The ideals of secularism, socialism and democracy in their modern form gained currency from the logic of mass mobilisation. When independence came, a broad idea of the Constitution’s framework had been ready
Critics of the Marxian concept of the state as an instrument of the ruling class regard it as too simplistic and lacking in universal validity. Thus the modern democratic state, presidential or parliamentary, based on varying measures of free enterprise, can hardly be called the handmaiden of the capitalist class, whose will is often thwarted by trade unions, political parties depending on the votes of industrial workers, rural and urban poor and the middle classes whose interests are often in conflict with those of factory owners and business leaders and, more recently, the civil society. While this is true, it is also a fact that a state represents a certain ideological consensus which was perhaps first cogently articulated in its fundamentals, by the theorists of social contract, Hobbes, locke and Rousseau
The consensus is sometimes unstated but overwhelmingly accepted as in the United Kingdom, which does not have a written Constitution but the spirit of the parliamentary democracy underlying the latter is enshrined in its laws, policies and the functioning of its institutions of governance. On the other hand, India’s written Constitution begins with the declaration that the people of India had “solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN, SOCIAlIST, SECUlAR, DEMOCRATIC REPUBlIC and to secure to all its citizens JUSTICE, social economic and political; lIBERTY, of thought expression, belief, faith and worship, EQUAlITY of status and opportunity, and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation”.
The above is very much the statement of an ideology that is not elaborated in a tome like Karl Marx’s Capital or MN Roy’s New Humanism or Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, but stated with clarity and in essential details in the Constitution, which in turn contains elaborate provisions aimed at ensuring governance according to its principles. The three cornerstones of that ideology are belief in secularism, socialism and democracy, which are accompanied by a statement of commitment to ensure to its citizens justice, liberty, equality and fraternity.
The question is: How did this ideology come to be accepted as representing a national consensus to be enshrined in its ConstitutionIJ There can be no question of the validity of the enshrinement as it was an integral part of the passage of the Constitution by the duly elected Constituent Assembly. The question relates to the social and historical process through which this ideology came to represent in the national consensus. Ideologies, as opposed to assertions of articles of faith or doctrine, are primarily Western phenomena. They emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, which Alvin Gouldner called in The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology: The Origin, Grammar and Future of Ideology, as the “Age of Ideology”. According to Gouldner, there was a profound link between the proliferation of ideologies and the “‘communications revolution’ arising from the development of printing, printing technologies, and the growing demand for printed products”. The growing demand for clothes following the 19th century population explosion and the technological advances in Britain and the United States, which made the mass production of cotton textiles possible, caused an immense increase in the supply of worn-out clothes or rags from which papers are made. This, as well as the introduction of new technologies of manufacturing paper cheaply from bagasse, ended the scarcity of paper that had inhibited the growth of publishing industry made possible by new printing technologies enabling mass production of printed matter.
The print media gave a new range and dimension to the written culture in the form of what Gouldner calls “elaborated discourse”. Observing that writing confers a permanence which a verbal statement ordinarily does not, he states, “To that extent writing may evoke careful thought in writer and reader. It establishes that the topic is to be taken with a certain seriousness, not having the fleeting quality of speech. Besides, one’s writing acquires an element of finality when printed. A mistake made during a conversation can be corrected while one is still talking. But a printed word cannot be easily recalled for correction once it is widely circulated, which makes one careful to avoid mistakes, embarrassing statements and faulty arguments. This contributes to careful, reasoned writing; so does the absence of direct communication between the writer and the reader.”
“Face to face conversation”, Gouldner observes, “is multi-modal, allowing persons to see and hear speakers. Force, tone, pronunciation, dress, manner gesture and movement, all convey information providing a context for interpreting talk”. By separating it from the talker, printing enables talk to be understood without the aid of the writer’s presence and the additional non-verbal interpretation it provides. He further argues that printing makes for more rigorous appraisal of the validity of arguments by making the process more deliberative and impersonal, released from the compulsion of coping with rebuttals arising from conversations assuming the nature of contests.
Since readers cannot ask questions and mostly do not share the writer’s assumption, the latter has to develop his/her arguments by anticipating and answering questions that may arise in the readers’ mind and elaborating his assumptions with which a reader in another time or country may not be familiar. The writer has also to carry his argument to its logical conclusion since he cannot, unlike in direct conversation, abandon it mid-way with the intention of resuming it later.
Ideologies, in the modern sense of elaborated discourse-Utilitarianism, Socialism, Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, and Nationalism in its several versions, for example arose in the West during the 18th and 19th centuries. These arrived in India following British rule and the introduction of Western education through the English language that followed it. These came to be discussed among the educated elites not only as a result of the intellectual ferment of the Bengal Renaissance of the 19th and early 20th centuries but as a reaction to the exploitative British colonial rule which made people reflect on the form and content of protest, which rapidly assumed the form of the struggle for independence.
The ideals of secularism, socialism and democracy — approximation of which can be traced in some form in ancient Indian texts — in their modern form gained currency from the logic of mass mobilisation which required the obliteration of the communal divide, which unfortunately could not be achieved, and the involvement of the generally poor masses which had to be given a stake in the post-independence order. Not only that, the participation of the masses under Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership led to some kind of democracy in action as well as the propagation among them of the ideals behind the struggle for freedom. When independence came, a broad idea of the ideological framework for the Constitution had gained acceptance in the country. The rest followed.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
