Modernity and Ethnicity in India: A History for the Present Author(s): Dipesh Chakrabarty Source: Economic and Political

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Modernity

and

Ethnicity

in

India

A History for the Present

Dipesh Chakrabarty The rise of the 'Hindutva' movementhas caused a backlash against the critiquiesof modernity' and 'secularism' in which Indiantintellectuals have been engaged for some time. But we short-change ourselves by attempting to ethnic coniflictsin India through a grid that has liberalism andfascism locked into an unremittingbinary understatnd opposition, as though they belong to entirely different histories. Rather thanforcing a choice between 'secularism' and religion, we need to explore the links between ethnic conflict and the moderngoverning practices that the British introdtuced into Inidiaas the his-orical bearers of 'Enlightenmentrationalism'.
I OVER the last few decades, some Indianintellectualshave been distinguished engaged in a critical revaluation of the intellectualand institutionallegacies of the EuropeanEnlightenment in the subconti' nent. Fora long time, this critiquewas seen by the Indian lett as a quaint form of intellectual Gandhism- sentimental, perhaps even noble-minded in its rejection of materialist values, but in the end unpractical and unthreatening.The left did not take muchnoticeof it. Thingschanged, however, in the 1'980s.There was post-structuralist and deconstructionist philosophy, now available in English translation, that, coupled with some strands of feminist theorising,increasinglycalled into question Enlightenmentrationalism and the metanarratives progress/emancipation the of that left had never questioned. There was also thedevelopmentin the US, particularly after Said's critique of orientalism, of a whole field of study that devoted itself to understandingthe formation of colonial subjectivitiesthrough examining 'colonial discourses'.' Within the field of Indian history, anthropologist-historianssuch as Arjun Appadurai, Nicholas Dirks, Gyan Prakashand other scholars working under the intellectualleadershipof BernardCohn in the 1980s also beganto drawourattention to theway thatcolonially institutedpractices and knowledge-systems affected the formationof new subjectivitiesin Indiaand cast a lastingshadowover emergingpolitics of identity in the subcontinent. And then, at the same time, there was the Subaltern Studiescollective, Gramscianin inspiration and led by RanajitGuha, who developed a critiqueof nationalismand of the political imaginationthat saw the nation-stateas the
ideal form for a political community. These

heterogeneousstrandsare now partof what is sometimes broadly referred to as the 'critiqueof modernity' debate in India. The rise of the 'Hindutva'movement has now caused an understandable backlash against these critiques of 'modernity' and

of theso-called 'Enlightenment rationalism'. The sense of a crisis on the partof the left in India was aggravatedand deepened by the way the leaders and followers of this Hindutva movement vandalised and destroyed a 16th century mosque in the northIndiancity of Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, on the excuse that the mosque had been forcibly built on what was, to their minds, a temple markingthe birthplaceof the mythical Hindu god-king Ram. This Hindu extremist movement, brewing since the early 1980s with anti-Muslimhatredand a fearof a weakened'Hindu'race/nationality as its main ingredients, and enjoying the backingof a large numberof Hindusinside and outside India, has caused both concern and debate among Indian intellectuals on questions of 'secularism', 'tolerance', 'modernity', and what the European Enlightenment means for intellectuals in India. It is this debate that provides the context for what follows. I have nothing to say in supportof the Hinduextremistswhose actions in many instances have only bred a politics of ethnic hatredand murder.But it does seem to me that the way the 'critique of modernity'debatehas been positionedby some Indian Marxist and left-liberal intellectuals in their rush to fight the socalled Hindufundamentalists, foreclosesthe space for critical thinking instead of expanding and enriching it. Faced with the Hindu challenge, these intellectuals have gone backto someofthe classicalshibboleths of Marxism and liberalism- the call for class struggle and a non-religious, if not altogether atheist, public sphere. They express the fear,as some do in the west, that to develop a critique of the legacies of Enlightenmentthought at this moment of (Indian) history is to betray the cause of Marxismandliberalprinciplesandthusplay into the handsof the 'reactionaries'(in this case, the Hindutva mob). Some subcontinentalMarxists,trueto a long tradition of debatewithinthe CommunistParty,have begun to describe others as enemies of the left. AijazAhmad,who clubstogether'LeviStrauss, Foucault, Derrida, Glucksmann[,J

Kristeva' as 'reactionary anti-humanists', dismisses the importantIndiancritics Homi Bhabhaand ParthaChatterjeein a footnote to his book hI Theoir with the intriguing suggestion that while 'post-structuralism', whenever appliedto things Indian,acquires of necessity a 'subordinateand-dependent' character, 'Marxism' (including, presumably, Ahmad's own) wonderfully escapes this fate.' In the more hyperbolicstatements, it is even suggested thatto develop critiques of 'Enlightenment rationalism'is to produce 'cultural relativism' at best and strident, fascist 'indigenism' at worst. Sumit Sarkar, for instance, has recently remarkedin an article on the Hindutvamovement that the 'rejectionof Enlightenmentrationalism'by theIndian criticsof modernity frighteningly is in evocativeof whathappened theintellectual historyof fascism in Europe.4 argument, The which conflates a 'critique' with wholesale 'rejection', is based on a simple syllogism and on some perceived historicalparallels. Here is how the syllogism runs in Sarkar's argument: (1) "Fascist ideology in Europe...owed something to a general turn-of-the-century move away from what were felt to be the sterile rigidities of Enlightenment rationalism". (2) "[NIot dissimilar ideas have become currentintellectualcoin in the west, and by extension they have started to influence Indian academic life." (3) Thatthese "current academicfashions" (Sarkar mentions 'postmodernism') "can reduce the resistance of intellectuals to the ideas of Hindutva has already become evident". Examples: "The 'critique of colonial discourse' ...has stimulatedforms of indigenism not easy to distinguish from the standardSangh parivar[i e, the Hindu fundamentalistslargument...that Hindutva is superiorto Islam andChristianity (andby extension to the creations of the modern west like science, democracy or Marxism) becauseof its allegedly uniqueroots".Sarkar warns that "[a]n uncritical cult of the 'popular' or 'subaltern', particularlywhen combined with the rejection of Enlighten-

