Democratic Culture: Historical and Philosophical Essays

247 Pages·2011·1.468 MB·English

by  Akeel Bilgrami

Democratic Culture
critical interventions in theory and praxis
Series Editor:Prafulla C. Kar, Director, Centre for Contemporary
Theory, Vadodara.
The volumes published in the Series will be devoted to current
interventions in theory and its application. Issues addressed
will engage with questions like the place of the human sciences
in the age of technology; cultural studies and their implications
for literature; the interface between science and philosophy;
the teleology of Theory as a new topos; environmental and
ethical issues in education; relations between globalized
knowledge and indigenous sources of inquiry; identity debates
in democracies and other forms of governance in both east and
west; the role of media in relation to epistemies of violence;
and reflections on the destiny of humankind. This, however, is
not exhaustive, and the Series welcomes creative interventions
on similar lines.
Also in this series
The Political Economy of Race, Gender, Class and Caste
(forthcoming)
Editor: Abdul JanMohamed
Democratic Culture
   

Akeel Bilgrami
LONDON NEW YORK NEW DELHI
First published 2011 in India
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
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Transferred to Digital Printing 2011
© 2011 Akeel Bilgrami
This volume is published in collaboration with the Forum on Contemporary Theory,
Vadodara and the Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.
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C
(cid:69)
Preface vii
1 Liberal Democracy and its Critics: Some Voices from
East and West 1
FRED DALLMAYR
2 Value, Enchantment and the Mentality of Democracy:
Some Distant Perspectives from Gandhi 23
AKEEL BILGRAMI
3 Politics, Experience and Cognitive Enslavement:
Gandhi’sHind Swaraj 64
VIVEK DHARESHWAR
4 Moral Perfection and Political Participation: The Indian
‘Millions’ in Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj 87
MOHAMED MEHDI
5 Politics and Violence: Gandhi’s Ambivalence
to Democracy 104
UDAY SINGH MEHTA
6 Pragmatism and Deepened Democracy: Ambedkar
between Dewey and Unger 122
LENART ŠKOF
7 Constitutional Democracy and Hindu Nationalism 143
RAJEEV BHARGAVA
8 Why Did Burke Impeach Hastings? 166
DAVID BROMWICH
9 Whither European Enlightenment? 186
PANKAJ MISHRA
vi (cid:127) Democratic Culture
10 Popular Festivals, Populist Visual Culture and
Modi Masks 199
PARUL DAVE MUKHERJI
11 Globalization, Culture and Education 209
NACHIKET PATWARDHAN
Bibliography 214
About the Editor 224
Contributors 225
Index 228
P
(cid:69)
Some two years ago, I was asked by Professor Prafulla Kar if I would
suggest a theme for a conference he was planning to organize
in Varanasi in the winter of 2008. I proposed a subject that should
be — at the level of generality at which I am about to describe it — a
quite familiar one: the ways in which the notion of democracy (that
has, ever since the orthodoxies of the liberal Enlightenment set in,
been cumulatively and impressively theorized in relatively formal and
procedural terms) might be made more substantial. I mentioned to him
some of the past theoretical efforts at such a thing, as for instance,
Marx’s making central to democracy, issues of political economy, or
the various dissenting and Romantic traditions that had stressed the
importance of a democratic culture by paying philosophical attention
to democratic dispositions of temperament and mind. Might a genuine
integration of these two (and possibly other) substantial aspirations
for the ideal of democracy give us a conceptual path of transition
from the orthodoxies of liberal doctrine to a more radical understanding
of the Enlightenment and its relevance for our own time?
He assented to this proposal and invited a number of distinguished
scholars to speak on the subject from a scatter of disciplines and
backgrounds, from all over India and around the world; and he has
now asked me to edit a volume that puts the written versions of their
lectures together. I am glad to do so — it is a collection of essays
with wide range and exploratory depth, and with both historical and
contemporary interest. They all, in one way or other, speak to the theme
of a substantial conception of democracy, to the great promise as well
as to some of the pitfalls of a democratic mentality and culture.
The volume begins with a very useful encyclopedic survey by Fred
Dallmayr of points of view from different parts of the world (including
some Western voices) which are either directly critical, or contain
the philosophical source of criticism, of some of the assumptions and
viii (cid:127) Democratic Culture
commitments of the liberal political Enlightenment. It is good to
have the collection open with such an international sweep of critical
points of view.
It is followed by my own essay, in which I elaborate what I meant
in a paper written a decade ago where I had said much too cryptically
that Gandhi did not believe in politics. The elaboration makes frame-
working appeal to some of Gandhi’s philosophical ideas to explore
some of the contrasts between liberal and radical elements of the
Enlightenment and their relevance to democratic attitudes in our
own time and place. Gandhi’s political philosophy is then pursued at
length in three essays by Vivek Dhareshwar, Mohamed Mehdi, and
Uday Singh Mehta. Dhareshwar and Mehdi comment particularly
on Hind Swaraj. Dhareshwar grapples with the difficult but essential
subject of Gandhi’s notion of experience as it informs his politics and
his moral philosophy. Mehdi focuses on the complex question of
Gandhi’s relation to mass politics, while Mehta speaks to that question
briefly as well as to various other aspects of democracy.
Lenart Škof turns from Gandhi to Ambedkar and offers a pragmatist
analysis of his political ideas and practice, sketching affinities with
the accounts of different elements of democracy found in John
Dewey and Roberto Unger. Rajeev Bhargava continues in a more
general analytical vein with Ambedkarite themes of constitutional
democracy and investigates its capacity to address the questions of
secularism and Hindu nationalism in India today.
The essay by David Bromwich focuses on Edmund Burke and the
trial of Warren Hastings in order to raise Burke’s own question about
the extent to which democracy may, in some contexts, be at odds
with other commitments of the Enlightenment. Pankaj Mishra’s essay,
then, looks at the extent to which ideals of European Enlightenment
are being abandoned in contemporary European society by some
prominent intellectual responses to the presence of Muslim immigrant
populations in their midst.
The book concludes with two essays on democracy, globalization,
and artistic culture. Parul Dave Mukherji studies populist elements in
the visual arts and the use to which the state in Gujarat has exploited
them in its efforts to integrate Gujarat into global capitalism. Nachiket
Patwardhan, a distinguished architect and film-maker, writes a brief but
heartfelt lament on the deterioration that globalization and misguided
educational philosophies and institutions have wrought on Indian
culture, particularly Indian architecture and cinema.
Preface (cid:127) ix
I owe a special thanks to Professor Prafulla Kar for his alertness to
detail and, in general, for the conscientious help that he has given me
throughout, in order to lighten my editorial tasks.
Akeel Bilgrami