DEFENCE PRESENTATION

A thesis which seeks to speak of communalism without studying the partition or

conflicts that have come to be called communal riots or without reference to
hindutva, seems immediately to require some justification. Studies of
communalism have purportedly been driven by a search for answers to these
problems. However, rarely do we find a study that addresses these problems
directly. Answers to questions about partition, communal riots, hindutva or
several other phenomena seem to get diverted through the prism of an allencompassing problem, communalism. So in a strange sense, we do not study
communalism in order to understand these phenomena, we seem to study these
phenomena only in so far as we think they will lead us to answers about
communalism. If that is the case, then this study should not be considered
eccentric, for it does address the question of communalism directly, even if it
does not address most of the phenomena that one has come to associate with
the term.
When one examines contemporary scholarship on communalism one notices a
pattern that has gone largely unacknowledged. Our scholarship on
communalism has basically been concerned with the lack of acquisition of some
crucial learning goal or other that keeps Indian society or polity communal. Thus
our studies of communalism have always tried to teach us something. They
have implicitly believed that they were participating in a project of reform. Even
where learning goals (such as secularism or nationalism), were not explicit, these
studies have been propelled by a sense of their own pedagogic importance. This
thesis does not attempt to teach something, but rather to uncover what it is that
we have been seeking to learn and whether we can ever reach those learning
goals. Could there ever be a time when we would not be communal? From
where have we derived these learning goals and to what end do we seek to fulfil
them? And what is the nature of these goals such that neither the process of
learning nor the criteria of success can be clearly formulated? These questions
provide the guiding threads of the thesis.
The take-off point for the thesis is a historical account which should provoke
some curiosity. Ibn Battuta, a 14th century Muslim traveller described how
Muslims and infidels did not share water or food or indeed much proximity, the
infidels taking care to stand aside when Muslims were passing. His assessment
of this situation is that the Muslims are treated with honour in the Malabar
where contemporary views would see, at the very least, discrimination or
prejudice. How does one understand this difference in assessment? What are,
in fact, the bases of assessment that make us come to such conclusions? And
how is this difference significant in the present? One thing seems certain,
communalism cannot be a simple universal fact or category. I use this anecdote
as a point of departure for reconsidering our understanding of communalism.
Since communalism seems to be a contingent condition/development, I embark
on a genealogy in order to reconstruct the bases for this condition. But before I

take up a genealogical investigation, I examine available scholarship on

communalism and attempt to delineate certain peculiarities that consistently
emerge in this scholarship. These peculiarities will serve as clues later in a
revaluation of communalism. To summarise a rather long discussion the thesis
undertakes on the classification of available scholarship on communalism and its
peculiarities:
a) Communalism seems to suffer from contradictory characteristics: It is a
modern phenomenon which is the result of colonialism 1 or one which can
be dated back to age-old conflicts between the Hindus and Muslims since
the medieval era2. It is a product of modernity3 versus a remnant of
primitivism in modern India4. It has been considered the nemesis of
secularism5 or the means to achieve secularism 6; a lack of secularism7 as
well as an excess of it (Nandy 1985). Communalism is the result of the
failure of education8 or the regrettable success of Western education (Sen
1993). It is majoritarianism, but politics of a similar characteristic have
been expressed by minorities as well.
b) Definitions of communalism seem to locate the problem in deeper and
deeper realms almost to the point where it becomes inaccessible to
definition itself. For instance, it goes from being described as a prejudice
to an ideology to a consciousness.
c) Phenomena with similar characteristics are assessed extremely differently.
For example, caste politics shares practically all the characteristics that
one may draw for communal politics but one is assessed as progressive
and the other as regressive. Similarly, historical accounts found in
hindutva literature share common characteristics with certain kinds of what
Pandey drew attention to as local or community histories. Yet, the latter he
assesses as positive and the former as extremely negative.
d) When definitions are probed deeply, most often explanations of
communalism end up invoking evaluative frames rather than providing
consistent definitions. Communalism, in every single contradictory account
or definition still retains its negative evaluative force. Thus, even in the
absence of definitional clarity, the evaluative force remains consistent.
And if one questions the basis for these evaluative frames, a long toll of
violence is invoked as evidence for the need of a negative evaluation.
Thus, in effect what is said is that given whatever similar features other
1

