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Title: Relearning Anarchism in India Author: Jaimine Bezboznik Date: February 2, 2016 Language: en Topics: India Source: Retrieved on 9th July 2021 from https://readoo.in/2016/02/anarchy-in-india
In India as elsewhere, anarchist thought is widely misunderstood. As
Bhagat Singh (1907 – 1931), one of the few Indian revolutionaries who
had explicit anarchist leanings, put it: “The people are scared of the
word anarchism. The word anarchism has been abused so much that even in
India revolutionaries have been called anarchist to make them
unpopular.”
Before sober minds of India or anyone elsewhere misinterpret
“anarchism”, I attempt to thoroughly clarify the greatest bemusement.
Thanks to the social culture of ultracrepidarianism ( the habit of
giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one’s knowledge),
though.
Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates self-governed
societies with voluntary institutions. These are often described as
stateless societies, but several authors have defined them more
specifically as institutions based on non-hierarchical free
associations. Anarchism is a broad tradition of historical ideas that
contain common elements that are nevertheless, sometimes, conflicting.
There is no set of positions that you must hold in order to count as a
real anarchist.
Anarchism questions the very foundations that political theory, and by
extension, the state, supposedly rests upon. Rather than seeing the
state as a given and required for the further development of society,
anarchists see the state as it truly is: the institution that has a
monopoly on the legitimate use of force. That is, a group of people who,
for some reason or another, have the ability to use the initiation of
force in a way that is deemed acceptable, worthy of respect, obligatory,
and even required by the mass of people inside the institution’s claimed
territory. In this way, the state relies on false or misguided views
about authority and power shared by most people and these widely shared
beliefs are what give power to the state.
Anarchism rejects political philosophy along with political authority.
It says the conventional wisdom is turned on its head — that the entire
notion of political philosophy, of politics requiring or creating a
philosophy is asinine. Politics and philosophy are contradictory
concepts and tying them together has resulted in justifications for some
of the worst atrocities the human race has endured. Where politics
relies on a gun, philosophy relies on the mind. Where politics utilizes
coercion and hierarchy, philosophy utilizes reason and the human
intellect. Where politics brings out the worst in people by creating
relationships of power and exploitation, philosophy realizes the best in
people by creating relationships of mutual respect in a joint effort to
discover truth. Politics relies on just as much philosophy as the mugger
in the alley relies on reason and cooperation.
The state views philosophy as the enemy — as it represents reason,
autonomy, and self-determination. After all, the philosophical way of
thinking requires a hunger for truth and certainty that only a
self-directive, passionate person will be able to feed. The
philosophical way of thinking requires an independent mind, not one
enslaved by the chains of authority and hierarchy. It requires a mind
that answers to oneself and no other, whether it be king, general, or
president.
Anarchism is about voluntary spontaneous orders, not cultures that are
predicated on instances of coercion, such as the norms and beliefs that
underline statism and rape culture. Letting people be free to develop
their own goals and plans, their own values and philosophies, means a
principle of equality of authority. Of course orders emerge from
coercive arrangements, but these are not valuable for the same reason
that voluntary orders are. The latter are the essence of civilization
and progress. They are the cement that holds society together. They lead
to peace, mutual respect, and trade and away from war, hierarchy, and
violence. Any effort to use coercion to direct others according to your
own values and goals displays a fundamental ignorance of the forces that
achieve progress and flourishing and a flagrant disrespect for the
humanity of both the coercer and the victim. Anarchism is an
institutional arrangement that puts into practice what we all already
know: that, as Gary Chartier puts it, “People are equal in essential
dignity and worth,” and, “There is no natural right to rule.” This
respect for persons and their individual authority is what must be the
ultimate foundation for spontaneous order to develop. To the extent that
coercion is used to direct others, the result fails to be based on a
spontaneous arrangement. It fails to be anarchistic.
Eminent anthropologist and political theorist James C Scott in his
latest book Two Cheers for an Anarchism writes: “Acts of disobedience
are of interest to us when they are exemplary, and especially when, as
examples they set off a chain reaction, prompting others to emulate
them.” Scott further adds, “Then we are in the presence less of an act
of cowardice and conscience — perhaps both — than of a social phenomenon
that can have massive political effects.” Every act of wanton
unruliness, therefore, does not correspond to a transformative act of
anarchy. Our careless use of the term — pinning the label “anarchist” on
all and sundry violators of law (propelled by the arrogance of their
power rather than any motivation for radical change) directly
contradicts Scott’s thesis.
