Deconstructing India

The Writings of Rajni Kothari, by Rajni Kothari
Orient Blackswan, Rs 995

Well known thinker and human rights activist Rajni Kothari is the doyen of Indian political science. A prolific writer, during the last 50 years he has published nearly 20 books and hundreds of articles on various aspects of Indian politics, democracy, human rights, poverty etc. The omnibus is a reprint of his three important works, written at different periods of his thought processes. The first two, Politics in India and Caste in Indian Politics were published in the Sixties; and the last one was published in 2005. I wish the publisher had given at least a list of his major books in the appendix.
In the late Fifties, when he entered the academic field, political science in Indian universities was confined to philosophy and Constitution. By that time behaviour sciences were at the formative stage in the West. Kothari’s concern for transformative politics lead him to pursue empirical political science to understand political processes. He is one of the pioneers in developing empirical studies in India. In the early Sixties, he wrote a series of articles in the Economic Weekly on “forms and substance in Indian politics”. His empirical work is the outcome of his theoretical-philosophical orientation for social transformation. Before he undertook extensive empirical studies, he authored two papers, one on “Meaning of democracy” and another on “Direct action”. He firmly believes that no theory is valid which is not based on “understanding and interpretation” of reality. Of course, the “fact” or “truth” does not exist in isolation. It is to be understood and explained in reference to both institutional and ground-level socio-economic and historical-cultural forces as well as theoretical exposition of the same.
This concern to grasp dialectics between theory and empirical situation is evident from his restlessness to grapple with reality and to move on “more normative, historical, contextual and methodological dimensions”.
Politics in India is his seminal work. The book was written at the time when “political development” was the dominant paradigm in American political science to analyse political processes in non-Western societies. The book broadly follows the same framework, with an Indian perspective. He goes much beyond functional school and questions binary of tradition-modernity as well as “social origins” and “prerequisite” models of political behaviour. The main thesis of this book, and all his subsequent writings, is that politics is a driving force in a relatively apolitical society for social transformation. With this premise, the book offers an insightful analysis of structures and processes of political change in the context of socio-cultural forces during the early decades of independent India.
It is argued that thanks to the democratic system fragmented social structure gets politicise through penetration of political forms, values and ideologies. This is the unique model of political development in India.
The second book, Caste in Indian Politics, explores the theme with empirical studies of different scholars and argues that politics has eroded traditional caste structure and values. Both the works so far remain major empirical theoretical foundations of political science in India.
Kothari, however, has not remained prisoner of his above-mentioned theoretical position. With changing reality, he began to interrogate some of his own ideological position and analysis. Democrat in ideology and personal action, he gradually turned to more normative and futuristic concern, not only for India but also for the globe.
The question in Indian context continuously bothers him: “How is that conceptual layout of parliamentary democracy in India, spurred by the idea of swaraj on the one hand and “tryst with destiny” on the other, eventually became a vehicle of exclusion and dispensability?” Is it because of vested interests, global design of hegemony and aggrandisement and decline in values?
In Rethinking Democracy, he critically evaluates the functioning of the parliamentary democracy and argues that the system has been hijacked by the capitalist class to consolidate their power. At present, the state functions against democracy — power of the people. “We have to restore sovereignty of the people”, he pleads. That does not mean the negation of the state. What is needed is to transform its role. This can be achieved in four ways: First, it can be achieved by transforming civil society; Second, the role of the centralised sate must be declined; Third, the state should be enabled to regain its autonomy from dominant interests and classes; and fourth, we need to move beyond nation state syndrome which has been “the source of both authoritarianism and hegemonism in our time”.
He calls upon intellectuals-cum-activists to intervene to work for human emancipation which range from “social change in institutional and ideological terrains to the more fundamental areas of ethics and philosophy”. All those who are concerned with the present state of affairs will find Kothari’s writings thought provoking.

Ghanshyam Shah is an author and retired professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi