Communication

Will the literature of the fantastic be possible in the twenty-first century, with the growing inflation of prefabricated images?

Italo Calvino¹

HAVING gone through the November issue of Seminar (Situating Sociology), I felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction for two reasons. First, there was hardly any coherence between the problem posed and the essays that followed. Second, it had screened out certain crucial questions which, I think, are central to comprehend the state of sociology in India.

Though the issue under discussion has made commendable efforts at situating sociology, the very process of situating it has not been adequately sociologised, much less historicised. For instance, the symposium, as stated on the content page, was about ‘knowledge, institutions and practices in a discipline.’ However, very little, if any, discussion was devoted to the matrix of power behind the fashioning of knowledge and its relations with philosophy and mutatis mutandis to sociology. In what follows, a modest attempt has been made to critically situate sociology as I, a young practitioner of the craft, have (mis)understood it.

A historically grounded discussion on Indian sociology cannot bypass the grand ascendance and expansion of European modernity, whatever its rendition. Indeed modernity is the sine qua non of sociology. Agnes Heller is quite right when she says that, ‘Sociology as a genre... is the offspring of modernity and it bears the birthmark of modern parentage.’² Thus viewed, it is hardly amazing that the writings of all three consensual founding fathers of sociology – Marx, Weber, Durkheim (not to speak of Comte, the actual father) – dealt with modernity, albeit with its varied aspects.

While Marx was concerned with capitalism in the West and its absence in the non-western world, Weber’s interest lay in the process of rationalisation of modern society. Likewise, Durkheim in his first major work, The Division of Labour in Society, sought to grapple with the evolution of society based on organic solidarity (which is coterminous with modern society) from the one based on mechanical solidarity.

Three sociologists, three themes; numerous concepts, but one problem i.e., the dynamics and complexity of modernity. And each of them regarded, with no major differences in essence amongst themselves, the ‘Rise of the West’ as ‘exceptional’. It was considered as no less than a miracle, something invisible elsewhere in the world.³

The method through which they arrived at the exceptional ‘Rise of the West’, and this in itself was seldom contested, was that of vertical continuity. This entailed looking at the West in an evolutionary fashion. This is not to say that they were oblivious of the horizontal continuity. But, to be sure, insufficient attention was paid to this important fact. Or else, when they analysed the horizontal continuity, they did not problematize the ‘Rise of the West’ in a non-Eurocentric way. They looked at the world with their eyes fixed on Europe rather than the other way round.⁴

As a result, the non-western world was often portrayed in starkly negative terms. For Marx, if the capitalist mode of production was what revolutionized Europe, the Asiatic mode of production (AMP) was the principal reason for the ‘stagnation’ of countries like India. So negatively unique did India appear to Marx that he had to invent a specific category, the AMP, to discuss it. Similarly Weber saw in the other-worldly orientations of Asian religions, e.g., Hinduism, the factor unfavourable to the birth of capitalism in the non-western world.⁵

From the above it is thus not very difficult to deduce that the main corpus of classical sociological theories dealt with the ‘Rise of the West’ and ‘stagnation’ of the non-western world. Rarely was it asked, in a manner that questions the already ‘given’ ‘Rise of the West’ doctrine, why the East did not rise. Or was there really something exceptionally ‘positive’ in European history and culture which heralded the ‘miracle’ in the West? More importantly, was the non-western world condemned to be a passive loser in the march of human history because of the AMP, other-worldly religious orientations and its other alleged negative historical-cultural features?

Instead of addressing these central questions in a historical, non-Eurocentric way, what has been predominantly practised in Indian social sciences, including sociology, is a constant comparison of the elements/features of western exceptionalism with the negative uniqueness of the non-western world, without dislodging the former from its self-proclaimed position of historical virtue. With such comparison, the raison d’etre of methods in anthropology/sociology, there ironically also began the process of cultural ‘othering’.

