DYNAMICS OF STATE FORMATION Inpo-Dutcu StupiEs ON DEVELOPMENT ALTERNATIVES — 19Indo-Dutch Studies on Development Alternatives ‘The present study is the nineteenth volume in the series sponsored under the Indo- Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development (IDPAD). This programme grew out of intensifying contacts and cooperation in the seventies between Indian and Dutch social scientists interested in sharing each other's experiences in devel- opment research. Led by a common concern about the need to critically assess existing structures and policies from the point of view of meeting basic needs of large masses of people and to conceive alternatives that heighten the capabilities of the latter to serve as creative agents in the evolving world economy and society, a work-plan of joint research was agreed on in 1980 forming the first phase of IDPAD (1981-83). Since its inception, the programme has been jointly implemented by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, and the Institute of Social Science Research in Developing Countries (IMWOO), The Hague, and financed to. a major extent by a grant from the Dutch government and a generous contribution from the Indian government. From January 1992 onwards, IMWOO's role as the Dutch counterpart organisation has been taken over by Nuffic, the Netherlands Organisation for International Cooperation in Higher Education, The Hague. Following the second (1984-89) and third phase (1990-95), the fourth phase has started January 1997 and will last till the end of 2000 and is based on the same principles as prepared by the Joint Committee of IDPAD. From January 1997 onwards, WOTRO, the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research, is the new IDPAD parent institution in the Netherlands. ‘The series of indo-Dutch Studies on Development Alternatives includes only those research results obtained under IDPAD which are considered essentially qualified for ‘wider dissemination. However, the views expressed and the facts stated therein are, of course, those of the authors. For a complete listing of all titles published under this series, see p. 442 at the end of this book.3 an Ott DS, DYNAMICS OF STATE FORMATION India and Europe Compared Edited by Martin Doornbos and Sudipta Kaviraj Inpo-Dutcu Stuptes ON DEVELOPMENT ALTERNATIVES — 19 ) Sage Publications New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/LondonCopyright © Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development (IDPAD), 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 1997 by Sage Publications India Pvt Led M-32 Greater Kailash Market-I New Delhi 110 048 ‘Sage Publications Inc ‘Sage Publications Ltd 2455 Teller Road 6 Bonhill Street ‘Thousand Oaks, California 91320 London EC2A 4PU Published by Tejeshwar Singh for Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd, phototypeset by Pagewell Photosetters, Pondicherry, and printed at Chaman Enterprises, Delhi. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dynamics of state formation : India and Europe compared / edited by Martin. Doornbos and Sudipta Kaviraj. P. cm—{Indo-Dutch studies on development alternatives: 19) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Comparative government. 2. State, The—Origin. 3. India—Politics and government. 4. Europe—Politics and government. 5. India—Social conditions. 6. Europe—Social conditions. I. Doornbos, Martin R. If. Kaviraj, Sudipta. III. Series. JF51.D96 1997 320.3--de2 96-48357 CIP Rev ISBN: 0-8039-9335-8 (US-hb) — 81-7036-574-0 (India-hb) Sage Production Team: Payal Mehta, Shyama Warner and Santosh Rawatac) 31309 ae $AS16 ioleze% CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES PREFACE INTRODUCTION Part [ Tue State wn Historicat PERsPECTIVE 1. HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE, CULTURAL TRADITIONS, STATE FORMATION AND .POLITICAL DYNAMICS IN INDIA AND EUROPE S.N. Eisenstadt with Harriet Hartman 2. THE FORMATION OF MODERN STATES IN EUROPE Hermann von der Dunk 3. A JUNCTURE OF TRADITIONS Satish Saberwal 4. TRADITIONAL EMPIRE AND MODERN STATE. Jan Heesterman . Part I Processes or IDENTITY FORMATION 5. LANGUAGE POLITICS IN INDIA AND EUROPE: A COMPARISON BASED ON A MODEL OF CONFLICT OF LANGUAGE INTERESTS Abram de Swaan 11 27 746. IDENTITY AND POWER IN EUROPE AND INDIA: SOME COMPARATIVE DYNAMICS Martin Doornbos Part II THe Rove oF THe State AND CrrizensHip 7. CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND THE MODERN STATE Bhikhu Parekh 8. CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP: ON THE EXEMPLARY ROLE OF THE FORUM AND THE MARKET Lolle Nauta 9. THE MODERN STATE IN INDIA Sudipta Kaviraj 10. PLANNING AND MARKET: RECENT EXPERIENCES OF EUROPE AND INDIA Harry de Haan Part IV MARGINALISATION AND SociaL MOVEMENTS 11. THE NEW EMERGING UNDERCLASS IN THE NETHERLANDS Kees Schuyt 12, CULTURAL RIGHTS AND THE DEFINITION OF COMMUNITY Veena Das 13. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN WESTERN EUROPE: AN ANALYSIS OF MAJOR RECENT TRENDS Hanspeter Kriesi 14. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE STATE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CONFRONTATION AND SOLIDARITY Gerrit Huizer Dynamics of State Formation 151 17 333 359Contents Parr V RETROSPECT AND Prospect 15. STATE FORMATION IN INDIA: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT Ravinder Kumar 16. EUROPEAN SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND EUROPEAN CULTURE Jan Berting NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 395 411 438LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES A. Tables 8.1 Two Historical Models for the Construction of Citizenship 206 10.1 Economic Types of Ownership/Control and Decision- Making 258 11.1 Unemployment Rate as a Percentage of the Labour Force in the Netherlands 290 16.1 | Common Market’s Policy of Rapprochement Toward East Europe (in %) » 423 B. Figures : 5.1 The Floral Figuration of Languages 130 12.1 State and Community 325PREFACE One of the paradoxes of the state is that it is bound to draw more attention and debate during times of crisis and transition than during periods of relative