Book review: The Crumbling Ground
Ananya Vajpeyi’s book Righteous Republic is a reminder of the moral quest that set the tone of the freedom movement, of leaders whose lifelong aim was to deny violence legitimacy
Reviewed by Tridip Suhrud
The question is not just about the anomic violence. It is about our inability to create a viable space for ahimsa in our collective endeavour. One principle reason for this is that we have delegitimised the moral question. Our political parties, our State, have seceded from the moral realm. We no longer speak in terms of moral superiority and desirability of non-violence over violence, but in terms of efficacy of instrumentality
Reviewed by Tridip Suhrud
The question is not just about the anomic violence. It is about our inability to create a viable space for ahimsa in our collective endeavour. One principle reason for this is that we have delegitimised the moral question. Our political parties, our State, have seceded from the moral realm. We no longer speak in terms of moral superiority and desirability of non-violence over violence, but in terms of efficacy of instrumentality
Swaraj is a call, a concept, an endeavour, a dedication and a dream. Ever since Dadabhai Naoroji used the term swaraj to articulate the nature of aspirations of the Indian people, no other term has equalled its resonance. Its appeal and reach were almost immediate and universal. There were other terms which were available; some, like azadi, were equally evocative. But,azadi and swatantrata referred specifically to the political realm. They assumed a state of slavery or foreign rule, without which the idea of freedom is philosophically untenable. Orlando Patterson, in his 1991 classic Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, traced the genealogy of freedom. Freedom is one of the most cherished values of our times, in the West and elsewhere. He links the birth of freedom to the institution of slavery. Swaraj is grounded in freedom, but its meaning is not exhausted by this aspiration. This term is constituted by two elements: swa (self) and raj (rule). Swaraj, therefore, alludes to two possible meanings: ‘rule by the self’ and ‘rule over the self’. Rule by the self refers to a political aspiration; it deals with aspects of sovereignty. Rule over the self opens up the meaning to include the personal, the normative and the moral. Swaraj thus links the personal with the societal and moral, with the political.
Ananya Vajpeyi’s book Righteous Republic seeks to trace the intellectual and political ligature of the idea of swaraj. She does this by attempting to answer a large question. What is the nature of swa, or self, that swaraj refers to? Or, more politically, what is this self whose sovereignty is sought to be reinstated? These questions and her reading of swaraj are intrinsic to the national movement. She does this by an inquiry into the intellectual foundations of the five founding figures of our republic: MK Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru and BR Ambedkar. She locates in Gandhi a search for ahimsa; in the poet Tagore a longing (viraha) and in the painter an aesthetic experience (samveg); in Nehru artha (meaning) and dharma, while in Ambedkar suffering (dukkha) as the principle orientations by which they sought to understand the nature of swa. These, she argues, are five possible orientations of self: self is understood and grasped, in its orientation to others, in its longing, in its capacity to experience aesthetic ‘shock’, in its aspirations and purpose, and in the burden of the self.
This work is not about an idea of India, although it could be read that way. It is not propelled by the anxieties—whether misplaced or genuine—about the rise of Hindu politics. Righteous Republic is concerned with the quest for virtue. It seeks to relocate the moral within the political. It is a powerful reminder about the nature of the moral quest that provided the foundation for the national movement, with all its plurality and polyphony. Let us take an example, the most obvious one of MK Gandhi. In his 1909 philosophical text Hind Swaraj, he asked the very same question: ‘What is swaraj?’ His answer was simple and yet difficult to practise: ‘It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves.’ Gandhi’s ‘rule ourselves’ necessitates self-knowledge or self-recognition. For him, civilisation—or to use the frame that Righteous Republic uses, the tradition by which conceptions of self emerged—is that mode of conduct which leads one to the path of duty, wherein performance of duty means observance of morality...
Increasingly, we have come to rely upon the legal process to resolve our moral dilemmas. Mass violence is a case in point. Violence has acquired a new salience. We turn against ourselves with ferocious regularity, revelling in the macabre dance of violence. We celebrate macho forms in politics, with our male and female leaders routinely brandishing swords in political gatherings. We speak of revenge and retribution restoring our cultural manhood. We are faced with a situation where violence is committed in the name of the State (or through its agency), where violence can be committed by those acting as defenders of faith, where those seeking rights and justice also use violence. And yet, we long forahimsa. We recognise that neither justice nor equality can be obtained through exclusive reliance upon violence.
The preferred response to mass violence is a commission of inquiry, which is a creation of statutes, not of moral imagination. These commissions are a mode of governance. They help create a veneer of impartiality, allow other societal or political processes to continue unhampered and provide a feeble hope that the truth will emerge. These efforts are marked by a deep moral vacuum. By its very constitution, the procedural takes precedence over the ethical. In fact, they aid the perpetrators by delaying both legal and moral accountability. They provide no succour to the victim. And, most significantly, they have no response to the salience of violence.
The question is not just about the anomic violence. It is about our inability to create a viable space for ahimsa in our collective endeavour. One principle reason for this is that we have delegitimised the moral question. Our political parties, our State, have seceded from the moral realm. We no longer speak in terms of moral superiority and desirability of non-violence over violence, but in terms of efficacy of instrumentality. For Gandhi and Tagore, ahimsawas not an instrumentality or a constitutional legality. It was an orientation of the self towards oneself and also the other. This was a moral orientation. Their life-long endeavour was to establish the illegitimacy of violence, despite the overwhelming temptation towards violence. They argued that those who resort to violence recede from the self. Those who recede from the self become incapable of obtaining swaraj.
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