Social Scientist

The Politics of Culture

Author(s): Aijaz Ahmad
Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 27, No. 9/10 (Sep. - Oct., 1999), pp. 65-69
Published by: Social Scientist
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3518104 .
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 65

AIJAZAHMAD*

The Politics of Culture

Most discussionsof culturein India, as they take place in academic

circles and the dominant media, tend to confuse 'culture' with
'civilization'and civilization with 'religion'.These discussionsthen
preparethe groundfor identifyingthe essenceof Indianculturewith
Brahminicalclassicism. Hinduism remains the centre of gravity in
these confusions of culture, civilization and religion. Christianity,
which has an older presencein India than most smriti literature,is
rarely regardedas an intrinsic part of this all-Indicculture and is
jettisoned,in the discourseof revivalistconservatism,to the domain
of missionaries.Islam,which has an olderpresenceherethan most of
medieval bhakti, is itself regardedas marginaland additional. The
verytermsof this debate,with theirextraordinaryorientationtoward
the past, pave the way, objectivelyspeaking,for a revivalistand even
fascistkinds of culturalnationalism,sincethe culturalistclaimsof an
organisedreligion in the context of modernpolitics, where religion
gets intermeshedin culturalnationalism,almost always concealvery
high degreeof violence againstthose who stand outsidethe charmed
circle of this religiouslydefinedculturalnationalism.
Againstthis revivalistdefinitionof culture,we need a materialist
conceptionwhich looks at culturenot as spiritualor religiousheritage
but as a set of material practices through which people live and
produce the meaningsof their lives. The starting-pointfor such an
analysis is not the heritageof the past but the actual realitiesof the
present,and one of the thingsthat most cruciallymatter,then, is the
degree of access to culturalgoods - such as educationor trainingin
the arts - that differentclasses and social groups have in real life.
When we look at culturein this way, we immediatelyrecognisethat
social conflicts of various kinds, along lines of class, caste, gender,
ethnicity, etc. actually leave very little room for all the people, or
* SeniorFellow,NMML, TeenMurti, New Delhi
Social Scientist, Vol. 27, Nos. 9 - 10, Sept. - Oct. 1999

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66 SOCIALSCIENTIST

even majorityof the people, to have roughlyequal accessto cultural

goods, that may be shared by 'a people' or a whole nation to any
significant extent. Culture, in other words, is not an arena for
harmoniousunfoldingof the National Spirit,as is often supposedby
those who borrow their nationalist vocabulary from German
Romanticism.Nor is 'Culture'simply a zone of the aesthetic.It is a
field, rather,of contention and conflict, among classes and among
other social forces that strugglefor dominance.Everynation has at
any given time not one culture but several, and these contentions
takenot only the benignformof 'unityin diversity',as our nationalism
presupposes,but also as unity of opposites. In today'scontext, then,
we have to rejectcertain kinds of culturalnationalismand fashion
for ourselves a different kind. The essential task in the politics of
culture is to combat the elitist, revivalist,communalistculturewith
its orientationtoward the past and toward Brahminicalclassicism.
Insteadof that kind of culture,we haveto builda democratic,secular
cultureof moderncivic values and radicalequalities.
In this alternativeconception,then, the very idea of cultureas a
cultivationof spiritis seen as a privilegethat is availableto some and
denied to most. The distinctionsbetween high culture and popular
culture, between the great traditionand the little tradition,are then
seen as so many modes of the hierarchicalorganisationof the sphere
of cultureas a whole, which is by its verynaturerepressive.Classicism
is thereforeseen not just as accumulatedwisdom of the ages but also
an anachronismthat weighs upon the souls of the oppressed.
From the materialistconception of culture - the conception of
culture as sets of material practicesby differentstrata in society -
comes the conceptionof what Gramscicalled "thenational-popular,"
in which the nation itself is identified with the popular classes as
such, so that a 'nationalculture'can only ariseout of the practicesas
well as aspirationsof thoseclasses.Thisconceptionof nationalculture
as 'national-popular'has an orientationnot toward the past, as in
revivalistconception,but towardthe future;cultureitselfis conceived
then not as a finishedcommon possession,beyondthe various social
hierarchies,but as a struggle for cultural entitlementsas part of a
much broader democratic struggle for social and economic
entitlements of various kinds. This conception of the 'national-
popular'distinguishesitself from merepopulismin two ways. One is
that it does not regardthe oppressedas cultureless,it recognisesthat
thereare numeroustraditionsof the oppressedwhich are intrinsically
libertarianandegalitarian,thatthosetraditionsareamongour central

