A Philosophical Tower of Babel? Aakash Singh Rathore’s “Indian Political Theory”

Indian Political Theory: Laying the Groundwork for Svaraj. Aakash Singh Rathore. London and New York: Routledge, 2017.

Aakash Sing Rathore’s Indian Political Theory promises nothing less than Indian political theory as the title entails. However, it really delivers something closer to the subtitle. The book might be more appropriately entitled Laying the Groundwork for Svaraj: The Task of Indian Political Theory. Those looking for an introduction to Indian political theory should instead be directed to Indian Political Thought: A Reader, ed. Aakash Singh Rathore and Silika Mohapatra (London and New York: Routledge, 2010). Though Indian Political Theory doesn’t quite give us Indian political theory, it does raise and attempts to answer a number of very interesting questions regarding the proper task of political theory, the status of and prospects for marginalized Indians, and the relevance of Western political thought to India. More fundamentally, the book attempts to transcend a Western philosophical enterprise that the author believes has failed at universality, even as he rests his argument on key universalistic premises.

Rathore is concerned to promote svaraj, or “the activity (energeia, or ‘being-at-work’ in the Aristotelian sense) of being oneself; again, svaraj is being-at-work being oneself. The discovery of oneself requires inwardness, turning away (pratyahara). … [T]his is not a backwards turn to some pre-modern golden age; rather, it is a look within, which is to say an excavation downwards.” (3) For Rathore, svaraj comes into view as properly human autonomous activity, self-expression, and self-realization in modern circumstances. Svaraj is something of a loaded term, and Rathore is careful to delineate his preferred variant. In particular, he wants to avoid “thick” svaraj, which is associated with “exclusivist notions of spirituality, profound anti-modernity, exceptionalistic moralism, essentialistic nationalism, and a purist orientation.” (10) Rathore would instead promote a “thin” svaraj, meaning (quoting the prominent Indian intellectual B.R. Ambedkar, in turn quoting Lincoln), “a Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” And by “the people,” Ambedkar (and Rathore) have in mind all the people, “low as well as high,” in the context of a “profound democratization, tied up with the agency of the governed.” (12; see also 196) This political svaraj thus aims at autonomy expressed as active and participatory self-government. Rathore’s special focus in promoting svaraj is “Dalit svaraj” (4). Dalits (formerly referred to as “untouchables”) are the lowest social order within Hinduism. The primary aim of Rathore’s book is to contribute to “the transformative potential of the political principle of Dalit svaraj when applied to one of the motivating questions of the book – How should we do (Indian) political theory?” (5) Rathore’s somewhat secular and radically egalitarian project is thus opposed to anything like Hindu fundamentalism (an instance of “thick” svaraj), and it seeks to recruit political theory in the service of political reform, to the particular benefit of Hinduism’s most marginalized people.

The book is stronger in articulating Rathore’s political project than it is in justifying it. Rathore does not offer us an adequate philosophic defense of his project’s goal. We do not learn why svaraj as he understands it is the proper aim of a life well lived. Nor are we persuasively told why Dalits should be the special concern of this project (152ff, 175, 182). Rather, it is largely assumed that the inhuman treatment of Dalits is a moral affront. Western readers of this book are obviously likely to recoil at the condition of Dalits, and most if not all would support reform efforts of some sort. But those likely reactions among westerners hardly constitute a philosophical argument. Pressed to offer a philosophic defense for his view of Indian social and political realities, a thoughtful westerner might avail himself of western political philosophy. He might recommend that westerners and Indian reformers such as Rathore make common philosophical cause in a cosmopolitan project of reform. In fact, and though they do not specifically address India’s situation, this is an aim of a number of western political philosophers who see their thought as having a universal liberationist application.

However, Rathore explicitly rejects most of western political philosophy, while at the same time he somewhat mysteriously borrows elements for his own purposes (164). He sees western thought as largely inapplicable to Indian circumstances (28-29, 192, 209), and he objects to what he regards as a western philosophical and academic hegemony, expressed as a demand that Indian political thought conform to western categories and present itself on western terms. Rathore rejects recent European and American political philosophers who have grappled with globalization and pluralism on the grounds that they are insufficiently pluralistic and fail adequately to accommodate and address the non-western world in their thought (2-3, 23). On Rathore’s telling, western political thought presents itself as unqualified “political thought,” as inherently universalistic, while political thought originating in India must be prefaced with the adjective “Indian”, thus subordinating it to the allegedly more universalistic western variant (23). Moreover, western universities and academic publishers perform a gatekeeper function of assuring the dominance of western thought in the face of non-western alternatives (23-24, 47). Perhaps worst of all, western political thought is engaged in sterile inquiries of little concern to the reality of Indian life. He tells us that “political theories should be built upon the foundations of the lived practices and self-understanding of the multiple masses of the polity, not those ideals projected by those who speak on behalf of the polity.” Instead, under the ongoing influence of the West, Indians “continue to work with categories and concepts alien to the lived social and political experience of the common man.” (26)