It found its ultimate, as also the ugliest, expression in binaries such as modern vs primitive, dynamic vs stagnant, scientific vs metaphysical, and gentlemen vs gentoos. The near-obsession of Indian sociology with caste as an institution perennially locked from inside, a logical expression of the shastric injunctions and, above all, the defining feature of Indian social system, ought to be seen in this historical context.⁶

One of the major spin-offs of the European ‘miracle’ was the emergence of a secular weltenschauung. It was premised on the three pillars of utilitarianism, humanism and an empirical-scientific approach to knowledge, dualism being their theme song. Over a period of time this worldview came to be regarded as absolute truth valid for all cultures, their distinct historical trajectories being of no consequence. Indeed it became, by a variety of complex processes, political as well as cultural, universal, even though in the beginning it was no more than provincial in character. Worldviews different from it were portrayed in two important ways: either as the abject negation of everything that the West and modernity stood for, or as a fragile, irrelevant tradition soon to be wiped out by the inescapable process of modernization.

Apparently, the two approaches seem to be different, even contrary. However, they are not; they emanate from the same premise of modernity. While the former displays dismay over, nay rage against, everything that is not itself; the latter symbolizes the optimism that modernity so enthusiastically nursed from its very inception. In social sciences, Louis Dumont’s Homo Hierarchichus and D. Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society respectively serve as examples of the two above-mentioned approaches.

More often than not Indian scholars tend to replicate, partially or otherwise, such theoretical models in studying their own culture, society and history. This renders their task quite easy. They do not have to undergo the painful process of imagining. Neither does it pose any intellectual challenge to them. They simply imitate the prefabricated images already fashioned in the West. Seldom does mimicry achieve the status of the original, however.

Consider, for instance, the proliferation of literature on multiculturalism (MC), the latest from the West which has captivated Indian scholars, particularly political scientists. It seems that in MC political scientists have finally discovered the right antidote to thorny problems such as communalism, minority rights and all that has beset Indian state and society in the recent past. As stated above, this imitation is, to say the least, unchallenging. It ignores the career of MC as a concept and the specific context in which it came to the centre-stage of debate. More importantly, it tends to undermine the significance of our own cultural resources, perhaps far more effective than MC.

I am referring to Indian pluralism, not as a mere reference recorded in the disciplinary history but as a tangible, lived-in historical experience. In Indian civilization, pluralism has flowered and flourished not just in structural, social domains but equally in cultural realm. This has not been the case in a settlement society⁷ like Canada where MC originally developed. The United States and Australia where it gained wide currency are also settlement societies.

Moreover, in settlement societies a policy of monoculturalism was ruthlessly pursued first and only when it did not succeed was MC compulsively adopted as a tool for administrative normalisation.⁸ In India, by contrast, pluralism/difference has since long been a fact as well as a value and ideal. There has been no monoculturalism. Lastly, MC is a guilt-ridden response to the pathology of European Enlightenment which does not appreciate diversity/difference and is hence homogenizing. Now let us turn to sociology.

The dominant discourse in Indian sociology too uncritically resorted to the western worldview, with its concomitant concepts and categories, to explain Indian society. And herein lies its persisting dilemma, a dilemma that the founders of Indian sociology – D.P. Mukherjee and Radhakamal Mukherjee, among others – strove to grapple with.⁹ They called into question the efficacy of ‘...positivistic utilitarian model of the western social science, particularly that of sociology...’¹⁰ to unravel the complex reality of Indian society.

Rejecting the western image of the individual, D.P. Mukherjee contended that the basic unit of the Indian social system was the sangha or community. In a similar vein, Radhkamal Mukherjee questioned the western idea of democracy (premised on individual rationalism) as the sole criterion for democracy. A.K. Saran’s position in this regard bordered on nihilism. He regarded sociology as a western ideological package foreign to the Indian ethos.¹¹

Later, Saran renounced sociology altogether. In hindsight it appears, however, that sociology too renounced Saran. He could hardly win more than a few supporters to his creed. But his philosophical criticism against sociology left behind a deep mark. It found its most coherent expression in the idea of a Hindu sociology. The collection of essays edited by Mckim Marriot underlined that Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Parsons, Shils were all unable to understand the cultural life of India. Marriot, therefore, argued for Hindu ethnosocial sciences ‘rooted in the categories of specific cultures rather than implanted from alien cultural systems.’¹²

Similar voices were raised vis-a-vis Islamic culture and society. Questioning the relevance of western anthropology in comprehending the life of Muslims, Akbar S. Ahmad passionately called for an Islamic anthropology.¹³ Much like D.P. Mukherjee, Ahmad too argued that the elemental component of Muslim social structure was ummah or community, not individual. ‘...(T)he aim of Islamic anthropology should be,’ writes Davies, ‘understanding the nature, conditions, meanings and consonance in the study of all mankind in their communal existence.’¹⁴ Terminological differences notwithstanding, D.P. Mukherjee and Radhakamal Mukherjee on the one hand and Akbar S. Ahmad and M.W. Davies on the other appear to be united in questioning the western worldview and underlining instead the specificity of the respective Hindu and Muslim cultural worldviews.

