THE word theory, in an ordinary sense, refers to a formal set of ideas that is intended to explain why something happens or exists. It is also understood as an opinion or idea that somebody believes is true but is not proved. In this sense, theory is the antonym for practice. There is no discomfort with this definition.
However, when theory is used along with a discipline, it is likely to suggest something very abstruse. General readers, therefore, are likely to keep a distance from books that promise to discuss academic theories, as if they constitute the exclusive domain of those in universities.
Rajeev Bhargava, director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, challenges this assumption and makes the study of political theory less abstruse and more accessible to the interested reader. The first three essays of his book What is Political Theory? , Why do We Need Political Theory? and Is There an Indian Political Theory set the tone of the remaining essays, all published in academic journals during the past two decades.
Is theorising an elite activity from which the common man will remain forever estranged? The author makes it clear that distance does not mean estrangement. Many cricket lovers in India have never played cricket. Some do play it but quite badly. Still others play it well but are not exceptional. But all of them can love or admire the skills of a Sachin Tendulkar. Just as cricket is not the preserve of a special class of people, theory is not the monopoly of a particular kind of people.
However, he hastens to add a caveat: we must avoid the view that theory is the monopoly of the special, naturally talented or genetically endowed group and the claim that it is available effortlessly to the masses or that it can also grow in slums, as his colleague Ashis Nandy has said. He cautions that there is a wealth of lived experience in slums that is crying out to be theorised but this should not be confused with theory.
According to him, political theories provide insight into and understanding of the most general pattern of human practices and social change. Saying that ethical and normative questions are at the heart of the human world, Bhargava continues his analogy with cricket to explain political theory. Consider, he says, a bowler who has been hit for three consecutive fours. This assault is not merely on his bowling but, in his reckoning, also on his sense of self-esteem and dignity. As he goes towards his bowling mark, he is angry and resentful. Indeed, he is so angry that he cannot contain himself. It occurs to him that to avenge the treatment meted out to him, he should bowl a beamer. Should he, really? He has a second to decide whether to do so or not. Should he use unfair means to remove the batsman from the crease?
This is not all. A bookie has offered him twice the match fee paid to him by the board if he is hit for four consecutive fours. Should he succumb to this temptation? Bhargava says he must assess these questions in the light of some conception of the good life, some idea of right or wrong. A cricketer has this choice. So do all other human beings in their respective contexts. In short, a human being has some degree of ethical or moral autonomy.
Bhargava suggests that similar ethical considerations arise in politics. Consider that the state is withdrawing from the public sector, say, public educational institutions. The reservation policy is predicated upon the availability of seats or jobs in the public sector. If admission or employment opportunities get limited in this way, the policy becomes practically toothless. What should now be done for those, such as Dalits, who have been disadvantaged historically?
At least two options are available. One is to pretend helplessness and to become indifferent to the plight of the Scheduled Castes. The other is to compel the private sector to have, for example, a proportion of seats or jobs reserved for them. Whatever policy the state adopts is guided by some reason. The question is whether the reason is a good one. To fail to assess ones reason in the light of any ethics is itself unethical, if ethics has a bearing on these issues, he says.
Having said that, Bhargava makes a key distinction between political theory and ideology. While political theory tries to give the fullest possible reason for why a certain standpoint must be adopted, or why an act must be performed on the basis of one set of principles rather than another, ideology lacks a commitment to spell out all reasons. Ideologies are part of the action; they get woven into practices, he explains.
Reasoning contributes to conceptual clarity, which, in turn, enables better communication among a diverse people. Through argument, differences, which are the norm in our societies, can be managed, if not resolved. We need to give reasons to one another for and against why some policy is to be initiated. Normative political theory aims to do this and also justify which conception of secularism, democracy or equality, is worth having in our context, says Bhargava.
Having established the virtues of political theory, Bhargava turns his interest to the question whether there is an Indian political theory. Here, he is in broad agreement with Ashis Nandy that after political independence, the newly liberated educated class released all self-imposed inhibitions and began to openly, uncritically use cognitive categories generated in and by the West. However, he adds that this was a psychological process transmitted by a set of institutions. His hypothesis is that this new phase of colonisation began with the academisation of Indian intellectual life. The modern Indian university, he says, has borrowed an entire gamut of practices and discourses, including a near-total reliance on academic practices and books and journals that are transmitters of a new, inescapable form of colonial power. As he says, You dont have to fly out of India to become a non-resident Indian!
