Democratic Resolution to Heterodoxy
What Diversity, Disparity, and Significance Mean to Individuals, India, and the Globe
(final paper for SAB II)
Introduction
Let me then begin with the disclaimer that my writing is conscious of the fact that 1) my exposure to India is highly urban, 2) my experience and reading is mostly limited to Bengal, and 3) India’s significance to me is overshadowed by the magnitude of my insignificance to India. That insignificance is the crux of heterodoxy. India is significant to individuals, communities, and the globe, but this significance is nothing more than the product of a billion disparate and diverse individual insignificances. The significant locus of this heterogeneity is India’s identity. This essay explains how significance, disparity, and diversity are related and establishes how the discourse of diversity affects individuals and communities. It goes on to develop an understanding of India’s role in the global sphere and how heterodoxy impacts this role. Following this, it zooms in to examine Indian democracy and policy to unveil its relationship with global, national, and individual lives and events.
Significance, Diversity, and Disparity
Together, insignificance and diversity dominate large portions of my journal. In Delhi and our first week in Kolkata, I noted how I modified the absorption of stimuli in the presence of density. Despite a sharp awareness of my foreignness in January, I also felt insignificance. In a journal from mid-January, my awareness was clear: “Where some try to process and understand every detail of the day, I acknowledge the disparities and differences, and I move on with the attitude that, ‘that’s diversity, and that’s India.’ We have to go about in naked anonymity” (Hovel 2013). Diversity and density simultaneously make individuals more significant and more insignificant. Disparity also contributes heterodoxy because divisions in individual equity are divisions in national identity. Each individual is a marginal addition to a dense fabric but also brings a new color and texture to the fabric.
Each insignificant opinion in a nation of 1.2 billion becomes significant because heterodoxy calls for persistent public dialogue. Kelly put it best that “nothing in India is weird.” That is not because things are not out-of-the-ordinary, but because there are so many differences that nothing can be out-of-the-ordinary. As Sen states, heterodoxy is “the natural state of affairs in India” (Sen 2005, 12). This natural state permeates interactions at different levels of social existence.
Individuals and Communities: The Extent
At an individual level, the natural state of heterodoxy is manifested in a multiplicity of opinions, occupations, and actions. In my “Expectations” essay in December, I asked myself whether my perception of “thriving individuals in a deprived place” will be more or less apparent when I interact with it daily (Hovel 2012a). There are thriving individuals in deprived places and deprived individuals living in thriving places. I picked up on this and the nature of personal heterodoxy within a couple days. In a blog about the volume of people from late December, I wrote:
“[People] all smell different, look different, sound different and yet are all neighbors…. They laugh, cry, sit, stand, pray, shag…trade, drive, bike, ignore, and engage. They are wealthy—donning Gucci, driving Mercedes; they are homeless—wearing grubby cotton and sleeping on sidewalks” (Hovel 2012b).
Ice-Candy Man illustrates how individuals are also concerned with interactions of greater magnitude and significance. Throughout the novel individuals of many different creeds and cultures discuss and act on the future of the subcontinent and the situation of Lahore (Sidhwa 1988). Sidhwa humanizes the colossal heterodoxy of India[1] through these human-scale interactions.
My familiarity with rural India is limited mostly to textbooks, but I would also be wrong not to address the rural-urban divide that is a major source of heterodoxy. Indeed, the majority of the population remains in rural areas. Besides the urban-rural disparity itself and the impact of immigrants on heterodoxy in urban centers, I can see heterodoxy displayed in some of the folk arts with rural roots. The evolution of patachitra from an art by rural Hindus for their worship to one in which Muslims and lower-caste Hindus produce art for middle-class Hindu communities (Hauser 2002) demonstrates how different classes and cultures interact to influence each other’s culture in interactions between urban and rural communities.
Global and National India
A pioneer in confronting heterodoxy, Emperor Akbar the Great recognized India’s religious diversity and created a platform for public acceptance and dialogue which promoted diversity and unity in the Mughal Empire. Later, Rammohan Roy viewed the variances in religions as creations of man but believed unification of India and the world could occur through global acceptance of monotheism over political divides. Roy applied the lens of heterodoxy to a global scale. Foreseeing globalization, he believed modernity lay in recognition of diversities and acceptance of human similarities[2]. For others after him, the message was less religious and advocated embracing similarity in identities rather than emphasizing petty political differences. Sen encourages people today to distinguish between historical-political activism identified with religion and actual religious tension “in which the contents of religious beliefs themselves are material” (Sen 2005, 69-70).
After the groundwork of Roy, Rabindranath Tagore also confronted Indian heterodoxy and its global effects, beyond the religious, in Nationalism. Tagore comments on how individual and community tendencies to either self-interest or common-interest will find a place in a modern world: “Those who are gifted with the moral power of love…will be the fittest to take their permanent place in the age lying before us…and those who [develop] their instinct of… intolerance… will be eliminated” (Tagore 1917, 99-102). Raylling “moral power” within India, let alone the rest of the world, has been difficult enough.. The differences within a nation complicate the way that nation relates to outsiders, not only its own citizens.
A nation’s position in the global sphere cannot be separated from its internal identity. For India, heterodoxy is definitive in both international and national domains as a result of centuries of dialogue and transfusion. Sen writes about the distinction between self-images and outside-images that create the identity of India. Western imaginations created orientalist images of India that often contradict themselves and reduce India’s identity in an attempt to simplify and oppress the subcontinent for the benefit of the West (Sen 2005). Here the discourse of diversity and insignificance is apparent in the attempt of the West to downplay significant sources of diversity in India and make India’s cultural achievements insignificant in global history.