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who want to rescue the story of modern liberalism from any necessary association with imperialism. The connection was contingentand historic,they in effect argue, holding forth the promise that, if only the fascists-fundamentalistscould be kept at splitting intelligence' ".1 bay,we wouldenjoya nice,benignmodernity I haveto admitthatI have a vested interest (which might even graduateone day, when in continuing this debate because I have capitalismhas playeditself out, to the higher as been namedby Sarkar one ol the 'radical' historical stage of socialism). It surprises me, however, when intellectuals from a historians undergoing this 'strange' colonial formationembracethe institutions transformationi. I do not deny the political need to fight of modernity, however inevitable and Hindutva for the danger of an Indian powerfultheymightseem, withoutany sense 'Hindu' fascism is real, though it is of irony qualifying their mood of welcome. Thereis anlndiancharacter TheSataniic in sometimesexaggerated.Norarethe parallels drawnwithEuropean historyalwaysaccurate Verves who says: "Battle lines are beitng (or when they are, their significance runs drawnin Indiatoday, secular religious, the contrary to the direction of Sarkar's light versus the dark. Better you choose argument). But we short-changeourselves which side you are on".' It is precisely this when we attemptto understand choice that I am going to refuse in this intellectually the currentethnic conflicts in Indiathrough analysis. I want to explore instead some of a gridthathas liberalismandfascism locked thecomplex andunavoidablelinks thatexist into an unremitting binary opposition to in Indianhistory between the phenomenon each other,as thoughthey belong to entirely of ethnicconflict and the moderngoverning different and unconnected histories. In the practices that the British introduced into westerndemocracies.there has been a long India as the historical bearers of tradition of doing this precisely by Enlightenmentrationalism.This is not an 'ethnicising' the histories of modern argumentagainst liberal values nor against fascist or otherwise, i e, the idea of modernityas such. But shadows authoritarianisms, by treatingthem as problems produced by fall betweentheabstract valuesof modernity otherpeoples'cultures, thoseof theGermans, and the historicalprocessthroughwhich the the Japaneseand now the so-called 'Asian institutions of modernisation came to be tigers'. In writing histories of modern built. It is truethat at this moment, theredo Europeatn thoughtand institutions,no anti- notseem to be anypractical generalisable and imperialhistoriancan ever atford to forget alternativesto the institutionsof capitalism what W E B DuBois once said: and the modern state in India. In all our Therewas no Nazi atrocity- concentration actions we have to take into account their camps, wholesale maiimingand murder. reality, i e, (heir theoreticalclaims as well defilementof womenor ghastlyblasphemy as the specific historiesthroughwhich they of childhood- whichtheChristian civilisa- havedevelopedin India.Butit is nevertheless tionof Europehadnot long beenpractising importantthat we create an Archimedean coloured inall parts theworld point at least in theory in order to have a folk of against in the name of and for the defence of a longer term perspective on our problems. SuperiorRace born to rule the world.7 of Today's understanding whatis 'practical' The connectionthatDuBois makesbetween does nothave to constituteourphilosophical this atrocityand the foundationsof modern, horizon -or we submit, even inside our liberaldemocraciesin both the New and the heads, to what already exists. This short Old Worldswill ring trueto all those whose reviewof thehistoryof modern governmental histories have been irretrievablyaltered by practices in India is offered in the spirit of the rapacities of modern European a dictum by a greatthinkerof the European imperialisms. That a high priest of Enlightenment- in reproducing it, I only rationalismsuch as Voltaire reversethe orderof his statement: Enlightenment "Obeybut would think of the blacks as people who argue as much as you want and about what approximatedthe 'physical features and you want." mental If a pristineform of liberalism(the Indian processes'of animals.wasa structural, and not an accidental, feature of wordis 'secularism')is one dangerbesetting Enlightenment thought.'One cannotsimply the analysis of contemporary racism in separate out the 'decent tendencies' in Indian,theotherdangeristhatof oricn-'Tlism, Enlightenmentthought from the indecent sometimesindistinguishable fromstatements ones. Yet, there is a discernible intellectual thatclaimthatIndiacouldonly be understood habit that makes us treat contemporary on 'Indian', or better, 'Hindu', terms. The instancesof racistor ethnic hatredas though possibility that the current Hindu versus in theywereaberrations thehistoryof modern Muslimorupperversuslowercasteconflicts nation-states, civil societies and their in India may be, in a significant sense, a attendantinstitutions.This tendency is not variantof the modem problemof 'ethnicity' surprisingin male intellectuals of the west or 'race',is seldomentertained discussions in ment rationalism... can lead even radical historians down strange paths" that, for Sarkar, bear "ominous" resemblance to of the condemnation Mussolini's idea "teleological" of progressandto Hitler's exaltation "of the German iwlk over 'hair

in the western media, both Hinduism and castebeingseen, notaltogether unreasonably, to Evenserious as particular thesubcontinent. and informed scholars are not immune to this tendency. Klaus Klostermaier's knowledgeable survey of Hinduism publishedfrom New York in 1989 warnsus against understanding Hindu politics on anything but 'Hindu' terms: Political Hinduism, I hold, cannot be understood applyingeithera Westernby party democratic gaugeora Marxist-socialist pattern.Its potentialhas muchto do with the temperof Hinduism,which was able the throughout ages to rallypeoplearound causes that were perceived to be of transcendent importance and in whose pursuit ordinary human values and had to be abandoned."' considerations Even when the problems are placed in an intemational as framework, insomepassages ot V S Naipaul's recentbooklIzdia: Million A Mutiniies Now, whatone gets is a patronising paton the back, a view of historysomewhat reminiscentof what Hegel said aboutIndia in his lectureson the philosophyof history: "Hindoo political existence", said Hegel, "presents us with a people but n7o state" [Hegel's emphasis].'" This, forHegel,meant the worst kindof despotismanda necessary absence of history: It is becausethe Hindooshave no History intheformof annals that (historia) theyhave no History in the form of transactions (resgestae);that is, no growthexpanding into a veritablepolitical condition.'2 Naipaul's Hegelianism is neitherconscious nor sophisticated.He simply reproduces the idea that an awakening to 'history' is the conditionfordemocracy.Forhim,therefore, all the ethnic fermentin the Indianscene is only a sign of the youth of India'shistorical consciousness; with time would come the maturitythat nations with an older sense of their history presumablypossessed: To awaken to history is to cease to live instinctively.It was to beginto see oneself andone's groupthe way the outsideworld saw one; andit was to knowa kindof rage. Indiawas now full of this rage.Therehad been a general awakening.But everyone awakened first to his own group or community: every group thought itself unique in its awakening;and every group sought to separatefrom the rage of other
groups. 'I

Within India, too, the same law of oversight rules, for 'racism' is thought of as something the white people do to us. What Indiansdo to one anotheris variously describedas 'communalism','regionalism' and 'casteism', but never 'racism'. There 'Indian'twists to are,of course, particularly this story, and it is also true that 'racism', properly speaking, has social-Darwinist connotations and shouLdnot be conflated