Rathore touches on some genuine problems in western political thought. That thought aims to tell us something true about political life. The radical diversity in western thought is but the first indicator that something is seriously amiss. After all, they can’t all be right. Moreover, Rawlsian liberals, postmoderns, critical theorists, and various other modern and late-modern philosophical movements mentioned by Rathore propose modes of thought and patterns of social and political life that are often mutually exclusive, utterly disconnected from western lived human realities, and (most disturbingly) in contradiction to the conditions of human flourishing. These ideologies remain the special preserve of intellectuals, and are only dimly perceived by ordinary western citizens as relevant to their lives and admissible to their political debates. We can therefore hardly be surprised when non-westerners reject such philosophies on the same grounds (55ff). And Rathore is certainly on the mark in his criticism of western intellectual gatekeepers. Among western intellectuals, one finds a broad consensus in favor of modern and late-modern political thought, and various efforts to secure intellectual hegemony for activist, transformative thinkers in opinion-shaping institutions, very much including universities and academic publishers.

It is precisely here that we can notice a problem with Rathore’s rejection of western thought. It is not only non-western intellectuals such as Rathore who are frustrated with western gatekeepers of received philosophic thought. Western dissident intellectuals also find that they are often shut out of important debates and forums (or simply ignored) by those same western gatekeepers. This is a particular problem for those western thinkers who question key modern premises concerning the purposes and possibilities of political thought, and thus would reach back to premodern western political thought. This ongoing process of marginalization is a great and continuing loss for the West, because classical political philosophy is very much grounded in the lived experiences of ordinary people, making it deeply relevant to our lives, and because it offers us unparalleled opportunities for liberation from falsehood. For example, Socrates encounters ordinary people concerned with questions of justice, or piety, or courage, or love. From those basic and fundamental concerns of citizens, he attempts to gain wisdom through rational dialogue. These are not strictly the concerns of westerners, but rather central concerns of thoughtful people everywhere and always. Surely ordinary Indians share those same basic concerns. Moreover, Socratic investigations of these concerns are a path to liberation from all forms of domination, and not a means to extend one civilization’s power over another civilization. These inquiries, pursued by Indian thinkers along Socratic lines, promise, not continued marginalization for India, but rather liberation through a radical questioning of all of one’s premises, whether western or Indian (39). Were Rathore to take more seriously the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle, he might discover the resources to address the political condition of Dalits. More deeply, he might discover the resources that permit him to offer a compelling rational account of why the condition of Dalits merits serious moral attention. And he might find that classical political philosophy has more to say to us than Rawls, Habermas, and Zizek, men whom he describes as “three giants” of western political thought (209).

Rather than building a second pole of political thought as an alternative to (an allegedly merely) western political thought, Rathore might make common cause with western supporters of premodern political philosophy by engaging with them in a hopefully fruitful dialogue about the nature of justice and about conditions of justice that obtain always and everywhere, including both the West and India. Such a project could be genuinely cosmopolitan, and not crypto-hegemonically western (32). Extending classical political philosophy into India would strengthen both Indian and western thought. Indeed, we might consider that in its self-understanding, western political philosophy must be declared a failure if it can be shown to be merely western. As for Rathore’s claim that western thought is not universal, we might, ironically, notice the universalism implicit in his charge against western thought. To declare any universalistic project a failure, one must be in a position to understand what universalism requires, one must understand the nature of a proposed project that is claimed to be universalistic, and one must see that the two diverge. If Rathore believes that western thought has failed to be sufficiently universalistic because it does not address the political realities of India, he is obliged either to show how that failure extends to classical political philosophy, or to propose his own thought as a universalistic alternative to a failed western universalism. If he succeeds at these tasks then, in the fine tradition of Socratic philosophy, we in the West will be obliged to follow the logos where it leads us, and adopt Rathore’s philosophy as ours. Failing that, it won’t do to set up Indian political thought as an Indian provincial alternative to a western provincialism, when a supra-provincialistic stance is implied in the rejection of alleged western provincialism.

The deepest source of Rathore’s search for a specifically Indian political thought might be historical memory. The book includes many negative references (some sharply so) to India’s prior status as an imperial holding. Despite this aversion among Indians to western impositions, it is clear to everyone that Indian rejection of western thought is anything but total. Resentment at past domination by the West has not prevented Indians from adopting, and even excelling at, modern natural science and its technological offshoots, even as science must be seen as an offshoot or branch of western philosophy. To be sure, there are important methodological differences between science and political thought. The scientific method permits no deviation on cultural or any other grounds, and scientists who would be successful as scientists must closely adhere to that method. By contrast, political thought is given to us in more particularized form, with treatises authored in this culturally-influenced way and not that way. This difference between science and political thought might cause some to think that they can free themselves from a given particularization in political thought and devise their own particular story of political thought. Yet one suspects that producing a domestic Indian version of that 2,500 yearlong western philosophic journey is too great a challenge. And meanwhile, Dalits suffer. Perhaps it would be best if Indians set aside their historical grievances and saw western political thought as a gift and not one more in a long line of arbitrary western impositions. Liberation (or even svaraj) from the burden of historical memory might be a precondition for India’s participation in advancing genuinely universalistic political thought.

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