Three problems can be identified in the above demand for a culture-specific sociology/anthropology. First, the call to anchor sociology in the concepts and categories of tradition in itself is decisively modern. Without reference to the West, it does not have any autonomous existence of its own. Second, it assumes, perhaps innocently, that traditions or cultures, be they Hindu or Islamic, are ‘pure’ and ‘unblemished’. It thus ignores the far-reaching changes that traditions and cultures have undergone during two centuries of colonial rule. No tradition is, therefore, ‘pure’ today; it is significantly altered even though claims to the contrary can be made.

Third, with the rise of culture-specific sociology – and logically it does not stop just at Hindu or Islamic sociology – will there be a possibility of dialogue among its practitioners? Is there no connecting thread across cultures even if they are diverse and have different, even counter, conceptions of man, society and universe? Or will it inaugurate the undermining of sociology qua sociology?

 

Irfan Ahmad

University of Amsterdam,

The Netherlands

 

Footnotes:

* I am indebted, as always, to Avijit Pathak for his unstinting support in the preparation of this note. J.P.S. Uberoi’s series of informal lectures on ‘European Modernity and Indian Tradition’, delivered at JNU between 27 and 29 November, greatly helped clarify my ideas and sharpen the arguments.

1. Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Vintage International, New York, 1993, 95.

2. Agnes Heller, ‘Sociology as the Defetishisation of Modernity’, International Sociology 2(4), 1987, 392.

3. For the most recent avatar of the theory of European exceptionalism, expressed in terms of ‘cultural capital’, see A. Habisch, ‘The Cultural Capital of Europe: Values, Norms and Institutions as Devices for European Developmental Success’, in Imtiaz Ahmad et al (eds.) Pluralism and Equality, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2000, 48-60.

4. This argument is central to A. G. Frank’s recent book, written from what he calls a ‘globological’ perspective. For further details, see his ReOrient: Global Economy in Asian Age, Vistaar Publications, New Delhi, 1998.

5. The connection between religious tradition and economic development, usually known as the Weberian thesis, has been a contentious issue in Indian sociology. For details, see T.K. Oommen, Alien Concepts and South Asian Reality: Responses and Reflections, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1995.

6. For a theoretically-nuanced critique of such a portrayal of caste system, see Dipankar Gupta, Interrogating Caste: Understanding Hierarchy and Difference in Indian Society, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2000.

7. For the distinction between settlement society and civilization, see Ravindra K. Jain, ‘A Civilizational Theory of Indian Diaspora and its Global Implications’, The Eastern Anthropologist 50 (3-4), 1997, 347-355.

8. Talal Asad has made an immensely powerful critique of multiculturalism in the context of Britain. See his, ‘Multiculturalism and British Identity in the Wake of the Rushdie Affair’, Politics & Society 18(4), 1990, 455-480.

9. This section draws on Yogendra Singh’s book. See his Image of Man: Ideology and Theory in Indian Sociology, Chanakya Publications, Delhi, 1983, Chapters 2 and 3.

10. Yogendra Singh, op cit, 16.

11. Yogendra Singh, op cit, 85ff.

12. See, McKim Marriot (ed.), India through Hindu Categories, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1990.

13. See, Akbar S. Ahmad, Toward Islamic Anthropology: Definition, Dogma and Directions, Vanguard, Lahore, 1987.

14. M. W. Davies, Knowing One Another: Shaping an Islamic Anthropology, Mansell Publishing Ltd., London and New York, 1988,113.

 

 

THIS is a response to Surjit Bhalla’s piece ‘Indian Poverty: ideology and evidence’, Seminar 497, January 2001. Particularly the diatribe Bhalla has once again launched on the issue of people displaced by large dams in India. That, unlike Arundhati Roy, Bhalla has no sympathy for people facing such calamities is obvious. That he has done it repeatedly, without checking his facts, also shows that there is little point in responding to him. The trouble starts when a highly respected journal like Seminar publishes articles that stoop to the level at which Bhalla becomes a psychiatrist and starts recommending psychiatric treatment for those who point out his fallacies or those he doesn’t agree with.

