For my first book review in this course I shall be reviewing Professor Satish Deshpande’s Contemporary India: A Sociological View. What drew me to this book instead of the other ones was the scale of the subject matter – contemporary India, as well as my own enmeshment in some of the themes which this book explores such as globalization and it’s consequent portability of cultures and identities. What made this endeavour a pleasure was the fact that Professor Deshpande doesn’t constrain his form of expression to the scholastically academic and writes with a sensitivity to the general reader while still maintaining a certain critical distance from their own commonsensicaly immediate outlook. Such a position ought to be emphasized given that Professor Deshpande thinks of Sociology as almost the critique of common sense.
Central to the book and the themes which it chooses to ‘squint’ at is a certain narrative which develops about the nation at large and the forces which were at play in the historical processes which shaped the contours of its society. The multi-facetted engagement of an emerging third world nation such as India, which had recently won its freedom from an Imperial Power, with the anxiety as to how to place itself vis-a-vis modernity expresses the conditions prevalent within that historical context which made the Nehruvian vision of India such a dominant force in the decades to come. The tension at the heart of such a condition was how one were to locate oneself within the axis of tradition and ‘modernity’. I use the word in inverted commas here as what precisely is designated by it seems to be a contested notion (M.N Srinivas is quoted asking whether modernization is the same as westernization – curiously the footnote to this quote says that M.N Srinivas actually preferred westernization to modernization as he believes that modernization endorses an ultimate judgement in terms of values and goals whereas he sees westernization to be the more neutral concept.)
Leaving the contestations as to what precisely constituted modernity – one of its least contested elements (in as much as it belongs to it) is that of the nation state. As the central institution which provides the geo-economic networks and ideological coherence to a people, nations according to Benedict Anderson needs to be thought of in its ‘anthropological spirit’ or the style in which they are imagined. The cornerstone of this imagination as Deshpande demonstrates was the imagining of the Nehruvian national economy. It was here that we see varying ideologies strive for their expression in what would constitute the popular public imagination and also what kind of development this nation would take. We can see a bifurcation of roughly two possible alternatives post-independence; one of Gandhian panchayati-raj with its deep seated cultural moorings and the other of Nehruvian modernized economy which functions as a powerful image being constructed into the future for people to strive towards. Gandhi’s vision is actually more radical – of having a culture govern an economy, yet its nostalgia for certain cultural relations brings with it a suspicion for technology and mass production – essential features of any developing nation. the true triumph of the Nehruvian vision over the Gandhian nostalgic ideal is seen in its ability to infuse this modernizing process with an almost religious significance, a telling sign as to how this project come to step into the place of what religion and tradition were once imagined to be in the country. The fact that a people were willing to respond to the ambition of this project is a sign of their subjection to the force of its direction during the post-independence period.
The protagonist of this modernizing process is seen to be the secular producer-patriot acting in service to the nation and constituting what is generally referred to as the ‘Nehruvian Middle Class’. The very ‘national’ character of this formation however which reflected the position of a centralist nation also served (perhaps inadvertently) to displace various regional interests. Further, the secular credentials of the Nehruvian middle class are met with a degree of scepticism given the fact that Deshpande’s empirical findings demonstrate that its secularity aside, it was primarily the upper castes Hindus who were able to constitute themselves as the protagonists of the modernizing process and reap the benefits of its endeavours. It is here, more than any other section where Deshpande distances himself from common sense. The urban ‘upper-middle’ class assumption that caste discrimination is an archaic and largely rural phenomena is critiqued by bearing witness to the fact that this urban elite which has had the privilege to leave its caste credentials behind were able to do so themselves largely because of they themselves constituting the upper castes.
Analysing this terrain brings with it unique challenges. Given the derogatory baggage which modernity has brought to caste as a category, it is no longer actively sought as a means of status by an increasingly urban diaspora – which would rather constitute its status in terms of class. This however effectively invisibilizes the fact that it has been primarily the upper castes who were in a position to leave the ‘baggage’ of caste behind and reconstitute the means of their status in class terms. What this has resulted in is that the category of upper caste Hindus is fast becoming increasingly difficult to quantify given that it is an identity which they would rather not associate with themselves. On the other hand the oppressed castes are put in a position where they need to assert their (lower) caste credentials to give voice to a certain structural inequality which is fast becoming invisiblized. This was particularly so after the Mandal Commission and its resulting structural interventions. Deshpande does however acknowledge an element of truth in the commonsensical notion of the caste card being used strategically at times.
