CHAPTER IX

PLURALISM AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN INDIA

DIKSHIT SINHA

The 1996 UNDP report on development trends in the world points out that at the end of 1994 conflicts around the world had left nearly 27 million refugees and displaced persons (an 11 fold increase since 1970). Today, one of every 200 people in the world is either a refugee or displaced within his or her own country. This itself shows the endemic nature of various kinds of conflict in the modern nation-states which are democratic, heterogeneity is woven into the fabric of their socio-economic life. Heterogeneity in India too is an accepted fact,1 but the pervasiveness of social and political conflict is recently showing signs of exceeding all known limits.

Sociologists, anthropologists and historians have advanced various theories explaining why conflicts arise. These are well-known and need not detain us here. Commenting on the nature of the Indian rural scene, M.N. Srinivas (1992) pointed out that it is hierarchical in more that one sense. This is based on such diverse factors as caste, land-ownership, patron-client relationship, dominant-subordinate relationships between various communities, etc. This pattern of relationships gave rise to every conceivable form of domination: economic, social or cultural. The multi-stranded nature of domination itself gave rise to fissures and contradictions in the regional societies which were exploited consciously or unconsciously by the dominant sector for the subjugation/coercion of a particular status group. Differences within the caste groups of Bengal villages into two opposite but juxtaposed status groups, Chotolok (the lowly) and Bhadralok (the gentry) is a case in point. The economically and socially superior upper castes (the Bhadraloks) used to dominate the Chotoloks (the untouchable caste groups) by using their dominant position. In this kind of dominant-subordinate relationship, a coalescence of all the three capitals -- economic, social and cultural (Bourdieu, 1993) occurred, resulting in two clear cut groupings and a horizontal division of the society, in the case inter-community relationship between the Muslims and Hindus or between tribals and non-tribals, domination was on the basis of the economy. Each community had a separate socio-cultural pattern, but, depending on the interplay of what Alexander (1987) called `external factors' (such as degree of differentiation in terms of economy, nautical system, religion, language, etc.) and `internal factors' (the degree to which the dominant group regard the other communities as complementary in terms of cultural system), inter-community rank was determined and the larger social order constituted. But this pattern of inter-community relationship remained at best partial, built on the basis of economic or cultural traits and mediated through a particular segment of the community.

Few studies regard the inter-community situation, especially in the context of building up the public arena at the regional level. Consideration of this aspect is important if we are to understand the process when two or more communities come in contact and build up various patterns of inter-community interaction. The existence of civil society, emphasizing citizenship rights (Marshall, 1973) and public morality, was virtually non-existent in India. What little public morality was there was co-extensive with the boundaries of individual societies and culture. Transactions at the societal level did occur between the communities based on individual interest and rational choice, but the concept of equality, justice or public right stopped at the boundary of the community or even at still smaller borders of extended kin groups.

The French sociologist, S. Durkheim (1960), who examined the pattern of social solidarity in human society, pointed out that in a simple society, it is based on similarity and collective conscience, but that in modern industrialized societies the collective conscience is replaced by repressive laws and altruism. Peter Saunders (1993) commenting on the nature of public order in modern societies pointed out that it was far more logical and less costly to create an atmosphere of public morality by voluntarily entering into public cooperation and thereby sustaining public life, rather than enforcing it by state coercion. Stephen Kalberg (1993), on the other hand, pointed out the pattern of the development of public morality through the instrumental rationality of economy and warfare in medieval Europe and the separation of the private and public domain in these societies. In Asia and Africa, economic transactions remained merely an extension of the private domain and largely were carried through the patron-client relationship. Therefore, the ideology of kinship and culture continued to play a pivotal role. The appearance of a public sphere also necessitates the creation of certain values and behavior patterns such as duty, service, loyalty, obedience, trust, etc.

In India, the effort to create a public arena was experimented with in the Mughuland British period with different results. O'Hanloln (1993) pointed out that the emerging new rulership during the Mughul period was subject to contradictory pressures. On the one hand, they were identified and remained immersed in the identity of the ethnic group to which they belonged; on the other hand, their success depended on their being able to attract a key range of social groups for their military and religious legitimacy. This meant that no ruler could identify closely with any group. State patronage, positive political uses of religious identity and public ceremonies as a central part of the state strategy produced fierce competition over the control of particular pilgrimage centers and other symbolic resources and intense rivalries between competing religious patrons at the local level. The coming of the British and their so-called religious neutrality resulted in congealing the patron-client relationship of various natures which played an important role in shaping the public life during pre-independence India and continued to play a crucial role even in post-independence days.

Turner (1988) pointed out that all modern nation states suffer from contradictions between the politico-legal and the economic organization. The state intervenes in this situation in favor of various `political clienteles' to redistribute various scarce resources. In so doing, they reinforce various ascriptive features of the society and give rise to "particularism as the basis of claims against society for reform" (Turner, 1988). In India we find that various communities which were at one time integrated through complementary relationships or through dominant and subordinate relationships are coming apart and asserting their polotico-legal status. This creates conflicts of various types throughout India. The tribal movements in eastern and northeastern India, conflict between various language groups, movements for autonomy as in the Punjab, etc., are some of the examples. At a different level one can also discern a development of horizontal ties between a particular caste located across one social space or between various castes opposed to caste groups above them in order to better their life chances as Pradip K. Bose (1991) has demonstrated so graphically in the case of Bihar. Here three intermediary castes -- Kurmi, Koeri and Yadavas -- have formed a caste association to improve their economic condition vis-a-vis the upper caste groups. In recent times they have been also responsible for violence against untouchables for standing up to them.

