Abstract
Anxieties of Democracy edited by Partha Chatterjee and Ira Katznelson is a very welcome, interesting and valuable addition to the field of social sciences in general and to the subject of Tocqueville studies in particular. This volume comprises two broad components; first, aspects of the American political and social experience pertaining to the twentieth century, in the context of Tocqueville’s landmark writing Democracy in America (1835) which made remarkably insightful observations on the evolution of American democracy. These essays have mainly been authored by leading American scholars related to this field. The second set of essays is focused on the relevance of Tocqueville’s writing on America, in understanding problems and issues concerning Indian polity and society in the post-independence phase. Since my competence to comment on contributions by American writers on the American experience is limited, I will focus upon essays on India in this volume and try to look into conceptual problems related to some of these writings.
To begin with, I would like to express my appreciation of Ira Katznelson for his Introduction, written along with Partha Chatterjee, and particularly for his article ‘Broken Chain of Memory’ which focuses on the assimilation and role of the American Jews as active citizens in the US democratic structure. However, the overwhelming significance of this essay, for us, lies in the fact that Katznelson draws significant attention to Tocqueville’s own writings and observations on India, which he made in considerable detail, which paradoxically none of the Indian writers refer to or comment upon. In fact, many of the writers seem to function on the premise that Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is the model work that can be used as a reference point in studying India, without taking into account his other writings which have a direct bearing on the theme.
Thus the sub-title of this book, ‘Tocquevillean Reflections on India and the United States’ is somewhat ironical, because the book and its authors do not engage with or build upon Tocqueville’s own reflections on India written in 1842–43 which appeared in his Oeuvres Completes. 1 This is an interesting and incisive commentary on several facets pertaining to India from the contemporary Indian political landscape to the growth of the British rule, to the role of religion, village communities, problems of government, revenue, the legal system in India, and several other aspects. Nor do they take into account Tocqueville’s numerous letters to his British friends concerning the Indian revolt of 1857–58 in which he advocated a forthrightly pro-British position which was candidly anti-Indian and unsympathetic to the anti-imperialist revolt. 2
It is indeed academically worrisome that many of the writers completely disregard Tocqueville’s own writings, and build up entire structures of arguments about post-independence India which may actually be quite in divergence to Tocqueville’s own perception and position on the India of his times. Second, it is important that a study of the Tocquevillean framework which analyzes India also needs to bear in perspective comparison with other colonial societies such as Algeria, on which he wrote extensively. A contextual study of the book makes it manifest that many of the essays in the volume under review are very interesting, imaginative and impressive particularly if they are unyoked from their Tocquevillean baggage. Therein lies the paradox.
Before commenting on the essays on this volume, it would be pertinent to briefly place in perspective the nature and scale of Tocqueville’s writings and the very extensive range of issues he touched upon. The Two Democracies of Tocqueville (1835, 1840) pertaining to America, like the two proverbial swallows do not make up most of Tocquevillean writings. Two other important writings which were widely popular were Souvenirs (1851), his memoirs about French political events between 1848 and 1851. His other and most scholarly writing, titled La Ancien Regime et la Revolution (1856) which analyzed the problem related to Aristocratic France, and the impact of the French Revolution, was a landmark work.
Moreover, Tocqueville’s Oeuvres Completes or Collected Works comprising his principal writings, several major studies such as his reports on Algeria, on slavery and on India, his numerous travel accounts across Europe, several speeches and above all his very extensive correspondence with friends and family, which are usually in the nature of sociological observations, altogether run into around twenty-five volumes. These works have been in the process of being re-edited by the ‘National Commission on Tocqueville’ comprising the tallest names among French scholars such as R. Aron, F. Braudel, A. Jardin, M. Perot, F. Melonio, J.P. Mayer and several others. Of these, about sixteen tomes have been published, many in multiple volumes altogether comprising around twenty-five volumes. For example, the double correspondence between Tocqueville and his lifelong associate Gustave de Beaumont between 1829 and 1858 comprise over 638 letters which run into three volumes.
