BOOK REVIEW

Democracy and Violence in India

Rudolf C Heredia

his book is the outcome of two

workshops held in 2011, the first
in Delhi on 1920 March, the
second in Shimla on 2628 September.
Both were on the theme of Collective
Action and Violence in Postcolonial
Democracy by the Mahanirban Calcutta
Research Group and the Indian Institute
of Advanced Studies (IIAS), Shimla respectively. The purpose was a more claimantcentred and dialogical understanding of
the violence inherent in the emancipatory
politics of postcolonial democracy (p vii).
Not Substantive Democracy
The editors introduction positions the
problematique thusperiodic elections
are by and large free and fair in India, but
this has yet to become substantive democracy that fulfils the promise of liberty,
equality and fraternity, with an effective
regime of rights, equally and fairly for all
citizens of the republic. Electoral democracy at most makes for plebiscitary democracy (Kothari 2005: 128). A high voter
turnout, when no credible alternatives
are available to the voters, becomes a
Hobsons choice and hastens peoples disillusionment, delegitimising governments
and undermining confidence in the formal institutional structures of the state.
For an ineffective elected government can
only be replaced with more of the same,
it is then that people disregard democratic procedures, and resistance readily
finds expression in extra-constitutional
means, from active physical violence to
passive civil disobedience. This is the
history of marginalised communities in
their quest for a more inclusive regime of
democratic rights.
In demystifying the celebratory understanding of democracy as a regimecentred approach, collective violence is
perceived as a pathology to be contained
and defused, and eventually suppressed.
This only reaffirms the status quo. A
claimant-centred approach defines democracy in terms of the demands made
by democratic subjects for democratic
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

APRIL 23, 2016

India: Democracy and Violence edited by

Samir Kumar Das; OUP, 2015; pp i-viii+258, `995.

rights and civil liberties. Pursuing such a

contested politics may precipitate conflicts
that confine and eventually overwhelm
the democratic regime itself. But it is
this very democratic regime that makes
the articulation of interests possible in
the first place. Often such violence is
fragmented and localised, especially in
areas of insurgency, as in the Naxalitedominated districts and the border states
where the government rite does not run;
or in spaces of governmental dysfunction when economic growth is pursued
at the cost of equity, or when development-induced displacement or sectarian
religious or caste violence or atrocities
against scheduled castes and scheduled
tribes is not effectively addressed.
In seeking to contain and suppress
such violence, the state all too often resorts to the violent negation of its democratic pretentions and its commitment to
its own formal regime of rights. This can
only be a short-term solution at most.
Sooner or later it precipitates a more
violent response. The escalating spiral
opens the way for authoritarian and/or
majoritarian movements to capture the
state and impose their rule. Weak postcolonial states prove inadequate to this
challenge of reconciling conflicting interests, of class and caste, of ethnicity and
religion and evolving democratically
into an inclusive participatory, liberal
democratic nation state. This is the story
of many postcolonial new states (Geertz
1963) and is particularly acute for multicultural and pluri-religious societies,
where the paradox of the mutual embeddedness of democracy and violence
remains unaddressed and unresolved.
Unravelling the
Constitutional Paradox
The edited chapters of the volume illustrate this paradox in four parts. In the
first, which deals with the Contest over
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Sovereignty, Partha Pratim Shil shows

how in dealing with the constabulary
strike in Delhi in MarchApril 1946, the
Congress government foregrounded the
colonial instruments of government
rather than the values of a democratic
state. Suhit K Sen discusses how, after
the transfer of power, the tensions between the ministerial and organisational
wings of the Indian National Congress
were resolved in favour of the former.
Part two covers citizenship and equality. In pushing the frontiers of effective
citizenship in India, Ranabir Samaddar
argues that The Violent Foundations of
Citizenship are embedded in the contentious events of its history. The postcolonial governments have privileged
state security over personal rights. With
increasing insurgency and terrorism
in todays world, this could spell the end
of liberal democracy as we know it.
Claiming Equality among Equals is
the issue examined by Samir Kumar
Das. In the quest for justice the struggle
against the structural violence of the
state must overcome the resistance of
those more equal than others (Orwell
1946). Pushing the frontiers of an equal
citizenship against such borders can
spill over into violence.
The focus in part three is on Law
as Violence. Extra-parliamentary movements attempt to address more directly
the inadequacies of electoral democracy
against laws that seek pacification rather
than fairness. Ashok Agrawals Inclusion as Violence is a case study of
the urban poor in our cities. The rhetoric of development and its agenda
has not delivered on its promises to the
multitude of poor and marginalised
there. It has if anything left them worse
off. In Reading Life and Death into
a Legal Text, Mayur Suresh reviews
police encounter deaths to show how
the victims are killed and the evidence
destroyed, leaving a self-authorising
paper truth.
The last part on Movements at Home
and Outside demonstrates how despite
the perfunctory shift from feudal orders
to democracies, patriarchy remains the
core paradigm of the state and social
organisation (p 18). Its sustaining power
is still much in evidence in unregulated
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BOOK REVIEW

