Branding India

I recall shortly after the publication of The Idea of India, and at the height of the 'coolBritannia' phase in Britain, being invited out to lunch by the doyen of British corporate identity design,Wally Olins of Wolff Olins. He had recently acquired as a client one of India's largest companies, and Olinswanted to discuss the image problem faced by Indian companies with real global ambitions, seeking exportmarkets: how to erase the image of India as a producer of cheap, poor quality goods, ridden with bureaucraticinefficiency, and what sort of image should they seek to project?

It is not only companies that need to be concerned with this: countries too have to project themselves, torepresent something. In the current debates about the future of the international order, the values andprinciples that nations embody and seek to project have once again acquired great importance. Today, we livein a world where what has been called the 'battle of ideas', and of images, is a crucial terrain of action.Even countries that have great economic and military power require what Joseph Nye has called 'soft power' -and this is especially true, as Mahatma Gandhi - an early exponent of such soft power - long ago recognised,for countries that do not have such material power.

It's somewhat ironic, therefore, that at the moment when India wishes for a moreactive presence on the world stage, the world's sense of India, of what it stands for and what it wishes tobecome, seems as confused and divided today as is India's own sense of itself.

Let me put it in short hand. Is India's future direction embodied and indicated by the present reality ofBangalore? A fortnight ago (December 1, 2003), Businessweek, in a rather lyrical portrait ofBangalore's research centres, put it thus:

"Except for the female engineers wearing saris and the soothing Indian pop music wafting through ...this could be GE's giant research and development facility in the upstate New York town of Niskayuna."

Or, is India's present and future reality captured by the appalling horror unleashed in Gujarat last year?

In Bangalore, one senses the enchanting promise of technology to transform and uplift lives, to take Indiaforward into the global economy. In Gujarat, one feels the brute fact of technology at the service ofstate-sponsored massacres, which threaten to drag India back into a dark world of religious bloodshed. 

Till its recent implosion, Gujarat epitomized a newly emerging India: its aspirational middle class, withstrong links to the outside world and to the large, successful Gujarati diaspora, wore proudly a reputationfor industry, entrepreneurship and civic-mindedness.

The conventional wisdom is that economic progress and the emergence of a middle class promote moderate andcentrist policies, and as such provide the conditions for a liberal democratic politics. But in Gujarat themurderous Hindu gangs were led by the rich and educated: doctors, advocates, shopkeepers roved in cars,punched mobile phones and used government-supplied computer printouts of Muslim addresses to conduct theirsystematic mayhem.

If we allow that Bangalore represents a possible India, so too does Gujarat. Contrary to some views, Iwould stress that Gujarat is not an 'aberration' - it would be foolish to try to reassure ourselves in thisway: for many it represents the first step in the creation of a Hindu rashtra, and what is happening thereshows that economic development seems to be entirely compatible with extremist politics.

India seems on the face of it poised between such choices. On the one hand, there is a shrink-wrap,software-package India, where 'brain arbitrage' is the new spice trade and where India is a global brand-name advertisingthe world's electronic 'back-office'. On the other hand, there is a self-inflated, venomous redefinition ofIndia in terms of the ideology of Hindutva - where, with mobile phone in one hand and trishul in the other, wesee modern technology and medieval weapons turned to lethal ends. A choice between India as Brand Software oras Brand Saffron, between the promise of Bangalore or the threat of Gujarat.

And yet the alternatives are in fact more complicated and especially since Sept 11the calculus of choice must be more nuanced. In my remarks, I'd like to explore the nature and stakes of thischoice, a political choice, since I think there is one to be made. It has of late become fashionable tobelieve that political choices and conflicts are ceding way to economic ones: that economics will integrateand pacify divisions and disagreements.

As India strives to achieve the higher global status it has so long aspired to, it is certainly true thateconomics will be an important medium for accomplishing that task: it is the ultimate and long-range basis forall state power, and it enables the state to pursue its interests.

But we cannot rely on economics, and economic development of itself, to do our political thinking for us,either in the short or long term. For several reasons:

• First, we are only at the beginning of a decade-long process of economic development, given the scale ofthe problems. There are no quick fixes, and in the meantime, we will have to decide what we stand for, andwhat we wish others to see us as standing for: i.e. economics is not going to define Indian identity in theshort run. (In fact, economic success will depend on clear political vision). 
  
  
• Second, as I've already said, the case of Gujarat makes clear that economic growth is compatible withextremism. 
  