A position first propounded by the nationalists and continues to be the most popular view.
This is the classic colonial position which has found echo in the work of later writers like C.A.Bayly
(1998) and Christophe Jaffrelot (1999) though in slightly different ways in both.
3
Nandys writings on secularism beginning with his very first piece, An Anti-Secular Manifesto (1985).
4
Most prominently held by Nehru (see Nehru 1934).
5
Most political scientists have insisted on the need for secularism in India as an effective means to combat
communalism. See Rajeev Bhargava ed. (1998), Vanaik (1997), Cossman and Kapur (1999) or P.R. Ram
ed. (1998).
6
See for instance Communal Road to a Secular Kerala by George Mathew (1989).
7
For instance, Khushwant Singh and Bipan Chandra call for a mass educational programme against
communalism, that will make people realise they are essentially secular and healthy and that communal
attitudes do not go with their personality and ideology (Singh and Chandra 1985: 62).
8
Amartya Sen in The Threats to Secular India (1993).
2

phenomena seem to share with what we call communalism, the latter has
the property of always leading to violence and therefore it is to be
abhorred. Now, it may be correct to say that there is historical evidence for
violence in Indian society. But before we understand what communalism
is, how do we know it is something that produces violence? How and why
it would produce violence are questions even further from explanation.
Thus the evidence of violence does not establish either its relationship to
communalism or shed any light on the concept of communalism. This
feature marks a strange interchangeability between concept and object.
When one asks for conceptual definition or explanation, one is only given
more and more object level evidence.
e) This concept-object swapping leads to a strange evidence loop in our
historical accounts as well. Our accounts of communalism are circular in
the sense that past conflict is cited as an explanation of the present
situation and present conflict as evidence of the problems existence in the
past. In effect therefore, we are communal today because we were
communal in the past and we must have been communal in the past
since we are communal today. Communalism is simultaneously cause
and effect, evidence and explanation in this conceptual quagmire.
f) Theories of communalism seem to multiply causes infinitely without any
compulsion to explain either the relationship between the cause and effect
or any relationship between causes9. This feature I call over-explanation.
I will not summarise here the detailed classifications of available scholarship on
communalism and its internal complications. Instead, I will keep these
peculiarities in the frame and move to the next broad question: what does it
mean to have a theory of communalism? The second chapter shows that the
plethora of theories of communalism we have are all causal theories. This
assumes then that communalism is a phenomenon or a set of phonomena with
some underlying unity for you cannot have a causal theory of a concept for
instance. However, in my section, The communal condition I investigate the
variety of different phenomena that have been classified as communalism
through an examination of cures posed for this problem over time. To summarise,
communalism refers to: an unwillingness to participate in representational
politics and thus remain in a state of political diminution 10; an assertion that
religious communities form the primary interest groups of the state and therefore
must have exclusive self-representation11; a state policy that is oppressive

For instance, Smiths work attempts to track the emergence of communalism (which he also implicitly
referred to as under-developed nationalism), to new capitalism compounded by the old factor of
religiosity. However, a theory of capitalism in India is simply not required in order to understand the
proposition that once the colonial government disbursed jobs along community lines, competition for
employment would take place along community lines. That is a fairly simple and straightforward
observation. What is not clear is the relationship this communal competition bears to underdeveloped nationalism or religiosity.
10
This is implicit in the dubbing of Sir Syyed as a communal as against nationalist figure.
11
This is implicit in the demands of the Muslim League

towards minorities12; the prejudice of an individual against other groups of

people13 and a hegemonisation or semitisation of hinduism in order to replace it
with fundamentalist and exclusivist strands14. Thus, one is hard-pressed to
understand these phenomena as one common phenomenon. The only possible
essential characteristic that unifies these phenomena is the view that each of
these phenomena is really based on the antagonism between two religious
groups15 which has found expression in different ways over the ages. However,
this is the one view which all Indian scholarship on communalism has fought
tooth and nail to refute. For this is the classic colonial vision of Indian society
which requires only one cure that it be purged of religion altogether. This
colonial view has been rejected as essentialist and self-serving. However, we
are caught in a bind here. Either the colonialist was always right or all
subsequent Indian scholarship on communalism has been significantly wrong
somewhere.
There is another possible explanation. Perhaps communalism has changed
meaning over time and that is why a diversity of phenomena are picked up over
time by the same term? However, this is not a possible answer since all of these
phenomena are still referred to as communalism at the same time, i.e. in our
descriptions today. As long as meanings change and their older divergent
referents either die or gain other corresponding terms there is no problem.
However, when a term changes and yet refers to all the older divergent referents
as well, then we cannot make a case for change of meaning.
If communalism is not one phenomenon but several, then we should have
several causal theories that tackle individually these different phenomena.
However, this has never happened. Then perhaps we must examine
communalism as a concept more carefully. What makes this concept seem to
refer to object-level phenomena of such diverse character? A theory of
communalism must explain these peculiar features we have observed rather
than multiply causal theories. A theory of the concept or better put, an explication
of the concept would depend on excavating the theoretical framework which
gives this concept its meaning and force.
This brings us to an examination of colonial discourse, the framework within
which the concept communalism first emerges. Our general approach to colonial
discourse is to consider it as a set of observations of the coloniser about the
colonised. But this is a loose description and does not give us any sort of grasp
on the nature of this discourse. The further proposition that colonial discourse is
essentialist is perhaps the most stringent criticism that is usually made.
12