In the hierarchically constituted Indian society, the notion of power was also hierarchically constituted, the ultimate repository of power being beyond the grasp and knowledge of the ordinary people. This ultimate repository of power was looked on as the arbitrator in the redistribution of scarce resources. The political clienteles which state power create to perpetuate their hegemony at various levels down the hierarchy of power operate to redistribute resources and operate as levers of social control. The local patron, through whom various resources are distributed, built up a network of allegiances through carefully nurtured social relationship. Over time, when competing centers of power arise due to changes in economic or state institutions, the patron-client relationship creates an atmosphere of conflict in which the primordial loyalties play a significant part.

From the discussion, it is evident that pluralism in India is made complex by the many patterns of domination creating crisis-crossing fissures in the polity, by the presence of horizontal division, inequality of all kinds and social and cultural heterogeneity of every conceivable order. The coming of the colonial state system and, later on, of a democratic political system in independent India led to the development of political clientelism that did not render the situation conducive for the construction of public order. The latter has remained problematic even in Western democracies where rights evolved very slowly through many processes of class and genders struggle (Held 1989). In India the linkages with the center of state power are mediated through a network of ascriptive relationships governed by traditional cultural values and trust. The desired merging of the cultural or group identity with the shared collective identity of public order remained a distant goal. During the pre-British days, heterogeneity used to be absorbed by acculturation and assimilation. The instrumental rationality of market and state power effectively derailed the system and brought in the concept of individuality and rationality without effectively changing the importance of community life.

The distinction between private and public domain in social sciences has remained ambiguous. In anthropology the network relationship, beyond the domestic, is considered public, the former merging imperceptibly with the latter world of instrumentality and rationality. Elaborating on this Ross Poole (1991) writes:

The dominant conceptions of market activity, capitalist production and bureaucratic administration exclude the feelings of the relationships and commitments which are characteristic of familial, sexual and emotional life. Society can, therefore, only be rationalized, in the senses appropriate to these conceptions, if these relationships lead a marginalized existence elsewhere. This creates a conception of domestic life as a distinct social space which is the appropriate place for emotion, attachment and sexuality. These are now conceived of as non-rational -- according to Weber, irrational ?- aspects of human life, and properly separate from and subordinate to the larger questions of production, distribution and social organization. It is this particular structure of exclusion and subordination which marks the modern form of the distinction between public and private spheres of social existence (p.47).

In the Western notion, the public and private spheres are thought to be opposed to each other (Seligman 1993). The former is related to impersonal, rational, calculable rules of bureaucratic, market organization and the latter confined to the non-rational, domestic sphere. Poole points out that it is not necessary that these two spheres be opposed to each other is not the place to go into metaphysical aspect of the notion or the related concept of civil society. But in the Indian context, what is relevant is that, if disparate communities are to exist side by side and be anchored together in a common polity, some form of shared collective life is necessary which will ensure an equitable, rational relationship. That is required not only as an impersonal concept of rights and morality, but as a proper institutionalization of the relationship between the different communities, so that it can have both impersonality or public life, as well as some degree of control over and regulation of individuals and different communities. The state power is too distant to ensure all the finer aspects of citizenship rights (civil, social and political in the Marshael's sense).

An intermediary organization like the Panchayat Institution which has been functioning in West Bengal can be developed as a kind of civil society regulating the transactions and social relationship between disparate communities and ensuring social and economic equality. It has the flexibility of an elected office and a bureaucratic structure. It is public, but nevertheless regulated by law. It is sufficiently large to encompass a sizeable portion of the communities and can regulate the economic and other aspect of public sphere. It has a structure which ensures that three or four contiguous villages, irrespective of their community structure, can come together to share resources, plan development, intervene in the social process and encourage people to participate directly in activities considered vital to their interest. Admittedly, panchayats cannot do away with horizontal relationships, such as those of class or community. But it has provided the people with a platform where class or community or other ascriptive attributes of individuals can be overcome. Although the village as a unit has existed from time immemorial, it was the horizontal relationship of intra-caste or intra-community relationship that became the regulator of village life. The vertical relationship between the villages became the important governing principle of public life only after the panchayat came into being. The panchayat system not only can take the power to the doorsteps of ordinary villagers, but has forced the people of a village to look at other contiguous villages as equal citizens and to share public resources, plan for a better future and bring in a sense of public morality with which they can readily identify.

The existence of plurality is an inescaple reality with which all modern nation states have to live. There is no unanimity on how to bring it about. But the multi-faceted nature of plurality in India requires that serious efforts be made to construct an intermediate public organization which can ensure an anchorage for the people in the impersonal, rational and equitable aspect of public life, which has been sorely missing from the Indian polity.

REFERENCES

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