For publication in Ajay Gudavarthy (ed), 2011,

Re-framing Democracy and Agency in India: Interrogating Political Society, London: Anthem Press

Political Society as a Critiquei

Swagato Sarkar1

Partha Chatterjee is one of the very few scholars in India who have systematically
tried to theorize the specificity of Indian democratic politics. His conceptualization of
political society can be seen as an approach to explicate the latter‘s logics. This
conceptualization has been modified and refined over the years by mediating on the
concrete historical experience and through a critical engagement with the received
Western normative political theory. In this paper, first, I will provide a sketch of
Chatterjee‘s criticism of the concept of civil society, and then present a critical review
of his concept of political society. I will argue, against Chatterjee, that the concept of
political society does not denote a positive political development; rather it should be
used to provide a critical insight into Indian politics, particularly in relation to the
process of capitalist expansion and differentiation.

CHATTERJEE’S CRITIQUE OF CIVIL SOCIETY

It is well known that the discussion on political society is embedded in the debate on
civil society and the critique of the conceptual infrastructure of Western normative
theory. In this debate, normatively, civil society has been identified as a domain for
the expansion and realization of rights and freedom (Cohen and Arato 1992), and
instrumentally, it is seen as a domain where the distribution, exercise and control of
power are (democratically) contested (Nonan-Ferrell 2004). Taken together, civil
society is an integral part of democracy and a placeholder of institutions.

1
Dr. Swagato Sarkar obtained his DPhil [PhD] from the University of Oxford, U.K. in 2009. He is an
Associate Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society in Bangalore, India. Email:
swagato.sarkar@gmail.com
I will argue that Partha Chatterjee‘s critique of Western normative theory and civil
society is primarily a critique of the subject (i.e. citizen) that this theory supposes. His
critique draws attention to the interpellative structure and the criteria of membership
of the institutions proposed/assumed by this theory, namely, the erasure of difference
in favour of formal equality and freedom (Chatterjee 2004). The effect of this formal
interpellation is that the state in its conduct can recognize or favour citizens only as
unencumbered individuals, severed of any primordial ties – a product of Western
humanism and secularism. Since the primordial identities of the citizens are not
invoked or referred to, hence, they are rendered homogeneous before the state,
namely, as a nation. It is the will of the citizens, expressed as their generalized
political aspiration and popular sovereignty, which gives legitimacy to the state and
forms the basis of democracy.

Here, Chatterjee posits the concrete postcolonial conditions against the conceptual and
normative space of civil society, and argues that only a handful of the ‗elites‘ in post-
colonial countries can meet such a criterion of citizenship. These elites are the product
of the inherited modernity (from colonialism), who can meet the demand of being
unencumbered either because they are cultured/socialized into such a being, or can
simply afford to ignore/avoid their primordial identities. Hence, the scope of the
concept of civil society is restrictive. This theoretical position is also problematic
because the concept of ‗community‘, which provides meaning to most of the people in
these countries, is suppressed and relegated to the pre-modern historical time
(Chatterjee 1998 and 2004). Therefore, civil society is a limited concept and an
undifferentiated space.

Put differently, Western normative theory finds only a section of the postcolonial
society as the true bearer of modernity. One can note that, by foregrounding
communal being (and identity), Chatterjee differentiates ‗community‘ from civil
society in an ontological way. He suggests that the political space be split, and a
domain, separate and distinct from civil society – i.e. political society – be
conceptualized to understand the democratic urge in India (and other postcolonial
countries).

2
CHATTERJEE ON POLITICAL SOCIETY

Chatterjee‘s advocacy for the identification of a different political space beyond civil
society rests on three moves. First, he focuses attention on the sphere of governmental
interventions where, he claims, a different kind of political engagement between the
legal-bureaucratic apparatus and the people who are excluded from civil society can
be witnessed.