Secularists decry the BJP as communal because majoritarian.

Indeed for the die-hard secularist, any behaviour or attitude which may show any prejudice against any
group is potentially communalism.
14
The argument that the RSS is transforming hinduism
15
This characterization, however, does not directly explain questions within the third class of phenomena to
be cured by pluralism. The problem with hindutva for instance was not simply that it was anti-Muslim but
also that it sought to do something to Hinduism which is perceived as dangerous.
13

However, as I explore in chapter 2, it is unclear what is meant by this allegation.

For instance, when we examine the proposition that colonial discourse attributes
certain characteristics of the native to his very nature rather than to his
historical/social circumstances, we find that colonial discourse in fact does
provide historical or social reasoning and does not simply make assertions about
the nature of the native without justifications of this kind. The further objections,
that it generates descriptions of the native which are unchanging, relies on the
permanent puerility of the native, and always implies the superiority of the West,
are in fact features that our own scholarship shares with colonial discourse when
we examine our own relationship to concepts like communalism. This suggests
that even after we have observed certain characteristics of this discourse, we
seem to replicate its framework in our own scholarship. This is the persistence of
colonial discourse which post-colonial scholars have been grappling with over the
past few decades. But we do not have a theory of colonialism which explains this
persistence.
In chapter three I take up this task and propose a hypothesis that enables us to
account for the characteristics hitherto dubbed essentialist, as well as meet
most of the objections that post-colonial scholars have raised vis a vis
colonialism. My proposition that colonial discourse is best understood as a
network of normative inferences. I explain this with several examples the
briefest one being perhaps the most effective. In a report on the legal system of
Mysore in 1799, Major Wilks, acting resident at Mysore provided what he
considered incontrovertible proof of the defective veracity of the native i.e. native
inclination to lie! Wilks noted native courts gave less credibility to testimony and
much more credibility to collateral evidence. The native law officials defended this
as a much more reliable system than one that took for granted the truth of
testimony by itself. This was Wilks conclusion from this observation:
The translation of their civil and religious institutes, has now laid open to the
general reader, the apology or the expiation of perjury in most of its forms: and the
most enlightened authorities of the law, have pronounced their practical conviction, that
the natives of India are lamentably deficient in that ordinary degree of veracity, which in
other countries is cherished as the vital principle of moral conduct, and the foundation of
all the virtues.

Thus the absence of the idea of the inherent truth of a testimony is taken as
evidence for the general encouragement of perjury and thereby deceit. This is
quite an interesting inversion. It is important to distinguish Wilks statement from
an observation these people lie and are thus deceitful 16. Wilks is also not
drawing a simple contrast to the principle of how testimony is dealt with in two
legal systems and its consequences. Here Major Wilks points out that there is an
absence of a principle which is crucial to English Law and is also the vital
principle of moral conduct, and the foundation of all the virtues in the West and
16

This is a common recurring observation about the oriental as I subsequently point out. Again, it is
certainly not my objective to give this observation credibility. I merely use this as an instance to show how
normative inferences would differ from other statements. Later I hope to draw a distinction between
stereotypes and normative inferences which should explain this further.