tranquillity and ‘normalcy’, when sup- posedly it is at its height. State frameworks in crisis or undergoing major transformation tend to call for explanations and debates of various sorts: over the root causes of their current predicaments, over route maps for alternative future trajectories, and over alter- native political arrangements. Thus, attempts at comprehending present uncertainties and the nature and direction of change almost inevitably will extend into debates about past state formation premises, and about the wider implications of emerging future scenarios and contradictions. Not a few of such questions are raised at the present time with respect to emerging patterns in India and Europe, two formations that have been, and are, experiencing major transformations socially, politically and economically. To be sure, there are vast differences in context between the two cases, as indeed in many of the questions themselves. Nevertheless, there is also an intrinsic heuristic value in pursuing broad questions on state formation trajectories comparatively, seeking to illuminate distinctiveness as well as commonalities in different processes. This collective effort represents an attempt to address this interest. Its origins go back to a seminar held in New Delhi in March 1990 on the comparative study of state formation processes in India and Europe organised and funded by the Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development (IDPAD). The present volume is based on a selection of contributions which were first “presented at this seminar, all of which have been substantially revised and reworked since. The chapter by S.N. Eisenstadt with Harriet Hartman was added later in view of its exceptional relevance to the theme of the volume. We would like to acknowledge here our gratitude to the Joint Committee of IDPAD for making the initial venture possible and to the Nehru Memorial Library and10 Dynamics of State Formation Museum, Teen Murti and its Director, Professor Ravinder Kumar, for providing such an excellent venue for the exchange of ideas on which this book has come to be based. The launching seminar had indeed emerged as a major intellectual event, not least thanks to the stimulating interventions and contributions by the late Sukhomoy Chakravarty and other participants. We are grateful to Anne Webb for the final editing of part of the Papers, to Loes Minkman, Akke Tick and Anna van Marrewijk for valuable administrative assistance, and to Joy Hemmings Lewis for typing some of the papers. In particular, we would like to put on record our indebtedness to Huub Coppens for his organisational support throughout this undertaking. M.D. S.K.INTRODUCTION The last five years have produced a strange historical uncertainty about the fates of frontiers and states in a manner long forgotten. It was commonly assumed in political analysis of the mid-1980s that we lived in a system of states whose frontiers and general structure were solid and permanent. Occasionally, there was polit- ical uncertainty within that structure, but there was very little uncertainty about that structure itself. Since the fall of the former Soviet Union, however, the world has entered into a new era of “fluidity of political formations. These processes serve to remind us of the historicity of state structures, something that at times we are apt to forget in a world in which states are the major players in history. But states have history; and if we wish to understand how they have come to be what they are and what might be expected of them, we must think historically about them. This is what the collection of papers presented in this volume seeks to do about trajectories of state formation in India and Europe, two political entities facing major uncertainties, crises and challenges today. The study of the state must form a general background to the deeper understanding of what is possible in development and what are its historical conditions and limits. For the state is such a central player in the whole historical drama of development, its successes, its deformations, its internal inequalities, that none of these can be adequately appreciated without a proper understanding of the phenomenon of the state itself. But it is also an important subject for analysis because under the general category of the state hide very different types of institutions, produced by very different kinds of histories. Although states are relatively modern construc- tions, their institutional forms and trajectories differ greatly not merely between the West and the Third World, but also within these areas. The proper way of dealing with the question of the state, this collection suggests, is therefore a mix of the empirical and the theoretical. There must be historically sensitive under- standing of the processes through which individual states came2 Dynamics of State Formation into existence: England as distinct from France, or from the Netherlands, or contemporary India as distinct from Pakistan or China. But this must be based on comparative and theoretical perspectives, which try to contrast different trajectories, and in doing so reflect on what can be realistically compared and what cannot be. STATE AND HISTORY In the 1950s and 1960s, political reflection tended to take an excessively constitutional and constructivist view of political dynamics in the Third World. It was widely believed, in Indian nationalist circles as elsewhere, that the making of a successful nation-state was basically a matter of legal and political construction. An elite, well versed in modern scientific knowledge and histories of different societies, had to first dispute and settle the most preferable principles for the creation of a new society, the outlines as it were of its foundational ‘social contract’. Conflicts might arise about the justifiability of this order, or the quickness of its realisation, but the constructivist premise itself went unquestioned. The polit- ical history of the Third World, and also of India, shows however that such a simple constructivist picture is misleading. There are real historical