The post-colonial Indian state inherited the legal-bureaucratic apparatus, which was
able ―to reach as the target of many of its activities virtually all of the population that
inhabits its territory, [whereas] the domain of civil social institutions, [….] is still
restricted to a fairly small section of ‗citizens‘‖ (Chatterjee 2001, 172). According to
Chatterjee, this is a new paradigm, and there is a clear shift from the abstract
theoretical domain of citizenship to the actual domain of policy. Following Foucault,
he claims that the domain of policy is predicated upon a conception of the society as
one constituted by population, not citizens or ―elementary units of homogenous
families‖ (Chatterjee1998, 279; 2001, 173). ―The regime secures legitimacy not by
the participation of citizens in the matters of state, but by claiming to provide for the
well-being of the population‖ (Chatterjee 1998, 279). Thus, Chatterjee‘s second move
is to shift the focus from the normative category of ‗citizen‘ to the descriptive and
empirical category of ‗population.‘

The concept of population is predicated upon an enumerable, descriptive, empirical

mass of people, and does not rely on a normative theory or abstraction. The
population is ―assumed to contain, large elements of ‗naturalness‘ and ‗primordiality‘;
the internal principles of the constitution of particular population groups is not
expected to be rationally explicable since they are not the products of rational
contractual association, but are, as it were, pre-rational‖ (Chatterjee 2001, 173 and
passim). The concept of population offers the governmental functions and apparatus
an access to ―a set of rationally manipulable instruments for reaching [a] large section
of the inhabitants of a country as the targets of ‗policy‘.‖

Such interventions in the society-as-population, if we may call it, and the interaction
between these governmental apparatus and the population groups inaugurate a new

3
site for strategic manoeuvring, resistance and appropriation. Chatterjee calls this site
political society. The strategic manoeuvre and mobilization that take place in this
domain neither always conform, nor are consistent with, the principles of association
in civil society. Yet, Chatterjee identifies an ‗urge for democracy‘ in this mobilization
in political society, as it channels the demands on the developmental state.

Chatterjee makes the third move by translating the ‗subject of development‘ into a
‗political subject‘, by assigning an identity to it and finding a normative ground for it.
Chatterjee is interested in exploring how people use the space opened by the
intervention of governmental functions. As we have seen, such interventions perceive
the society as population and then categorize the latter into empirical groups which
become the ‗target‘ for policies. However, such categorization also infuses a new
identity within the group, and many a time, the constituents of the group emerge as
distinct political entities. These new groups have a territorial boundary, ―clearly
defined in time and space‖ (Chatterjee 2004, 58 and passim). Consistent with his
critique of civil society and the prominence of community, Chatterjee tries to
demonstrate how these groups become a ‗community‘ – and thus a collective, and
also finds a normative ground for the latter‘s demands. According to him, since the
livelihood and existence of many of the members of such groups are predicated upon
a (collective) violation of (property) laws, they appear as ‗illegal entities‘ before the
state. They are not recognized as proper civic bodies, pursing legitimate objectives.
Thus, to be recognized by the governmental functions, they must ―find ways of
investing their collective identity with a moral content‖ (ibid 57 and passim) and
thereby ―give to the empirical form of a population group the moral attributes of a
community‖ [emphasis in original]. Yet this community is about ―the shared interests
of the members of association... they describe the community in […] terms of a shared
kinship…the most common metaphor… is that of a family.‖

Chatterjee never spells out what he means by the ‗moral content‘ of an identity, but it
seems that these new groups appropriate the proposition of the ―government‘s
obligation to look after the poor and underprivileged population groups‖ (Chatterjee
2004, 60). The objective of their mobilization is to ―secure the benefits of
governmental program[me]s‖ (Chatterjee 2004, 66), which they claim as ―a matter of
rights and use their association as the principal collective instrument to pursue that

4
claim‖ (ibid 59). This, according to Chatterjee, is a clear break with the erstwhile
patron-client exchanges, and an indication of their political assertion.

Chatterjee explains that the mobilization which takes place on the terrain of political
society is ―necessarily temporary and contextual‖, and ―depends entirely on the ability
of particular population groups to mobilize support to influence the implementation of
government policy in their favour‖ (Chatterjee 2004, 60, emphasis added; note:
implementation, not policy formulation). Such strategic politics must operate within
the constellation of the (mainstream) political formations (i.e., parties, but also non-
governmental organizations?). The success of such strategic manoeuvring depends on
―applying the right pressure at the right places in the governmental machinery‖
(Chatterjee 2004, 66). However, they do not always have access to such ‗right places‘,
and therefore, ―(t)o produce a viable and persuasive politics of the governed, there has
to be considerable act of mediation‖ (ibid 64). Hence, there is a real need for finding
trustworthy mediators who can represent them.

