Abstract
The volume is a collection of 12 articles by scholars who are, or who have been, affiliated to the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata. It celebrates the work of Partha Chatterjee as well as his long and very productive association with the Centre, first as a Fellow and then, as Director. It moves across multiple and diverse disciplinary areas. While that adds to its range and depth, it also makes the reviewer’s task very difficult. Anjan Ghosh, one of the editors, died an untimely death shortly after the volume was put together. It is poignant, therefore, to recall that tragic loss along with the celebration.
The Introduction, written by Ghosh and Nair, discusses Chatterjee’s intellectual trajectory. Each author in the volume has tried to build the article around a particular concept, especially associated with him. Predictably, that of political society has claimed the attention of most. Dipesh Chakravarty makes an elegant addition to Charles Taylor’s notion of the politics of recognition which depends on the articulation of a sense of historical wounds, inflicted on a vulnerable community by a dominant one. He says that a process of healing is already on its way when the besieged community describes its wounds. This depends on a consensus about the wounds, reached between the dominant and the subordinated—a consensus, that however, remains fragile and contested. He examines both propositions in the contexts of Indian dalits and Australian indigenous people, the latter being an unusual and valuable parallel. He moves on to the importance of the realm of personal experience and the limits of its articulation within an academic discipline of History.
Janaki Nair invokes Chatterjee’s famous dictum on the nationalist resolution of the woman’s question to show the varieties of feminist writings that have emerged in the last few decades. The spectrum, by its very breadth, indicates a pending irresolution. She points out the problems that feminist historical writings face when they are enclosed in a corner, folded in upon themselves. Because she brings in so many varied examples of writings, the essay sometimes gets a little breathless. M. Madhava Prasad, in his study of the politics of hierarchising Indian languages in the post colonial situation begins with Appiah’s insistence on combining citizenship with identity, the language of politics in public places with one’s own language use. He then considers the Indian context and the controversial issue of which Indian language should have what kind of status. Gyanendra Pandey attempts a ‘science of violence’, which, as opposed to war, forges an Other. He refers to the violence of the quotidian, he cites words that describe violent episodes and he also cites silence about violence. He talks about violence among communities as well as violence that happens inside each community. He multiplies the spaces of violence to such a point that we may, perhaps, lose a sense of distinction.
In an excellent essay, Ranabir Samaddar takes up Chatterjee’s formulations on sovereignty—which is attached to the subject instead of always and necessarily to the state—as an entry point into a situation when the state confronts an insurrectionary figure and wants to initiate a process of governance rather than of obliteration: a more subtle aspect of statecraft. In the gap between the two, he says, the figure of the political subject emerges, as an excess beyond the mere rebel. He studies this in the context of Naga peace negotiations and looks at the dialogue between the state and the NSCN—a dance of peace offering and its subversion.
Tapati Guha Thakurta contrasts the politics of the art world with the autonomy of the art practitioner. Gandhi’s iconisation by the sculptor Debiprasad Roy Chowdhury and by the painter Nandalal Bose, is cited as a counterpoint to the work of Ramkinker Baij. She points out that the first two received official and mainstream sanction for their representations, while Ramkinker, a more individualistic and unruly sculptor-painter, was marginalised. Between the contrasts lies a rich history of different art forms, art theories and art criticism. The story of nationalist appropriation and marginalisation is very well told. But Ramkinker, too, acquired an iconic aura among a middle class avant-garde and one wonders what made it possible. Ramachandra Guha studies Rabindranath’s travels abroad to focus on a controversy-ridden process of exchange between the poet and the world—contentions that were largely created by his unrelenting internationalism and his sharp and bold critique of nationalism.
In a very interesting essay, M.S.S. Pandian captures an essential paradox about nationalist claims on the unconditional loyalty of its subjects. He unpacks the moves through which this loyalty is sought to be mobilised even as he identifies the points of rupture where the representational claims are undone when the nation privileges a particular majoritarian streak which metonymically presents itself as the entire nation—either marginalising or violently repressing other particularities. He then refers to two striking departures from nationalist claims, Rabindranath Tagore and E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker. Pandian establishes his arguments on the register of cultural marginalisation—it would have added to his arguments had he also said something about the separation of marginalised communities from their material resources, adding the politics of distribution to the politics of recognition.
Asok Sen, an inspirational figure for intellectuals in Kolkata and beyond, has been an especially close associate of Chatterjee. He takes up Chatterjee’s reflections on relations between state and organised capital on the one hand, and non-corporate capital, especially of peasants, on the other. Sen disagrees with one point that Chatterjee has made—that unlike rural insurrections during colonial times which the early Subaltern Studies collective had celebrated, peasant resistance today cannot possess the same validity as both state and peasantry have moved over to a situation of mutual contestation through negotiations for welfare. He presents a different understanding of the present phase of Indian capitalism to argue for the continuing efficacy of earlier modes of struggle. Indeed, many of the rural struggles present today involve critical issues of survival and livelihood, and they prove the limits of negotiations. They also affirm the efficacy and relevance of the insurrectionary form that has, on several occasions, managed to resist the combined powers of state and multinational capital.
Dwaipayan Bhattacharya carries on the debate, combining ethnographic research with important general observations. He focuses on West Bengal’s surprising tradition of political parties controlling the social sphere. This is done to such an extent that all social and material claims have to be mediated through some party or another, including claims that belong to intimate areas of life. Bhattacharya looks at how the Left Front initially built up its hegemony through rural bases and policies, and how its weakening rural reformism progressively eroded that hegemonic status. He makes the pertinent point that Chatterjee’s concept of negotiated gains within the political society framework works far better in an urban context than in a rural one.
Anjan Ghosh observes the changing form of the annual Durga Puja in Kolkata—from a neighbourhood based performance to that of an inter-para (neighbourhood) competitive spectacle that, despite its transience, happens on a gigantic scale. He observes this in the context of changing employment, skill, desires and needs under globalisation, media direction and corporate awards, closely tracking the emergence of theme based pujas. He also observes, interestingly, the temporary suspension of civic spaces at Puja time, an illegality that is officially approved and that unifies the entire political spectrum. He counterposes the new spectacle confronting urban publics against the Habermasian public sphere based on rational communication.
Pradip Kumar Datta revisits the well publicised case of Rizwanur Rahman in Kolkata where family and police combined to separate a legally married couple and the death of the husband in mysterious circumstances. Since the marriage was across community and class, diverse social segments of the city, representing discrete urban localities, came together to demand justice and to protest with peaceful candlelight vigils. The theme of love as spur to collective action is established via two Bollywood movies. The notion of conjunctural collective is suggested as a useful counter against Chatterjee’s notions of performative community and political society. It needs to be pointed out, however, that the issues the protests raised were, perhaps, more akin to Chatterjee’s understanding of civil society, even when they involved urban lower middle classes from where Rizwanur himself came. They stressed the legal right to consensual cross-community marriage, judicial investigation and police procedure.
It is a surprise, and something of a pity too, that many of the essays have either been published before or are re-workings of earlier work. This, perhaps, indicates the relentless pressure on scholars today to publish or perish. Nonetheless, the volume is a rich tribute to Chatterjee’s contributions to social science scholarship