Recovering the Republic - I : Recovering Power from a cynical use of the Law

The column a couple of weeks ago asserting that the centenary of the declaration of the Portuguese Republic was also a Goan event, received a few responses that convinced me of the need to follow that argument with an explanation of some sort. These responses were shocked by the connection made between Dalit and Bahujan consciousness in Goa and the declaration of the Portuguese Republic. The Portuguese Republic, they were at pains to explain, was not an angelic affair committed to equality throughout the Portuguese empire. It had dictatorial tendencies, was entirely concerned with issues in the metropole (that is continental Portugal) and in fact laid the foundations for the persecutions of the Estado Novo under Salazar.

To be fair to these responses, I must admit that they were rightly triggered by my use of the word ‘celebration’ in the context of the Declaration of the Portuguese Republic. Celebration suggests an uncritical appreciation of an event. Commemoration would be a more appropriate term, given that it requires solemn stock-taking of an event, weighing both pros and cons.

Having acknowledged the error in choice of words, I believe that I have gone some distance toward assuaging the outrage of my interlocutors. However, I would now like to address the question that they put to me, whether one can be justified in laying claim to an event that did not have the liberation of the Goan Bahujan in mind. Surely, one critic suggested, this Bahujan activist was mistaken?

The original column that sparked off this response, indicated rather clearly the two edged, cynical use of ideas of liberty and equality that marked the inauguration of the European republics. The bourgeois classes that spearheaded these revolutions made a cynical use of these ideas, largely to ensure a larger support base as they attacked the feudal regime. However, having done so, they were now hostage to the idea that was then implemented by the masses in the slow progress of democracy. Suhas Palshikar, in his essay in the must-read book titled ‘Humiliation: Claims and Context’, edited by Gopal Guru sums it up rather aptly. ‘Democracy’ he says, ‘even only a very formal democracy - cannot be stopped from infusing some amount of democratization’. The moment the bourgeoisie introduced the rather novel idea of ‘power to the people’ they were inviting a group, hitherto outside of the frame of power politics, into its very heart. Once invoked and legitimized in the course of the French Revolution, the roll of democracy was unstoppable, as formerly disenfranchised masses seized the opportunity to rid themselves of inequality.

To understand the complex and cynical politics of Republicanism, have a look at the history of Haiti. The French Revolution was marked by the slogan of equality for all, a slogan taken seriously by the black slaves in Haiti, who declared their freedom and independence. This was, to be sure, hardly the intention of forces dominating the Revolution. The resistance of the French to this declaration led to the Haitian Revolution that eventually saw the declaration of independence of this territory. Equality in republican Europe, was not intended for people of colour, nor for the colonies. Not in France, nor in Portugal. But this should not blind us to the fact that the mere declaration did in fact result in a legal change that allowed people to assert claims that could never be legitimately made until then.

Palshikar extends this logic to nationalist struggles in colonial settings as well. He points out, no doubt referring to the nationalist history of British-India, that ‘similarly, the moment the nationalists in colonial societies departed from exclusively conspiratorial and secret methods and waged ‘people’s struggles’, they were running the risk of their nations being claimed by ordinary people’. Large portions of the Indian elite were not comfortable with the idea of the unwashed masses gaining a say in the governance of the country. This discomfort continues today in such assertions as made by the ‘Friends of the BJP’ when they stress that we as educated know better than the rest of the ‘illiterate’ population.

Clearly then, once the democratic idea is invoked, it fundamentally changes the rules of the game. People who formerly could not even imagine themselves as equal, now begin to hear the powerful voice of the law tell them that they are equal. This powerful voice may be cynical, not meaning what it says, but having uttered these magical words, is now powerless against the influence of its own logic.

A legal history of the territory of Goa would have to necessarily recognize that the Declaration of the Portuguese Republic, that extended equality to all citizens, as a significant moment in this history. To argue that the Portuguese never intended Goans to be equal, is to raise silly nationalist arguments that seek to begin a history of this territory post-1961, or prior to the start of the colonial period. Its purpose is precisely to obscure the fact that this declaration had profound impacts on a far away territory, and was a significant moment in its legal history. A legal history is built on recognition of legal pronouncements, and the job of a legal historian is to probe the impacts that this law has had on different segments of the subject population. In such a history, while we highlight the intention of the law, we also inquire into its consequences intended or otherwise. When we commemorate the events marked out in such a legal history, it is necessary for us to dwell on all facets of this moment.

In the companion piece to this column, I would like to argue, why it is not nostalgia of the Portuguese that motivates the commemoration of the declaration of the Portuguese Republic, but in fact a more domestic agenda of Dalit empowerment. This agenda is least concerned with the predilections of other segments of Goan society. These segments wish to either brand the colonial period as one long, dark, nightmare, without any redeeming feature; or on the other hand, as a glorious dazzling history that sadly ended in 1961. This agenda is interested in unshackling Goa’s colonial history from the shackles that these two groups have placed on it and open up new and democratic ways in which we can imagine and empower ourselves.

(A version of this column was first published in the Gomantak Times 3 March 2010)

Taking Caste Seriously – III: Caste, Democracy and the ‘Friends of the BJP’

On the 7th of April 2009 the ‘Friends of the BJP’ organized a political meeting in Panjim. The meeting was a part of the electoral campaign for the soon-to-be concluded general election to the Parliament. In their own words, “Friends of BJP is a subset of the educated civil society that is BJP-leaning, and willing to be vocal about it. We are not part of the BJP. We also do not agree with everything the BJP says or does. It is our belief that at this point of time the BJP is the better alternative.”