It is through such political engagements that people are ―substantial[ly] redefin[ing]

property and law within the actually existing modern state‖ (Chatterjee 2004, 75) and
―are devising new ways in which they can choose how they should be governed...
people are learning, and forcing their governors to learn, how they would prefer to be
governed…[which itself is a] good justification for democracy‖ (ibid 77-78).

A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF POLITICAL SOCIETY

As mentioned earlier, Chatterjee‘s critique of civil society is predicated on the critique

of the subject that Western normative theory supposes. Furthermore, his
conceptualization of political society is predicated on the difference in the modes of
―transacting business with the constitutional state‖ (Chatterjee 1998, 282). The
modality of realization of rights is what, then, separates political society from civil
society. The difference in ontology which Chatterjee introduced at the beginning of
his critique of civil society – by foregrounding the lived experience of a ‗communal‘
being, as opposed to the unencumbered modern individual – is replaced with a critical
appraisal of the procedural dimension of Indian democracy (involved in ‗transacting

5
business‘, as quoted above). While trying to explore the ontology of this late position,
we do not find any elaboration of the concept of the social. Rather, Chatterjee reads
social relationships and practices ―in relation to the legal-political forms of the
modern state‖ (Chatterjee 2004, 74). He neither engages with the immanent
antagonisms in the social, nor with the quasi-transcendental conditions of possibility
and impossibility of political actions/interventions. To modify my last observation, I
can say that, at the ontological level, Chatterjee posits the difference between political
society and civil society in terms of the difference in the legal status of the entities
that the state encounters. It is therefore no surprise to see that the procedural
dimension unfolds in terms of judging the legal status of the means of the chosen
economic activity by, and amenities for physical living of, the members of political
society. Political action is seen in terms of establishing the legal, or transgressing the
illegal, status within the black letter (property) law (which becomes a referent point).
Political space, then, is strictly the space of interaction between the state and the
‗population‘. Obviously, Chatterjee sees this in a positive light.

Chatterjee argues that as the new political entities wrangle over property and benefits,
they also strike at the foundation of property relations. Property, Chatterjee reminds
us, is ―the conceptual name of regulations by law of relations between individuals in
civil society‖ (Chatterjee 2004, 74 and passim). But as these ―social relations‖ are yet
to be ―mo[u]lded into proper forms of civil society, the state must maintain a fiction
that in the constitution of its sovereignty, all citizens belong to civil society and are,
by virtue of that legally constructed fact, equal subjects of the law.‖ This ‗fictional‘
element must be addressed in the actual administrative processes.

The postcolonial (Indian) state not only finds a different legal entity/subject, but also
negotiates with it, instead of liquidating or banishing it. According to Chatterjee, this
negotiation does not take place because of the state‘s benevolence; rather these
subjects force the state to do so. Therefore, a positive appraisal of political society is
pivoted on demonstrating the agency of the people in forcing the state to recognize
them. The normative dimension of political society becomes visible in terms of
delineating alternative (even if contingent) criteria for the recognition by the state.
The governmental functions and non-governmental agencies are forced to recognize
the ‗demands‘ of the members of political society in a different way. Since, these

6
agencies do not recognize these members or groups as part of civil society, so they
cannot negotiate with them according to the formal and strict procedures and law of
the land. Hence, there is a proliferation of layered mediations and para-legal
arrangements to resolve various contentious issues, and to meet the demands of these
groups. The governmental bodies and political representatives deliberate and
negotiate to identify the valid claims (Chatterjee 2004, 69). However, such
negotiations must be hidden and not formally recorded, as ―(i)t is entirely possible
that the negotiations on the ground did not respect the principles of bureaucratic
rationality or even the provisions of law‖ (ibid 73 and passim). Chatterjee appreciates
this ‗para-legal arrangement‘ and the actions in political society as an act of ―actual
expansion of the freedoms of the people‖ (Chatterjee 2004, 66). Chatterjee argues that
it is through manoeuvring in political society that certain groups participate in
political process, which is otherwise not possible within the liberal space of the
associations of civil society. He claims that the working of political society opens up
the possibility to ―effectively work against the [existing] distribution of power in
society as a whole‖ (Chatterjee 2004, 66, emphasis in original). This possibility,
according to him, is realized in the case of distribution of property rights. He briefly
refers to Amartya Sen‘s capability approach, which ―embod[ies] a set of substantive
freedoms rather than utilities or income or primary goods‖ (ibid 68) to support his
claim.