In the article, the author claims that ‘The India Country Study (ICS) of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) from where Arundhati Roy gets her "ideological" statistics, does not contain any reference to 56 million (as people displaced by large dams in last 50 years).’ One is not sure from where Dr. Bhalla got his copy of the ICS, but for the benefit of Seminar readers, here is the exact quote from Chapter 5, section 3 entitled ‘Social Impacts’.

‘The total number of large dams constructed or under construction according to the CBIP is 4291. Therefore, as per our calculations, the total area that can be expected to be submerged is 4291 x 8748 ha, which is a whopping 37,53,7668 ha (approximately 37.5 million ha). Based on this, the number of people displaced, using the average of 1.51 persons per ha, would be an astounding 56,681,879 (approximately 56.68 million)... However, given the hesitation of the government to make data available, it is the best estimate that can be made. In any case, what it does establish is that the displacement figures cannot be anywhere as low as suggested by some official sources. At best the variation would be of the order of 25%.

‘Together, nearly 62% of the population displaced were tribals and members of the scheduled castes. Considering their population nationally is only a little over 24.5%, clearly their representation among those displaced was disproportionately high.’

The trouble with Bhalla is that he seems to have developed a habit of writing on issues and facts that he has no idea about. For example, in his full page masterpiece titled ‘Going wrong with figures in a Big Dam way’, Indian Express, 9 September 1999, he says, ‘The SSP project contains one very large dam and 29 other Big Dams.’ Anybody who has even minimum knowledge of the subject would know that SSP (Sardar Sarovar Project) is just one project, not 30 dams as Surjit Bhalla believes it to be. Another piece of misinformation that Bhalla spreads through this piece is that the government believes that total number of people to be displaced by SSP is 40,000. The official government estimate of people to be affected by the reservoir alone is 41,000 families, which would, at an average of 5 per family, come to 200,000 people. But can someone who does not understand the difference between persons and families be expected to understand that large dam projects have many other categories of displacement besides reservoir displacement? Canals, colonies, downstream impacts, compensatory measures like catchment area treatment, afforestation and sanctuary, and even rehabilitation schemes lead to additional displacement of people who are uprooted in order to make way for the rehabilitation of the dam oustees.

It is not possible in this brief rejoinder to go into the other the fallacies of his articles. Coming to the issue itself, when we compiled displacement figures of 140 dams for which figures were available, the figure came to 4,387,625. That is nearly 4.4 million people displaced by just 140 dams. If we were to arrive at an average number of people displaced per dam from this figure and divide that average by three, i.e., assume that the actual figures were 300% higher than the computed average, we still arrive at a figure of over 40 million people displaced by the 4291 large dams in India. And this is only the displacement due to reservoirs. If we add all other categories of displacement connected with large dams, the figure would be much higher.

Interestingly, this is close to the figure of 40 million that the then secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, mentioned in a meeting with non-government organisations in 1998. While Bhalla would like to have us believe that the number of people displaced by dams in India is 5.84 million (1360 persons per dam x 4291 large dams), the Mid Term Appraisal of Ninth Five Year Plan says the figure could be upto 25 million.

But of course the problem with economists like Surjit Bhalla is not just their incompetence with numbers, it is their callous, utterly inhuman attitude towards such problems in our society and towards development itself. That is why the government which, more than any other institution, is responsible for pauperisation of millions in India, has no account of how many people have been displaced and what happened to them. The following is a relevant quote from Mid Term Appraisal of Ninth Five Year Plan:

‘Systematic irrigation development and construction of big dams in the country have caused land to be submerged and led to large-scale displacement of people from their original habitat. Almost half of the displaced persons are tribals who have least resources, experience and temperament to negotiate their lives after displacement... There are no reliable statistics with break-up of social and economic classification of the people displaced by each of large projects since Independence’ (Planning Commission, October 2000, p. 89).

That is a very chilling thing to say about any society. In the end, one can only hope that a journal like Seminar will be careful about publishing articles of such low level in its tone and so full of misinformation.

Himanshu Thakkar

South Asia Network on Dams,

Rivers and People (SANDRP),

New Delhi