A totalitarian society
T.K. OOMMEN, PROFESSOR, JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY
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“Democracy cannot really flourish as long as exclusionary structures still exist in society.”.
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That India is the largest democracy in the world is an oft-repeated cliché but hardly anybody certifies it to be a successful democracy. The most important obstacle in the flowering of democracy in India is the persisting totalitarianism of Indian society.
India’s is a four-in-one society. Like all societies, Indian society too is socially stratified based on gender, class, age, rural-urban disparities and the like causing discrimination and exploitation which can be tackled through appropriate social engineering. As with most contemporary societies, Indian society is also culturally heterogeneous due to the presence of a large number of religious and linguistic communities. In spite of the mind-boggling linguistic diversity of India, democratic participation is facilitated through the formation of politico-administrative units, the provincial States, based on language. And yet the democratic process stands diminished because two linguistic categories do not have the possibility of fuller participation: One, those linguistic groups which do not have their own cultural homelands as they are spatially dispersed and two, those who migrate from their linguistic homelands to other regions/States. However, this is a problem which exists in most multi-lingual polities.
The remaining two features — externalisation and hierarchy — are the ones which render Indian society totalitarian. Externalisation is the process through which fellow citizens are defined and treated as cultural outsiders. There are two types of externalisations in India which block the flowering of democracy. One is the product of turbulence created by migration from one cultural region to another within the country, articulated through nativism. This undermines the principle of single citizenship mandated in the Constitution. The other variety of externalisation is qualitatively different in that a set of co-citizens are perceived and defined as outsiders to the entire society, which becomes the bases of discrimination and exclusion. Thus, in India, followers of some religious faiths, notably Muslims and Christians, who together account for 16 per cent of India’s population, that is 160 million, are viewed as cultural outsiders by some elements in civil society. This erodes deeply the democratic ethos of Indian polity as it alienates a substantial segment of Indian population from Indian society and polity.
The other element, which contributes to totalitarianism of Indian society, is hierarchy, the product of caste system, which is unique to India, leading to the abominable practice of untouchability. The ex-untouchables of India now constitute 18 per cent, that is 180 million, of the Indian population. Caste system not only institutionalised inequality but also sanctified it through the Hindu doctrines of creation, of varnashrama dharma, of karma and rebirth and the like. Although some would argue that there is no organic relationship between Hinduism and the caste system, in reality they are inextricably intertwined. All available evidence suggests that caste system is antithetical to the ethos of democracy.
The two totalitarian elements of Indian society conjointly erode individual autonomy, a pre-requisite for authentic democracy. When groups and communities are perceived as cultural outsiders they tend to insulate themselves socially in spite of internal differentiation among them. In turn this breeds alienation and a segment of this population resorts to aggression and violence. Similarly, when a group is eternally condemned to be inferiors, they remain in a psychological cage of their own and can rarely can participate as equals in economy, polity and society.
The two categories, religious minorities and the Scheduled Castes, the victims of externalisation and hierarchy respectively, account for more than one-third of Indian citizens. Without their fully-fledged participation in all walks of life, one cannot think of a flourishing democracy in India.
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