However, there is a limit to this ‗agency argument‘, which also indicates the limit of
political society. Chatterjee observes that the leverage in political society is linked
with the ―inherent majoritarian bias of electoral democracy‖ (Chatterjee 2008b, 90
and passim). Because of this bias, certain sections of the population are excluded
from political society, producing newly marginalized groups, comprising of low-caste
and adivasi people. ―Political society and electoral democracy have not given these
groups the means to make effective claims on governmentality. In this sense, these
marginalized groups represent an outside beyond the boundaries of political societyii.‖
This third space (after civil and political societies) is a new category in Chatterjee‘s
writing, which John and Deshpande (2008, 85) call the ―liminal zone.‖

7
POLITICAL SOCIETY AS A CRITIQUE

Now, it is pertinent to ask why Chatterjee theorizes political society in a statist/state-

centric and legalistic way. It might be helpful to refer to the original concept of
governmentality to understand that impulse. In developing the concept of political
society, particularly in terms of ‗the politics of the governed‘, Chatterjee selectively
draws from the Foucauldian concept of governmentality. Governmentality, as we
know, denotes the generalized governmental rationality, beyond that of the state.
Methodologically, it studies the strategic field of application of power, whose
problematic is: ―[H]ow best to govern[?]‖ (O‘Malley et al 1997, 502).
Governmentality is about the organization of resources and institutions, establishment
of norms and practices, etc., and justifying this constellation. Thereby, as we know,
power assumes a productive dimension, rather than a negative and repressive one.
Thomas Lemke argues that the salient feature of Foucault‘s conceptualization is that
governmentality ―links technologies of the self with technologies of domination, the
constitution of the subject to the formation of the state; and finally, it helps to
differentiate between power and domination‖ (Lemke 2002, 51).

Government refers to more or less systematized, regulated and reflected modes

of power (a ―technology‖) that go beyond the spontaneous exercise of power
over others, following a specific form of reasoning (a ―rationality‖) which
defines the telos of action or the adequate means to achieve it‖ (Lemke 2002,
53).

And thereby, ―structuring and shaping the field of possible action of subjects‖ (ibid
52).

In Chatterjee‘s conceptualization of political society and the case-studies that he

engages with, we never see the inter-linkage between the ‗technologies of the self‘
and ‗technologies of domination‘. What comes out, as mentioned earlier, is that the
process of surveying and categorization (which are not exactly the ‗technologies of
domination‘) of the population are politicized, i.e. people use the very categories,
which are generated or used in surveys and censuses (which again are not exactly the
‗technologies of the self‘), to stake claims on the state. Read this way, Chatterjee‘s

8
notion of ‗governed‘ as a subject of political society is nominal, and the process of
‗subjection to power‘ in the domain of governmental policy – which is the premise of
Chatterjee‘s argument – does not end up in producing/constructing any subjectivity as
such. And this happens, because governmentality is played out in India exclusively
within the body politic of the state, not beyond the latter. This statement of mine
might seem to be contradictory to Chatterjee‘s (2008b, 93) later claim that
―governmental power [..] is no longer restricted to the branches of the state[,] but
extends to a host of non-state and even non-governmental agencies.‖ Chatterjee does
not define ‗governmental power‘ explicitly; however, it is evident that he sees
‗governmental power‘ to be beyond the state from the stand point of the institutional
space of application of power, but not from the problematic of ‗subject‘ and
‗subjectivity‘iii and also the concept of the social (the two problematics on which my
critique rests).

‗Governmentality‘ here is just an alternative way to understand the Indian state and its
interaction with the population, and does not refer to the generalized ‗governmental
rationality‘ or ‗logics‘ – perhaps, that itself points to the postcolonial predicament. A
lack of mediation on this predicament makes political society a theory of politicsiv –
describing the modes of transaction between the state and ‗governeds‘. A description
of the social conditions in which the ‗governeds‘ find themselves does not elucidate or
clarify the ontology of the social, from which the specificity of the postcolonial
condition (and the predicament therein) can be explained or elaborated.v Without such
a critical engagement, Chatterjee remains within the liberal strand of political theory,
where the expansion of liberal institutional order is presented as an unlimited, albeit a
hindered or interrupted, process. Since Chatterjee does not read the practices of
governmentality as political logics, governmentality almost becomes a shorthand for
such a liberal political order, always already in a position to accommodate and
subsume various negativities – which is an evolutionist view of political order.
Chatterjee does not deconstruct the metaphysics (of presence) of such political
practices which could point to the impossibility of constituting an order and thereby
also demonstrate the limit of naming a political space as civil or political society.