Anarchism is a fearless trek into the unknown. Since it throws out the
imposed normative ideals of other political philosophies, anarchism is
the complete sacrifice of the ego of a politically driven mind. It
forebodes the usual prescriptions and solutions for society’s ills and
trusts the forces of cooperative effort, mutual respect, and voluntarism
will do better. It’s the respect for the limits of human reason, the
fallibility of human power, the unlikely, but unsurpassed, power of
unconscious design, the appreciation of innovation and progress brought
about by forces completely out of our control and, above all, humility –
the recognition of one’s own mistakes, flaws, ignorance, and inability
to know the unknown. Anarchism means, “I don’t know.”
Anarchism is the recognition of our ultimately unprivileged position in
the world, the acknowledgement of the fact that we are systematically
ignorant of the crucial forces that the fabric of social life depends
on, and to embrace this dynamism of life is to live happily and freely.
To reject the conservatism of coercion, hierarchy, and planning in favor
of a permanent intellectual revolution, to see that only a virtuous,
impassioned people are capable of developing and maintaining the
peaceful emergent orders that allow humanity to flourish requires the
humility only honest and everlasting introspective analysis can provide.
Only constant self-questioning accompanied with self-improvement will
reveal what our lives and our happiness ultimately count on. And this
means the acceptance of the absurdity of life, which makes way for not
only joy, but despair, confusion, pain, and everything else that makes
joy worth striving towards.
confidence and value in one’s decision-making and reasons, yet society,
the aggregate of all those very people, is simply too varied, too
specialized, too persistent, dogged, and rebellious to be predictable
and controllable?
convince everyone else they are somehow special, that they can plan and
direct, police and kill, bomb and drone, invade and occupy, kidnap and
imprison, spy and torture, tax and counterfeit, prohibit some drugs and
not others, decide who can marry and can’t, and so on, when they are
actually just as fallible and ignorant as everyone else and that these
arbitrary powers are what cause chaos?
authority like many may claim, but refusal to submit and
self-determination?
Accepting this absurdity leads one to reject politics and all attempts
at government as a well intentioned, but meaningless attempt at
manipulating the social order by the permanent suppression of revolution
– of society itself. This is why freedom, nothing if not the chance to
be better, according to Albert Camus, must be the inherently respected
value of any harmonious social order and any happy life.
The process of realizing one’s happiness necessitates the blissful
exercise of one’s liberty, to spit in the face of authoritarian
governments, murderous tyrants, and the cruel, infinite despair that a
world only capable of giving birth to an equally infinite,
non-contradictory joy could impart. Happiness and freedom are the
easiest things to lose but they are always there for our taking when
we’re ready.
Unlike the modern Western Anarchist theories, the Vedic Anarchism is a
time tested and successfully established anarchist model of the
ancients. The rishis who have given Vedas are the first founders of
Vedic anarchist societies. They dwelled in forests outside the control
of any state or governments, and enforced a values based living through
the knowledge on Rta and dharma. Unlike the Western anarchism that
emphasizes priority to anti-state and anti-rulers policies, Vedic
Anarchism deals with balance of powers, non-hierarchical and
decentralized polity, community living, and ecologically sustainable
lifestyles through its varna, ashrama, dharma, and Janapada systems.
The Janapada system created a non-hierarchical and decentralized polity
of root-level democracy.
The dharma system is wisdom in action. The wisdom that brought awareness
about natural and social powers is known as Rta. This system attempted
values based living, and brought ecologically sustainable lifestyles.
The dharma system is wisdom in action. The wisdom that brought awareness
about natural and social powers is known as Rta. This system attempted
values based living, and brought ecologically sustainable lifestyles.
The ashrama system empowered individual freedom and independent
expressions. Based on the biological age, the needs and behavior of
individuals are categorized as Student life, Householder life, Retiring
life, and Renouncing life.
The Vedic varna system ensured swadharma based entitlements that brought
flexibility, non-hierarchical and decentralized distribution of powers
among all the communities for a balanced society, smooth
inter-dependency, as well as deals with social responsibilities.
From these Vedic systems, arose the Mahajanapada system that formed the
basis of all kingdoms and republics of India. This system administered
the root-level distribution of political, technological, economical, and
social powers. The term “Janapada” literally means the foothold of the
people. In Pāṇini, Janapada stands for country and Janapadin for its
citizenry.
Each of these Janapadas was named after the Kshatriya tribe who had
settled therein. Within each Janapadas existed the Varna system
distributing the socioeconomic powers, creating village communities that
are completely independent from the state and completely inter-dependent
within itself. All of the ancient Vedic period states followed
grass-root democracy raising from the village communities.
The Vedic polity of root-level democracy has turned the entire India as
a community and village based society. These villages are completely
self-sufficient, self-governing, cooperative, nature bound, and ensured
complete independence from the state and its politics. Thomas Munroe,
Charles Metcalfe, and Mark Wilks are a few of the Orientalists who have
eloquently described this importance village communities held in India.
