One versus group

Ashutosh Varshney has written eloquently in these pages that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's third consecutive election victory and his potential ascendance to a role in national politics "challenges the so-called idea of India" ('Modi needs a Vajpayee', IE, December 25, 2012). A great debate is brewing in this context. What is the idea of India? Should certain groups have special rights over and above the individual rights that all citizens enjoy in a free, democratic India?

This is a fundamental schism in political philosophy. While many intellectuals have long argued for the primacy of group rights over individual rights, and the "protection" of minority interests, there needs to be broader discussion on how this mindset might atrophy individual identity.

An identity-based "minority group right" can broadly be of two types. It can either give the group's members more liberty or enforce more restrictions. Will Kymlicka, a leading proponent of multiculturalism, has developed a similar classification — he supports the former, terming them "external protections", and is less enthusiastic about the latter, which he christens "internal restrictions". But even external protections can be problematic. Examples of such protections in India include allowing members of certain groups to have multiple spouses, or providing for special autonomy in education. The question, then, is why not extend this "greater" liberty to all citizens? If the rationale for not doing so is that polygamy is socially harmful, or that regulation of educational institutions is needed, then why be condescendingly detrimental towards such minority groups?

Enforcing more restrictions — like restricting alimony or adoptions — is worse, as it forces individuals to choose between the state's definition of their faith or official apostasy. As Vrinda Narain argues in Gender and Community: Muslim Women's Rights in India, this "discrimination dictates a system of 'differential citizenship' based on ascriptive belonging".

The prevailing intellectual consensus that affords special rights to "minority" groups manufactures resentment in the majority community. This consensus offers no comment on realities like state control of Hindu places of worship. It correctly brands as "communal" an assertion of majority group rights that manifests itself in episodes like the banning of beef or banning voluntary conversions, while tacitly accepting similar rights for minorities in the name of "protection". Is this secularism?

This double standard is principally illiberal. Labelling those asking for individual rights over group rights as "radical" liberals or "extremist" troglodytes, while claiming oneself to be a "moderate" liberal, may be an effective rhetorical stratagem, but it is a specious argument. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that such a standard worsens communal relations — Steven Ian Wilkinson of Yale University has shown that increasing consociationalism in India has led to rising ethnic violence.

The tacit thrust of the propagators of this mindset is towards redistribution from the majority to the minority to ameliorate discrimination, while ignoring that identity rights pander to conservative elements that keep communities backward in the first place. Moreover, Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker has shown that in market economies, discrimination hurts even those who indulge in it, not just those who are discriminated against. It follows that in a non-market system, it makes economic sense to indulge in discrimination. In India, it is rare that those who bat for "secularism" come out in strong support of economic liberalisation.

It dawned on Marxists by the 1950s that workers wanted to engage with and possibly reform capitalism from within and not overthrow it altogether. In such a scenario, theorists of the New Left started scouting for virgin proletariats, based more on culture than class. Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School was one of those who bridged Marx with his understanding of Nietzsche and others, playing up the "non-integrated forces of minorities, outsiders and radical intelligentsia" in his book, One-Dimensional Man. Integration would mean capitulation to the "end of history". This furthered the scholarship on the compatibility of liberalism and group rights in left-leaning academia.

Left-liberals complain that "radical" liberals ignore the reality of individuals existing in a world based on social intercourse. This misrepresentation ignores the fundamental difference between the state and society, between coercion and choice. Indeed, Thomas Paine, Alexis de Tocqueville, Mohandas Gandhi and Deendayal Upadhyay have argued along these lines as well. As Jan Narveson writes, "only individuals can make decisions, have values, engage in reasoning and deliberation".

In our country where new ideas are in short supply, such meta-ideological waltzing is rare. Our left-liberals assist the state in slowing India's natural evolution from a discrete salad bowl to a composite, dynamic melting pot, lest what they think of as the antediluvian, regressive right obtain political power. The reasoning goes that majority communalism is a bigger threat than minority communalism, partially because of the former's conflation with nationalism. This is not an invalid point, but many of the mainstream right's "controversial" demands — for a uniform civil code and repeal of Article 370, for example — are not "communal", but liberal and nationalist. The Supreme Court and the Constitution call for a uniform civil code. Similarly, proscribing the autonomy of individuals to sell their lands to residents of other provinces, in the name of their province's autonomy, also violates equality and liberty.

Liberals of all hues should advocate for strengthening the law-and-order machinery so that no violence — irrespective of its antecedents — goes unpunished. State welfare programmes should be targeted to those in economic need, and not bluntly based upon caste or religious identity. The government also shouldn't have discretion on what constitutes offensive speech, to prevent politicians from fuelling competitive intolerance.

When the state has no discretion to pick certain groups as winners, fraternity is more likely to prevail because socio-economic intercourse, unlike political competition, is not a zero-sum game. India needs more liberalism — rule of law, open markets, separation of identity and state — not its leftist perversion.

Gupta is a fund manager and writer. Mantri is a venture capitalist and writer

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