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with'ethnocentrism'. forme, thepopular Yet, word 'racism' has the advantage of not makingIndia look 'peculiar'. A relative of mine wanting to sell a plot of land near Calcutta was recently told by the local Communistleadersthathe could indeed sell his landbut not to Muslims. How is thatany different. I would want to know, from an English landlady asking, on being told on the phonethe name of a prospectivetenant, "Isthata Jewish Kahnor a PakistaniKhan?", bothvarieties being,atleastin thisapocryphal story, undesirable. Infocusingon the themeof contemporary Indianethnic intolerance, I will argue that the experiment of nation-making in India shows how modern problems of ethnicity cannotbe separatedfrom modernmeans of government and communication. My emphasis,in otherwords, will be on the way of thedevelopment a modernpublic-political life in India has called into being constructionsofboth 'Hinduisn' and 'caste' that do not admit of such simple binary distinctionsas Salman Rushdie's character invokes: secular/religious, liberal/fundamentalist,nationalist/communal. Letme tryto anticipateand forestal.l few a however. It is not my misunderstandings, intentionto deny the traditionsof violence that existed in India before British rule. There are recorded instances of HinduMuslim tensions during the pre-colonial period. Historiansand anthropologists are agreedthat the brahmanicalclaim to ritual supremacywas seldom accepted without challenge and contestation by other social groupsincluding those whom we know as the 'untouchables'.The eminent historian Romila Thapar,citing examples trom the period between the seventh and the 12th centuries of 'Hindu' sects destroying Buddhist and Jaina monasteries and sometimes killing the monks, has usetully reminded us in a recent article that the "popular beliet that the 'Hindus' never indulgedin religious persecution"is simply untrue.'4 This ancient history is something thatI neitherdiscuss nor deny in this essay, for my point is different. Something has fundamentally changedaboutbothHinduism and caste since Britishrule and particularly since the heginning of the 20th century. If I may put it simply by using the example of caste,thechangemaybecrudelydescribed as this. We know from anthiropologists and historiansof the so-called caste system that therewere no strongsystemic rules guiding everybody'scaste identity. This could be a matterof negotiation between individuals and groups. Marriage rules and rules of commensality could change within one's own lifetimeor over generations,depending on factors such as social, economic and geographical mobility.In otherwords, caste society operated as a non-standardJised system,andrulesguidingcaste transactionsi

would have required on the part of the participanta sensitivity to the context. Just as they sought to give India a standardised legal system, the British also attemptedto fix andofficialise collective identities(such as caste and religion) in the very process of creating a quasi-modern public sphere in The India.'5 concept andthe institutionsthat make up the public sphere- free press, voluntary associations, avenues for free debate and enquiry in the public interestaremodemEurope'sintellectual practical and gifts to the people they considered less fortunate thanthemselvesandatwhosedoors they arrivedas raging,madimperialists.My point is that modernproblemsof Hinduism and caste are inseparablefrom the history of this modern public life in India that the British instituted and the nationalists preservedin whatthey thoughtwere the best interests of the country.

II
The most far-reachingand fundamental innovation that the British introduced to Indiansociety, in my view, was the modern state - not a nation-state,for that was what the nationalist movement created, but a modernstate nevertheless.One symptomof its modernity was that its techniques of government were very closely tied to techniques of measurement.From surveys of land and crop output to prospecting for minerals,from measuringIndianbrains(on behalf of the false science of phrenology) to measuring Indian bodies, diets and life spans(i e, layingthe foundationsof physical anthropology modernmedicinein India), and the British had the length and breadthof India, her history, culture and society mapped,classified and quantified in detail that was nothing but precise even when it was wrongheaded. The most dramatic examplesof this governmental concernwith measurement were the decennial Indian censuses, the first of which was published in 1872. Since the Britishdid not go to India in search of pure knowledge, all these studies were produced in the cause and in the process of governingIndia,andit is this pervasivemarriage betweengovernment and measurementthat I take as something that belongs to the deep structure of the imagination that. is invested in modern '6 politicalorders. Withoutnumbers,it would be impossible to practise bureaucraticor instrumentalrationality. This is not to say that pre-modern government had no use for numbers. The Mughalshad statisticsof produce,land and revenue, among other things. Historiansof demographytalk about ancient censuses in such distantand disparateplaces as ancient China, ancient Rome (the word 'census' itself being of'Romanorigin) and in the Inca society of Peru.Butmuchof this information

was haphazardly collected and seldom updated with any regularity. Systematic collection of detailed and classified statistics for the purposeof ruling seems to be intimatelytied to modernideas of government. The history of the very discipline of 'statistics' carriesthis tale. The word 'statistic', etymologically speaking, has the idea ol statecraftbuilt into it. The Slhorter OxfordDictionarv tells us that, 'in early use', statistics was "that branch of political science dealing with the collection, classification,anddiscussionof factsbearing on the condition of a state or community". Gottfried Achenwall, who, as Ian Hacking informs us, was the first to coin the word 'statistics',intendedit to imply a "collection of 'remarkablefacts about the state' " While the census itself is an old idea, the first modern census, according to some scholars, was taken in the US in 1790 and the first Britishcensus in 1801. The Indian censuses were not to appearuntil late in the 19th century, but the East India Company caused quite a few regional censuses to be taken before the period. Measurement is central to our modern ideas aboutfairnessandjustice andhow we administerthem, in short, to the very idea o-f good government. Foucault has emphasisedin several places - especially in his essay on 'governmentality'- how this has been critically dependent on 'the emergence of the problemof population'in the 18th century, and thereforeconnected to the development of the other important 'science' of the same period, that of economics." Benthamiteattemptsat using law for social engineering- the idea, for instance, that punishment should be in proportionto the crime committed or the utilitarian aim devising a society that maximises the pleasure of the maximum possible number of people - all speak a language borrowed from mathematicsand the naturalsciences (unsurprisingly,given the connection between Enlightenment rationalismand scientific paradigms).The 1790 American census had to do with the idea of proportionality in the sphere of political representation. Ideas of 'correspondence', 'proportionality'and so on markRousseau's thoughtson 'equality'. Withoutthem,andwithoutthe numbersthey produced,the equalopportunity legislations of our own period would be unworkable. And to go from the institutional to the personal, a gesture toward measurementis inherentin the question that we have now madeinto a universallitmustest of conjugal happiness: "Does he share the domestic chores equally?" A generalised accounting mind-setis whatseems to inhabitmodernity. The British,as the representatives the and inheritors of European Enlightenment, brought these ideas to India. It is, in fact, one of the ironies of Britishhistorythatthey