It is in these set of conditions (the displacement of regional interests, the regionalizing of communalism along with the invisibilization of certain caste inequalities) where one sees in India an aggressive ‘return of the repressed’ expressed in the resurgence of Hindu communalism in the 1980’s. Deshpande overviews the spatial strategies Hindu communalism takes up to entrench its interest and re-constitute an idea of India in a different direction from that of the Nehruvian secular-modernist vision. It broadly has been described as a process of ‘competitive de-secularization’ of the public sphere and a re-sacralization of the nation as pace. Genealogically it draws from the writings of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a militant Hindu nationalist. Symptomatic of its efforts are the events of 1992 Ayodhya – being the demolition of the Babri Mazjid by carders of the Hindu right by claiming that the mosque was originally the site of an ancient Hindu temple. The displacement of the other from the public space via an aggressive symbolic intrusion into it for its own privilege by claiming a mythic historical right over the site has characterized the political spatial strategy of resurgent Hindu communalism.
Alongside such developments the book takes a keen look at the class which seems most embroiled in the factors being discussed – the middle class. It historicizes the notion of this category by bringing to bear how it has been thought of in the past and what it may be becoming today. Marx’s initial dismissal of the middle class is re-contextualized using a Gramscian understanding of how the middle class perpetuates and regulates the dominant ideology serving the present social structures – which in some ways accounts for the historical conservativeness of this section. The section then takes a close look at just how large this section may be and considers the possibility that the commonsensical notion of the middle classes now constituting the majority of the country is again a gross misunderstanding. Rigorous quantitative analysis done on the basis of earning, expenditure and consumption demonstrate that the middle class is actually much smaller than we suppose. Having established its relatively smaller size than supposed it then explores as to how this entity is in a position to see itself as the repository of the true moral legitimacy of civil society. Fundamental to this position (as already noted) is the fact that it is the middle class which articulates the hegemony of the ruling bloc, hence the class most dependent on cultural capital (this seems to be as true in the Nehruvian period as it is in the subsequent ones). The post-independent project of developing the state via the Nehruvian middle class also invested this group with the added moral legitimacy they seem to command. Hence functioning as the class which effectively regulates the relationship between the ruling bloc and the others it is in a position to command for itself a measure of clout far beyond its sheer size.
A book on contemporary India would be incomplete without a section on globalization and Deshpande examines the curious and superficially contrary relationship between what globalization apparently seems to do to cultures and Hindutva’s claims of the regional essentialism of a ‘Hindu’ culture. One of the effects of globalization is that of cultural portability – the fact that today it is possible to be a soccer fan who supports Manchester United to do so in any of the five continents, hence de-essentialyzing the very ‘English’ nature of this phenomena – but with this increasing portability and the rupture between a culture and it’s indegenousity to a geographical location also arises the condition of what a number of theorist refer to as an ‘anxiety of identity’ born out of the void of the non-essential identity which we have for ourselves today (by the sheer fact that the culture I imbibe is increasingly less determined by where I am). Further, this deteritorrialization of culture has also provided a marketable opportunity which media and the tourism industry cash in on by selling an ‘authentic exoticism’ – the ‘real’ Indian experience etc. This anxiety in many ways fuels the need to construct an essential and diasporic identity, such as Hindutva which in itself becomes a cultural affectation which can be marketed to people in the globalized market place (bhajans on tv, etc). The most striking development which illustrates the extent of this deteritorrialization is the emergence of a non-resident Hindutva – a transnational force which may actually influence local phenomena.
This constitutes my review of the book. I have attempted not merely to paraphrase it (which would be impossible without reducing chapters to bullet points) by trying to account for a narrative of the political developments of the nation which emerges out of the analysis of various factors which Deshpande looks at over the course of ‘Contemporary India’ and by emphasizing and relating the continuities that one can trace such as the evolving role of the middle class, their relationship with the category of caste and its cultural negotiations with globalization. This cannot hope to be an exhaustive account or analysis of what Professor Deshpande does in the book and hence is also a reflection of what this student found interesting in it. This book would certainly be of interest to anyone interested in contemporary India history, as well as the reader who seeks a more nuanced yet generalist understanding of the formations of the political forces which influence their lives today.