structures which underlie political processes, and have a parametric limiting influence on what is possible in the political world of developing societies. Legacies of administration, political order, rule and defiance surviving from earlier political formations — empires, royalties, rituals of exaltation and sub- ordination etc. — remain in something like a substructure of the political world. What is being constructed on the surface of present history is subtly but effectively restricted and regulated by this underlying structure. Sometimes the surface constructions and the deep structure coalesce to produce strange, but serviceable, mutations and forms. Thus, the approach followed here has been premised on the idea that a one-sided view of the political world entirely structured by the institutions and initiatives of the ruling elites would be deeply misleading. Also, the subtler efforts of the lower orders to limit exploitation and repression must be recorded in any realistic theory of the state. Popular images of power, stereotypes, imaginary constructions, mythologies, which define what people believe can or cannot be done to those with power in aIntroduction 13 certain society, constitute a vitally important element of the terrain on which the power of the state seeks to operate. Historical legacies of this kind can come back into play often as memories, which do not have any definable locus in institutions but pervade the political world, subtly altering the meanings and results of Political actions. Thus, analyses in this collection by Von der Dunk, Heesterman and Saberwal seek to outline the long-term historical paths traversed by the state in India and Europe from such per- spectives. The recent period has witnessed an increasingly lucid appreciation of the subtle ways in which historical pasts remain active through their effects. Political theorists who have discussed the origins of the modern conceptions of the self and individual in the West have often noted the preconditional role that Christian doctrines had played in their later evolution. In a country like India, apart from such relations of preconditionality with the struc- tures of the present, the patterns of traditional politics operate as deeper, subterranean influences on the formal architectures of modern parliamentary politics. Caste and religious politics have in Tecent times developed forms which are impossible to describe in terms of a dichotomy between traditional and modern. Anthro- pologists have noted the tendency of politicians to slip into styles of princely power. To understand and appreciate these trends in the present, not merely to understand the past, such historical surveys are essential. We are never quite certain whether the present has quite broken with the past. PREMISES OF THE MODERN STATE The modern state almost inevitably pursues strategies of integration of the peoples who fall within its territorial control, but the tech- niques of control and homogenisation vary, In early modern Europe two pressures played a decisive role. These were the constant wars between new nation-states and the demands of citizenship and patriotism these made on their peoples, and the very different, cruel and insistent integration with the growth of modern capitalism, which created larger markets for products and for labour. The political logic of citizenship and the economic logic of industrialisation both triggered the development of new forms of political integration. Despite their admiration and envy towards the state of European modernity, governments of the newly14 Dynamics of State Formation independent states faced in this respect a very different set of historical circumstances. Widespread state intervention in the economy in the meantime had become common practice. Leaders like Nehru deliberately tried to replicate, in the new social world they hoped to create in India, the kind of economy found in post- war Labour Britain, with a substantial public sector which controlled, in the phraseology common to the times, the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy, and assisted in redistribution of income and welfare. Kaviraj outlines the historical trajectory of the emergence. of a modern state in India, while Ravinder Kumar and Eisenstadt provide two larger, longer term perspectives about the relation between social evolution and political authority within which these recent initiatives ought to be framed. Although the logic of state planning, which this strategy involved, was meant to go against the logic of the unlimited profit motive of traditional capitalism, from the point of view of the nation-state both were considered functional. The state sector integrated people into a common developing economy just as a private sector based on the free movement of labour and goods on the national market did. There have been interesting deflections from this ideal picture of the political con- sequences of capitalist economic growth. In India at least, disputes over the location of public sector industries have often intensified regional conflict. At times, public sector industries have been sought to be used strategically by state governments in their struggles with the central government over redistribution of eco- nomic, or sometimes more undefinable political, resources. This relates to the wider range of questions concerning the present state of the claims of the market and the state — both in India and in the wider field of economic theory. However, the historical form of the state which emerged in the West in the period of capitalist development, and which’ was accepted in the constitutional structure of free India was the liberal democratic state. Liberal democracy was a contingently produced balance between various social and constitutional principles as a result of extension of suffrage and the search for social justice. Some of its basic premises are theoretically analysed in Parekh’s contribution. Liberal democracy, accompanied by welfarist reformism, however widely accepted it became as a normative politico-economic form, was not the inevitable result of the