Tocqueville’s Methodological and Ideological Concerns
There were several facets of ideological and attitudinal concerns that were reflected in Tocqueville’s writings pertaining to the different themes he focused upon. His enormous mental space encompassed different strands and opinions, some of which were at variance with the fundamental ideological tenets he stood for. His mental formation took place in times of considerable social and ideological turbulence marked by several swings in the French political and civic milieu. As Tocqueville himself noted in 1837, ‘Aristocracy was already dead when I was born and democracy had yet to come into existence… I was living in a country which had for forty years tried out everything and settled permanently on nothing.’ 3 Coming from an aristocratic background, his family suffered grievously during the French Revolution and only became rehabilitated during the phase of Bonapartist absolutism (1800–15) and further under Bonapartist monarchism during 1815–30.
Thus, Tocqueville’s aristocratic background and tutelage, coupled with the times of ideological and civic ferment he lived in, made him prone to certain contrarian positions in his political thinking concerning some issues which we will now look into.
Great mind, grand persona, prolific writer, savant extraordinaire, there was not a simple uniform Tocquevillean vision and perception about the diverse themes and societies he wrote about. In a manner of speaking, there was more than one Tocqueville enfolded in his enormous mind space, one component of which was certainly harsh in his judgement of colonial countries. Tocqueville’s thought was characterized by attitudinal asymmetry. He could oscillate from being an impassioned liberal democrat to being an arch conservative imperialist towards the colonial societies, the African and Asian peoples he wrote about, who he felt needed the benign tutelage of European Christian civilizational influence. To illustrate Tocqueville’s views and sentiments about the different social contexts, during his visit to Ireland in 1835, which was then under the British rule, he made an impassioned plea for liberty. He noted, ‘Liberty is in essence something sacred. There is only one other word which merits this name, it is virtue.’ He further emphasized his deep political and moral sentiment on this matter by stating ‘Liberty for me holds the same place in the political world that atmosphere does in the physical world.’ 4
On the other hand, Tocqueville’s attitude and nature of discourse, could change completely when it concerned Asian and African countries particularly vis-à-vis the European powers. Tocqueville considered these countries at a lesser level of civilization, who needed the benign tutelage of the European Christian nations to acquire an enlightened perspective. For example, concerning Britain’s war with China over the issue of trade and territory, Tocqueville wrote to his friend Henry Reeve in April 1840: ‘Here is the European spirit of movement pitted against Chinese immobility…the most recent in a series of events which gradually push the European race abroad to subjugate all other races. He further noted, ‘our age is something vaster and more extraordinary than anything since the establishment of the Roman Empire. I mean the subjugation of four-fifths of the world by the remaining fifth.’ 5
Tocqueville thus manifests himself as an outright justifier of European imperialism, whose sensibility towards the Asian people and their rights appears to be amoral, located outside the purview of ethics and reason. The rationalization for this dichotomy lay in the belief and reasoning that European Christian civilization (which included the Americas) was enlightened and ‘superior’ and could be entrusted with the task of tutoring of the ‘inferior’ civilizations through conquest and colonization and by guiding them towards the civilizing process.
At one level, Tocqueville’s passionate and philosophical articulation of the principles of liberty and democracy places him at a very sublime level among the ideologues. On the other hand, by confining the applicability and contextual role of such principles to the European American Christian societies, made the Tocquevillean narrative morally and ideologically deficient. The imperialist impulse in Tocqueville manifests itself repeatedly, in his analysis of Algeria and India, which I shall briefly touch upon. It is this glaring paradox that the writers of Anxieties of Democracy and several other scholars disregard conveniently thus becoming complicit in Tocqueville’s ‘ideological disenfranchisement’ of four-fifths of the world and its acceptable domination by one-fifth of the European Christian civilization. In other words, in the Tocquevillean discourse four-fifths of the world which comprised the ‘lesser’ civilized societies, countries and peoples, did not actually merit to be guided and governed by the principles of liberty and democracy.
