There have been many obituaries of liberalism in the past decade. To many, its demise is welcome as a Western import to be shaken off as colonial baggage. To others, it is a retrograde step into the dark ages. Somewhere in the middle lies a path worth considering for us today.
Like many great ideas, liberalism’s core commitment is often buried under the scars of adherents who have given to it a meaning that suits their particular viewpoints. At its core, liberalism is a belief in freedom and equality of all persons and a commitment to arrive at some workable social arrangement that finds common ground amidst our diversity and disagreement. Seen this way, liberalism is an old idea, found as much in the democratic spirit of Hinduism as in the practice of early Mughal politics and the Sikh Khalsa, embedded in theocratic or monarchical systems, ripe for their time, but past today. An ethic of tolerance for diversity and for views we find deeply disagreeable, democracy by dialogue as Amartya Sen calls it, is very much a part of our culture and hardly a political innovation imported from the West.
But liberalism is often seen as an alien idea. In particular, three criticisms are common. The first is that liberals take an unnecessarily critical and negative attitude to Indian society, its customs and civilisation. The second is that liberals are selective in their appeals to liberty, playing a game of minority politics. The third is that liberals are isolated in their privileged bubbles, islands of great talk and no action. What I want to suggest here is that there is a grain, if not more, of truth in all these criticisms, but reactive attitudes that want to do away with liberalism itself ought to be rejected for political reasons as much as cultural ones.
It is true that many liberals unduly discount the rich traditions of Indian civilisation out of cultural ignorance as much as out of active intellectual preference. It is unfortunate that our school and university curricula do not teach us more about Indic knowledge systems, that flippant characterisations of Indic thought as entirely caste-riddled or misogynist are all too common, and that references to Indic texts are all too readily met with anxiety. These traditions deserve great respect, attention and study, for the strength and beauty of their ideas that have been a living part of our culture. A renaissance, or renewal, is called for. Yet, it is equally true that our culture, drawing from those very sources, had degenerated towards a parochial caste spirit, sustained horrible hierarchies, and lost its energy and vitality in a mass of superstition. As T.M. Krishna beautifully articulated in his column for this paper on August 30, faith is about experience, not dogma or socialised codes that tar its purity. The liberal’s commitment to equality and liberty requires positive action to revive, renew and strengthen these traditions, which based themselves on the ideal of freedom for all — sarva mukti, our true dharma — and also to criticise with a zeal its perversions. In fact, in this preservation by reconstruction, as Vivekananda called it, lies the liberal’s greatest ally. The seeking spirit at the core of the Indic tradition, which is intolerant of all impositions of external diktat and crude groupisms, including an ethnic, as opposed to spiritual, Hindu groupism, gives a strong ethic of freedom and tolerance. If Western liberalism is criticised often for being too individualistic and rejecting the old virtues, the edifice of Indian liberalism can be built on stronger foundations.
It is also true that liberalism has been selectively applied. Minority communities, particular the Muslim communities, needed to be made to feel secure and confident in Independent India, reeling from the Partition and with the prospect of religious violence looming large. Yet, 75 years on, we can do well to remember Justice Chancrachud’s counsel in the Shah Bano case that political courage to tackle injustice is the need of the hour, including in minority communities. The role of the reformer is not primarily of the courts, but of communities and their leaders. Liberalism’s commitment to liberty and equality means that our minority communities must too reflect, through open and honest dialogue, on the unfreedoms that afflict them. This need not mean aggressive political action that creates distrust and anxiety, but it must mean a clear, transparent and sincere conversation within and outside the community to take problems seriously. Political parties have played the religious card in the name of liberalism to cover up clear injustices for far too long. The task of building a consensus of like-minded views, crossing barriers of dogmatic religious adherence, is now imperative. There are notable traditions of Islamic liberalism that can fight this fight, as much as governmental intervention of the kind majority communities are accustomed to. But passing the buck to the Supreme Court, and hiding under the cover of its legitimacy, cannot be the long-term strategy of good liberal politics. Liberals must make hard choices and tackle concentrations of power head on.
And third, it is true that many self-described liberals occupy positions of great privilege, with access to educational, employment and cultural opportunities unavailable to a majority of Indians. It’s not misplaced then to criticise liberals for being far too removed from how the common man lives, preaching high values from isolated bubbles. Liberalism implies at least a basic commitment to removing unearned concentrations of power and making economic and social opportunities available to all. This is not a zero-sum game, but it will require some serious redistribution. Liberalism has an ethic not only of liberty and equality but also of fraternity, and wide chasms of difference sit uncomfortably with this commitment. A liberalism that permits economic despair amongst our brothers and sisters is no liberalism.
I don’t mean to suggest revivalism, where we have ready-made liberal political institutions in our past that we can replicate in our democratic politics. Yet, it is an idea that has roots in our culture and debts owed to outside contact that can be carefully assimilated into the Indian political project. Our Constitution is best seen in this light. That the word, liberalism, is not found in the text of the Constitution should not detain us too long. Liberalism is our common heritage, an idea worth fostering and building, not simply a political ideology of the Westernized elite. Indian liberalism is alive and needs work by all lovers of freedom and tradition to build a society that actualises its commitments into living practices.
(Raag Yadava is an Assistant Professor of Law at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru)
