non-alignment and Panchasheeela are the two examples she gives of alternate world views, originating from within India, of how the global states system should function. The irst possibility is discussed in some depth by Deep Datta-Ray in his chapter on the practice of Indian diplomacy. Datta-Ray argues that Western categories cannot adequately explain Indian diplomatic practices because of its “absolute failure to engage Indian diplomacy on its own terms” (235). He instead draws upon the Mahabharata as a new resource to understand Indian diplomacy because “it, rather than IR texts, motivates the intellectual circuits of Indian diplomats and ofers a basis for diplomatic rationality unfound in the extant literature” (235). In stressing the need for stepping across disciplinary boundaries, he believes that a fresh methodology is required in analyzing Indian diplomatic practices. He outlines extended multi-sited ieldwork of the Indian diplomatic bureaucracy as a useful 143 Paciic Afairs: Volume 88, No. 1 – March 2015 methodological tool to understand Indian diplomatic practice on its own terms. This is a highly original formulation and Datta-Ray demonstrates quite clearly the need for IR scholars, looking to understand Indian IR, to venture into unfamiliar theoretical and methodological terrains. However, there remain two issues with his account. The irst is methodological. As much as too much of Indian IR depends solely on the actions and perceptions of Indian political elites in formulating Indian foreign policy, this group of actors cannot be totally ignored. In Datta-Ray’s conception, studying Indian diplomats is the key to understanding Indian diplomatic practice. This begs the question of who makes Indian foreign policy and he is not clear if his framework includes non-diplomats, in the strict sense, and their contribution to diplomacy, widely conceived. The second is his assertion that the Mahabharata is the key text used by Indian diplomats in understanding diplomatic practice. In this case, the connection between this text and actual Indian diplomatic practice is diicult to locate. Overall, though, this chapter should certainly be read by Indian IR scholars looking at the relationship between IR theory and Indian IR. The volume has eight other chapters looking at diferent aspects of Indian IR and each of them, like Datta’s Ray’s chapter, have managed to make signiicant original contributions to the study of Indian IR. Overall, this edited volume will hold an important place in the literature on Indian IR because of two attributes. First, the volume will be an invaluable reference for the literature on Indian IR, covering a spectacular array of work done on Indian IR up to this date. Second, the various chapters also outline exciting new possibilities in the ield. As a new generation of scholars increasingly looks to study Indian IR in a theoretically self-conscious manner, this edited volume could not have come at a better time. National University of Singapore, Singapore 144 SINDERPAL SINGH