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Liberal Humanism and the Non-Western Other: The Right and the Good in World Affairs
This was, in fact, perceived as a historical necessity as these rulers had transformed India, a mere geographical expression, into a political unity, even though they looked down upon the majority of the Indian population and was divided from it by race, religion and culture. This eventually got so deeply rooted in consciousness that it was not seen as a negation of democracy and any departure from it was feared as surrender to majoritarianism and a threat to national unity. The author quotes from Mark Tully’s No Full Stops in India to show that such a civil-authoritarian regime was a pragmatic option in India (pg 306). Intellectuals and the leadership reinvented liberal humanism and its two pillars, liberal democracy and representative government, so that a majority of property-less people, to quote John Locke, was not ‘able to think and act politically’. This was enough for the author to interrogate Francis Fukuyama’s celebration of liberal democracy as the final winner in contest over forms of government. The preface and the following chapters covering almost half the book lucidly explicate liberal humanist readings of structured differences and inequalities, when mediated by pursuit of power and interest. This is brought out forcefully in the sixth chapter entitled World Affairs: An Inter-textual Narrative. The argument is further developed by identifying four dynamic political actors — state, nation, class and the individual — and the author differentiates each from its nodal description along a spectrum of its empirical types based on their unequal competencies. This serves as a fertile ground for actions and strategies which sketch a Machiavillian profile of political process, both in domestic and international politics. A remedy for these maladies is ‘value pluralism’ and determination to rehabilitate Mahatma Gandhi who continues to be outflanked by a changing political economy seeking to realise a neoliberal utopia. This leaves the reader a little dissatisfied. The reader knows that it is neither possible to roll back nor to change course. He would like the book to begin again where it ends. In short, the work is engaging and thought-provoking and whets appetite for more from the author.
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The
book underlines a growing disconnect of democratic aspirations with
institutionalised processes designed to align them with elite
interests, even the movements for social and gender justice. The
struggle for Independence did not prepare a blueprint for
post-Independence state-building. Hence the leadership had no
alternative to drawing on the ideological resources of colonial
governance and the strategic thought processes of Mughal and British
rulers.