local caste panchayats. Samita Sen and

Nandita Das address the issue of domestic
violence and the Changing Strategies
within the Womens Movement: Bengal
19802010. In spite of good laws,
apathetic state functionaries and the
importance given to family and communities ties stymies the agency of women
especially with regard to issues of
domestic violence. This gap between
the pretensions of the democratic and
the grievances of the exploited, the poor
and the disenfranchised is taken up by
Sibaji Pratim Basu in The Chronicle of a
Forgotten Movement in West Bengal
1959 Revisited. This was a food movement outside formal democratic structures in the 1950s and 1960s, which had
its impact in the legislature and led to a
change of state government. The food
riots in 2007 protesting against the
public distribution system (PDS) were
an echo of this that once again facilitated a change of state government.
A More Perfect Democracy
This volume is a convincing demonstration of the paradox of democracy and
violencethe democratic project promotes violence when it raises peoples
expectations and then suppresses it with
violence and majoritarian tyranny. The
consequent spiral of violence may well
overturn democratic governments. Only
when it loses its efficacy as an effective
practical means to legitimate political
ends, is an authentic democratic transformation towards a more inclusive regime of rights and a more participatory
and transparent governance possible.
This is what defines substantive democracy. Unless such a contentious politics
(Tilly 2004) is contained within the rule
of law, premised on a regime of democratic rights and civil liberties, it will
mutate into a politics of frustration,
anger and rage. This can all too easily
betray the democratic project and precipitate anarchy at worse, and authoritarianism at best. Ultimately, the alternative to a dysfunctional democracy
can only be a more perfect democracy
(p 115).
However, reconciling conflicting interests will necessarily be contentious.
Once these become non-negotiable in a
34

zero-sum game of winner-takes-all, they

inevitably become embedded contradictions that cannot but lead to violence.
Uncompromising identity politics is a
telling example of this. A democratic
state must find or create some common
ground between such contradictions,
where they can be contained and
defused, and conflicts reconciled, if not
in a win-win resolution, at least in a
win-some, lose-some compromise. This
is the name of the game in democratic
politics that necessarily implies a processnegotiated conflict-resolution. A liberal
democracy must be a government by
discussion (Buchanan 1954: 120), as a
method of dissolving contradictions and
resolving conflicts. Or else elected democracy will spill over into a tyranny of
the majority (Tocqueville 1862).
The postcolonial states inherited a
coercive apparatus that has not been
adequately dismantled. There is more
continuity than rupture between the
pre- and post-colonial states in the
Indian subcontinent. Moreover, as they
open their economies to the neoconservative global order, the market
penetration of these societies accentuates
the political inequalities and injustices,
further escalating contradictions, exacerbating socio-economic disparities and
ethno-religious differences. The legitimacy of such a postcolonial nation state
is then severely questioned and its sovereignty sharply contested as has happened in South Asia and is escalating
today. This can fragment the state to the
point of ending up as an intolerant,
anarchic and failed one. For the constitutional declaration of sovereignty remains
notional, it becomes real for citizens and
communities when they have a stake in
the democratic project, where rights and
liberties are universal and non-discriminatory, vulnerable individual dignity is

not undermined, and distinctive community identities respected.

However, chauvinist political leaders
refuse to negotiate or compromise with a
politics of the possible. Rather they escalate the violence, both overtly and covertly,
to polarise the people into reciprocated
intolerance and hostility. This may result in a rich pay-off at the hustings, but
such corrosive competitive politics easily
spirals out of control. There is convincing evidence of this in our world today:
unconscionable short-term gain for
political parties brings irreversible longterm damage to vulnerable democratic
institutions. Only when such chauvinism is punished by the electorate with
negative returns will this be reversed and
a more substantive democracy retrieved.
The contributors to this volume set
this paradox of democracy and violence
in the historical context with case studies
in India. But it has lessons for other
postcolonial states elsewhere as well.
It is an essential reading for serious
scholars and all concerned with the
contemporary situation in India and
more generally South Asia.
Rudolf C Heredia (rudiheredia@gmail.com) is
with the Indian Social Institute, New Delhi.

References
Buchanan, James M (1954): Social Choice, Democracy, and Free Markets, Journal of Political
Economy, Vol 62, No 2, pp 11423, http://www.
jstor.org/stable/1825570?seq=1#page_scan_tab_
contents.
Geertz, Clifford (ed) (1963): Old Societies and New
States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and
Africa, London: The Free Press of Glencoe.
Kothari, Rajni (2005): Rethinking Democracy, Hyderabad: Orient Longman.
Orwell, George (1946): Animal Farm: A Fairy Story,
NY: Harcourt Brace.
Tilly, Charles (2004): Social Movements, 17682004,
Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
Tocqueville, Alexis de (1862): Democracy in America,
revised and edited, with notes by Francis Bowen,
Cambridge, Massachusetts: University Press,
Welch, Bigelow and Co.

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