  
• Third., economic growth and development is an instrument/tool, it cannot of itself provide the rationalefor a nation to hold together, nor endow it with a distinct identity. There is an independent realm ofpolitical values, where we have to make choices. And the choices that are made about how we arrange ourdomestic matters will have direct impact on how we are seen internationally, and so on our globalstatus. 
  
  
• Finally, in fact as economic growth kicks in, we will in fact face more real and potential conflicts, andhave to confront more urgent and difficult choices about what sort of nation we are.

These domestic political choices will seriously affect how India is perceived internationally, and itsglobal standing and influence. We need to be able to define clearly what we stand for, to live thisconsistently, and to project this forcefully.

In this respect, clearly India does possess one vital and immediately available resource, which hasimparted a distinct identity to it, and which is the global currency of political legitimacy: it is a form ofpolitical capital, that has been amassed over the past five and a half decades. This is represented by thesteady operation of constitutional democracy, in a liberal and non-majoritarian form, over this period. Weneed both to preserve this democratic capital from erosion (at the hands of extremists of whatever hue), toenhance it, and to make wise use of the 'democracy dividend' which it yields - to be willing to play a role inthe global 'battle of ideas', rather than squander this currency.

Let me just restate the philosophical roots of this form of political capital, inorder to clarify how it is distinct from the political ideology that is being propagated by some today.

These roots lie in the founders commitment to freedom, as expressed in the value of choice, over andagainst the acceptance of the authority of the past. It entailed a commitment to cultural and intellectualopenness, the nurturing of a tradition of free inquiry, rational discussion and argument, toleration ofdifferent beliefs and values, a willingness not to sentimentalise about the past, and not to nurture a senseof victimhood and resentment, but to be self-critical about one's inheritance.

Those commitments were all expressed in the ideology of the national movement, in what I have elsewherecalled a tradition of public reason as outlined by Tagore, Gandhi and Nehru, and they also were andinstantiated in the formal architecture of constitutional democracy as well as in the informal practices thathave sustained this.

It aligned India with the great project of social modernity set in motion by the critical spirit of theEuropean Enlightenment. And it resulted in the creation of institutions designed to acknowledge the presenceof real differences in Indian society, but which also aimed to provide contexts that could transform potentiallyviolent conflicts into moderated, negotiable ones.

So, in committing India to a democratic order, the founders committed us to learning to live with conflict.They avoided the authoritarian temptation - associated with ideologies of religious nationalism - which do notallow for recognition of conflicts in their society (more precisely, they wish to suppress conflict, throughintimidation and terror), acknowledge that ultimately all politics is potentially about conflict - conflictsabout values, about how to achieve those values, as well as conflicts over interests and how to secure these.But they also tried to show - in the constitutional order they established - that a primary art of politics isthe ability to moderate and contain conflicts: to transform them from something base to something richer. thatis the alchemical promise of democratic politics. The founders saw that by recognising the presence ofdifferences, often deep set ones, one might be able to find ways to contain them, in ways that actuallyenhance the overall, long-term stability of the Indian project.

A central test of India's international image, its brand, will be how it deals withits own internal conflicts. And be assured, these will proliferate and multiply in years to come. One illusionwe should disabuse ourselves of is that the anticipated period of economic growth and development will somehowhave a pacifying effect, that it will reduce conflicts, and that politics will become less important, replacedby technocratic solutions. This is at best wishful thinking. As the Indian economy grows, as there is more atstake to struggle for and over, so too will be potential subjects of conflicts. Economic growth and modernity,especially when it occurs within an already complex society such as India's, is not homogenising: on thecontrary, it will spawn further differences. And, as Indians gain more autonomy over their lives as aresult  of economic prosperity etc, so too we will see more and more experiments in living, sometimesincompatible and in tension with one another.

I see three important lines of division and conflict in the coming decades: those ofthe regions and regional states, of caste and religion. These represent competing conceptions or visions ofIndia which are challenging the vision set in place by the founders. As such they suggest alternative imagesof what this nation might hope to be.

Regional and Caste Views

First, the perspective from the regions, and from the rapidly politicising lower castes. This is a powerfuland heavily partial view, which takes on entirely instrumental view of the lower castes. This is a powerfuland heavily partial view, which takes an entirely instrumental view of the Indian Union. 

Today's regionalism is of course very different from earlier forms (say in the 50s-60s, or 80s): it is notso much threatening of the Indian idea, it is not secessionist. Its leaders: Laloo Yadav, Naidu, Mayawati etc- most drawn from the lower castes, they aggressively defend their own class and regional interests. They donot have a coherent view of Indian identity, they operate with more restricted horizons. 