If the theory of political society has to be statist, then it might be more helpful to
conduct a thorough investigation of the ways in which the postcolonial state ‗transacts

9
business with the population‘ from various perspectives/stand points. What comes out
of Chatterjee‘s description in various cases (and many scholars would also attest the
factual basis of those) is that the postcolonial state is contradictory and indecisive in
its conductvi: on the one hand, it is marked by hesitancy and weakness in obtaining
compliance to the existing codified norms, and in enforcing certain legal and
executive orders, and on the other hand, it can be extraordinarily violent (i.e. in using
violent means and in violating the constitutional rights, legal provisions, and
procedures) – all of which cannot be solely seen as a response to the manoeuvring in
political society. It is also possible to provide alternative explanations for the
postcolonial state‘s tolerance of violation of (public) property rights, particularly in
the context of informal economy. Barbara Harriss-White (forthcoming, n.p.) provides
such an alternative argument:

The state may also have an interest in sustaining petty commodity production
[the economic domain where the members of political society predominate].
Its infrastructural responsibilities to employers may be avoided if production is
outsourced to petty producers, and it often does not enforce laws through
which the super-exploitative advantage of petty production would be
abolished, or enforce fiscal measures that would threaten through taxation the
nutrient-bed of petty production. So small-scale production and trade also
thrive because the capital involved does not accumulate sufficiently for the
revenue from tax to outweigh the costs of its collection. The state also
‗inadvertently‘ subsidizes and promotes production by small enterprises
through condoning and not policing the onward lending of ‗formal‘ credit on
terms and conditions which prevent the borrowers from accumulating (and of
late through permitting a mass of more or less experimental micro finance
arrangements). It subsidizes and promotes the reproduction of small
enterprises through whatever infrastructural and welfare interventions are
aimed at the households involved in it. To prevent mass unemployment,
widespread malnutrition, etc, for several decades it has had to transfer
resources – more or less exiguously – for politically stabilising policies that
prevent the destruction of small scale production, trade and services. In doing
[so,] it creates small enterprises it cannot regulate[,] and incidentally also
restricts accumulation.

10
The root cause behind such a contradictory and indecisive – and perhaps pragmatic –
state is the predicament faced by the postcolonial bourgeoisie: the condition of
‗dominance without hegemony‘, as Ranajit Guha had conceptualized. Guha defines
hegemony, within a field of power, i.e. a ―series of inequalities‖ or ―unequal
relationships‖ (Guha 1998, 20), as ―a condition of Dominance (D) such that, in the
organic composition of D, Persuasion (P) outweighs Coercion (C)‖ and ―hegemony
operates as a dynamic concept and keeps even the most persuasive structure of
Dominance always and necessary open to Resistance‖ (ibid 23, emphases in original).
‗Dominance without hegemony‘ is the condition where persuasion never manages to
outweigh coercion, i.e. coercion becomes explicit in the formation and operation of
power relationships. It is this condition that propels the development of strategies of
co-optation and negotiations, in an attempt to defer or modify the (often inevitable)
application of force.

In our given context, the bourgeoisie never loses sight of its interest in accumulating
capital, yet adopts various strategies to dispel the antagonisms faced in that process
and negotiates with certain impediments. Does the Indian bourgeoisie manage to
persuade ‗the people‘ to facilitate the process of accumulation or does it ultimately
depend on the application of force, or a mix of both? This question returns in the
context of the recent economic transformation in India, on which Chatterjee has
published two articles in 2008.