Tocqueville’s views on Algeria where France was involved in the process of building an empire in north Africa, were forthrightly imperialistic. In October 1841, he noted in his detailed report on Algeria, after touring the region, ‘I do not believe that France can seriously think about quitting Algeria. Abandoning it would appear to the world the announcement of France’s impending decadence.’ He further underlined the importance of holding on to its newly acquired colonial possession by arguing,
If France turns back from the enterprise where it confronts nothing more than the difficulty of terrain and the opposition of petty barbarian tribes who inhabit it, it would appear in the eyes of the world to buckle down due to its own weakness and succumb due to the defect in its heart.
6
Strong words indeed from someone for whom liberty and equality was a deeply ingrained intellectual and moral sentiment. But as Andre Jardin, his very scholarly biographer pointed out, Tocqueville’s views on the colonies were closer to those of the French imperialists. 7 In fact as early as 1831, when Tocqueville visited Canada, which was a former French colony, Tocqueville argued that it was appropriate for the French to have its colonies. 8
Similarly, Tocqueville’s writings and letters concerning India particularly during the revolt against English rule in 1857–58 display a consistently vehement imperialist sentiment. Though India was not a French colony, Tocqueville’s wife Mary Motley was British, as were a large number of his friends such as Henry Reeve, John Mill, G.C. Lewis, Lady Thereza, Lord Hatherton and many others, which gave Tocqueville considerable empathy towards British interests. 9 I will cite a few extracts from among several of Tocqueville’s letters pertaining to India to illustrate his support for British imperialism and his indifference towards the Indian cause for liberation from English rule.
Tocqueville’s letters concerning India were published in ‘Lettres Inedites de Alexis de Tocqueville’.
10
On 18 October 1857, at the height of the Indian revolt, Tocqueville wrote to Lady Thereza, wife of Sir G.C. Lewis who was a senior official in the British government:
There has never been anything so extraordinary under the sun than the conquest and above all the governance of India by the English… Believe me Madame can a nation after having occupied this immense space in the imagination of the human race retire from there in shame? I myself do not think so.
This argument is quite similar to Tocqueville’s writings on Algeria in 1841 and 1846 which advocated strong French imperial control over its colonial territories.
Tocqueville’s letter to Lady Thereza also advised her that the English should not sully their civilized image by being excessively harsh in suppressing the Indian revolt. He wrote, ‘you have certainly been involved in handling savages whose barbarism had crossed all limits….but you do not have the right to outperform these pitiless savages just because you have greater justification than them.’ Tocqueville’s phraseology and choice of words when referring to the Indians indicated complete indifference to the concerns of these subjugated people, as if for him the principle of liberty did not have universal applicability.
Ironically, Tocqueville wrote to his friend N.W. Senior on 15 November 1857 that the general sentiment across Europe did not support British imperialism and in fact empathized with the Indian cause. He noted, ‘I can affirm that throughout the Eurpoean continent, which disapproves of the barbarities committed against you [the British], people do not wish to see you victorious.’ Tocqueville however maintained that Britain had a civilizing role in India, as he noted in his letter to Lord Hatherton dated 27 November 1857. He noted, ‘I have never ever doubted for a moment about your victory, which is that of Christianity and that of Civilization.’ Thus European civilizational and Christian facets were counterposed against Indian barbarianism, implying that the English cause was virtuous, and that of the Indians was not so, or perhaps less so.
It thus appears that Tocqueville had differential yardsticks for judging different countries and peoples. For the European and the American Christian nations, liberty and democracy were essential for their societal functioning and well-being. On the other hand, for the Asian and African peoples imperial control and subjugation by European powers was an acceptable and valid principle for their ‘upliftment’ and ‘development’.