by extension should be so in all the world. If such a vital principle is absent, not
Truth itself, but the idea of inherent truth of the testimony of an individual, even
though this practice would seem to be more consonant to reason, it must serve
as irrevocable proof of the defective veracity of the Indian population in general.
Before I go on to draw out the characteristics of normative inferences, there is
one immediate objection to deal with. Some may argue that the knowledge of
oriental deceit precedes this inference. Thus, there may be well-accepted notions
about the Asiatics or Orientals17 already in circulation which are merely
reassessed and thereby proved within the normative frameworks of the time.
Were these based on observation at first and only later proved or sometimes
perhaps not proved through inference? Major Wilks in the example above may
have merely examined one framework (English Law), within which to
demonstrate in normative terms the deceit of the oriental. But his knowledge
(presented as pure observation) of this trait he had already received from older
European sources about India. I propose that the distinction between the
knowledge he already may have had and the proof he provides is what
gives colonial discourse its distinctive character 18. This is also therefore
what distinguishes my account from that of Edward Saids orientalism. I am
unable at the moment to provide a theoretical justification for why colonial
discourse took this form of a network of normative inferences. In stead, I
demonstrate the efficacy of my own hypothesis through the explication of certain
key recurring ideas in colonial discourse such as oriental despotism and the
degeneracy of pre-colonial India. Here I draw out the characteristics of
normative inferences and the implications of the hypothesis that colonial
discourse is a network of normative inferences:
1. Normative inferences are generally presented as statements of fact
about the native. Unlike in the above example their inferential nature is
often lost though it can certainly be reconstructed by an excavation of the
colonial normative framework. (For example, despotism as the absence of
private property is not evident in most colonial accounts which use the
term loosely but it is certainly the only way to arrive at an understanding of
why the East was always considered despotic.)
2. These are inferences from norms, not facts. They require not the presence
of any kind of positive evidence (i.e facts) but merely the absence of
particular norms that are central to the coloniser (in the case above, the
absence of testimonial truth).
3. They are therefore not based on observation. Observations that Orientals
are deceitful are subject to both change and contradiction by other or the
same observer over time19. However, once inferential knowledge of the
kind above is drawn, contradiction can only come when the
17

See Edward Saids classic text Orientalism.

I suspect that the difference here also may allow us to make a distinction between orientalism and
colonialism. But that requires consideration separately.
19
For instance, see Elphinstones defence that orientals were not necessarily all deceptive in The History of
India.
18

4.

5.

6.

7.

normative framework itself faces change. In other words, Wilks

provides proof which rests on the foundations not of observed behaviour
in Eastern society but of the absence of a normative concept that is of
crucial import in Western Law. To understand his proof requires no
observation at all. In fact, this inferential knowledge substituted the
very need for observation.
Thus, normative inferences cannot be contradicted by positive evidence.
For instance, a statistical survey of how many people lied or spoke the
truth in cases in the Mysore court in 1799 has no bearing on Wilks
assessment that the native is deceptive because he has no concept of
testimonial truth.
The only possible means of a change in assessment would have to rest
either on a major change in the western normative framework itself (in this
case western Law), or on the East learning this western normative
framework20.
Thus, normative inferences implicitly pose learning goals for the colonised.
These learning goals are not predicated on the ability to behave like the
coloniser, as is predicated in theories of colonialism as generating mimicry
for instance. For instance, Wilks would not be satisfied with the native
speaking the truth, the native must first of all adopt the system of
testimonial truth. However, since testimonial truth is predicated on the
individual soul and its relationship to God in Christianity, the natives
adoption of just the strategy of testimonial truth will certainly never suffice!
It is the adoption of the entire normative framework that would be required.
This makes the learning goals set by colonial discourse deeply
unachievable! But more on this later.
Normative inferences proliferate and rarely remain a single proposition.
They tend to provide support for each other while at the same time
obfuscating the original norm from which the inference is drawn and
generating multiple other kinds of causes. (For ex, Wilks proposes that the
defective veracity of the native may be the result of long years of living
under despotism. And Alexander Dow gives at least 13 different causes of
despotism.)

To reiterate, colonial discourse is made up of a network of normative

inferences. This knowledge posits the projected consequences of the
absence of the subjects (colonisers) own normative framework as
statements of fact about the colonised.
Thus, my account parallels Saids propositions about orientalism in many ways,
especially in his assertion that orientalism (and in my case colonial discourse)
gives us an account not of the East but of the West. Colonial discourse can help
us reconstruct the normative framework of the coloniser, but cannot serve as a
source of knowledge about the colonised. My account diverges from Saids in so
far as he poses the project of domination as the explanation or the motivation of
20

See S.N Balagangadharas Heathen in his Blindness and an unpublished essay on stereotypes.

