Seeding The Topsoil

I find it hard to take seriously the view that Indian civilisation is faced with the imminent risk of losing its identity. For 40 years, I have been associated with social anthropologists from all parts of the world—the UK, the US, the Netherlands and Japan—who have come to India to study its society and culture at close quarters. All have been struck by the distinctiveness and uniqueness of what they encountered and experienced across its length and breadth. Some were appalled by the poverty, inequality and corruption; others found many things to appreciate and admire. But all found India distinctively Indian.

To say that Indian society and culture have maintained a certain identity is not to suggest that there has been only continuity and no change. No civilisation can continue through time unless it is prepared to reconstitute itself in the face of new challenges and new opportunities. It is true that the changes that have taken place in the last 50 years have not always been painless and that their costs have not been borne equally by all sections of society. But that cannot be an argument against change and development. It is in any case pointless in the modern world to resist all change for fear that it will lead to a complete loss of identity.

Indian civilisation has accommodated new elements from outside over the entire course of its history, and in the modern age it has been more open to cultural influences from outside than China or the Islamic world. This should be counted as a source of strength and not weakness. Indian society showed a great capacity in the past to accommodate diverse and even contradictory elements without losing its identity, and there is no reason to believe that it will suddenly lose that capacity as a result of globalisation. The noted anthropologist and writer, Irawati Karve, called this distinctive way of accommodating new elements without loss of identity the principle of accretion.

The diversity that resulted from the principle of accretion was in the past organised in a distinctive way. It was organised hierarchically and not democratically. The multitude of tribes, castes, sects and communities that were the building blocks of Indian society were allowed and even encouraged to pursue their diverse ways of life, but they were not all equally esteemed. The principle and practice of hierarchy were carried to extremes in the traditional order, and the tolerance of diversity included the tolerance of untouchability and the perpetual tutelage of women. Further, the accommodation of a multitude of beliefs and practices did not mean that each individual was free to choose from among them according to his personal inclinations; on the contrary, he was bound more or less by the customs and traditions of the community into which he was born.

The challenge that India has faced since Independence is to maintain its traditional regard for diversity while finding more room for equality and individual freedom. These are modern and not traditional values. They were given a prominent place in the Constitution of India although they are out of tune with much that civil society is made of. It was with this in mind that Dr Ambedkar had said in the Constituent Assembly that democracy was only a top dressing on an Indian soil that was essentially undemocratic. Something of what has come down from the past has to go if the values essential to the democratic way of life are to be extended and carried forward.

With independence, India adopted a modern, democratic and secular Constitution based on three related institutions: (i) a secular state governed by the impersonal rule of law; (ii) citizenship without regard for distinctions of caste, creed and gender; and (iii) open and secular public institutions mediating between citizen and state. These institutions have not worked as well as had been expected, but we cannot deny what we owe to them. Today, when they are gripped by a loss of nerve, Indian intellectuals tend to run down secularism and modernity as threats to India’s social and cultural identity. But secularism is India’s destiny, and Indian intellectuals have gone too far on the road to modernity for them to be able to turn the clock backwards.

(Sociologist Andre Beteille is the author most recently of Chronicles of Our Time, Penguin.)