Given this strand of Tocqueville’s observations on Algeria and India, I am inclined to ask Prof. Anne Norton about her peer opinion on the back cover of the book under review, what does she mean when she writes that ‘the editors have with their characteristic brilliance taken Tocqueville elsewhere. They and their comrades take Algeria to India, and see America from across the sea.’ As evident from the discussion above, I do not think that these writers take Tocqueville to either to Algeria or India in the way Tocqueville ‘visited’ these countries. I am also inclined to ask Yogendra Yadav in what way is the book ‘a fitting tribute to Tocqueville’, particularly because (other than the significant mention by Katznelson) the book completely ignores his own writings on India and other colonial societies, which are necessary to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the Tocquevillean discourse.
Reviewing the Essays
Sudipto Kaviraj’s article titled ‘The Empire of Democracy; Reading Indian Politics through Tocqueville’, is a sophisticated, mature and intellectually stimulating paper, which touches upon several themes related to the Tocquevillean discourse by citing a range of thinkers from Montesquieu to Marx. He incisively comments upon Tocqueville’s methodological usage of the idea of ‘providence’ by comparing it with the methodological tools used by other thinkers, which have a ‘para-rational’ orientation. He compares Tocqueville’s ‘providence’ with Smith’s ‘invisible hand’; Hegel’s ‘cunning of reason’; Marx’s use of ‘tendency’ towards change; and Max Weber’s concept of rationalization, as unique instruments of reasoning.
The pitch and depth of Kaviraj’s analysis emerges in several facets he comments upon. For example, while analyzing the Two Democracies, and Tocqueville’s later study of the Ancient Regime, Kaviraj points out that Tocqueville’s analytical separation between democratic governments and the democratic principle governing social life as a whole was a major feature of his thinking. Kaviraj thus develops upon Raymond Aron’s seminal work ‘La definition liberale de la liberte’ (1964), which examined the evolution of Tocqueville’s views on democracy, liberalism and liberty published in 1836 titled ‘L’ Etat sociale et politique de la France’.
Further, Kaviraj makes a very interesting observation about the founding of the Indian Constitution which abolished the essential structure of the caste system, something which pre-modern Indian monarchs or the British Raj had been unable to do. He further states, ‘but what Tocqueville would have appreciated was the manner in which this was done that a fundamental part of the architecture of society was brought down without the old order falling apart.’ For Tocqueville, who had an abhorrence for and distrust of violent uprisings, Kaviraj correctly points out the Indian parliamentary enactment was a revolutionary step that Tocqueville would have significantly approved of.
Kaviraj makes two other interesting observations which constitute important facets of the Tocquevillean narrative. He states, ‘It is one of Tocqueville’s fundamental insights shared oddly with Marx that there is an expansive tendency in the principle of equality: it does not stay restricted to a single sphere of social life but extends itself to others.’ He further argues, ‘Tocqueville regarded Democracy as a major constituent of the modern condition and consequently saw the history of France and U.S as segments of a larger narrative of political modernity.’
And this is where the Tocquevillean schema falters, and Professor Kaviraj’s implicit endorsement of Tocqueville’s position on this facet becomes questionable, concerning the ‘larger narrative of modernity’. If this were so, then where does Tocqueville’s own writing about Algeria and India fit into a modern universal theoretical construct? Tocqueville viewed both these non-European societies as being backward deserving to be colonized and subject to the benevolent imperial control of Britain and France. It is this awkward ideological stance of Tocqueville that is difficult to reconcile, which needs to be addressed by scholars of the subject.
Niraja Gopal Jayal in her article ‘An Immense and Incomplete Democracy’ places Tocqueville (1805–59) and B.R. Ambedkar living two centuries apart; whereas actually they lived one century apart; Ambedkar (1891–1956). Jayal makes perceptive observations about Tocqueville’s analysis of race relations in American society pertaining to the role of the American Indians and Afro-Americans and that of women. She does point out the sense of ideological inadequacy in Tocqueville’s study stating that ‘none of these three groups is even remotely perceived by Tocqueville as being future claimants to citizenship. Nor is the condition of any of the three viewed as in any way undermining the quality of American democracy.’