In the first article, Chatterjee (2008a) engages with the political economy of the recent
economic transformation in India. Here, the central problematic is the sole ascendancy
of private industrial-corporate capital in India to the position of hegemonic
domination which is accomplished with the ‗connivance‘ [in my words] of the ‗urban
middle classes‘—―the sphere that seeks to be congruent with the normative models of
bourgeois civil society‖ (Chatterjee 2008a, 57) – and the parallel decline of the
‗agrarian bourgeoisie‘ (ibid 56). Such ascendancy of industrial-corporate capital is
rendered possible through ‗primitive accumulation‘, namely, ―the dissociation of the
labourer from the means of labour [i.e. production]‖ (ibid 54) and the attendant
transfer of those means of production to the capitalists. Chatterjee thinks that political
society again becomes a significant field of contestation and interventions in this new

11
context: the need to reverse the effects of the primitive accumulation necessitates that
the governmental agencies engage with political society to distribute the benefits,
following the modality described above. But this contestation has been part of
‗passive revolution of capital‘ right from the beginning of the postcolonial state‘s
carrier, as can be gleaned from Sudipta Kaviraj‘s critique (which is seen from the
stand point of the state).

Kaviraj‘s critique of ‗passive revolution‘ is predicated on the proposition that ―the

state in India is a bourgeois state in at least three, mutually supportive, senses‖
(Kaviraj 1997, 48 and passim). First, the bourgeoisie and ruling bloc enjoys a state of
dominance; second, ―the state form [i.e. the parliamentary democratic form] is
bourgeois‖; and thirdly, ―[t]he state expresses and ensures the domination of the
bourgeoisie and helps in capitalist reproduction‖ (ibid 49 and passim). As the ―capital
cannot perform‖ the ―directive functions…through the market‖, therefore ―the
bourgeois state performs through the legitimized directive mechanisms of the state.‖

Kaviraj wants to problematize and concentrate on the first aspect, namely, the ―state
of bourgeois dominance over society‖ (ibid 50). But ―capital is not independently
dominant in Indian society and [the] state‖ (ibid 52), nor are the other propertied
classes. Kaviraj observes, ―the Indian capitalist class exercises its control over society
neither through a moral-cultural hegemony of the Gramscian type, nor a simple
coercive strategy on the lines of satellite states of the Third World‖ (ibid 51). Such a
control is achieved through a ―coalitional strategy carried out partly through the state-
directed process of economic growth, partly through the allocational necessities
indicated by the bourgeois democratic political system‖ (ibid 51, emphasis added).

As neither the bourgeoisie nor the other propertied classes can exclusively dominate
the state and the society, hence a ‗ruling bloc‘ is formed between the bourgeoisie,
(―particularly its aggressive and expanding monopoly stratum‖ (ibid 52)), the landed
elites and the bureaucratic managerial elites (―high bureaucratic elite and industrial
management groups‖ (ibid 54n)), which ―ensures their joint dominance over the state‖
(ibid 52 and passim). The bourgeoisie ―exercises the directive function in the
coalition‖ and ―is the only truly universalizing element in the ruling bloc[;] among the
ruling groups, the bourgeoisie alone can develop a coherent, internally flexible

12
development doctrine‖. The landed elites (or ―the precapitalist elements‖) do not have
―alternative coherent programme‖ and ―have been restricted mainly to slowing down
capitalist transition.‖ The bureaucratic managerial elites perform certain distinct
function in the governmental apparatus and ―also mediate crucially between the
classes within the ruling coalition itself‖ (ibid 54, emphasis in original).

The ruling bloc wields its dominance over the society by working in the terrain of
governance, which according to Kaviraj, ―refers to the process of actual policy
decisions within the apparatuses of the state‖ (ibid 54 and passim). The dominance is
created by establishing sets of ―vertical clientilist benefit coalitionvii‖ [emphasis in
original] with subordinate classes through certain policies. Such an approach is
concerned with the ―calculations of short-term political advantages accruing from
policies.‖ The objectiveviii of establishing benefit coalitions is to ―ensure that actual
political configurations do not become symmetrical to class divisions in society.‖

Though one can argue, after Kaviraj, that creating vertical clientilist benefit coalitions
is the logics of political society, a necessity that the bourgeoisie faces, yet it will be
difficult to normatively evaluate it as a positive development (in terms of expansion of
rights). An ‗agency argument‘ix is not enough to salvage such an evaluation. This is
because the very condition of capital accumulation depends on creating such vertical
benefit coalitions, which is a ‗social cost‘ to accumulation, and such a cost does not
alter or threaten the course of capitalist transformation and expansion (in an
ontological sense, not a historicist sense, and thereby not a question of teleological
transition). I will argue that such vertical benefit coalitions and para-legal negotiations
are simply a factual and descriptive state of affairs in the domain of power
relationships, bereft of any immediate normative problematizationx. Since
interventionist and transformational politics requires a normative evaluation, so it is
also difficult to see any transformational potential of the development of political
society. However, all is not lost.