Central to the book and the themes which it chooses to ‘squint’ at is a certain narrative which develops about the nation at large and the forces which were at play in the historical processes which shaped the contours of its society. The multi-facetted engagement of an emerging third world nation such as India, which had recently won its freedom from an Imperial Power, with the anxiety as to how to place itself vis-a-vis modernity expresses the conditions prevalent within that historical context which made the Nehruvian vision of India such a dominant force in the decades to come. The tension at the heart of such a condition was how one were to locate oneself within the axis of tradition and ‘modernity’. I use the word in inverted commas here as what precisely is designated by it seems to be a contested notion (M.N Srinivas is quoted asking whether modernization is the same as westernization – curiously the footnote to this quote says that M.N Srinivas actually preferred westernization to modernization as he believes that modernization endorses an ultimate judgement in terms of values and goals whereas he sees westernization to be the more neutral concept.)
Leaving the contestations as to what precisely constituted modernity – one of its least contested elements (in as much as it belongs to it) is that of the nation state. As the central institution which provides the geo-economic networks and ideological coherence to a people, nations according to Benedict Anderson needs to be thought of in its ‘anthropological spirit’ or the style in which they are imagined. The cornerstone of this imagination as Deshpande demonstrates was the imagining of the Nehruvian national economy. It was here that we see varying ideologies strive for their expression in what would constitute the popular public imagination and also what kind of development this nation would take. We can see a bifurcation of roughly two possible alternatives post-independence; one of Gandhian panchayati-raj with its deep seated cultural moorings and the other of Nehruvian modernized economy which functions as a powerful image being constructed into the future for people to strive towards. Gandhi’s vision is actually more radical – of having a culture govern an economy, yet its nostalgia for certain cultural relations brings with it a suspicion for technology and mass production – essential features of any developing nation. the true triumph of the Nehruvian vision over the Gandhian nostalgic ideal is seen in its ability to infuse this modernizing process with an almost religious significance, a telling sign as to how this project come to step into the place of what religion and tradition were once imagined to be in the country. The fact that a people were willing to respond to the ambition of this project is a sign of their subjection to the force of its direction during the post-independence period.
The protagonist of this modernizing process is seen to be the secular producer-patriot acting in service to the nation and constituting what is generally referred to as the ‘Nehruvian Middle Class’. The very ‘national’ character of this formation however which reflected the position of a centralist nation also served (perhaps inadvertently) to displace various regional interests. Further, the secular credentials of the Nehruvian middle class are met with a degree of scepticism given the fact that Deshpande’s empirical findings demonstrate that its secularity aside, it was primarily the upper castes Hindus who were able to constitute themselves as the protagonists of the modernizing process and reap the benefits of its endeavours. It is here, more than any other section where Deshpande distances himself from common sense. The urban ‘upper-middle’ class assumption that caste discrimination is an archaic and largely rural phenomena is critiqued by bearing witness to the fact that this urban elite which has had the privilege to leave its caste credentials behind were able to do so themselves largely because of they themselves constituting the upper castes.
Analysing this terrain brings with it unique challenges. Given the derogatory baggage which modernity has brought to caste as a category, it is no longer actively sought as a means of status by an increasingly urban diaspora – which would rather constitute its status in terms of class. This however effectively invisibilizes the fact that it has been primarily the upper castes who were in a position to leave the ‘baggage’ of caste behind and reconstitute the means of their status in class terms. What this has resulted in is that the category of upper caste Hindus is fast becoming increasingly difficult to quantify given that it is an identity which they would rather not associate with themselves. On the other hand the oppressed castes are put in a position where they need to assert their (lower) caste credentials to give voice to a certain structural inequality which is fast becoming invisiblized. This was particularly so after the Mandal Commission and its resulting structural interventions. Deshpande does however acknowledge an element of truth in the commonsensical notion of the caste card being used strategically at times.