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becamepoliticalliberalsat home at the same time as they became imperialists abroad. Britishpolicy in India was forever haunted Whilethe Britishwould by thiscontradiction. never take the step, until 1947, of granting Indiafull self-government,they were often concernedaboutbeing 'fair' to the different competingsections that,in theirview, made up Indiansociety. These sections had been defined by the British, quite early on, in religious and caste terms. A count made of the population of Bombay in 1780, for instance.divided the populationinto 'socio9 religiouscommunities''. Inthe 18thcentury, British amateurhistorians often portrayed India as a society weakened by its internal divisions into various religions and castes, shared later on by Indian an understanding nationalists themselves. Understandably, then, categories of caste and religion dominated the censuses that the British undertookin India.At every census, people were asked to state their religion and caste Kenneth Jones and,as theAmericanhistorian has pointedout, this was in markedcontrast to what the British did at home. Religion, says Jones, was neveran important category in the British censuses for the period 1801 to 1931.Onlyonce, in 1851, werethe British asked about their religious affiliations, and answering the question was optional.*? Counting Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and untouchables became a critical political in exercise, particularly the 20th centuryas the British began lo include Indian representativesin the legislative bodies in very measured doses. Whatmadethe census operationscritical was that the British, in trying to be fair referees, made the process of politicalrepresentation 'communal'- seats in the legislativeassemblieswereearmarked fordifferentcommunitiesaccordingto ideas of proportionality.Nationalists like Nehru and Gandhi abhorredthis process and the ideology that governed it, namely, 'communalism', a word that still leads a stigmatisedexistence in Indiaand works as a surrogatefor 'racism .2 They pointedout, with some justice, that it was invidious to treat 'untouchables' as a 'community' separate from the 'Hindus'. A languagebased definition of political communities would have seemed more natural'to them, but post-independence Indian history has shown that language is no surer a guide to ethnic identity and inter-ethnic peace than religion. Heads have been regularlybroken in the subcontinent over linguistic issues since the 1950s, the liberation war of Bangladeshin 1971 being only a dramatic example of the process. Political leaders of the Muslims and the untouchables,on the other hand, felt much happiergoing along with the British-devisedarrangements until the final decade before independence and Of the partitionot the conuntry. particular importance theIndianstoryis thecategory in

'scheduledcaste', which the Britishcoined in 1936 (and the government of India has retained)and which was so-called because it referred to a schedule of particularly disadvantagedcastes that was drawnup for of "thepurpose giving effect to theprovisions of special electoral representationin the
Government of India Act, 1935".22 It

to one that Hackingdraws in his attemptto find a path somewhere between the epistemologicalobstinaciesof henominalist
and realist positions: It will be foolhardy... to have an opinion about one of the stable human dichotomies. male and female. But very roughly, the robust realist will agree that there may be what really are physiological borderline cases, once called 'hermaphrodites'. The existence of vague boundaries is normal: most of us are neither tall nor short, fat nor thin. Sexual physiology [i e, the categorial structure of sexual physiology] is unusually abruptin its divisions.24

at represents pioneering a attempt affirmative action. Historians politicalscientistsstudying and modern ltndiahave recently made several attempts to understandwhat happened to ethnic identities through this process of a quasi-modern,albeit colonial, state instituting, throughmodernmeansof measurement, a structure political representation to of tied notions of proportionality.What, in other words, did the census do to identities? Historians and anthropologistsof colonial Indiahave reporteda social process akin to what Ian Hackingin his essay 'Making Up People' calls 'dynamicnominalism':people came to fit the categories that the colonial authoritieshadfashionedfor them. Hacking explains dynamic nominalism thus: nominalist You will recallthata traditional says that stars (or algae or justice) have in nothing common exceptournames ('stars', realistin 'algae', 'justice').The traditional contrast finds it amazing that the world couldso kindlysortitselfintoourcategories. He proteststhat thereare definite sorts of objectsin it... whichwe havepainstakingly come to recognise and classify correctly. The robustrealistdoes not have to argue that very harid people also come sorted.A different kind of nominalism- I call it dynamic nominalism attractsmy realist on about making self, spurred bytheories the of the homosexualand the heterosexual as kinds of persons or by my observations about officialstatistics. claimof dynamic The nominalismis not thattherewas a kindof person who came increasingly to be recognisedby bureaucrats by students or of human but nature rather a kindof person that cameintobeingat thesametimeas the kind itselfwasbeinginvented. somecases,that In is ourclassifications ourclassesconspire and to emerge hand in hand, each egging the other on.23 The Indian political scientist Sudipta. Kavirajhas pursueda similarargumentwith regard to the history of 'communities' in pre-British BritishIndia.'Communities' and in pre-British India,says Kaviraj, 'fuzzy' had boundaries; in British India thcy became 'enumerated'. By 'fuzzy', Kavir-ijmeans
vague boundaries which do not .z;?-t of

The kernelof Kaviraj'sargumentis thatthe that post-Enlightenment governingpractices the British introducedinto Indiaand which entailed counting collective identitiesin an all-or-nothing manner, enabled people to see andorganisethemselves in lightof these categories. I shall quote hereat some length Kaviraj's own gloss on these terms, as all my knowledge of Indianhistoryas well as my lived experience of Indiacompel me to agree with him. Kaviraj writes: Communitieswere fuzzy in two senses. Rarely, if ever, would people belong to a whichwouldclaimto represent community or exhaust all the layers of theircomplex on selfhood.Individuals suitable occasions
could describe themselves as vaisnaivs, Bengalis or more likely Rairhis,Kayasthas,

all villagersandso on; andclearlyalthough

these could on appropriate occasions be called their satnaj [society/community]... theirboundaries would not coincide.... [Their identity] would be fuzzy in a second sense as well. To say their community is fuzzy is not to say it is imprecise. On the appropriate occasion. every individual would use his cognitive apparatus to classify any single person he interacts with and place him quite exactly, and decide if he could eat with him, go on a journey. or arrange a marriage into his family. It was therefore practically precise, and adequate to the scale of social action. But it would not occur-toan individual to ask how many of them there were in the world, and what if they decided to act in concert... 2 I would like to modify Kaviraj's incisive

either/ordi visions.Censlus discrete, c.,official enumerations, however,givc us discretekind of identities even' if particular identities change, as indeed they often do, over time. For the purpose of affirmative action, a 'scheduled caste' person is a 'scheduled ca.ste'person is a 'scheduledcaste' person. The distinctionthatKaviraj drawsis parallel

analysis in one respect, however. The movement from 'fuzzy' to 'enumerated' communities did not representa complete change of consciousness. In theireveryday lives, in negotiatingthe spheresof friendship andkinship,say, Indians,like humanbeings everywhere, are comfortable with the indeterminacies ethnicidentities, share of and none of the tenacity with which social scientists and governments hang on to the labels thatinformtheirsense of bothanalysis and action. Yet the very existence of administrative categories of ethnicitywhether one is looking at the international level or at developmentswithin a country-

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suogest a modern, public career tor ethnic tags, a 'national' identity being its highest form.It is. of course, within this spherethat the identity olf being Indian or Hindu or Muslimor scheduled caste takes on a new politicailmeaning. This meaning resides alongside.and is interlaced with. the more ftuzzy'sense ot co:mmunity. The late 19thcenturycensuses and other similarinstitultions, then. reconstitutedthe meaningol commlunity'or 'ethnicity' and gave Indians thlree important political messages. all of whiclh are entirely commensurable with liberal political philosophyas we know it. These messages were: (a) that communities could be and enumerated, that in numberslay one's political clout; (b) that the social and economic progress ol a community was a measurable entity. measuredin the case of Indiancensuses by their share in public lite (education,professions. employment, etc); and (c) that this enabled governments and
communities to devise objective tests for the