Political society can be a useful concept and an analytical tool to study the condition
through which antagonisms are deflected, deferred or nullified in the postcolonial
society. Political society can be a critique of the postcolonial condition. Yet, we must
be careful to not treat political society as a successful strategic field, structured to

13
overcome the problematic of ‗dominance without hegemony‘, i.e. the development of
non-coercive and persuasive political condition for capitalist transformation. Violence
is embedded in this process. Amita Baviskar and Nandini Sundar (2008) draw
attention to such an application of force and infliction of violence in contemporary
India. They argue that such an application of force makes civil society ―not a domain
of hegemony‖, ―but of domination‖ (ibid 89), implying that the division and
distinction of civil and political societies along the axes of civility and legality is
misleading.

If political society is to be treated as a critique, and no ready transformational politics

can be found within it, then the obvious question is: How does one think about the
political and transformational politics? Chatterjee‘s critics see politics in terms of
contingency and the empirical specificity of a struggle, and fall back on the ‗agency
argument‘. They suggest that in order to appreciate contemporary subaltern politics,
one needs to study the cases of resistance (John and Deshpande 2008, 86), to see the
success in getting the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the
Forest Act and the Right to Information Act as an outcome of people‘s ―own degree
of organization and their increased ability to speak in terms of the very law that is
used to dispossess them‖ (Baviskar and Sundar 2008, 88), and to look out for ―spaces,
which the ruling classes are compelled to open up in an attempt to legitimize their
positions of power‖ so as to ―(utilize) [those spaces] with a renewed creativity by
those fighting for a more equal, less exploitative social order‖ (Shah 2008, 81).

In reply to his critics, Chatterjee re-calibrates political society by introducing two

more concepts ―moral passion‖ and ―populism‖ (populism is definitely a new turn in
his theorization). He explains:

…it is mistaken to claim that the dominant and propertied classes any longer
set the standards of morality for society; rather, in a democratic age, the moral
passion of entitlement and outrage is on the side of those who have little…
(Chatterjee 2008b, 92 and passim).

The political dimension in seen in terms of ‗struggle‘ (clash and conflict) – not by
clarifying the negativity or antagonism at the ontological level (i.e. that what leads to

14
the conflict): ―Since the intentions emerge from the arena of politics, it goes without
saying that they are shaped by the struggles between rival groups and classes in that
arena.‖

The character of the politics which emerges in this field — a ―field created by
governmentality‖— is populist, and ―populismxi is the only morally legitimate form of
democratic politics today.‖ Thus, it seems that Chatterjee stands by his earlier claim
that the ‗politics of the governed‘ is ―shifting the historical horizon of political
modernity in most of the world‖ (Chatterjee 2004, 75).

This insistence on seeing political society as an innovative and promising political

development ignores the other possibilities of (progressive) political interventions.
The analysis of governmentality studies a very specify domain, namely the mode of
application and transformation in governmental rationality and power, and resistances
to it. This does not exhaust the possibilities of analysing other domains of power
relationships, the dislocating events within those, or anticipating other forms of
progressive political interventions. These limitations are also inherited by the analysis
of political society as such. Thus, political society as a critique of Indian politics is a
much stronger position to defend. If one has to understand the political and the
transformational politics, then that should begin with the conceptualization of the
social, explication of its ontology, and then proceed from there to apprehend the
quasi-transcendental conditions of possibility and impossibility of political
interventions, i.e. the struggle itself.

CONCLUSION

I have argued in this paper that political society can be more useful as a critique,
rather than an alternative ‗normative theory‘, which can only offer the criteria of
recognition by the state. What the concept of political society warns us is that a
certain section of the society is marginalized and that their demands do not become
part of mainstream political articulations in civil society. Political society alerts us
about various strategies that are being developed, how different sorts of demands are
allowed to be raised, and how those are dealt in a piecemeal way to mitigate

15
antagonism and in facilitating the ‗passive revolution of capital‘. Yet, such strategies
cannot fully hegemonise ‗the people‘, and force the bourgeoisie to resort to violent
means. Political society as a critique marks out the problematic of perseverance of the
condition of ‗dominance without hegemony‘ and the return or the spectre of ‗the
people‘xii.

