Yogendra Yadav On Death Of Modern Indian Political Thought (image: facebook.com/YogendraYY)
In an Indian Express opinion piece titled “Where are our political thinkers,” political activist Yogendra Yadav details about the sudden death of modern Indian political thought. It has sustained politics of colonial and post-colonial India through the 20th century and the deterioration of the political thinking affects entire political class, despite ideological and political differences, Yadav added.
“While everyone notes and comments on the decline of political morals, we tend to miss out on something that is no less significant — the emaciation of our political vision, the shrinkage in the vocabulary of politics, the withering away of our political under-standing, the poverty of political judgement and the recession in the agenda for political action,” he wrote.
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Though one cannot put an exact date when the death happened, according to Yadav’s observation, it is somewhere in the first quarter of post-colonial India. Tracing history, he recalled the abundance of political thinkers active in 1947 across ideological spectrum. Aside from Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and BR Ambedkar, the range of thinkers included MN Roy, Aurobindo, Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, Acharya Narendra Deva, Jayaprakash Narayan, Rammanohar Lohia, SA Dange, PC Joshi, Ramasamy Naicker Periyar, C Rajagopalachari, VD Savarkar and Maulana Maududi.
“They were, or had been, political activists, but their political practice was anchored in a vision of future India. While engaged in everyday politics, they were also engaged in thinking, speaking, writing about issues beyond quotidian partisanship. They were fully immersed in India, but deeply informed of the developments across the world. They read and wrote in English but were deeply anchored in the world of indian languages,” he adds.
But within the first 25 years after Independence, this tradition suddenly deteriorated. By the early 1970s almost all thinkers mentioned died. However, the period marked thoughts and visions of Jayaprakash Narayan, Charu Majumdar, Vinoba Bhave, MS Golwalkar, and Charan Singh.
In the end of the century, except Kishen Pattnayak, Sachchidananda Sinha, Ramdayal Munda, Dharam Pal and BD Sharma – who stayed aloof from mainstream politics, remaining political activist-thinkers also disappeared. “Since then, we don’t have, in any meaningful sense, a body of political thought that reflects on and, in turn, shapes the world of political action,” Yadav pointed out.
At the same time, Yadav states that currently we have brilliant minds, thinkers and writers more than before just politics is not at the centre of thinking. Though various strands of political thinking is happening it do not contribute to a coherent conversation, a vibrant contestation or a meaningful dialogue that can connect to the world of politics, he writes.
“Critiques of the dominant model of development, explorations in the pluriverse of alter- natives and occasional debates in feminist and Ambedkarite circles keep the tradition of political thinking alive,” Yadav cites as honourable exceptions.
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Continuing further, Yadav observes that political thinking retreated to the world of academia. Though it resulted in the some brilliant political theorists like Rajni Kothari, D L Sheth, Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee, Sudipta Kaviraj and Rajeev Bhargava, “much of their ideas have not left a deep impression on the world of political practice.” The academic mode of thinking about politics, with reliance solely on English language is indifferent to political consequences.
According to Yadav, deterioration in political thinking in some measure constituted the sorry state of our politics today. Reviving and reinvigorating this tradition of modern Indian political thought is a precondition to reclaiming our republic, he concludes.
