Mahatma Gandhi speaks with Jawaharlal Nehru in Bombay, in 1946. Both Gandhi and Nehru represented a tradition of “thinking-in-action” or “thinking-in-politics” that characterised Indian political thought during the anti-colonial movement.
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Yogendra Yadav took a dig(Indian Express, August 26) at practitioners of modern political thought and theory in India by pronouncing an exaggerated judgement that political thinkers who, during the anticolonial movement, belonged to a tradition of thinking-in-action or thinking-in-politics have now disappeared from prominence. Despite conceding the existence of formidable names in the field of Indian political thought since Independence, Yadav’s complaint centres around the argument that political thinking has given way to a more academically constrained world and craft of political theory. This complaint is true to some extent, but the reason behind this shift has to be understood by certain key changes in our political history.
Figures like Gandhi, Nehru, and Ambedkar were produced by the anticolonial struggle where they did politics as well as put their thoughts on paper to be read by the public at large. These figures produced a reading public that contributed to the making of India’s politically conscious civil society. Since India’s political thought uniquely arose from the real field of politics, our trajectory was shaped by an emergent, contestable, and fluid set of ideas that had a corresponding relationship with the shaping of our politics during colonial and postcolonial times. This meant that ideas were always under contest and arguments got reshaped by the force of these contests. If we look at the Constituent Assembly Debates on citizenship in 1950 or the debates around minority rights, we get the idea of a vibrant and occasionally bitter struggle for a constitutional ratification of what comprises people’s rights.
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These debates have contributed to the strong foundations of our democracy; the wide level of political representation made it possible. Even though everyone participating in the debates was not a thinker, they were ideologues who could articulate their opinions coherently.
Unlike the West, our political ideas were shaped by thinkers who were not formally trained in the subject of philosophy or political thought. Though Ambedkar had a doctorate in Economics and practised Law, and Gandhi and Nehru earned degrees in law, much of their writing was a combination of their reading of Western thought and an imaginative engagement with their own historical, social, and political reality. Nehru’s attempt at writing a “living history” of India, Ambedkar’s theory of minority rights, and Gandhi’s non-violent politics of truth are unique proposals with universal resonance in the 20th century.
Indian political thought was never very Indian but was in deep affinity with modern trends of thought in Europe. Yet, the interpretation of secularism in India has been understood by theorists as more culture-inclusive than how it has been thought of in France and other nations. Tagore’s radical critique of the nation idea has no parallel in the intellectual thought of the 20th-century West. Indians have thought independently, and our theorists have explained it to the world.
In postcolonial India, the inheritance of political thought was bifurcated into two spheres, party politics and academia. Once institutionalised, politics was reduced to ideological polemics and the lack of imaginative leaders ensured the death of political thinking in India’s mainstream parties. It was during social movements and the Emergency that politics was transformed into a battle for ideas. In academia, the theory took over thinking. I have often complained in amusement that my own subject, political science, has been reduced to “rethinking” in every other seminar.
The theory is an important means to engage both with radical and normative values and the principles of politics, as well as a critique of existing structures of thought in the world and within a nation. But theory is highly jargonised, which limits it to a set of aspirational “experts” who argue in a language that often does not speak adequately to a larger audience. The language of theory is the chief culprit in limiting its sphere of influence and understanding.
In fact, overtly Westernised academia has successfully managed to replace thinking with theory. It, however, cannot be said of scholars such as Ashis Nandy, Gopal Guru, Faisal Devji, and Sharmila Rege, among others, who have written in accessible language without compromising on rigour. There are younger scholars following in their footsteps today who write on political issues in public.
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I would now like to reverse the question raised by Yadav: Do political parties and activists, or the larger world of politics, need political thinking or theory? There is enough literature to read and engage with for political leaders and ideologues. But what we mostly see is an interest in political biographies (often hagiographies, or ideologically-motivated criticisms) and not political thought. The intellectual lethargy and lack of imagination in India’s political class and the (often) rigid ideological frameworks of political activists cannot be exempted from the ebbing interest in political thinkers in the country. Public engagement with thinkers should be part of a creative necessity for vibrant politics. Currently, Rahul Gandhi’s “Mohabbat ki dukaan” (the love store) is an exception in the way it is trying to reinvent Gandhi’s politics of love in the face of communal and hate politics.
There are enough public intellectuals in India who can be taken seriously. But does the political class pay heed to their concerns and warnings? Do they consider and discuss these ideas in their internal meetings? Do Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Suhas Palshikar share their incisive political opinions for a reading public sans people doing politics? The “poverty” of theory lies in the reception. Yadav must ask the question to the world he belongs to. India’s political thinkers are very much around. It is a political engagement with them that is missing.
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is the author of Nehru and the Spirit of India.