This language would now appearoffensive but there is a homology between what this children's primer said and the sensibility that makes of- the modern industrialised nations a model tor the rest of the world to follow. We all partalke tilis sensibilityand ot I am no exception. All I am saying is that this sensibility, our commonsense on these My point is that the social assumptions on matters,is undergirdedby the mechanisms which the classitication andorganisationof of the modern state and the universal census figures rested were fundamentally requirements governmentality,the same of modern: they showed Indiato be a collection mechanisinsthatinfluenice constructions our of 'communities' whose 'progress' or ol conmpetitive blocs ol ethnicityin thepublic could be measuredby thle sphere.Hindus,Muslims,the scheduledand 'backwardlness' applicationof some supposedly 'universal' lower castes of India, both duringand after indices. That is exactly how the modlern British rule, have in aisense done no more world ot' nation-statesis structured it is a thanapplythis sensibility to theirpublicand political orders produce, that led many Indian united but internally hicrarchised world political lives. leaiders profess simplistic, homogeneous where some countries are described as to ethnicidentitiesin 'publiclife'.disregarding measurably orshouldI sayimmeasurably III all the heterogeneityanddiversity of Indian more 'advanced'thanothers.This structure social praclices. These were categories by of relationships has the nature of what But of course they have done more than which few leaders actually lived in their scientists call f'ractals or self-similar that. If India were simply a place where privatecapacity. patterns- it is capableof reproducingitself ethnicity was contained within the liberal Wlhenwe look back now at India in the at many different levels. between nations, structure competitive pluralism,it would of 1870s and 18 80s. it becomes clear that the between modern ethnic groups, between not have made news aindI would not be eraof modern, competitive,governmenitally- perceived races and so on. It is what discussing it today. Ethnicstrifein Indiahas ethnic identities familiar to us in constitutes the liberal idea of competitive spilled blood in large amountsat ditferent detinecd liberal democracies, had already arrived. pluralism.As anidea, as the Frenchhistorian points in history from the 1890s onward. of Thepeculiarity colonial Indianhistorylay LucienFebvreonce remindedus, it has been Recent problems in Assam, Punjab and in the fact that these identities were based with us since the second haltfof the IXth Kashmir havebeenparticularly glaring.What on religiouscategories because of a certain century.2X was packed into the idea of then is the difterence between the recent It degree of reiticationof these categories by 'civilisation', a word the French startedto experience of ethnicity in western liberal the British. (But even it the British had use in the 1760s and which soon found its democracies and the contemporaryIndian pickedlanguageas a markot distinction in way into the English language to provide experience'? this multi-lingualcountry, the result would! the noblestjustiticationf'orEngland'swork The difte~rence to me forcefully in camEle have been the salme.)By the 1890s, Hindu in India. The word 'civilisation' has long~ 1989)whenI received (form) letter Irom a

relative 'backwardness'or otherwise of a community. Indians were quick to learn the art of participationin this public sphere. They learnt,as we all do when we want to take ot advantage equal opportunitylegislation, thatmodern limited governmentshaverather intelligence;their principles of distributive jistice require simple, homogeneous,sharply delineated identities,the kindsthatpassports bear. While identities can proliferate and havea tendencyto do so underthe pressure ot the politicsof democraticrepresentation, the sense of multiple identities that propels individuals in their everydayness is too complex for the rules that govern the logic of representation modernpubliclite, where in identities,howevernumerousand internally difterentiated maybe, musteach remain they distinctanddiscrete in the competitive race torgoods andservicesthatthe stateandcivil society may offer. It is this pressure,which is essentially tile pressure that modern

and Muslim leaders were quoting census at f-igures each otherto provewhetheror not they had received their legitimate share of benel'its (suchas employmentandeducation) f'romBritish rule. The rise of moderncaste consciousness shows a similar concern for the measurement 'progress'in publiclife. of The famous anti-hrahman 'manifesto', produced in Madras in 1916 by the nonbrahmancaste who formed a new political owed its rhetorical forceto thestatistics party, thegovernmenthadcollected to demonstrate a brahman'monopoly' of the civil service.26 Demographywas pressedinto the service of such ethnic jealousies between Hindus and Muslims or between castes by several authorswhloused the censuses to make their points. One example of this process, discussed by Kenneth Jones, is a set of articles publishedby a Bengali author,U N in Mukherji, 1909 (a periodin Indianhistory whentheMuslimswerebeinggiven reserved seats in the legislature by the British). In these articles, entitled 'A Dying Race'. Mukherjiused the census data from 1872 to 1901 to demonstrate,to the satisiaction of manyHindus."that withina given number of years all Hindus would disappear f'rom British India".In doing this, writes Jones. Mukherji"was actually following the lead of M J C O'Donnell, Census Commissioner ot'Bengal for 1891. who hadcalculated 'the numberot' years it would take the Hinduis to altogether disappear f'rom Bengal if' Muhammadan increase went on at the raite it was doing' ".7 Let us put aside for the moment whaitto ourearsmay sound 'racist'in these remarks.

since tfallenout of favour; we preferredto talkabout 'progress'in the 19thcenturyand 'development' in the 20th, but the idea of a unitedworld with an internallyarticulated hierarchymeasurableby some universallyagreed indices, has remainedwith us. How strongly the Indian middle classes internalised this idea is suggested by the following quotationfrom a Bengali book of moralsthatwas publishedin Calcuttaabout 140 years ago for the consumption of children. I quote from the eighth edition of the book, printed in 1858. Notice how the world is seen as both one and hierarchical, the observable differences in standardsof living between countries being - to make a conscious gesture toward the idea of measurement proportionalto their "total national efforts": Countries wherepeopleareaverseto labour ...are uncivilised. The Aboriginals of Americaand Australiaas well as Negroes are still in this state. They live in great hardship withoutadequate foodandclothes, aind do notsaveanything badtimes... for they The Germans,the Swiss, the Frencih. the Dutch and the English are the most industrious nations/races ['jati']of theworld. Thatis whytheyenjoythebestcircumstances
among all nations.2"

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the Australianprime minister encouraging me (and others) to become Australian citizens. In that letter the prime minister went to some trouble to spell out what it meant to be an Australian.He said: it was not the colour ot your skin, or your religion or the language you spoke that made you more Australian than others; being an Australianmeant believing in freedom of speech, of association, in everyone having .a fair go', etc. This letter promptedme to subject myself to some imaginary tortures (of the Geoffrey Robertson kind). For example, I asked myself if this were all there was to being an Australianthen what would be my properpatrioticresponse if Australia ever went to warwith a nationthatprofessed the same liberalvalues but was much better equipped to protect them and hence by definition protect my 'Australianness' as well? (Of course,a Margaret Thatcherwould arguethata liberaldemocraticcountrynever
starts a war. so the question would not arise!).