Jayal’s discussion about the constitutional provisions concerning Indian society such as caste-based reservations for the deprived sections of the society is interesting. Referring to Tocqueville’s discussion on race relations, she examines the American political experience pertaining to ‘group differentiated citizenship’ concerning the ‘less’ mainstream social groups such as Afro-Americans, Hispanics and others. Similarly, Jayal’s discussion on the status and role of Indian women in obtaining franchise and their participation in social–political institutions has a valid contextuality vis-à-vis Tocqueville’s observation on American women. Both these facets of discussion, however, reveal Tocqueville in a somewhat inadequate position while tackling these issues. Jayal attaches chronological symbolism to the symmetrical distance in time span between the adoption of the American constitution (1789) and Tocquevillain writing on the subject (1835) related to it; and between the adoption of the Indian Constitution (1950) and the writing of this book. On a lighter note, this appears more in keeping with the concern of a numerologist than that of a social scientist.
Rajeev Bhargava’s interesting and impressive essay titled ‘Hinduism and Social Democratization’ opens with a questionable observation concerning ‘What came to be called Hinduism in the nineteenth and twentieth century’. Juxtaposed to the writings of the nineteenth-century orientalists, as a student of pre-modern history I would like to submit that writers in the colonial phase were merely updating and synthesizing upon the corpus of writing on Hinduism which was studied in considerable detail by a plethora of foreign visitors particularly Christian missionaries such as Roberto di Nobili, Dr John Fryer, Chaplain Ovington, Abbe Dubois, Anquetil Duperron and several others.
Bhargava’s essay is very readable with a refreshing perceptive about Hindu revivalist movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ranging from Brahmo Samaj, Arya samaj, Adi Dharma, Radha Soamis, Brahma Kumaris and others, which had a significant role in propagating and preaching liberal facets of Hinduism. Bhargava relates his study to Tocqueville’s observations on Democracy and Christianity which projected that this inter-relationship fostered a secular and liberal ethos in American and Western societies.
Notwithstanding the sensitivity of these arguments, my discomfort lies in the fact that Bhargava completely distances himself from Tocqueville’s own observations on Hinduism, which have been remarked upon by Katznelson in his essay in this volume. In his Oeuvres Completes, Tome III Part I, Tocqueville made a series of brief notations on Hinduism, based on his fairly extensive readings on India. He felt that the impact of the Hindu social order made civil society somewhat immobilized due to religious laws and the caste system, which has arrested social change for centuries. He further added, ‘The immense majority of Indians belong to low castes…change of government does not really interest them but only the high castes which are composed of very small number of men.’ He noted perceptively that despite significant caste stratification and hierarchical domination by upper castes Hinduism had an immense hold over Indian society.
Further, Tocqueville makes an interesting and incisive remark about what he found paradoxical about Hinduism. He noted,
The religion [Hinduism] which has introduced among them so many vicious institutions and evil maxims has not been able to produce the sole benefit which as a matter of right is expected of the worst religions. It has never inspired in them that religious fervor which has enabled so many people to oppose conquest particularly when the conqueror professes another faith that theirs which makes them save their homeland and nation in trying to honour and safeguard their religion.
Tocqueville’s observations on religion, caste, community, nation and several other facets concerning India are interesting, pertinent and contextual. They certainly need to be studied and analyzed by scholars writing on these themes. This is where Bhargava and others have missed out.
Ashutosh Varshney’s article titled, ‘Two Banks of the Same River; Social Order and Entrepreneurialism in India’, is based on a peculiar extrapolation of Tocqueville’s writing. His argument that there took place greater economic growth in post-independence south India compared to Hindi-speaking north India is supposed to be based on Tocqueville’s observation that there was a difference in economic growth in areas and plantations that used slave labour and those that did not. Varshney argues that analogous to slavery free areas in Kentucky, south India became free from upper caste domination by the mid-twentieth century compared to north India, which enabled the former to generate accelerated economic growth. To this genre of writing, he further adds, ‘Contemporary travellers to south India invariably noted signs of economic dynamism virtually everywhere they go, whereas parts of Hindi speaking North like Tocqueville’s Kentucky appear remarkably listless to the naked eye.’
