SOME REMARKS ON CONTEMPORARY INDIAN SOCIETY, STATE AND GOVERNMENT Pradip Baksi While reading Karl Marxs Draft

Plan for a Work on the Modern State [MECW, Volume 4: 666]1, some thoughts occurred to me over time. The following remarks are preliminary expressions of those thoughts. Here Marxs Draft is [in red] followed clause by clause, by my remarks [in black]. 1) The history of origin of the French Revolution The self-conceit of the political sphere to mistake itself for the ardent state. The attitude of the revolutionaries towards civil society. All elements exist in duplicate form, as civic elements and [those of] the state. 1) There does not exist and, perhaps, there will never be any Indian/South Asian equivalent of the French Revolution. In this situation, how may we proceed towards the multiple histories of the origins of the contemporary South Asian States and Governments? We may simultaneously proceed from: a) the normative texts like the Arthashastra, the manuscripts of which were not rediscovered in Karl Marxs time, through texts like the Fatva-yi jahandari, Ain-i-Akbari, and the British Imperial Government of India Act of 1935, to arrive at The Constitution, The Penal Code of India [and those of Pakistan and Bangladesh], amended till date; and, b) a Part by Part and Article by Article study of the currently operative Constitutions of South Asia, together with the Laws enforced by the current governments of this region with the aim of understanding and unveiling the self-conceit of the political sphere, including the self-conceit of the Communist Parties and Groups led by members of the hegemonic castes. Ours are no ardent states. We have inherited imperial governments, subservient to the interests of the current avatars of the Varnashrama Dharma, reorganizing itself under contemporary global conditions. Since we have a hybrid civil society, which consists of Adivasi, caste and, partially class-like components the attitude of our future-oriented political operators to the emergent hybrid civil society becomes issue based, non-linear and chaotic, often pragmatic, parochial or imperial. Here all elements exist in multiple forms: as old clan/caste-

bhaichara based civic elements; imposed, new, partially European-looking, Bania elements; and, those of the Hujur-Mai-Baap-Sarkar. 2) The proclamation of the rights of man and the constitution of the state. Individual freedom and public authority. Freedom, equality and unity. Sovereignty of the people. 2) The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Woman-Citizen (1791)2, a text that went into oblivion and, was not known to Karl Marx, the proclamation of the rights of man and the lack of Fundamental Rights related articles of The Constitution of India [and similar articles of the other Constitutions of the region], in comparative, historical and critical perspective. Lack of individual freedom, power of familial, clan, casteetc. norms over individuals; violation of the rules of public authority and, the customary sources of such impunity. Various types of bondage, inequality, inequity and communal/clan/caste based unity. No sovereignty of the people, sovereignty only of the Hujur-Mai-BaapSarkar, concretely expressed as the sovereignty of the leaders of the ruling clans and castes, embedded in the executive, judiciary and legislature in that order.

3) State and civil society. 3) Imperial Government and Society based on primary loyalty to family, clan and caste, clothed by a cosmetic and perfunctory rule-of-law-state and, NGOcracies controlled by domestic and foreign funding agencies masquerading as civil society. 4) The representative state and the charter. The constitutional representative state, the democratic representative state. 4) The unrepresentative empire and the unstated but taken for granted Vidhis.

The constitutional unrepresentative empire, the democratic unrepresentative empire: views from the center and the periphery, viewed by the hegemonic media and, viewed from the lived reality of the non-voting-praja and the voter-praja. 5) Division of Power. Legislative and executive power. 5) Undivided Power. Primacy of the Unelected Component of Executive Power over its Elected Component and, overall primacy of Executive Power over Legislative Power. 6) Legislative power and the legislative bodies. Political clubs. 6) Legislative power and the legislative bodies as rubber stamps of the unelected political executives, masquerading as secretaries of elected ministers. Model Kautilyas Sachibayatta Rashtra. Ruling and opposition political parties as clubs of coalitions of ruling castes. 7) Executive Power. Centralisation and hierarchy. Centralisation and political civilisation. Federal system and industrialism. State administration and local government. 7) Executive Power as embodiment of imperial authority of the hegemonic castes. Centralisation and hierarchy of the empire and its ruling castes evolved over several thousand years. Political centralisation and civilisation based on clan/caste based social and ideological hegemony. Ideological hegemony of the rulers that is historically more consolidated than their repressive hegemony. Federal system at odds with the interests of industrializing empire. Central and Regional Governmental administration and local government/Panchayati Raj, subservient to the interests of the hegemonic clans/castes or, to those of some quasi-castelike/quasi-class-like hybrid formations like the Bengali bhadraloks. 8) Judicial power and law. 8) Judicial power oscillating from dharma to law and back3. 8) Nationality and the people.

8) Hegemonic and Non-Hegemonic Nationalities, Confessional Communities, Castes, Adivasis and People Marginalised on grounds of occupation, sexual preference, gender or birth. 9) The political parties. 9) The political parties as layers upon layers Jaat-Biradari Panchayats: where the male members of the most powerful castes effectively control the decision making mechanisms of the central organs, the next level of committees may accommodate the less and less powerful castes and genders in descending order. Even in castespecific parties of the weaker castes, the advisers to the central leaders may come from the hegemonic castes. 9) Suffrage, the fight for the abolition of the state and of bourgeois society. 9) Suffrage, currently a victim of caste-based social rigging in the villages and, technical rigging in the urban and suburban areas, however, has the potential to be used in the fight for the abolition of the imperial government and its social base, the contemporary avatars of ruling-caste-hegemony, if rectified by continuous familial, social, religious, cultural and educational reforms initiated by the dissidents from below and from above. Notes 1. Available at: <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/11/state.htm> 2. See: <http://www.academia.edu/3100911/Olympe_de_Gouges._1791._Declaration_of_the_Rights_
of_Woman_and_of_the_Woman-Citizen>

3. Baxi, Upendra (1986), From Dharma to Law and Back? [Section II, in Chapter 5: Peoples Law in India, The Hindu Society], in: Asian Indigenous Law: In Interaction with Received Law, edited by Professor Masaji Chiba, London and New York: KPI; and, Menski, Werner (2004), From Dharma to Law and Back? Postmodern Hindu law in a Global World, available at: <http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/4410/1/hpsacp_20.pdf> Kolkata, 8 June 2013