Take their picture of the economy: they see this as basically a cluster of regional units, each engaged inzero-sum relations with one another, and with the centre (the caste parties also operate with this picture).In terms of culture, they are also parochial - devoted to tending their own vernacular gardens.

Fundamental problem with this view of India: it offers no coherent national conception of what India is.

The Perspective of Hindutva

This of course is a an avowedly national perspective, if also a revisionist one. It does think of India asa national unit, and it is fundamentally committed to the aim of creating a Hindu Rashtra, i.e. totransforming the present character of India. What are the elements of this?

First, to create 'one nation, one culture, one people': where this singular culture is based on a selectivevision of the past. And this past consists of a glorious Hindu past, the ancient Vedic age: great attentiongiven to rewriting history, and to rewriting the educational curriculam. It sees Indian past as one disrupted,interrupted, and plays up a sense of victimhood. 

Second, to transform the constitutional and legal order India: to remove legal protections for religiousminorities, abrogate the status of Kashmir etc. 

Third, and above all, this proposes to transform the longstanding relationship between state and society.The historical pattern of this state-society relationship is one where the state did not interfere in thereligious beliefs or cultural practices which were observed in the society: this is generally true of theMughal state, of the British, and of the post-47 Indian state. One can of course find some exceptions, butnone of these earlier forms wished for wholesale and regular intervention in such matters.

The irony of this: a reversal of the situation we had in the post-independence decades. In the 1950s and60s, India had a lumbering command economy of sorts but also had an open market in cultural and socialidentities. Today, we are in the era of free-market economies, but the pressures are towards a commandculture, where those holding state power wish for their cultural diktats to prevail. If choice is an axiom ofthe market, how can this be excluded from the realm of religion, culture and identity?

In the Indian and South Asian context, it is conflicts over the relationships betweenreligious identity and the state which have the most dangerous international consequences.

Those who fantasise about making India a state with a singular, homogenous religion and culture slide overthe fact that India is the second largest Muslim country in the world - and that India contains the largestbody of Muslims living within a liberal, democratic order. The actions of the Indian state have heavyconsequences, both domestically and for the whole subcontinent - which, with Pakistan and Bangladesh, containsthe largest concentration of Muslims anywhere in the world. 

At a time when the West is embarked on a fraught and intense relationship with Islam, and when Muslims feelincreasingly alienated within the international order, the Indian model established in 1947 is a powerfulexample of how ancient religions can co-exist within a single political frame. If India can continue to deepenits capacity to integrate Muslims into the democratic system and uphold the democratic right to be different,this will be seen by the world as a major success and it will confirm India as having an exemplary status inthis regard (it is not least  from this point of view that the urgency of resolving the Kashmir problempresents itself). But if the Indian model is gradually pushed out of shape and collapses, as many within theSangh Parivar would like, this will have disastrous consequences both for India and for the region morewidely.

The Hindutva definition of Indian identity is in negative terms, contra Pakistan; yet it subscribes to thevery two-nation theory that led to Partition, and it aspires to make India into a Hindu Pakistan. A kind ofmirror image - another irony. Where once the founding ideas of India and Pakistan constituted a polarity,today they creep toward a parallel symmetry: one where jihadis mirror Hindu extremists.

Since September 11, the stakes of extremism in whatever form - whether it beterrorists sponsored by Pakistan and operating in Indian territory, or terror inflicted by the electedgovernment of Gujarat on its Muslim citizens - are higher than ever. The New York Times columnist TomFriedman has argued that in the post-September 11 world, the crucial polarity is no longer between East andWest, but what he terms the World of Order and the World of Disorder. The latter - the failed, rogue and messystates - are the breeding grounds for terrorist and criminal networks, while the World of Order, Friedman hassuggested, is constructed around four pillars: the U.S., the E.U.-Russia, China and India.

Yet, will India be able to take and sustain a role as a pillar of the World of Order if it adopts a coarseand exclusivist national ideology, one that would splinter along religious lines India's interconnecteddiversities and plunge it into internal and international conflict?  India remains the one greatmodernist political success of the non-Western world, one of the early ones that has amassed the politicalcapital of a democratic state which has to a large degree respected internal diversity. It would be acatastrophic irony - both for its own people and for the international order - if it were now to abandon thathard-won commitment to - and practice of - toleration and moderation. If we were to squander this capital atthe very moment it is more valued than ever as a currency of global legitimacy.