This kind of a visually-challenging observation is seriously questionable in my perception. Would this analysis be tenable referring to the prosperous and productive regions of Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Himachal, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in comparison to all of south India? At the risk of deviating from Tocqueville (caused by Varshney’s peculiar digression), it would not be impertinent to state that Bihar and eastern UP have become favourite punching bags of sundry viewpoints ranging from enlightened social scientists to cantankerous political outfits such as the Shiv Sena, even though they provide a huge reservoir of skilled and semi-skilled labour to many parts of India. I have also been given to understand that these regions are lately known to witness considerable productive fervour that is visible to the naked eye.
Further in his discussion, Varshney locates other interesting social groups in America and India which he finds comparable. He compares the Irish migrants who peopled America in the mid-nineteenth century to the Nadar community of toddy tappers in Tamil Nadu, both of whom rapidly outgrew their restrictive socio-economic backgrounds to become economically dynamic. Perhaps, it would be best to leave these moot themes of enquiry to researchers from institutions funded by Irish and Nadar philanthropists. But there is a question I would like to posit to Ashutosh Varshney, in the context of his north India–south India paradigm, which he connects with Tocqueville’s Kentucky and slave labour. In July 1831, Tocqueville and Beaumont embarked from the town of Buffalo, down Lake Eyre and the Detroit River admiring the majesty of the countryside from their steamship. Tocqueville recorded the contract between the civilized and primitive life, which was symbolically reflected by the presence of a Scottish soldier in full uniform mounting guard on the English bank, while naked Indians with rings in their noses camped on the opposite banks of the river. Similar to Varshney’s comparison between north and south India which was analogous to Tocqueville’s Kentucky (two banks of the same river), can we generalize and extrapolate those two river banks he passed by down the Detroit River be symbolically compared with the industrialized advanced regions in western India (Gujarat and Maharashtra) and contrast them with the less developed regions in east India (Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh), which due to their backwardness and primitive nature have been prone to anti-state Marxist movements. I humbly submit that such non-contextual generalizations do not conform to valid scientific enquiry about societies and peoples.
Partha Chatterjee’s impressive article surveys a number of facets from changes in peasant society in post-independence India, to poverty management through rural banking in Bangladesh to the problem of army coups in Thailand and Bangladesh, to endorsing Gramsci’s idea of passive revolution in explaining class domination in post-colonial India, to the risk of turning peasants, artisans and petty manufacturers into ‘dangerous classes’ due to the hegemonic hold of corporate capital, and several other issues. In my limited perception, Chatterjee’s observation that rural India remained characterized by persistence of precapitalist forms of agriculture and craft production in the early decades after independence underestimates the rapid economic and political ground gained by a considerable section of the newly empowered middle peasantry in various parts of India. I would also like to submit that in Chatterjee’s essay the inspiration and linkages with the Tocquevillean discourse are somewhat tenuous and not adequately self-explanatory.
In conclusion to return to Tocqueville, there is no doubt that he was a remarkable ideologue, philosopher, sociologist, an intellectual powerhouse, political thinker and activist who perceived socio-political problems and perceptive with remarkable insight. However, Tocqueville was unable to cross the ideological-moral threshold about viewing humanity at large in egalitarian terms that deserved equal measure of freedom, liberty and a democratic ethos for their existence and well-being. He passionately argued for liberty and freedom of opportunity in the context of Europe and America. He also stood for the abolition of slavery and felt that it was immoral and inhuman. But he did not feel any serious moral dilemma about accepting and advocating subjugation of colonized countries such as French rule over Algeria and English imperial control over India. In fact, Tocqueville’s writings and views about French rule in Algeria were no different than that of French imperialists, which illustrates the paradox associated with his multi-hued persona and his thinking. There is no doubt that Tocqueville was an extraordinary mind and an exceptional writer. But he was a product of his background and despite his amazing brilliance, had serious failing of perception and attitude. And this is what many of the contributors to Anxieties of Democracy have failed to perceive or recognize.