A littleretlectionmadeit clearthattheprime was minVister speakingin a historicalcontext that aftorded him one rare luxury- he did not feel any pressureto spell out what made Australians differentfromothers.The letter, by implication, was relegating 'cultural difference' to the sphere ol the personal. If pressed, a liberal would no doubt tell me as the British Muslims who burned The Saianic Ver-ses at Bradford were often reminded- that'ethnicity'could finda place in public life so long as its expressions were in coniormity with the 'core values' of the nation (as defined by the state). Ethnicity functions here under the aegis of equal opportunity principles. in the form of a pressure group - in my case, an Indian Associationwhichdemandsthingsliketimeslots on AustralianpubUcradio or tunding for community schools as part of liberal pliralist multicUlturalism.As Talal Asad haisshown in his discussion of the Rushdie aifair, there are hlidden ldemographic this assumptions belhlild position.particularly that of a continuous dominance of a European-derived, if not an English" speaking, majority. Of course, one would also have to take into account particular Australianinstitijtions- the welfare state, a relativelyprosperous economy. the structure ol the AustralianLabourParty, the olticial etc policy of mtilticulturailistim, - that have historicallyplayeda role in mainaging ethnic contlici in public life. That Australiawould be able to retainthis multicultural tolerance of ethnicity in public life if the cultural doiniiance ol its Anglo-Celtic or at least European maijority were ever seriously threatened.is far from certain. Modern ethnicconsciousnessin Indiahave beenfashionedundercircumstances which in the politics of culturalditference has been of pre-eminentvalue. The point is that the question of Indian unity has never becn

settledbeyondall doubtanddisputation,nor has there been any one, culturally homogeneousanddominant,majority ethnic group that could both dominate as well as effectively claim to representall Indians(at least until independence- one might argue that the Hinduextremistparty,the BJP. are trying to develop one now, precisely by denying the heterogeneitythatcharacterises Hinduism).The British cobbled a political Indiatogetherfor reasonsof administrative convenience. The nationalityquestion was muddled 1romthe beginning. In the public spherethatthe Britishcreated,therewas no one, universally agreed-upon 'Indian' ethnicity. The struggle to produce a sense of cultural unity against the British made mainstream Indian nationalism culturally Hindu. The Muslim search for Pakistan emphasisedIslam.Thelowercastes'struggle forsocialjustice produced anti-brahmanism. After independence, in the 1950s and the 1960s, there were the 'tribal' communities of the Nagas and the Mizos on the northeastern frontierof the country who had to be bludgeoned into becoming Indians.The last 15 or 20 years have seen an explosive of combination democracyanddemography. Indianpopulationhas almost trebled since independence.The growth and diversity of the niiddleclass may bejudged fromthe fact that while at independence there was consensus that the number of important languages was 14, there are now daily newspapers published in more than 78 differentlanguages."' This middle class has tastedconsumerismwhich has increasedthe sense of competition in urban life. The secessionist aspirationsin Kashmir,Punjab and partsof Assam have gained in strength in recentyears.Caste,particularly Indian the policy of positive discriminationin favour of thelowercastes, has becomeanextremely contentious issue in public life. And the latest attempts by the extremist Hindu political partiesto convert Hinduisminto a strong,monolithicandmilitantreligionhave given many IndianMuslimsunderstandable nightmares. Fundamentally, like the former Soviet Union, India remains in part an imperial structure held togetherby strongtendencies towardscentralism. UnliketheSoviet Union, however, those centralist tendencies exist within,andmustworkthrough,ademocratic political structurewhich also gives the state more popularlegitimacy than the Stalinist states ever-had.Indianshave an investment in electoraldemocracy,as was provenin the unpopularityof Indira Gandhi's two year emergency of 1975-77. Yet the ideological scene has changed. This centralisingtendencywas once most powerfully expressed in the ideology of JawaharlalNehru and it representedsome kind of consensus among the political elite. This ideology, called in India by the name

of secularism,drew heavily on the western liberal heritage to argue for a separation betweenreligionandtheideas thatgoverned public life. This ideology never described the actual culture of political practice in Indiawhereareligious idiomandimagination had always been very stronglypresent.But so long as the nationalleadershiplay in the handsof a tiny elite rearedin and respectful of the British traditions of politics, the everyday religiousness of Indian political culture could be kept separate from the decision-makingboardsof the government. Thecustodian nature ofthis elitewasreflected in the unity of the Congress Partyin which Nehrualways remained Bonapartist a figure. The combinationof demography,democracy and political growth in Indiahas now ensured that the political elite is no longer tiny. There are no Bonapartistfigures in India today. Nehruviansecularism,a close cousinof westernliberalismrepresented now by Marxistsand the left-liberalsin India,is on the defensive (remember Salman Rushdie's charactertalkingaboutthe battle lines?). Why this has happened will require a different analysis. But it should be clear from the above that the problem of competitive and official constructions of in ethnicityis a featureinherent moderncivil society. In the best of times, one expects to tind lawful, bureaucratic meansof resolving these tensions. Even then, the mobilisation of ethnic sentiments would always risk spilling over into racism in publicplaces as the experience of the AustralianMuslims during the Gulf war would confirm. There are, however, other times in history when bureaucratic solutions lose theirappeal.The differencehereis notdueto a totalopposition between fascism and liberalismas political philosophies. The difference here is in historical contexts. Imagine the conflict betweenthe Bengali-Muslimsenseethnicity andPakistani nationalism whatwas, before in 1971, East Pakistan. Clearly, a model of pluralism that recommendedthat all signs of culturaldifference be mattersof private belief, became untenable in that situation. Kashmirtoday, for many, would represent a similar situation. The point is, as I have argued, the very structure of modern governmentalitycarrieswith it the seeds of ethnic bloodbath. Whether the seeds will ever germinateis a matterof the particular moment of historyone inhabits.This is not a counsel of despair- but it is a plea forour political analysis to be informedby a larger sense of irony. Advocating the cultivation of a sense of irony about the civilising narratives of does notimplypoliticalpassivity. modernity The relationship between philosophical positions and political action is seldom straightforward. (a)thereis noalternative For, to action,we arecondemnedto actpolitically

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in this world whetherwe want to or not, and (b) the subject who acts, and is mobilised to act in the tace of events, is more than an intellectual-philosophical subject. Action involves emotions, memories, tastes, feelings. will and values - and these things havehistoriesover which we have muchless controlthan we have over our consciously thought-out philosophical positions. Whatever my theoretical understanding today of the problematic histories of practicesnamed 'sati', 'female infanticide'. 'human sacrifice' and 'thagi' - to name four names by which British colonial discoursecondemned 'Indian' (yet another civilisation - I havebeen irreversibly naime) up brought by the historiesof my childhood, education. socialisation (all of them influenced by British and nationalist critiques of Indian society) to be revolted by the practices that these narmesseek to describe (always inaccurately). How, in what mode of action, this revulsion will express itself depends on particular situationsandthe opportunitiesI readthem as presenting. What, then. is the relationship between this critique and political or state policies thatmightbe put in place to combat racism First, conditions of modernisation'? Linder this critique is about the limits of policymaking under present institutional I arrangements. have arguedthat, given the connectionibetween governmentality and both the modern nation-state measurement. and civil society necessarily set up certain competitive structuresof identity through the very distributiveprocesses over which they preside. The question. 'distribution takes identities for among whom!'n,always Identities herearenotseen as porous. granted. ln fact, identities are not measurable or enumerableexcept on the assumption that theirboundariesare abruptand not vague. In the language of distributive justice, identitiesrepresentat any one point of time some kind of narrativeconsensus in which everybodyor every group knows who they are, and this knowledge is shalredby the institution that administers well-being. In otherwords, the existing models of modern political and economic institutions handle of 'difference'in identity thequestion cultural precisely by fixing and freezing such differences into divisions that are not permeable a Hinducannot be a Muslim so that they are amenable to measurement and enumeration.Even if we moved from the idea ol ililocative justice to that of justicein thesphereot distribution procedural as John Rawls did in his classic book A Thieort of Justice (1971), we would still have no way of handling differences in identities. Rawls' search for "justice as

