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The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs
The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs
The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs
To cite this article: Michel Naumann (2008) Commonwealth, Democracy and (Post-) Modernity:
The Contradiction Between Growth and Development Seen From the Dalit Point of View,
The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 97:399, 851-855, DOI:
10.1080/00358530802485841
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The Round Table
Vol. 97, No. 399, 851–855, December 2008
MICHEL NAUMANN
Université de Cergy-Pontoise, Pontoise, France
RESUME Dans quelle mesure les politiques du Commonwealth refle`tent-elles une confusion
largement répandue entre croissance et de´veloppement, démocratie et gouvernance ? A travers
l’e´tude de la place des Dalits dans une Inde dont le libe´ralisme, le succès e´conomique et la modernité
sont souvent vante´s, l’auteur analyse les rapports entre démocratie et question sociale. Si le
Commonwealth veut promouvoir la de´mocratie, il est nécessaire qu’il prenne ses distances vis-à-vis de
la nature actuelle de la globalisation et entreprenne une analyse critique du modèle anglo-saxon.
KEY WORDS: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), cultural hegemony, Dalits, democracy,
development, economic growth, globalization, governance, liberalism, poverty
Introduction
Why hasn’t the Commonwealth asked the Indian government, in the name of
democracy, to do something in favour of the Dalits (untouchables) and landless
farmers who walked to Delhi last year? Does this silence mean that democracy has
nothing to do with the plight of the people?
When the official results of the 2008 Kenyan elections were proclaimed riots
started. The Commonwealth immediately called for an understanding between the
two party leaders involved and condemned the rioters. How could these politicians
be presented as the defenders of democracy whereas the people whom they had
reduced to the status of impoverished thugs were not given the slightest recognition
or understanding?
In proposing such a strategy to help a member state the Commonwealth had
probably confused democracy and ‘governance’. Even French, the language of 1789,
has started using the verb ‘ gouvernancer ’! The condemnation of the Kenyan people
was not due to the sin of violence because the Commonwealth did nothing about the
Indian Dalits (Untouchables) whose organizations do not resort to violence,
although Dalits suffer every day from what has been called in India ‘atrocities’. Must
we conclude that India’s economic success and growth rate seem to show that her
government and her democracy are adequate to the new liberal and global
dispensation, which is what governance is about? Governance is formal law and
actual order for the sake of the elite and economic growth. It means that the issue of
the development of the many is forgotten or, at least, that it will necessarily come as
a consequence of growth. As long as this confusion between democracy and
governance dictates Commonwealth policy in favour of democracy among its
members, the cause of democracy is doomed.
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big cities. Nowadays, the castes of traders and usurers are praised by economists,
who see them as the ancestors of Indian global capitalism and the problems of the
Dalits are once more forgotten.
Western democracy cannot easily see the Dalits because this cultural tradition sees
the citizen as an abstract entity, not a Dalit nor a Muslim or a Hindu. But in this
process of blurring identities, the Dalits are in the worst possible position: the West
knows about religions and classes as it still deals with such factors, but it cannot
define and understand castes, as they disappeared a long time ago in Europe. The
concept of good governance is too Western and based on individual economic
competition to see an actor in the economic field as a Dalit. Even many Indian
Marxists tend to erase the Dalits. In the past they were a necessary casualty of the
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Cities as much as Indian villages suffer from the economic decisions which go with a
policy of good governance. The Dalit movements have analyzed the consequences of
the Green Revolution2 and urban violence.
values brings anomie and despair. Many Dalits are thrown out onto the roads which
lead to the large cities.
humiliating position for which they are not prepared by traditional values.
Simultaneously new expenses appear: school fees for more literate children, longer
periods of unemployment due to the instability of the labour market, reduced social
help and subsidies, funds needed to create a small business for those made
redundant, the cost of a passport for those who want to migrate to the Gulf
(sometimes 100 000 rs), an increasing financial pressure created by consumer society
to keep up appearances. For unemployed or badly paid men, frustrated and
humiliated, often obliged to cling to traditional groups and values to survive, debts
and needs increase. The dowry is often a difficult issue and wives may be harassed,
threatened, beaten, attacked with acid or burnt by their husbands. Even in Kerala,
where the status of women is very advanced, crimes against women increased by
40% between 1990 and 1997.4 Dalits are always among the poorest of the poor in
urban areas as much as in rural ones. The politicians recruit thugs from these
sections of the population that they despise so much.
What the Commonwealth institutions call democracy is actually the opposite of it.
They do not understand and sometimes do not want to understand that a sound
democracy needs development, and that the present policy of growth without
development, what we call liberal globalization, is a factor of regression not only for
excluded men and women, but also for the rich who try to built a society which
doesn’t listen to the majority of citizens and even scorns them. Every day, in the
Mecca of high technology and successful globalization, Bangalore, the Indian Silicon
Valley, women are threatened not because of old Indian traditions, but because of
the living conditions, the anomie and the despair created by what is called progress
or (post-)modernity. Formal democracy imposed by the elites always betrays the
people, as Noam Chomsky once said: ‘‘it is when the threat of popular participation
is overcome that democratic forms can be safely contemplated’’.5
Notes
1. Radhakrishnan, P. (2006) Religion, Caste and the State (Bangalore: Rawat Publications), pp. 102–131.
2. Bandhu, P. (2007) Dalit Situation in South India (Bangalore: NEPA).
3. Teltumbde, A. (2005) Hindutva and Dalits (Calcutta: Samya).
4. Bandhu, P. (2001) Dalit Situation in South India, pp. 156–166.
5. Quoted by Slavoj Zizek, ‘‘Democracy versus the people’’, New Statesman, 18 August 2008, p. 46.