I was personally, profoundly impressed by the meeting; the location for the meeting, the tech-savvy presentation, the suave speakers from the ‘Friends of the BJP’. The meeting left one with the impression of a dynamic organization brimming with energy and life, promising a better tomorrow for the country.

This was only a preliminary impression however. Sitting down to evaluate the messages sent out from that meeting, I realized that while there was without doubt a dynamism in the organization, it wasn’t a positive dynamism. The dynamism of the ‘Friends’ was the dynamism of a group determined to lead a counter-revolution and recapture the power that it had lost to the democratic processes of this country. If at all the ‘Friends’ appeared dynamic, it is because the only group we have to compare them to, the Congress Party is in all senses dead. It survives purely on the inertia of the past, and the sheer lack of any serious electoral alternative for India’s voting population. The option between the two parties should be compared to the option between two different poisons. One will agree it is not much of an option!

The first thing that strikes one as we read the Manifesto of the ‘Friends’ is their uneasy positioning vis-à-vis the BJP. “We are not part of the BJP. We also do not agree with everything the BJP says or does” but we do believe that “at this point of time the BJP is the better alternative.” What is it that these ‘Friends’ do not agree with? Reading through their website, one does not find a response to this crucial question, except a suggestion at some point that the BJP may not be the ‘Whitest of the parties’. Let me suggest the other reasons that they may have for this uncomfortable distancing even as they seek to propel the BJP into power; the hate speech that proliferates under their shadow, the hate crimes that maim and kill innocents by the thousand in their regimes, the perverse re-writing of Indian history and political culture to create the subcontinent as a land of gentle Hindus now exhausted by the patient hospitality extended to foreigners (read non-Hindus) that parasitically feed off the land. It is because the ‘Friends’ market themselves as members of “educated civil society” that they are unable to defend these actions of the BJP that are an integral part of its agenda. Since no educated person, or member of a civil society can stand for the retrograde positions of the BJP, these members of ‘educated civil society’ must necessarily glide over this aspect, and focus on the apolitical matter of corruption, where in any case the BJP is one among many.

The ‘Friends’ market themselves as members of civil society, but their speech and positions declare them to be anything but constituents of a civil society. To begin with, there is no express rejection of the BJP’s excesses. More importantly there is a constant harping on the fact that their constituency is ‘middle (class) India’, the urban Indian, the ‘educated’ Indian. As we all now know, these three images that they offer are images of ‘upper-caste’ India. What the ‘Friends’ offer us therefore is a ‘casteist’ vision of India, and of course, the BJP is the best alternative to realize this vision, since unlike the Congress, the BJP is frankly open about this agenda.

The ‘Friends’ continuously stress the difference between the superior ‘us’ and the inferior ‘them’. These inferiors are the rural, the uneducated (in English that is) and the non-middle class. The term ‘middle-class’ in India cannot be defined economically, since it is by and large a broad caste location. A clerk barely able to feed her a family of two children would still call herself middle-class. Why is this? It is because if you are upper caste and verging on poverty, you have ‘fallen on bad times’, if you are bahujan-dalit and verge on poverty it is because ‘they are lazy’. This caste equation that they offer, in keeping with the times, can in fact accommodate persons with dalit-bahujan backgrounds. But only if they are able to, on their own effort, overcome the historical barriers that prevent their entry into this club of the urban, middle-class and educated (read English speaking).

It is because the BJP and the ‘Friends’ stresses this coded language of the club, that they appeal to the middle-class constituents of the ‘minority’ groups in India. ‘We are one of you’ is the message that the ‘Friends’ seek to convey, ‘not like those barbarous, unwashed, unlettered natives who abound in the filth of India. It is our duty to educate (read civilize) them and take India forward’. So as to make a point, the bouquets to the guests at this meeting in Panjim, were presented by two Catholics, both middle class, and almost certainly upper-caste. It is for this reason, that all of Catholic Fontainhas votes convincedly for the BJP. This civilizing mission is common to all the upper-caste elements of all religious groups in India, be it Christian, Muslim or Hindu. They all believe in the need for the lower elements to be educated and civilized, failing which, policed.

The ‘Friends’ does not anywhere speak the language of rights. It speaks the language of governance, or what it calls ‘good governance’. As important as governance is, when governance is divorced from rights, as in the case of the ‘Friends’ discourse, it allows for the emergence of autocracy. The discourse of the ‘Friends’ not surprisingly, given their business school backgrounds, is Managerial. Their vision is not one of democratic negotiation and discussion, but of the management of people, to maximize economic production. There was this hungry man, a couple of millennia ago, in the deserts of Judea who cried out in the face of temptation, “Man does not live by bread alone”. That man was right; democracy cannot be reduced to a system that allows us to achieve higher production and consumption. Democracy is about a spiritual ethic that recognizes rights. The ‘Friends’ however would like us to reduce democracy to a managerial system, a system of ‘good governance’ divorced from other civil, cultural and political rights. This is in keeping the upper-caste vision of the BJP and the Friends where it is only the upper-caste, educated, English-speaking urban denizens of the country that know best. One presumes that the rest of us must just shut up.

The Friends of the BJP present a mirage of dynamism. In reality, their vision is regressive and seeks to undo the liberation of people that the Indian democracy has achieved. As in the Puranic story of the churning of the Ocean of milk, the democratic process has unleashed a number of problems. The solution however lies in more democracy, not a casteist oligarchy.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 13th May 2009)