Contributions to Indian Sociology http://cis.sagepub.

com/

Book reviews and notices : ACHIN VANAIK, Communalism contested: Religion, modernity and secularization. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1997. x + 374 pp. Notes, index. Rs. 550 (hardback) /Rs. 250 (paperback)
Aditya Nigam Contributions to Indian Sociology 1999 33: 600 DOI: 10.1177/006996679903300313 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cis.sagepub.com/content/33/3/600.citation

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Contributions to Indian Sociology can be found at: Email Alerts: http://cis.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://cis.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

>> Version of Record - Oct 1, 1999 What is This?

Downloaded from cis.sagepub.com at JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY on March 8, 2014

600
the ways in which the local communities reacted to colonial rule, and tried to gain control over the situation. Violence is popularly understood as a process of exerting great physical force, causing harm and bloodshed. In traditional contexts, upper castes might resort to violence against the lower, or the dominant (such as the Rajput) against the external state (the colonial rule). But people low in hierarchy, or those subjugated, often adopted other methods of protest. Instead of retaliating, they emigrated en masse, hopefully searching for places where they could be ensconced. One comes across stone tablets in Rajasthan erected by emigrating people, inscribing on them their reasons for leaving the village forever and also warning posterity against ever contemplating returning to it. In addition to voluntary exile, ritualised non-cooperation and suicide were equally viable methods of protest. Rather than directing their anger at others in the form of violence, the lower and subjugated castes often interiorised it, inflicting violence on themselves and suffering in the end. The colonial rulers challenged traditional uses of violence and truth in Indian society (p. III). They also tried to pacify the situation by granting concessions to the suppressed group, but at the same time, they did not apparently change the power relations between the rulers and their subjects. The traditional society in any case was not as peaceful as has often been depicted in anthropological writings. An important conclusion drawn by Vidal is that the people who suffered most because of these changes not only persisted in using the traditional methods of protest but also looked for alternatives. One of the latter was the Gandhian ideology which combined non-violence with non-cooperation. The call for non-violence had previously come from the colonial authorities (pp. 226-27); however the principle of non-cooperation was a conventional mode of protest. It was used by all castes notwithstanding their rank. For colonial masters, non-violence was a precondition for any negotiation with warring parties. But in Gandhian teaching, it became an instrument challenging the hegemony of British rule. The concepts of non-violence and non-cooperation were transformed by Gandhian thought, and this linked the national freedom struggle with local protest movements. Many local leaders were seen as mannequins of Gandhi. Gandhi became an idea, a concept reincarnated in the person of village and town heroes. Written perspicuously, Vidals book is an important one for both modem Indian historians (especially, the ;ubaltem; ) and anthropologists.

Department of Anthropology University of Delhi

VINAY KUMAR SRIVASTAVA

ACHIN VANAIK, Communalism contested: Religion, modernity and secularization. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1997. x + 374 pp. Notes, index. Rs. 550 (hardback) /Rs. 250

(paperback).
This is book by one of Indias leading marxist intellectuals who has been constantly with the burning questions of contemporary Indian politics, particularly communalism. The present book is a result of this involvement-an attempt to theorise the vexed issues around which the secular/ communal debate has got tangled in recent years. Achin Vanaik summons all his intellectual resources-and passion-in this collection of essays to reassert the validity of the secular credo and to establish it as the only legitimate ground
a

engaged

Downloaded from cis.sagepub.com at JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY on March 8, 2014