he himself explains) in which individuals met without any conception of their social or class locations - thatis to say, as humans from whom all differences had been abstractedaway)2 Even Leftist intellectuals who try to modify Rawls in order to infuse a more self-consciously political life into his theory, find it diflicult not to universalise a distinction that is historically very particular,that is, the distinction between 'public' and 'private'. Chantal Mouffe's attempt to move away from the Rawlsian position of holding on to the idea of an original rational agreement and to ground 'democracy' in a permanent state of disputation (since there cannot any longer be a "single idea of a substantialcommon good"), is instructive in this regard. Pluralism here is seen as possible on conditionthatthepolitical is defined around a minimum shared agreement; that "the principlesof the liberal-democraticregime qua political association: equality and liberty"be delined as the "commonpolitical good". As Mouffe clarifies: be a liberal-democr-atic regime. if it mrUst agnosticin termsof moralityand religion. cannot be agnostic concerning political values since by definition it asserts the that principles constituteits specificityqua political association, i e, the political principlesof equality and liberty.3" Where,then, will be the place tfor'morality and religion' in this (post)modern,socialist idea of liberal-democraticpolitics which accepts disputation as a foundation for democracy? Or for anything else that was not part of this minimum shared political good'?Mouffe is clear:these ideas will exist as 'private' belief, the sphere of 'privacy' implicitly defined in such a way as to be incapable, by its very detinition, of endangering the institutions that cmbody ."the political principles of equality and liberty".4 Whatelse can an Indianinteliectualdo but experiencea sense ot ironyatwhatEuropean political theory offers us'?On the one hand. there are the actually existing institutions that adminiister lives both in India and our of outside. The very administration (ethnic)
identities by the actually-existing civilpolitical institutions needs, as I have shown,

thesamefixed,discretecategoriesthatracists of all colours use. The only difterence is in their idioms - bureaucraciesuse a certain impersonallanguage while racist mobilisation in public life involves an explicit use of emotions as well, but this difference is superticial and depends on the historical context.Governments.in momentsof crisis, will use both. On the other hand, critics of these institutions, whether arguing from a purely liberal position of a Rawls or a fairness", as readers of that text will st, remember, ledl him to) posit an "o)riginal postmoderni socialistpositionof a Moufte, of (a po.sition" perspectivalposition, really, a.s caninotbut resurrectthe modJel a human

being who holds on to a culturaldistinction between the public and the private, as a condition for tolerance and pluralism. But is this humanbeing universal?Is this human being universal even in the west? Does 'political emancipation' (I borrow the expression from young Marx's essay 'On the Jewish Question') require us to universalise the experience and skills of a in history? particulargroup modemEuropean Do we all have to become humanswho are able to objectify their relationship to the into supernatural stateable'beliefs' andwho are able to categorise these 'beliefs' as 'private'? The politics of being humanare different between cultures and within cultures. We are not impervious to one another but that does not mean that the differences are not real. Some people in India possess the modernsense of privacy as it has developed in the history of the middle classes in the west. Many do not. The importance of kinship in Indian society suggests other paths of social change. If we swallowed a theory, hook, line and sinker, that made tolerance and pluralism contingent on the idea of private belief', we would only move furtheraway from our social realities than Rawls does from his by his theoretical manoeuvres.The writing of Indian history then has to subscribeto two struggles. One is to documentandinterpret'orcontemporary needs the different practices of toleration and pluralism that already exist in Indian society, practices that are not critically dependent on the universalisation of the public/privatedistinction. The otherwould ol' be to help develop cr-itiques the already existing institutions and their theoretical assumptions, for the struggle against the murderous and self-proclaimed 'Hindus' of today must, in the long run, also be a struggle for new kinds of political and economic institutions tor the management of public life - institutions that do not require for their everyday operation the fiction of cultural identities with fixed, enumerableandabruptboundaries.Nobody has to blueprints for such institutions, though we know that two of the finest productsofIndo-British culturalencounter of the 19th century,-Gandhi and Tagore, experimented with both facets of this struggle at different momentsof theirlives. If cultural and other kinds of differences are to be taken and lived out seriously, and we want to live in a world where particuliar developments in the cultural histories of European middle classes do not have to function as models to which all politics of being human must aspire, then we also need institutions that can handle the fuzzy logic with which identities are built. The existing institutions in charge of produciny Ind administering prosperity, cannot do that.