this discourse. For this gives no explanation for the persistence of this discourse
after domination has ended. In my account the persistence is to be accounted
for, not by dominance but by the legacy of learning goals set by colonial
discourse. In so far as we seek to reach these learning goals, we remain caught
in this discourse and its normative inferences. In so far as we have relinquished
these learning goals, we are free of colonial discourse.
The native relationship to these learning goals, however, is anything but
straightforward. I outline in only the broadest and quite unsatisfactory terms two
responses to the learning goals set in colonial discourse before I go into an
examination of the consequences of the above theory for communalism.
1. Concepts become polysemic. I dub this the tower of Babel in my fifth
chapter. This is a strange phenomenon since the native uses colonial
concepts. However, there is no agreement to what they are to mean! In
my thesis I examine the conversation between Sir Syyed Ahmed Khan
and Badruddin Tyabji in order to show how the concepts of
representation and nation have no stable reference. This sets the scene
for a great deal of violence.
2. Concepts become attributes. This is the most tentative of my propositions.
But there seems to be a pattern whereby concepts lose depth i.e.
grounding in a theoretical framework and become instead characteristics
of individuals or communities or governments. The example I examine is
the idea of divide and rule but this has parallels in the use of the concept
of secularism and communalism as well.
In my fourth chapter I suggest that the conception of colonialism as a trust to
hold sovereignty over the natives until such time as the natives become
sovereign through a process of maturation, abetted this peculiar structure of
colonial knowledge. It is at this point we arrive finally at the promised genealogy
of communalism!
Now that we have a reconstruction of what colonial discourse is and a set of
expectations from this discourse, let us examine the old category communalism
once again. We know from etymological reconstruction that the term
communalism comes into being in the 1920s (in fact 1924). Before this the term
communal is used to refer to a type of reservations and a type of representation.
Thus, let us examine this history.
In 1899, Thorburn, Financial Commissioner of Punjab made a set of observations
which became the means of instituting communal reservations in state
employment:
Now, confining comments to the Musalman districts, the Musalmans there are so
inadequately represented that I think it will be readily admitted that if a remedy can be
found it should be applied both on political grounds and in simple justice to the people.
Obviously in such districts there must be popular dissatisfaction when the people see that
a majority of posts are held by members of a class antipathetic to them in religion and

interests a class which under the protection of our system is expropriating them and
reducing them to the position of helots.

What is adequate representation in government employment? In fact, what does

one represent at all in government employment? Why do all communities need to
be present in numbers proportional to their population in government services for
justice to be done? It is one thing to observe the poverty or lack of education
prevalent in a community and recommend state intervention in terms of
educational and employment schemes to alleviate such circumstances, and quite
another to say that the bureaucracy must be made up of proportionate
representation. The basis for Thorburns proposition is that the Hindus and
Muslims have conflicting interests and the employment of Hindus in
government services naturally creates discontent amongst the Muslims. The
language of conflicting interests in the case of government employment for
instance, is particularly strange. What are these conflicting interests? In
parliamentary governance for instance, capital and labour would be dubbed
conflicting interests, for the profits of one often rest on the exploitation of the
other. However, in this case, neither community can have a relationship of
potential exploitation. What they do have is a relationship of competition for
limited state employment or resources or educational provisions. The absurdity of
this situation is clear if one continues the analogy. In an election if two candidates
representing labour are competing for a seat in parliament, they cannot be
dubbed conflicting interests, they are merely competing with each other for a
limited number of seats and represent the same interest.
Further, how could one religious community, the Hindus be oppressing another,
the Muslims, in a secular British state? Clearly these remarks conflated two
social group divisions, one of religion and the other of class. Thorburns reference
had to be to a class of money-lenders and landlords who were expropriating
Muslim tenants and these were also incidentally, Hindus. The first part of the
reasoning which relies on a natural antipathy between Hindus and Muslims is
derived from the narrative of Hindu-Muslim antagonism. I have examined this
separately in chapter 3 as an old assumption made in colonial sources from the
late eighteenth century onwards. However, this narrative now becomes the
source for the notion of conflicting interests of the two communities. This is rather
curious and I now turn to investigate how these conflicting interests come to be
considered a problem for which representation was the answer.
In a liberal democratic context, conflict in interest is resolved by representation
since whichever party may be in power, both parties have the chance to defend
their own positions and secure what benefits they can. The Hindus and Muslims
were competing for a finite set of government positions but to define the
acquisition of jobs as in itself an interest is, as I have asserted above, a
nonsensical claim since the interest here is not defined in any way by particular
group positions. All individuals and groups would express this very same
interest since they would be competing for the same jobs! Thus, there can be no
conflicting interest, only competition. There could be no communal interests

