Book Review: Asia & the Pacific: India: Political Ideas and the Making of a Democratic Discourse
| Author | Aditya Anshu |
| Published date | 01 August 2015 |
| Date | 01 August 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1478-9302.12100_109 |
| publishedBy | Sage Publications, Inc. |
under-represented in the international comparative
policy literature.
Daniel Béland
(University of Saskatchewan)
India: Political Ideas and the Making of a
Democratic Discourse by Gurpreet Mahajan.
London: Zed Books, 2013. 181pp., £18.99, ISBN
9781780320922
Gurpreet Mahajan’s intention in this book is to
authenticate the view that political theory in the West
is different from that in the East. Towards such
authentication, she identifies different political variables
such as equality, freedom, religion and its democratic
discourse and convincingly argues that we should not
view these variables in the Indian context through a
Western lens. Mahajan makes that sharp distinction
by presenting different examples and the views of
various Indian thinkers such as Rabindranath Tagore,
Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bamkim Chandra
Chattopadhyaya. In the process, she has provided a
detailed exposition of Indian democracy.
The book is divided into separate chapters on
Equality, Freedom, Religion and Diversity, and each
of these is presented from an indigenous rather than
Western perspective. For instance, when Mahajan talks
about democracy, she tries to link the individual to
society and then society to the state. When it comes to
secularism, she makes a distinction against its Western
interpretation and instead presents how important reli-
gion is in the Indian context. Although the state for its
part is secular (i.e. it doesn’t follow any religion of its
own), it cannot force its citizens to do the same.
Religion is the soul of Indian society and everything
revolves around it. Mahajan tries to show that religion
is the umbrella and that other concepts like ‘rights’,
‘equality’, ‘freedom’ and ‘diversity’ lie under its
shadow.
When it comes to equality, the author talks about
positive discrimination as a strategy to achieve equality
in Indian society, whereas any such discrimination in
Western political philosophy is not accepted. Because
Indian society is a diversified society, she introduces
the concept of ‘multiculturalism’, which implies how
the Indian state has to accommodate the existing diver-
sity. Thus, by providing these explanations, the author
emphasises the need for an indigenous social science or
an Indian political theory in contrast to that of the
West.
The book is very well researched, with critical
analysis of all the available literature by the author,
who has presented her unique concept of Indian
political theory as being distinct from that of the West.
With its simplicity of language, coherent thought and
consistent flow, this book is a must-read for Indian as
well as non-Indian readers as it beautifully introduces
such exciting political concepts.
Aditya Anshu
(Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Regimes of Narcissism, Regimes ofDespair by
Ashis Nandy. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013. 196pp., £19.99, ISBN 9 780198 089650
In Regimes of Narcissism, Regimes ofDespair, Ashis
Nandy moves beyond the clichéd trope of what he
calls ‘normal politics or economics’ (p. ix) when it
comes to examining the distinctiveness of India’s
political culture. Instead, Nandy reveals how ‘two pre-
dominant psychological states: narcissism and despair’
(p. ix) fundamentally (re)shape the intellectual history
of Indian politics, and do so alongside the practices of
territorialising, stakes, contentions and issues of subjec-
tivity involved therein.
The book comprises eight chapters that hover at the
interstices of issues concerning nationalism, terrorism
and mass violence, ideas of happiness and humiliation.
The overarching theme of ‘modernity’, which has
been a pressing concern for Nandy throughout his
career, weaves the chapters together. For Nandy,
modernity in South Asia – he takes the examples of
China and India (p. 13) – is a perennially incomplete
project, emanating from and tutored by West Euro-
pean frameworks of reference that are incongruous
with South Asian contexts. The vicissitudes in personas
arising out of the desire to cope with a conceptually
untranslateable worldview (as reflected in the lives of
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Madanlal Pahwa) is
illustrative of the very problem Nandy has set out to
explore.
In the first chapter, drawing on the ideas of Gandhi
and Tagore, he distinguishes between ‘nationalism’ and
‘patriotism’; interestingly, however, without alluding
to Sumit Sarkar. This is symbolic of the overall tone of
this book: the pieces, most of which are actually
BOOK REVIEWS461
© 2015 The Authors. Political Studies Review © 2015 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2015, 13(3)
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