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Cominunities? Ancient History and the Attonoiny. liidii'idialiiv,1 and the Seffin Modem Searchfor a HinduIdentity',Modern WesternThought.Stanford. 1986. pp 227-28. Ast(in Sftldies. Vol 23. No 2. 1989, p 219. 24 Hacking. 'Making Up People'. p 227. [An earlierand shorterversion of this essay was 15 Some of the unfortunateconsequences of 25 Sudipta Kaviraj, 'On the Construction of readat a seiniai;lr organised by the University of such standardisationin post-colonial India Colonial Power: Structure. Discourse. WesternSydney. Nepean, in May 1993 and was have been recentlytracedby MadhuKishwar Hegemony', unpublishedpaperpresentedto published in the proceedings of that seminar. I in heressay Codified HinduLaw: Myth and a conferenceon 'ImperialHegemony',Berlin. am gratefulto the participantsin thatsemiiinar for Reality EconominandPolittcal 'VVeeklVol v. June 1-3, 1989. their criticisms. Thanks also to Fiona Nicoll, XiII, August 13, 1994, pp 2145-61. 26 See Eugene F Irschick, Politics aondSocial DIavidBennett. Meaghan Morris and Stephen 16 Our eyes have been opened to these aspects 71'e Conflict in So,th In&dia: Non-Brahinin Henninghamfor their coininents. All responsiof modernity' by, aimong others, the ad Movemnemit(t Ta ail iSepir(itismtn. 1916-1929, bilities are. of course, inine.1 works of Michel Foucault.My pathbreaking Berkeley, 1969, App 1. particular observationson Indiaowe a lot to 27 Jones, 'Religious [dentity', p 91. I Ashis Nandy's work has been pioneering in the pioneering researches of BernardCohn 28 Lucien Febvre, 'Ci*ilisatiitm,Evolution of a : this respect but one can miention Veena Das. andto theilluminatingworkof Richard Smith, Word and a Group of Ideas' in A New Kind Bhikhu Parekh.T N Madan and others. See, o Histor!: Fromin the Writiln.gs Fehvre, Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge, oj/ for exainple. Ashis Nandy's The Ititnt(ile Nicholas Dirks, Rashmi Pant, N G Barrier, Peter Burke (ed), London, 1973. pp 219-57. Loss and(t Eeineao': Recov'erv oJ Sel' inud(ler / Gyan Prakashand others. 29 Rajkrishna Bandyopadhyay, Neetibodli. ColonilihsmnDelhi. 1983. and Tra(ditions. Calcutta. 1858, pp 12-13. anlUd Tv-rantim Utoipias:Essays in thlePolictEs 17 Ian Hacking. The Taming of Ch(ance, Cambridge. 1991. p 24. 3() Talal Asad, 'Multiculturalism and British of Awareness. Delhi. 1987I Veena Das and ; I 8 See Michel Foucault, 'Governimentality'in Identity in the Wake of the Rushdie Affair' Ashis Nan(ly. 'Violence. Victimnhood the and GrahamiBurchell, Colin Gordon and Peter in his Geniealogies of Religilon:Discipline Languageof Silenlce' in Veena Das (ed). 7The Miller teds). 7'1/ie 1-oucafit E'fje't: Studies and Reasons of Power-in, Chir istianity antd Worldaniid World. Delhi. 1986. pp 177the in Govler-,iienitalitiv. Hertfordshire, 1991, Islan, Baltimore, 1993, pp 239-68. 95; Bhikhu Parekh, G(andhi's Political pp 87-104. 31 Personal communication from Ashin Das Discourse, London. 1989. , 2 See LataMani. Vivek Dhareshwarand Mary 19 T H Hollingsworth,Historical Demoi(,gralcv1h Gupta, formerly director of the National London, 1969, p 78. Library in Calcutta. Johnin JamesCliffordandVivek Dhareshwar 20 See Kenneth W Jorfes, 'Religious Identity 32 See JohnRawls,A TheoryofiJustice,London, (eds). T)' Ovellliig ThIeor-ies. Travelling and the Indiani Census' in N G Barrier(ed), 1976, pp 137-38. Rawls, as is well known, Santa Cruz. 1989. Thleori'sts, Cecis.us in Bitish, In,dia: Net Perspectives, has both miiodifiedand presented reinter3 Aijaz Ahmiiad. Theorw:Cilasses. Natiolns. In Delhi, 1984[?J, p 74. pretationsof his originaltheoryin subsequent Liter-tulires. London. 1992. pp 192-93. 21 GyanendraPandey's book, TheConstruction publications. A good overview of the debate 330n22. ini around Rawls is available in Chandran oJ Commnunalismi Coloniial Idia, [Delhi 4 Sumit Sarkar, 'The Fascismnof the Sangh 1990, Chapter7, contains a fine analysis and Kukathasand Philip Petit, Rawls: A Thieory Parivar'. E(onomnicaind Politictl Weekly. r)f Justice atd Its Critics. Cambridge, 1990. history of this word. January 1993. See also Tom Brass 'Away 20, withTheirWor(I)ds:RuralLabourers through 22 Marc Galanter. Conpetiing Equalities: Ltaw 33 ChantalMouffe, 'Rawls:PoliticalPhilosophy and(lthle Backwvtdr(lClaisses in h/ilia, Without Politics' in David Rasinussen(ed), Deelhi, the Postinodern Prism' in Economuicand 1984, p 130. Uniiversailisti v.s Comntnunitaritanism: Political Weekli. June 5, 1993. ,Deb(tes 23 IanHacking, 'MakingUp People' in Thomiias Comntemnporatry iii Ethics.Cambridge, 5 Sumlit Sarkar. 'The Fascissmof the Sangh Heller, MortonSosna, and David E Wellbery Massachusetts, 1990, p 223. Parivar'.pp 164-65. (eds), Indivitlviduaismi: 34 Ibid. p 222. Reconstructing 6 See theexcellent discussion in Achin Vanaik. 'Situating Threat of Hindu Nationalism: with Problemiis Fascist Paradigin'and Partha and Toleration' in Chatterjee. 'Secularismii REVIEW OF WOMEN STUDIES Economicand PohiticalWVeekly. 9. 1994. July pp 1729-48. 1768-77. October 28, 1995 7 W E B DuBois, TlheWorll antAtfri Aca. New Cultural Imperialismand Women's Movements York. 1965. p 23. cite(din Roslyn W Bologh, Sheila Rowbotham: Builder ot Bridges Late orGreaitness: v Weberand Max Masculine Vinay Ba/il London.1990, Thikingl- A Fem1nisitEnqmar%. Judiciary, Social Reform and Debate on 'Religious
p 38. 8 See the discussion in Pierie tH Boulle. 'In Defence of Slavery: Eighteenth-Century

Notes

Prostitutionin Colonial India' Images of the Body and Sexuality in Women's Narrativeson Oppression in the Hoime Gender in Field Research: Experiences in India Fertility and Frality: Demographic Change and Health and Status of Indian Women Women and Land Rights in Cambodia
-KalpyaeEa KaczetJabirc

Opposition to Abolition and the Origins of a Racist Ideology in France' in Frederick

Krantz (ed). History Fronti Below. Studies in Populatr Protrest (11id Populaehr Ideology, New

Mcalavika Karlekar
-Meernaks/JThalspan

York, 19X8. pp 219-46. 9 CitedinTalalAsad. 'Ethnography, Literature. and Politics: Soime Readings and Uses of SalimlanRushdie's 77te Sataic Verses',
Cultural Ant hroolo1ogv Vol 5. No 3. August

-Kirstv McNat

-Kyoko Kusababe, GovinidKcelkar Wang Ytun-xian, The Review of Women Studies appearstwice yearly as a supplementto the last issues oi April and October. Earlierissues have focused on: Women's Movement in Third World (October 1994); Gender and StructuralAdjustment(April 1994), Womenand Public Space (October 1993);Community,State and Women's Agency (April 1993);Genderand Kinship(October 1992); Women:Rights and Laws (April 1992): Women and the Media (October 1991). For copies write to Circulation Manager, Economic and Political Weekly, Hitkari House, 284, Shahid Bhagatsingh Road, Bombay 400 001

199(9,p 243.
10 Klauis K Klostermaier, A Sifarvevoffind(isni.

New York, 1989, p 412. II Georg Wilhelimi Friedrich Hegel. 7'1Te of Philosolphy Historv, translatedby J Sibree. New York. 1956,p 161. See also the(liscussion in RonaildInden. Ihagining lindlit,. Oxford,
1990. pp 69-74. 12 Hegel. Histor. p 163. ,,

13 V S Naipaul. indiai: Million,Mutinies Nowv, A Londlon.1990.(p 420. 14 Rtoinilal Thapa.lr 'Imalginced Religious

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