Book review: Manindra Nath Thakur,Gyan ki Rajniti: Samaj Adhyayan aur Bharatiya Chintan [Politics of Knowledge: Social Studies and Indian Thought]

The modernity–tradition debate is as old as the French Revolution. Until recently, modernity has been heralded as the driving force to correct historic wrongs and to implement a common social, economic and intellectual attitude at the global scale. The modern methods had a normative quest and proposed universal ethical codes to examine and arrange the social and traditional spheres on rational, scientific and secular basis. The West has aggressively implemented scientific and technological innovations in the rest of the world through imperialist expeditions and made individualism, capitalism and democracy modern forces that would transform the social order of many societies, including India. Although the Western model was hegemonic and pushed Indian intellectual traditions to the periphery, resistance to imperialist domination also emerged simultaneously.

In the post-1857 period, modern ideology faced little resistance in India. The British established new political and legal institutions for governance and rearranged economic affairs without much trouble. However, the domination of the West was not universally welcomed. There was a visible hesitation in accepting its hegemony in the cultural and intellectual domains. The formation of the new nation (not state) was visibly imagined on the basis of indigenous civilisational values, traditions and India’s spiritual distinction. For example, Shabnam Tejani (2007, p. 174) suggests that for Gandhi, ‘politics without religion would be reduced to a crude and self-serving affair’. Similarly, Gail Omvedt (2008, p. 240) argues that Ambedkar’s idea of Prabuddha Bharat (Enlightened India) was deeply rooted in India’s civilisational ethos that he instrumentalised to maintain a distance from the harmful effects of modern political ideas like socialism.

Manindra Nath Thakur’s Hindi book Gyan ki Rajniti (Politics of Knowledge) is an impressive call to revisit this discourse, with an exhilarating hope to build a serious dialogue between competing philosophical approaches. Thakur adopts a middle path to examine the Indian modernity debate with the hope that such an exercise will liberate us from the colonial hangover and produce emancipatory ideas. He argues that the Indian knowledge system can also have universal validity and should be valued equally while proposing grand metanarratives. He further suggests that even post-modern global crises can be understood and corrected by engaging with the Indian traditional knowledge system.

The author is not content, however, with the nationalist rhetoric towards knowledge production, which emphatically valorises the Indian ‘spiritual’ past and villainises the ‘materialist’ Western civilisation. Thakur explores the hegemonic power of the West that has dominated the Indian philosophical and academic traditions (bracketing it mainly as Hindu religious and mystic thoughts) and reprimands the Western academia (and its prodigies in India) for looking at Indian thought as passive, stagnant and mystical. Thakur advances an alternative reading, placing Indian knowledge practices at the centre of his inquiry. The result is the production of an intriguing and interesting hypothesis, which not only places the Indian philosophical tradition parallel to the West but also shows its distancing from the zealous Hindu nationalist project. He looks into Indian resources that can supplement transformative and emancipatory ideas without making them hegemonic or antagonistic toward Western knowledge practices.

The author notes that modern state apparatuses, especially the educational institutions (or universities, in particular), remained dominated by scientific–empiricist methodologies and hence detached from other sources of knowledge, which are rooted in everyday social practices. Thakur’s exploration of biographies, especially his commentary on Tulsi Ram’s Murdahiya, is an excellent exposition of alternative sources of knowledge that have often been neglected by dominant methods of knowledge production. ¹ He endorses the controversial claim, formulated earlier by Gopal Guru (2012, pp. 122–123), that a specific social experience is crucial to speak, analyse and theorise about oppression and injustice. The author used this logic to demonstrate the distancing of academic scholars from everyday social experiences of the general people, as they are overtly occupied with banal methodological exigencies. He demands legitimacy for knowledge based on social experiences and suggests that its acceptance would help us to develop a revolutionary epistemology.

Liberal political thought has aspired to arrange social and economic inequalities in a legitimate manner. Although it promotes equal freedom to all individuals, it compartmentalises them in class ghettos and regional boundaries. In more contemporary times, with the arrival of the neoliberal economic order, inequalities are becoming more exploitative, creating hellish conditions for a large majority. Importantly, revolutionary political ideas like Marxism also failed to examine the changing nature of capitalism and were periodically relegated as a peripheral force. The author notes that new modes of social cooperation are required to build a global movement against capitalist exploitation and divisive, identity-based sectarian politics.

Thakur examines the adivasi (Indian aboriginal/indigenous population) case as the starting point for an alternative discourse. He shows various small and local alternatives that individuals and groups are trying to defend, offering alternative ways of community living. Interestingly, as a theoretical alternative, he offers a close reading of purushartha—decoding the Indian values of kama (pleasure and love), artha (economic order), dharma (moral conduct) and moksha (spiritual liberation)—and suggests that it can complement the rich discourse on human psychology and social behaviour. In the next chapter, he extends the purushartha concept to imagine contemporary society on the basis of classical virtues and to propose a better version of a democratic order. Gandhi’s concepts of Swaraj and Su-raj (a moral claim for self-rule) are instrumental in building an emancipatory theology and shall be applied to build a moral–ethical foundation of the new world.

Often, an emotional bond with the past is crafted because it has a set of alternative values to reconstruct the existing world. However, such hope also brings the reader closer to the nationalist political ideology and recreates xenophobic tendencies. Thakur understands this slippage and often reminds the reader about his secular goals and the revolutionary potential of such a dialogical exercise. The project is ambitious and therefore, on occasion, appears rhetorical and separated from the actualities of social and political conditions. In a cursory search of common linkages between revolutionary ideas (Gandhian thought, Marxism, dalit thought, psychoanalysis, etc.), it fails to defend the exclusive merit of Indian thought. Instead, the proposed alternative to build an ‘emancipatory theology’ appears like a re-stylising of popular modern ethics. The book looks like an intellectual sermon in some parts but shows academic depth and invokes crucial concepts and categories of knowledge in some others. By the end, the reader of this book is fascinated by the author’s knowledge of diverse religious texts and literature, his broad engagement with distinct ideological and philosophical attributes, and his audacity to promote a new normative in such complex times.

To add a critical reflection, the book overtly constructs the imagination of Indian philosophy around Hindu ethics and neglects other philosophical schools such as Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Interestingly, the book also lacks any meaningful engagement with Islamic thought and its Indian versions, which have immensely influenced modern social and political thought. On occasion, we see the names of national luminaries such as Rabindranath Tagore and Ambedkar but without any serious engagement with their philosophical texts and ideas. Instead, it is Gandhi who represents the core of Indian philosophical traditions in this discourse while all others remain peripheral. The book critically engages with the contemporary crisis of democracy and suggests impressive amendments; however, the author remains silent on the limitations and crisis of other modern ideals such as secularism and social justice.

These are flimsy critical assertions and can be addressed in the book’s next edition. On the appreciative note, the book offers an innovative discourse to humanise the current fashion in the social sciences and introduces Indian philosophical thought as a commendable partner in the discourse of emancipation, justice and good life. Most importantly, because it is in Hindi, the book invites the north Indian academic sphere to indulge in serious academic discussions using its vernacular agency. The book conveys that colonial hegemony will not be destabilised only by promoting vibrant intellectual ideas, for this also requires that such deliberations use indigenous language and cultural and traditional attributes to frame post-colonial Indian thought.