Re: The Bharatiya - Identity, Vision, Agenda, Proposition
Posted: 15 Feb 2013 02:38
The role and very structure of the state needs to be very carefully thought about. In most cases now, the sheer size of the central industrialized pyramid that is needed to maintain the coercive control that the state imposes on the society - is almost impossible for citizens to overthrow if the state fails to keep its side of the bargain/contract.
Its simplistic to state that its is only a matter of a contract between the state and the citizens. It was perhaps so in the days when cannons were relatively few, and guns could still be supplied with bullets made at home with a punch, or it was just a case of bow and arrows and slingshots.
The fundamental factor that drives all contract is the actual power of either of the party to impose consequences, retaliatory, punitive and decisive on the other for breach of contract. The modern state almost always holds an unfairly overwhelming coercive edge over its citizens, thereby nullifying the theory of "contract".
People often try to proclaim that the "voting" or electoral methods give the people all power to change everything they don't like. That again is a very simplistic claim often coming from members of elite or others who stand linked or support power groupings dominating the state for their own advantage.
If the state provides a one-sided coercive control mechanism, it means that it will attract those people who would like to exercise totalitarian control over the rest of society. If they manage to come to power, they will exercise all available methods of ideological control, by actively promoting through education, media and even monetary incentives their own brand of "values" and intervening with all the above as well as the full coercive power of the state - both overt and covert - to crush or eliminate even ideological nuclei of opposition to their agenda.
This is exactly the method that has been used to corner the "Indic" in India. On the other hand mere balancing acts between regional and central totalitarians is no guarantee or solution either. The very reason any two-level system can still be corrupted by power-seeking elite - works here too. The problem with the representative method that we have now - is actually the problem of a two-tiered, or two level game.
The first levels are those that the people elect directly - and therefore that game is much more restricted, localized and narrowed down in its scope. The electorate does not have to think of larger issues, do not have any pre-requisite to be even aware of such issues and their impact perhaps down the chain on their own cozy local interests. Moreover - they might be under dependency/fear/connected constraints with those they have to elect.
But the elected actually form a second level of the game where they bargain and ally with each other at this "elected" level on larger issues, and in ways and on things they never had to consult with those they elected. They can then get away with things - using the lagged effect problem - that might affect the very people they were elected by, negatively.
The regional and Delhi [or Ujjain - a new capital perhaps for the future] might actually be repeating this two-level corruption nakhra that exists now in the assembly/parliament system itself (if one thinks the regional satraps forming the pseudo-parliament).
In fact the states authority to intervene should be divided into two restricted classes: those that can be automated and taken out of human discretion (thereby disempowering the tsars and bosses of patronizing institutions), and those others where discretion is still unavoidable - subject to direct democracy.
I would be very very wary of claiming "existing" practice or even selections of textual claims as to be made into "state values" or "state principles". This was exactly what was done by the Brits [and perhaps by the sultanate too] to select only one text of Hindu "law books" among many competitive ones - as "proposed" by certain scholars and as accepted by British "experts" and orientalists, as the "law book for Hindus". There is well documented research on how confusing and divested of real-practice this attempt was. The result was the production of the more repressive memes from Manu Samhita as the sole legitimate representative of claimed ideal Hindu society - which in turn provides all the right excuses to kick the Hindu and even create new invented divisive identities. Whenever textual claims are imposed without trying to understand the motivations, context, time place and language use - it almost always is used by the powerful to create conditions for perpetuating their own power and weakening alternative centres of challenges to their power. Are we to justify the khap panchayats torture and liquidation of couples because they don't fit into their ideas of sexual unions - out of claims of "practice"? That in turn is based on taking a certain idea of "gotra-aantara" and exogamy rules - which obviously evolved at least partly out of a certain specific demographic constraint. It might have been appropriate and reproductively meaningful from the interests of the group - at that specific time and condition and numbers, but need not be valid for our times. People have to try to understand the principles used to arrive at "practices" and need to check out whether they remain applicable.
Sanatana is often represented as something unchanging, universally applicable. Agreed that there might be something after all like that - but make sure that what you are trying to apply as "sanatana" is really sanatana. Even the texts bear signs of constant change of practice - from period to period, place to place.