Another contention that Bhargava makes is that pre-independence India could better absorb social and political theory because of the lack of academisation and professionalisation of Indian intellectual life during that period. He believes that if India is to develop a political theory that speaks to its urgent or enduring problems, the country needs to turn to the traditions of reflections available to it in the pre-independence period and cultivate a suspicion of currently dominant Western political theories. However, he clarifies that he is not in favour of ignoring mainstream Western political theory, which will be suicidal.
Bhargavas other essays throw light on how political theory can help to address contemporary challenges. While discussing political secularism, he is of the view that the history of Indian secularism is more non-Western than Western. Mainstream theories or ideologies in modern, Western societies take little notice of features constitutive of the Indian model or have forgotten them. Hence, they are struggling to deal with the post-colonial religious diversity of their societies. He believes that Indian secularism mirrors not only the past of secularism, but in a way, also its future. Indian secularism needs to examine closely and theorise properly its own evolving practices in response to the problems of religious diversity. Doing so, he suggests, will benefit the secularisms of many Western societies.
If there is one country that can learn from India, it is France, which is unable to take into account its own multicultural and multi-religious reality. In March 2004, the French Parliament passed a law banning all ostentatious religious symbols and signs in public places such as schools, hospitals and town halls. The controversial law led to a debate on the merits of French secularism, with Sikhs questioning the ban on their wearing of turbans in public places. Bhargava contends that France cannot take refuge in claims of exceptionalism and that a good hard look at Indian secularism could change the self-understanding of other Western secularisms.
Bhargavas other essays in this book discuss issues such as socialism, multiculturalism, censorship, truth commissions, and 9/11. Anyone interested in seeking theoretical answers to these contemporary issues will find these essays instructive.
Bhargavas plea for applying indigenous theoretical remedies to Indias political problems appears to have influenced legal theorists if not political scientists themselves. The second book under review, born out of the Critical Legal Studies Conference held in Hyderabad in 2007, exemplifies the virtues of new theoretical remedies in the area of legal reform, rewriting legal knowledge and interpretation of legal principles by a group of legal academics. Central to the essays in this book is the premise that legal ideas and institutions inherited from the colonial era have not helped in the creation of a just society, for which there is a clear need for alternative theories. Again, like Bhargava, these academics emphasise the need to consider these new theories, free from any ideological baggage.
The first essay by Michael Neocosmos on rethinking emancipatory politics in contemporary Africa holds lessons for India as well. He contends that development, like the struggle for independence, has to be a political project. As the editors, Amita Dhanda and Archana Parashar, explain in their introduction, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) and the agitations of various project-displaced persons in India could be viewed as an illustrative effort to politicise economic development. The editors agree with Neocosmos that this struggle must remain a grass-roots struggle, as any effort to obtain leverage from other state institutions can prove counter-productive. The editors say that the manner in which the Supreme Court made short shrift of the fundamental developmental issues raised by the NBA in its petition against the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) confirms this insight.
But has the NBAs litigation against the SSP been counter-productive? Though the NBA ultimately lost the legal case against the construction of the SSP overlooking the environmental and livelihood concerns, it succeeded in delaying the project by securing a stay on construction, which was vacated only after a few years. The case in the Supreme Court also resulted in the laying down of principles for rehabilitation and resettlement of project-affected persons, which continue to be of help in further litigation against the SSP. It is doubtful whether the NBA could have achieved even this limited success had it remained merely a grass-roots movement.
The transformative potential of law is explored by Archana Parashar in her essay Responsibility for Legal Knowledge. She says that judges, in performing their role of interpretation, do make choices, but, more importantly, they have the responsibility of explaining why the consequences flowing from those choices are fair. Traditional legal theory conceptualises the role of judges as that of applying the law. Judges are constrained so as to not act as political actors but base themselves on the law. One consequence of this way of theorising is that form takes precedence over substance. One of the accepted rules of interpretation is that judges should not go beyond the intentions of the legislature in order to enhance what they consider as the social justice content of the legislation.
Parashar disagrees with this theory and argues that judges inevitably have to make context-specific choices, and the only guiding principles are the achieving of substantive equality or justice and a concern with avoiding oppression and exclusion.
The new legal theories, advanced by the authors of the remaining chapters, aim to merge current legal knowledge with the responsibility to bring about social and economic justice. The book may be considered to pose a serious academic challenge to legal practitioners, who are generally resistant to change.
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