It is in these set of conditions (the displacement of regional interests, the regionalizing of communalism along with the invisibilization of certain caste inequalities) where one sees in India an aggressive ‘return of the repressed’ expressed in the resurgence of Hindu communalism in the 1980’s. Deshpande overviews the spatial strategies Hindu communalism takes up to entrench its interest and re-constitute an idea of India in a different direction from that of the Nehruvian secular-modernist vision. It broadly has been described as a process of ‘competitive de-secularization’ of the public sphere and a re-sacralization of the nation as pace. Genealogically it draws from the writings of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a militant Hindu nationalist. Symptomatic of its efforts are the events of 1992 Ayodhya – being the demolition of the Babri Mazjid by carders of the Hindu right by claiming that the mosque was originally the site of an ancient Hindu temple. The displacement of the other from the public space via an aggressive symbolic intrusion into it for its own privilege by claiming a mythic historical right over the site has characterized the political spatial strategy of resurgent Hindu communalism.
Alongside such developments the book takes a keen look at the class which seems most embroiled in the factors being discussed – the middle class. It historicizes the notion of this category by bringing to bear how it has been thought of in the past and what it may be becoming today. Marx’s initial dismissal of the middle class is re-contextualized using a Gramscian understanding of how the middle class perpetuates and regulates the dominant ideology serving the present social structures – which in some ways accounts for the historical conservativeness of this section. The section then takes a close look at just how large this section may be and considers the possibility that the commonsensical notion of the middle classes now constituting the majority of the country is again a gross misunderstanding. Rigorous quantitative analysis done on the basis of earning, expenditure and consumption demonstrate that the middle class is actually much smaller than we suppose. Having established its relatively smaller size than supposed it then explores as to how this entity is in a position to see itself as the repository of the true moral legitimacy of civil society. Fundamental to this position (as already noted) is the fact that it is the middle class which articulates the hegemony of the ruling bloc, hence the class most dependent on cultural capital (this seems to be as true in the Nehruvian period as it is in the subsequent ones). The post-independent project of developing the state via the Nehruvian middle class also invested this group with the added moral legitimacy they seem to command. Hence functioning as the class which effectively regulates the relationship between the ruling bloc and the others it is in a position to command for itself a measure of clout far beyond its sheer size.
A book on contemporary India would be incomplete without a section on globalization and Deshpande examines the curious and superficially contrary relationship between what globalization apparently seems to do to cultures and Hindutva’s claims of the regional essentialism of a ‘Hindu’ culture. One of the effects of globalization is that of cultural portability – the fact that today it is possible to be a soccer fan who supports Manchester United to do so in any of the five continents, hence de-essentialyzing the very ‘English’ nature of this phenomena – but with this increasing portability and the rupture between a culture and it’s indegenousity to a geographical location also arises the condition of what a number of theorist refer to as an ‘anxiety of identity’ born out of the void of the non-essential identity which we have for ourselves today (by the sheer fact that the culture I imbibe is increasingly less determined by where I am). Further, this deteritorrialization of culture has also provided a marketable opportunity which media and the tourism industry cash in on by selling an ‘authentic exoticism’ – the ‘real’ Indian experience etc. This anxiety in many ways fuels the need to construct an essential and diasporic identity, such as Hindutva which in itself becomes a cultural affectation which can be marketed to people in the globalized market place (bhajans on tv, etc). The most striking development which illustrates the extent of this deteritorrialization is the emergence of a non-resident Hindutva – a transnational force which may actually influence local phenomena.
This constitutes my review of the book. I have attempted not merely to paraphrase it (which would be impossible without reducing chapters to bullet points) by trying to account for a narrative of the political developments of the nation which emerges out of the analysis of various factors which Deshpande looks at over the course of ‘Contemporary India’ and by emphasizing and relating the continuities that one can trace such as the evolving role of the middle class, their relationship with the category of caste and its cultural negotiations with globalization. This cannot hope to be an exhaustive account or analysis of what Professor Deshpande does in the book and hence is also a reflection of what this student found interesting in it. This book would certainly be of interest to anyone interested in contemporary India history, as well as the reader who seeks a more nuanced yet generalist understanding of the formations of the political forces which influence their lives today.
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