Because of the Janapada system, anarchism ruled the roots and roosts of
India irrespective of kings and other types of rulers. C.F. W. Hegel
finds that this system ensured the whole of India and her societies not
yielding to despotism, subjection, or subjugation of any rulers. Its
influence is very strong and far reaching, even in the colonial period,
the colonialists found that the establishment of Vedic anarchism through
its village communities as the most difficult barrier to break and could
not completely enforce their hegemony.
In Gandhi’s view, violence is the source of social problems, and the
state is the manifestation of this violence. The nearest approach to
purest anarchy would be a democracy based on nonviolence.” For Gandhi,
the way to achieve such a state of total nonviolence was changing of the
people’s minds rather than changing the state which governs people.
Self-governance is the principle behind his theory of satyagraha. This
swaraj starts from the individual, then moves outward to the village
level, and then to the national level; the basic principle is the moral
autonomy of the individual is above all other considerations.
Gandhi’s admiration for collective liberation started from the very
anarchic notion of individualism. According to Gandhi, the conscience of
the individual is the only legitimate form of government. Gandhi averred
that “Swaraj will be an absurdity if individuals have to surrender their
judgment to a majority.” He opined that a single good opinion is far
better and beneficial than that of the majority of the population if the
majority opinion is unsound. Due to this swaraj individualism, he
rejected both parliamentary politics and their instrument of
legitimization, political parties. According to swaraj individualism the
notion that the individual exists for the good of the larger
organization had to be discarded in favor of the notion that the larger
organization exists for the good of the individual, and one must always
be free to leave and to dissent. Gandhi also considered Leo Tolstoy’s
book, The Kingdom of God is Within You, a book about practical anarchist
organization, as the text to have the most influence in his life.
Indian revolutionary and the founder of the Ghadar Party Lala Har Dayal
was involved in the anarchist movement in United States. He moved to the
United States in 1911, where he became involved in industrial unionism.
In Oakland, he founded the Bakunin Institute of California which he
described as “the first monastery of anarchism”. The organisation
aligned itself with the Regeneracion movement founded by the exiled
Mexicans Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón. Har Dayal understood the
realisation of ancient Aryan culture as anarchism, which he also saw as
the goal of Buddhism. The Ghadar Party attempted to overthrow the
British in India by reconciling western concepts of social revolution –
particularly those stemming from Mikhail Bakunin – with Buddhism.
Almost half a century back, John Kenneth Galbraith, the US ambassador to
India and a renowned economist, had called India a “functioning
anarchy”, where the implication was that the country did well despite
the government not doing much.
A lot has happened since then, with India going through a series of
ideological changes ending in a phase of economic reforms where a number
of institutions and structures were created or changed. Have these
institutions really delivered or does the epithet – ‘functioning
anarchy’ – still hold?
Broadly, we can look at political, administrative, economic and social
institutions that have evolved over the years. One does not quite get a
clear picture on these institutions and the public reaction to them is
even more intriguing. India remains a democracy despite our
disenchantment with various parties and their opportunistim. Except for
the brief period during the internal Emergency of the mid-seventies, we
have had regular elections and several reforms, including control of
expenditure on elections and the anti-defection laws. But today the
general feeling is that all parties look alike and there is little
differentiation between them. There was a promise of youth when Rajiv
Gandhi took over, or the illusion of governance when VP Singh came to
power on an anti-corruption platform. But little has changed really and
at the end of the day it does not seem that governance standards have
improved at all.
What do people do here? The rich do not vote and live in a world of
their own. They only discuss the decline in standards but do little
about it and prefer to concentrate on their own business. The middle
class runs around hoping for change. But the level of interest has
dwindled and the disillusionment is palpable. The poor actually matter,
as they can be swayed by largesse and can be made to vote for specific
parties. Therefore, ultimately those who sway this group either through
monetary benefits or threats get the votes. It is not surprising that
when governments change, names change, but quality does not change
significantly. The administrative institutions strike a more dismal
picture. One has less faith in the bureaucracy and even less in the
judicial system – except at the topmost levels. It is hard to get a
ration card without bribery and getting anything through a government
department can be frustrating. Systems are not changed because it
affects everyone down the line. One wonders why registering an
agreement, which is anyway not checked, can’t be done online. It would
mean a loss of income for the entire chain along the way.