Reduction of identity retards the ability to embrace differences and creates conflict from disparity. Acting as the British Governor-General at the Simla conference, “dividing and conquering” seemed the easiest solution at times. In our simulation, India found a way to unify against the common enemy of Britain. Alas, this unity is not lasting and also complicates the idea of “significance” for each concerned party. A question that I wished to ask at the end of the simulation was: “Once unified, how significant is each interest group within the nation?” In another way: how do heterodoxy and democracy work together to protect (or not protect) India and its diverse population.
Indian Democracy
Sen emphasizes that voice, “through arguments and agitations… advance[s] the cause of equality in different spheres of life” and is essential for positive outcomes from heterodoxy (Sen 2005, 36). The source of these arguments and agitations is the competition of diverse opinions, disparities, and varying significances. In this final section I inspect democracy and heterodoxy from this lens at the global, national, community, and individual level. I point out that democracy and heterodoxy are not compatible for all issues, that democratic agency must meet certain standards to succeed in a heterodox environment, and that attention to specific needs of communities is the best way for democracy to recognize diversity and give citizens significance.
To again examine a global scale, India and Pakistan possess great significance in development and security. The history of international diversities is rooted in the heterodoxy of the subcontinent. Despite a democratic system in India, the voices of some hold more significance than others. The influence of the Hindu right in India and the Islamic right in Pakistan have brought India and Pakistan to global significance through constant conflict and nuclear antics. Dr. Sen’s Democratic Cure-All is not likely to be a solution in the near future. Sen indicates that India’s spending on nuclearization could greatly reduce illiteracy through elementary education (Sen 2005, 259). The motivation for Indian nuclearization is threat specifically to Pakistan, not global deterrence[3]. Transborder heterodoxy will not be solved through democratic process when agitators remain powerful on either side of the border.
In my time in and studies of Indian politics and development, I became aware of the disparities across states in achievements, law, and capacity. Literacy rates, agricultural production, religious intolerance, and many other developmental indicators vary widely across the 38 states. This is a perturbing form of heterodoxy. I noted in my study of Indian taxation how states hold very different business and taxation laws, making supply chains difficult to develop and business growth geographically varied. India attempts to deal with heterodoxy by providing geographic autonomy. This was also my solution as Governor-General. Unfortunately, this entrenches regional identities and development patterns, reducing the significance of nationalism for individuals, and erecting barriers for federal policy formation. For democracy to succeed in a heterogeneous environment, it must be educated, unified, and enable each stakeholder with a significant voice.
My walks through Kolkata recognized intensely free markets whose inefficiencies typically came, in my perception, from misplaced government regulation and spending. Inefficiencies in markets appear as the result of lack of information and lack of proper infrastructure. Greater organization and information provided through government initiatives could benefit society through increasing market access rather than subsidies and tax exemptions which often benefit wealthy capitalists more often than struggling farmers or consumers (Bhalla & Singh 2009). Disparities such as this might be better resolved through civic education and democracy. Democratic engagement by impoverished consumers and struggling small business operators could expand opportunities.
Class remains one of the most difficult dimensions of heterodoxy. The defined lines of the caste system are still apparent and play a major role in policy and democracy affecting individual livelihood. Democracy, Sen believes, is the best way to protect the interests of those who lead a “thoroughly vulnerable life” (Sen 2005, 209). Sen points out that there have been concurrent times of hunger and surplus in India. This indicates that there are distributional barriers or inefficiencies (213); inefficiencies which democratic agency could eliminate. A recent article from The Hindu explored movements to encourage free and safe arenas for Dalit persons to express their struggles and oppression through art and music (Patwardhan 2013). Expression feeds significance and makes the value of diversity apparent. Democracy enables citizens to overcome insignificance and call for change when it is most needed in their lives, thereby bridging divides in development. Only in this way is heterodoxy confronted adequately.
Conclusion
I arrived in India at the peak of demonstrations following the Delhi rape. Here, Indian democracy was at its finest, confronting issues that affected individuals and communities, both urban and rural, as well as dealing with national justice and global image and influence. Responses to the rape and it’s [mis]handling were, in a word, heterogeneous. While fingers were pointed every which way, including at western influence and globalization, most recognized sexual violence as a problem within India and throughout India for Indians to confront. Indians from every background—Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Parsee, Dalit, Brahmin, woman, man, gay, straight, literate, illiterate—found reason to be engaged. Global media had reduced India’s identity to a red flag of sexual violence; national leaders were being challenged; villages and cities were in uproar; and a young woman had been murdered and raped. Public dialogue prevailed and made clear that India was a single nation, no matter the geographic, class, linguistic, or religious barriers that separate its citizens from time to time in the course of its conflicted and diverse history.
Bibliography
Bhalla, G.S. and Singh Gurmail. “Economics Liberalisation and Indian Agriculture: A Statewide Analysis.” Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 44, No. 52. 26 December 2009. Pp 34-44.
Hauser, Beatrix. “From Oral Tradition to ‘Folk Art’: Reevaluating Bengali Scroll Paintings.” Asian Folklore Studies. Vol. 61, No. 1. 2002. Pp. 105-122 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1178679.
Hovel, Andrew. “Expectations.” Writings for SAB II. 24 December 2012.
Hovel, Andrew. “17,000,000:1 Scales of Humanity.” Life on the Hugli. WordPress.com 31 December 2012.
Hovel, Andrew. Journal. 17 January 2013.
Patwardhan, Anand. “Democracy Needs their Song.” The Hindu—Talking Point Magazine. 5 May 2013.
Sen, Amartya. The Argumentative Indian. Penguin. New Delhi, Delhi. 2005.
Sidhwa, Bapsi. Ice-Candy Man. Penguin. London, England. 1988.
Tagore, Rabindranath. Nationalism. The Gutenberg Project. London, England. 1918.
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