601
which to confront communalism. However, unlike many fellow-secularists, he concedes that as an ideology, secularism is state-centric. He, therefore, argues for secularisation-a process that, he claims, inevitably follows modemisation/modemity and which shifts the attention to civil society and the need to build modem institutions therein. True to his style, Vanaik is polemical. He reserves his sharpest barbs for two kinds of anti-secularists―the self-declared ones like Ashis Nandy, T.N. Madan and Bhikhu Parekh, as well as the undeclared ones, namely, theorists of the Subaltern Studies project, like Partha Chatterjee and Dipesh Chakravarty. Here too, he shows greater sensitivity for the nuances of the opponents arguments than most left-secularists who seem to unproblematically lump together all of them into a single category. This effort to distinguish between different strands of the critique of secularism raises some hope in the initial sections, only to be dashed in subsequent ones. His arguments eventually merge into the already familiar critiques available in the works of scholars like Sumit Sarkar and Aijaz Ahmed, where characteristically, all forms of anti-secularism (and anti-modemism) constitute one undifferentiated mass. For, in the theological world of this secular credo, there can only be believers and non-believers! Vanaik believes that the struggle against communalism involves a battle for the soul of Indian nationalism, in which he identifies three positions: those who believe it must be based on Hindu cultural and psychological foundations; those who believe it must rest on secular foundations; and those (who he says are confined to the academic world!) who believe that secularism being a Western ideal, a non-communal vision of the soul of India must draw on the authentic resources of faith etc. (pp. 29-30). Is it possible that Vanaik does not see, or is it the case that he just outlaws (he uses this term in a slightly different context) the non-theoretical, political articulations of identity that are challenging both the secular-nationalist and the communal notions of nationhood? Is the dalit-buhujan assertion, for example, despite heavy investments in modernity, a secular assertion? Vanaik, like many other marxists fighting rearguard battles in recent times, seems to have suddenly discovered the secularity of dalit politics-which till the other day was termed casteist-without so much as a theoretical reconsideration! Having outlined the three positions thus, there can be no doubt that any sensible person must rely on the secular-nationalist one. In a subsequent chapter, Communalism, Hindutva and Anti-Secularists, he attacks Partha Chatterjees position thus: To dismiss the importance of one of the major gains of the National Movement [capital letters original] and a fundamental pillar of Indian democracy, all Chatterjee latches on to by way of evidence is that the Hindu Right does not attack secularism... (p. 188). One is truly baffled at the way in which, in the late 1990s this degree of faith is displayed in the legacy of the [N]ational [M]ovement as though it were so self-evident. This is especially baffling because the whole critique emerging from the dalit-bahujan movement (not to speak of many others) is precisely that the legacy was one of Hindu hegemony encoded in secular language. Look at the sharp critiques of Indian marxist practice made by the dalit movement and it is clear. Secular-nationalism, says Vanaik, derives its legitimacy not from History... but from its promise (p. 39)--the crisis of its legitimacy in the 1990s is simply not an issue worthy of consideration, even though that is what spurred him to write the book in the first place. The fact that its history stands in stark contrast to its promise matters little. It is important to believe in its legitimacy, for an army in retreat to maintain its morale. It is strange that while for Marx himself, the advent of modernity (and capitalism) constituted a fundamental rupture (all that is holy is profaned, all that is solid melts into
on

Downloaded from cis.sagepub.com at JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY on March 8, 2014

602
the entire effort of many present-day Indian marxists, Vanaik included, is invested in demonstrating its continuity with the pre-colonial world. If, even in societies where it was an endogenous process, modernity tore asunder old relations, what reason can there be of imagining that despite its implication in the history of colonialism, there is benign continuity in India? Possibly, the fear is that a critique of the colonial legacy would play into the hands of an anti-Enlightenment, anti-Rationalist position that is already flourishing in an atmosphere permeated by the heady fumes exuded by Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee, Subaltern Studies/postmodernism and Edward Said-a brew of potent anti-modernism!t Interestingly, Vanaik comments that communalism can... only be perceived as a secular problem, having fundamentally secular sources (p. 197) thus coming dangerously close in his diagnosis to Ashis Nandy. But the medicine-secular-nationalism-has already been decided a priori, before the investigation was begun. It is closures of this type that prevent him from even entertaining the possiblity of other positions-leave alone exploring them. Often enough in the book, rhetoric seems to take the place of argument. However, read as a document on the crisis of the secular self, it makes for interesting reading.

air),

Centre for the Delhi

Study of Developing Societies

ADITYA NIGAM

JOANNE PUNZO WAGHORNE, The Rajas magic clothes: Re-visioning kingship and divinity in Englands India. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. This brilliant and persevering book engages in a dialogue with James Frazer and Max Mueller. The central theme of the work is the culture of ornament, fabrication and grand display in the court of the Tondaiman (Kallar) Kings of Pudukkottai during the years of the Victorian Raj in India. While Frazers Golden Bough hangs heavy over a large and complex text, Joanne Waghome substitutes syncretism and eclecticism with the structuralist motifs of order and mytheme. But in its very grandness of scale this is a postmodern work. The author is concerned with weaving many different kinds of material and symbolic sources: photographs, letters, objects of art, particularly printing, photographs and architecture. The book tries to get behind the flamboyant printed screens of dependent royalty and colonial authority. Photography, as an act of remembering and crystallising the past is taken very seriously: ritual, dress-codes, jewellery, hierarchy, relationships all are considered in a style both objective and deeply introspective. The text becomes a museum: both a way of embossing the past, of reading it and of appropriating it. Two problems are particularly interesting. One is the feminist presence of the Maharani Janaki Subbamma Bai Sahib. She dominates the early landscape of the book by her presence, so beautifully captured by Ravi Varma in 1879. Raja Ramchandra is fatally in love with this, his second, wife and in British eyes, is rendered incapable by his ardour. His love for jewels, singing birds and other objects of pleasure leads to an interesting correspondence between him and the British agent. The Queen in turn sets up her own correspondence with the British demanding the royal right to luxury, for their visible prosperity is much desired by the people. Then there is the consummate discussion by Waghome of the rule of the dewan, the brahmin, Shastri, who took control when the lovesick Ramachandra died, and whom the Rani fought every inch of the way. The second interesting problem is the problem

Downloaded from cis.sagepub.com at JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY on March 8, 2014