Do not let this become and excuse for perpetuation of dominance and power by small aspiring elite groups who will simply reproduce all the totalitarian features we are condemning now. They will do so in the "Indic " garb, and thereby ensure that a future reaction to their personal narrowness will throw the Indic away too as guilty.
Its simplistic to state that its is only a matter of a contract between the state and the citizens. It was perhaps so in the days when cannons were relatively few, and guns could still be supplied with bullets made at home with a punch, or it was just a case of bow and arrows and slingshots.
The fundamental factor that drives all contract is the actual power of either of the party to impose consequences, retaliatory, punitive and decisive on the other for breach of contract. The modern state almost always holds an unfairly overwhelming coercive edge over its citizens, thereby nullifying the theory of "contract".
People often try to proclaim that the "voting" or electoral methods give the people all power to change everything they don't like. That again is a very simplistic claim often coming from members of elite or others who stand linked or support power groupings dominating the state for their own advantage.
If the state provides a one-sided coercive control mechanism, it means that it will attract those people who would like to exercise totalitarian control over the rest of society. If they manage to come to power, they will exercise all available methods of ideological control, by actively promoting through education, media and even monetary incentives their own brand of "values" and intervening with all the above as well as the full coercive power of the state - both overt and covert - to crush or eliminate even ideological nuclei of opposition to their agenda.
This is exactly the method that has been used to corner the "Indic" in India. On the other hand mere balancing acts between regional and central totalitarians is no guarantee or solution either. The very reason any two-level system can still be corrupted by power-seeking elite - works here too. The problem with the representative method that we have now - is actually the problem of a two-tiered, or two level game.
The first levels are those that the people elect directly - and therefore that game is much more restricted, localized and narrowed down in its scope. The electorate does not have to think of larger issues, do not have any pre-requisite to be even aware of such issues and their impact perhaps down the chain on their own cozy local interests. Moreover - they might be under dependency/fear/connected constraints with those they have to elect.
But the elected actually form a second level of the game where they bargain and ally with each other at this "elected" level on larger issues, and in ways and on things they never had to consult with those they elected. They can then get away with things - using the lagged effect problem - that might affect the very people they were elected by, negatively.
The regional and Delhi [or Ujjain - a new capital perhaps for the future] might actually be repeating this two-level corruption nakhra that exists now in the assembly/parliament system itself (if one thinks the regional satraps forming the pseudo-parliament).
In fact the states authority to intervene should be divided into two restricted classes: those that can be automated and taken out of human discretion (thereby disempowering the tsars and bosses of patronizing institutions), and those others where discretion is still unavoidable - subject to direct democracy.
I would be very very wary of claiming "existing" practice or even selections of textual claims as to be made into "state values" or "state principles". This was exactly what was done by the Brits [and perhaps by the sultanate too] to select only one text of Hindu "law books" among many competitive ones - as "proposed" by certain scholars and as accepted by British "experts" and orientalists, as the "law book for Hindus". There is well documented research on how confusing and divested of real-practice this attempt was. The result was the production of the more repressive memes from Manu Samhita as the sole legitimate representative of claimed ideal Hindu society - which in turn provides all the right excuses to kick the Hindu and even create new invented divisive identities. Whenever textual claims are imposed without trying to understand the motivations, context, time place and language use - it almost always is used by the powerful to create conditions for perpetuating their own power and weakening alternative centres of challenges to their power. Are we to justify the khap panchayats torture and liquidation of couples because they don't fit into their ideas of sexual unions - out of claims of "practice"? That in turn is based on taking a certain idea of "gotra-aantara" and exogamy rules - which obviously evolved at least partly out of a certain specific demographic constraint. It might have been appropriate and reproductively meaningful from the interests of the group - at that specific time and condition and numbers, but need not be valid for our times. People have to try to understand the principles used to arrive at "practices" and need to check out whether they remain applicable.
Sanatana is often represented as something unchanging, universally applicable. Agreed that there might be something after all like that - but make sure that what you are trying to apply as "sanatana" is really sanatana. Even the texts bear signs of constant change of practice - from period to period, place to place.
Do not let this become and excuse for perpetuation of dominance and power by small aspiring elite groups who will simply reproduce all the totalitarian features we are condemning now. They will do so in the "Indic " garb, and thereby ensure that a future reaction to their personal narrowness will throw the Indic away too as guilty.