Chatterjee reminds us, ―governmentality always operates on a heterogeneous social

field, on multiple population groups, and with multiple strategies‖ (Chatterjee 2004,
60 and passim). And we have seen that the politics in political society is ―necessarily
temporary and contextual.‖ Thus, any political intervention that wants to overcome
this fragmentary and temporary politics would necessarily require an engagement in
hegemonic politics, a process of constructing a broader political movement beyond
the fragmentary ones. There are programmatic issues involved in such a
transformational politics; but any mediation on such political programmes cannot
begin without understanding the specificity of the postcolonial condition and
predicament, which in turn, requires an ontological analysis. The outcome of such an
analysis will not necessarily initiate transformation, but will at least provide a far
more critical insight about the political processes.

Post-script: Partha Chatterjee is now considered to be a prominent figure within the

postcolonial studies movement, which wants to challenge the hegemony of Western
liberal theory and knowledge/power complex. So, after engaging with his
conceptualization of political society, we may ask the following questions: Should
(postcolonial) political theory always start with (a reflection on) the state and civil
society, while trying to understand/question the postcolonial political modernity?
Should normative discussion be always statist/state-centric?

16
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ENDNOTES:

i
This paper is a modified and expanded form of another paper published in 2008 (Sarkar
2008).
ii
Samir Kumar Das argues that there are sections of the population who escape the calculative
logic of enumeration and thereby they become the ‗ungoverneds‘. But it is not clear why this
should be the case, i.e. what kind of logical inconsistency or limit of governmentality is
involved here is not readily understood.
iii
This problematic is central in Foucault‘s conceptualization of governmentality. Refer to
‗Two Lectures‘ by Foucault (1980), particularly pp. 97-98.
iv
I borrow the term ‗politics‘ and ‗the political‘ from Chantal Mouffe, where ‗the political‘
refers to ―the dimension of antagonism which [is] constitutive of human societies‖, and
‗politics‘ refers to ―the set of practices and institutions through which an order is created,
organizing human coexistence in the context of conflictuality provided by the political‖
(Mouffe 2005, 9).
v
Also, without such a consideration, the emergence of political subjects cannot be
understood. The Foucauldian understanding of subject formation through subjection to power
has been thoroughly criticized by Derrida. Refer to Derrida (1972 and 1973) and Ernesto
Laclau (1990).
vi
Say the hesitancy of the Left Front Government of West Bengal in the case of the rotting
corpse of Balak Brahmachari of the Santan Dal (a religious sect) (Chatterjee 2004, 41-51),
and the same Government‘s use of police force, time and again, in suppressing and killing
(political) dissidents (in Marichhjhapi, Singur and Nandigram).
vii
I will argue that this can be seen as the institutionalized form of the colonial idiom of
‗Improvement‘, through which ―the colonial rulers [used] to relate nonantagonistically to the
ruled (Guha, 1998, 30, emphasis added).
viii
Arun Patnaik offered an alternative argument. Patnaik (1988, 30) found the poverty
alleviation programmes and targeting the poor in the 1970s as the ―state‘s paternalistic
attitude to the rural poor‖, through which the state ―diffused among the poor peasants its own

19
organizational contradictions and tried to wean them away from the social contradictions of
the real life.‖
ix
I will argue that the question of agency in these discussions always arises ex post facto, at
the moment of attributing the credit (or autonomy) of the action to a particular subject. The
question of identification and recognition of that subject is very much part of the above
objective. Therefore, to consider the ‗agency‘ as a (starting) premise of an argument is limited
in explaining the case.
x
One can develop this argument further by engaging with Jacques Rancière‘s concept of
politic(al/)s as ‗disagreement‘ (1998 and 2004), which necessarily involves such a
problematization.
xi
In defence of ‗populism‘, Chatterjee quotes Ernesto Laclau. But, I think, it is a
misapplication. For Laclau (2007 and 2005), populism stands as a problematic of staging the
people within democracy, which is preceded by a Claude Lefort-inspired understanding of
power, which is empty (i.e. there is a lack) at the core, and hegemonic politics is practised in
an attempt to fill or occupy that emptiness or lack. ‗People‘ becomes the constituency
constructed or is the locus in this hegemonic political practice.
xii
The populist question, similar to Laclau and Rancière.

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