The police force is known to be either inefficient or corrupt, where
cases are not allowed to be filed unless one pays for the same. Our
antiquated laws ensure that cases never get solved and are heavily in
favour of criminals. If one does not have money, one can forget about
getting justice. What do the people do here? The rich use agents and pay
to get things done. Or they simply keep away from the masses, as that is
the best way to ensure that no crime is committed against them. The
middle class tries to fight it out, but they finally relent as they have
no choice. The poor continue to suffer, but frankly no one cares, as
they are a class which has no hope and have the maximum atrocities
committed against them. It is not surprising that most crimes are
committed against them, right from exploitation and land grabbing to
physical abuse. As it involves the poor, they go largely unreported.
The social institutions show an even more distressing image. The
Constitution (also called as Condomstitution) as well as manifestoes of
various parties speak the same language of providing education, health
and other civic facilities to all people, especially the weaker classes.
Large amounts of money have been spent every year under various schemes
on education, health, water, transport, etc. services. Yet government
schools provide the lowest quality of education. At higher education
levels, the lacing of politics to admissions policy has compromised
significantly on quality with a plethora of reservations based on birth
rather than merit. Hospitals are pathetic where patients live in abysmal
conditions. Civic amenities are invariably supplied better to the higher
strata of society.
What do people do? The rich never make use of public institutions and
take recourse to five-star hospitals for health requirements. The new
bands of IB schools are preferred, where the logical corollary is to
move out of the country for higher studies. The middle class struggles
with the system and relies on our insurance companies for support in
times of need. While education is still in a state level school or the
CBSE or ICSE curriculum, they get squeezed when seeking higher education
with marks being skewed heavily through competitive pressure. They are
finally opting for taking loans and studying overseas. The poor remain
with government schools from where they enter the category of educated
unemployed, as the job opportunities for them are limited. This leads to
frustration and at the margin and gives rise to crime. The economic
institutions are probably the only ones that have fared relatively
better in the last two decades but they still present contrasting
images. The financial systems are robust – both the institutions as well
as the capital market, with a number of reforms and developments having
enhanced access as well as quality of services. The fact that the system
has held on during crisis times is heartening. The rich have benefited
through better access and returns from these segments. The smaller
entrepreneurs have struggled against the systems and still fight for
survival.
Growth has picked up notwithstanding the hurdles in policy which have
certainly clouded the pace of progress. Infrastructure has shown a mixed
picture with expressways coexisting with the absence of roads,
electricity and urban infrastructure. The middle class has drawn the
benefits if located in the metros or larger cities where they have
access to modern lifestyles that promise hope for upward mobility.
Government programmes for the poor are afflicted with leakages, but have
helped some of the poorer sections nonetheless. There is evidently a
long way to go here because to reduce inequities in our social fabric,
these leakages have to be eliminated. Where does this leave us? We have
created many institutions which are inundated with several challenges.
The fact that the country has grown is remarkable because it has
happened notwithstanding these obstacles – signs of a functioning
anarchy. The economic reforms story has been continuous despite
different governments, which again is a good sign.
Indian enterprise has fought to find its way, but the government
evidently needs to clean up the administrative and social institutions
which will necessarily have to begin with the political structure.
Therefore, there are still signs of anarchy where the guilty have an
easier time. The rot has set in our institutions fairly deeply. But the
country functions mainly due to the people – driven by motivations of
faith or fate or just pragmatic realism where they try because that is
the only way out.
Anarchism is considered as a facet of sedition. It isn’t a dirty word,
in reality. In fact, spontaneous order enriches the sense of liberty,
responsibility and accountability. Even empirical analysis can gibe with
my observation, if at all they’re “independently” peer-reviewed.
Dangerous freedom is always better than peaceful slavery. Every
voluntary action happening around is an act of anarchism and it’s vile
to episteme “without government, who’ll build the roads?“
This descriptive article (hopefully you’ve read) is an attempt to
explore anarchism and also endeavors to clarify certain mindless
misconceptions. Indians (including nationalists or “liberal” leftists)
possess partial information embedded with bounded rationality. I blame
this tribe for manipulating the knowledge and discourses.
As a professor, I have faced “ideological discrimination” in my
vocational life for teaching my students to look at things from
libertarian or anarchism perspective. Does it signify that Indian
education system is obsessed with dumping down of imbecility?
I can cite few examples (which are unfortunately uncovered by mainstream
media or economists) on people’s free association. There are many
practical examples for you to search out.
Massimino, Cory. “What Is Anarchism?”. Center for a Stateless Society.
N.p., 2015. Web. 2 Feb. 2016.
“Anarchism In India: Non-Government Philosophy In Ancient Hindu
Thought”. America Pink 2016. Web. 2 Feb. 2016.
Drèze, Jean, and Jean Drèze. “Anarchism In India”. Raiot. N.p., 2015.
Web. 2 Feb. 2016.
Firstpost,. “Why India Remains A Functioning Anarchy Even Now –
Firstpost”. N.p., 2013. Web. 2 Feb. 2016.