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The Politicsof Culture 67

resourcesof hope for the future;but, unlikefacile kinds of populism,

it also regardsthe totalityof the culturallife of the oppressedcritically
and even with suspicion,becausethere is much in the culturallife of
the oppressedwhich reflectsthe internalisedforms of the dominant
ideology and even the distortions which are produced in the
consciousnessof the oppressedby the mechanismsof oppressionitself.
On the other hand, the conception of the 'national-popular'refuses
to concede the culture of the upper classes to those upper classes
becauseit recognisesthat dominantcultureitself is not a productof
leisure but of labour, so that it is indeed the working classes and
other oppressedsocial strata which have in fact produced,through
blood and sweat, the culture that the upper classes call their own.
The work of creatingthe 'national-popular'thus involves a critical
task twice over,in other words a critical appropriationof all that is
best in the culturesof the oppressedas well as the oppressors,in the
serviceof a generalliberation.
Politics of culture has always had paramount importance in
Marxist-theory.In Marx's own writingswe find two great projects.
A verylargepartof his work was devotedto a scientificunderstanding
of the political economy of capitalismand to a demonstrationhow
the laws of the transitionto socialismariseout of the laws of capitalism
itself. An equally large part was devoted, however,to developinga
materialistconceptionof consciousness,ideology and culture.Thus,
in his 'Preface'to A Critiqueof Political Economy of 1859, Marx
makes a very important distinction between the realm of human
consciousness,as follows:
"... a distinction should always be made between the material
transformationof the economicconditionsof production,which can
be determinedwith the precision of natural science, and the legal,
political, religious, aesthetic, or philosophic - in short, ideological
forms in which men become conscious of their conflict and fight it
out."
What is striking about this distinction is that only "the
transformationof the economic conditions of production"are said
to be availablefor being "determinedwith precision,"in a scientific
manner.The "consciousness"of that fundamentalconflict is said to
belong elsewhere - in "the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or
philosophic"forms - which evidentlycannot be "determined"with
equal "precision"even though - or, more likely, because - that is
wherepeople actually"fightit out." Those formsare, in otherwords,
less the outcome of objective structural laws and much more

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68 SOCIALSCIENTIST

"determined"by the very way human subjects "fight it out" in

collective struggles. According to this principle, then, "political
struggle" encompasses a greater variety of "forms" ("religious,
aesthetic", etc.) in addition to the strugglesthat take place at the
point of productionas such. For,one bitterlesson we have learnedin
the course of the revolutionarystrugglesof the past is that the fact of
exploitation alone does not producea revolutionaryconsciousness.
For that, the domainof consciousnesshas to be addressedin the very
forms in which it experiencesthe world, and those forms are social
and ideological in nature.
Colonialismitself was not only an economicand politicalsystem
but also a powerful cultural force. Struggles against cultural
imperialismwere an integralpartof the nationalmovement.All forces
within that movement tried to capture the ground of our cultural
nationalism,the rightwing,upperclass and uppercaste tried to give
this cultural nationalism a revivalist colouring, which was a very
importantelement in the rise of communalism.The left and liberal
forces, by contrast, tried to create a modern, secular, democratic
culture in order to combat those revivalist and communal forces.
That struggle continues to this day. The past two decades have
witnessed great expansion in those revivalist and communal
tendencies, which are now paradingas "Hindu nationalism"and,
alternately,Indianculturalnationalism.The struggleover cultureis
now a centralelementin politicalstruggleas a whole, much more so
than ever before.
The whole issueof culturalandideologicalwork has an altogether
different salience in our time than it had at the time when basic
principles of classical Marxism were formulated. There was no
electronic media of radio, TV and film in Marx's time, so that the
purveyorsof rulingclassideologiescould not so easilyentereveryone's
homes, as they can now reach even very deep into the countryside.
Most of the working people in Marx'stime were illiterate,and even
in countrieslike Britainandthe USAanytrulysignificantprogrammes
for mass literacywere yet to come. Nor was therea singlecountryin
the world based on universalsuffrage;most of Europeitself did not
have representative government. All these changes - electoral
democracy,increasinglevelsof massliteracy,increasinggeneralisation
of the electronic media - have profound consequencesfor working
class consciousness;the rulingclasses have far greateraccess to that
consciousnessthan everbefore.Evenif we leave aside the questionof
parliamentarydemocracyandthe way it transformsthe consciousness

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The Politicsof Culture 69

of the working classes, we can readilysee that the various kinds of

media - print media and even more centrallyelectronicmedia - are
not justentertainmentsoutsidethe spheresof culturebut arethe very
central element in culturalcontrol, as a well-oiled culturalindustry
that dispensesideology not as an abstractset of beliefs but as image
and narrative that seeks to inhabit the soul and colonize the
unconsciouson behalfof those who controlthe heightsof this culture
industry.The working class movementshave to devise new ways of
dealingwith this problem.
The past decade has witnessed three fundamentalshifts in the
culturalfield. First,the Hindutvaforces, which used to be marginal
to nationalculturein the days of the National Movementand in the
opening decades of the Republic,are now the main contendersfor
politicaldominanceandculturalhegemony,especiallyin North India.
Second, economic liberalisationhas vastly acceleratedthe creation
of a pan-Indiancultureof commodityfetishismwhich the electronics
media is carryingfar beyond the urbanhabitats of the bourgeoisie,
fairly deep into the countryside.Together,these far-reachingattacks
on the founding principlesof the Republichave led to an immense
brutalisationof day-to-dayculturallife, certainlyof the affluentbut
with far-reachingconsequencesfor society at large, as competing
spectres of greed satisfied and of greed unsatisfiedstalk the land.
Third, the lack of a national project for social justice and the
acceptanceof the supremacyof the marketas the final arbiterof the
social good, combined with full commodification of competing
religiosities,has led to a new eruptionof the savageidentitiesof caste
and denomination, which gets intellectual respectabilityfrom the
indigenistscholarsfor whom secularismis the sin of modernitywhile
savage identities of religion and communityare the very essence of
what theycall 'tradition'.Of theseindigenismis arisingas a particular
pathology of 'highculture',and Hindutvaposes the most immediate
danger to the culture of secularcivility, but the greatest long-term
dangercomes from that worship of the marketthat goes currently
underthe nameof 'liberalisation'.For,unleashingof an uncontrolled
marketin a multi-culturalsociety that rests on such concentrations
of wealth and magnitudesof deprivationpromisesto createa culture
so brutish, so much at odds with itself, so devoid of any sense of
culture as a 'common way of life' that neither political democracy
nor the compact of a united nation may survivethis brutalisation.

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