served unless one is to make either of two inferences: that the competition was
really for a religious state and therefore the two religions were conflicting
interests in the competition for state control along religious lines; or the
competition itself was economic but the alleviation of the economic conditions of
one community would make the other vulnerable since they were natural or
historical enemies who were always engaged in a civil war of sorts 21. Neither of
these inferences is historically tenable. Clearly, we must find another way of
understanding Thorburns proposition of conflicting interests. In Western
representational discourse every mature citizen expresses a will which is what
the process of representation marked. Therefore, when this citizen expressed his
allegiance to an interest group, it marked the mature will which understood that
interests were to be secured in order to attain equality. Thorburn reverses this
logic. There is no equality in India. This is because it is made up of conflicting
interest groups. And since the people are not mature enough to exercise their will
and strive towards equality, the government must exercise it for them by giving
them equal representation22.
The nature of this normative plea for equality is quite different from the bid for
equality made by Muslim memorialists23 and others seeking patronage from the
colonial state in the early 19th century. The latter were demanding an equitable
distribution of state resources. Thorburn however, sets the stage for a different
notion of equality. For the memorialists, the State dispensation of resources was
either equal or unequal. For Thorburn, the people achieved equality. That meant
that through the process of learning to secure interests the groups would also
obtain and defend their equality with other groups. Equality changes reference
from a share in resources to a desirable outcome of the state of mature selfrepresentation.24 Thus, native conceptions of equality and colonial conceptions of
21

It is possible that the antagonism expressed in memorials like the one above may be cited at this point to
make precisely this point that the Hindus and Muslims did indeed see each other as natural and historical
enemies. We must recognize by now that this merely leads us to fall prey to the position in colonial
discourse that Indian society was doomed to be forever communal. If one continues to take this claim
seriously then there is very little that can be said except that we seem to have found the right solution in
partition and must have fared rather well thereafter!
22
One suspects that the conflicting interests may actually refer to the notion that India was made up of
several different nations. That is perhaps what he wishes to stress through his emphasis on classes that
are naturally antipathetic to each other. Therefore, Thorburn is really raising the point that in the absence
of a people who express one will, India could only demonstrate classes expressing clashing interests
because it was a State made up of different nations. This is much more explicit in Mintos explication of the
scheme of representation for India.
23
An examination of the history of native demands and the concessions the colonial state conceded in
response, reflects the often completely tangential nature of the conversations between native and coloniser.
For instance, according to the above conceptions of securing interests through representation in colonial
state bureaucracy, the judiciary would be a healthy institution so far as its employee statistics were in equal
ratio to population statistics of the different communities in India. This is of course a completely different
conception of a healthy judiciary from the one that Indian communities themselves had been demanding
i.e., that they have judges of their own communities to judge their cases for they would be in a better
position to understand their claims. It is deeply ironic that the demand of the communities for judges of
their own religion could not be ceded however, since differentiation between judges and the cases they
would try on the basis of their community would not be in the interest of equality!
24
Thus it shifts from an empirical to a normative concept.

equality were referring to anything but the same thing. Equal patronage would
always be a matter of competition before the State. This competition may well
cause conflict and antagonism. However, equal representation of conflicting
interests was to trigger off a whole different set of dynamics. Implicit in
Thorburns scheme for securing interests through representation is the fact that
the State could not secure the interests of the groups for them, they could only
be secured by self-representation. It was therefore not long before this notion of
equal representation in government services came to be understood in terms of
equal participation in government institutions. Less than a decade after
Thorburns recommendations, the Morley-Minto reforms were to set India on the
road to representative politics which recreated Thorburns logic through and
through. Thus, it is crucial to see the story of political representation in India as
an extension of this earlier story of communal representation in government
services.
I will not rehearse this history of representation here but will end here on a note
that returns us to the central dynamic of the thesis brought together by learning
goals. Clearly, we cannot say that we have learnt to be warring interest groups!
Thus, what does our assertion of modern day communalism imply? At the most
fundamental level, it means that several diverse phenomena as diverse for
instance as state violence against people (which can never be legitimate) and
violence of the people against the state (which may often express legitimate
concerns) get clubbed together as one and the same phenomenon. This is to live
in mind-boggling confusion about our past and our present.