TheDaak review

Book: Hailing The State: Indian Democracy Between Elections by Lisa Mitchell, Duke University Press, Paperback, Published: 2023, 320 pages, ISBN:978-1-4780-1876-6,  INR 2,418

by Survesh Pratap Singh

There is a tendency in discussions around democracy, particularly Indian democracy, to be hooked to election practices and results. This gives the false impression that elections are the only lifeblood of a democracy. Hailing The State by Lisa Mitchell is a novel attempt to bring into the discussion how a democracy like India works and functions in between elections. This is probably a rare book as it takes collective assemblies and their interaction with the state seriously while also offering a different understanding of the purpose of these assemblies. The book, in my opinion, could also be taken as a supportive reading to books that primarily focus on Indian elections such as Why India Votes? (2014) to understand Indian democracy comprehensively by bridging the gap between election times and non-election times.

Lisa Mitchell has organised the book into two parts, part I titled “Seeking Audience” and part II “The Criminal and the Political” and contains a total of seven chapters along with the introduction and the conclusion. Each chapter aims to focus on a certain form of collective assembly such as Dharnas (sit-in demonstrations), general strikes, rail and road blockades all the while keeping issues like recognition, representation and democracy at the core of the discussion.

Among the major arguments that the book propels is that all actions and instances of collective assemblies cannot be seen as ‘protest’ against something or as the total rejection of the state and its apparatuses’ authority. Rather, certain forms of collective assemblies aim for recognition in the eyes of the state and seek inclusion into its ambit. The book argues for a new understanding of collective action- to be taken as efforts to seek recognition and inclusion, to gain a hearing and interest fulfillment which can mean different things for different groups, myriad ways in which people in India “seek to be seen, heard and recognised by the state” (p. 15, emphasis in the original). 

The book, in offering this argument, goes against the anarchist, the marxist and the rightist traditions all of which view the state through suspicion. It stands to challenge the Foucauldian understanding by arguing that the state has been seen as a provider and protector of the people, as an enabler, an agent of change and the medium through which people’s lives can be transformed for the good. People aim for recognition in the eyes of the state, particularly those at the margins. The book tries to offer an alternative view of looking at the state, which has been portrayed only as an oppressive institution in a vast gamut of literature. The author argues that if the state was solely oppressive in nature, its sustenance for a long period would be difficult. The view emerging from the book is that the state is an institution of inclusiveness, meaning that various groups and individuals want to be included in its mechanism and gain recognition. But a major question that was left unattended is why the state originally failed to give recognition to historically marginalised groups and left them no choice but to mobilise and form a collective to get heard and seen. How much can we really understand the state from an ahistorical, value-neutral and non-sociological position, as the book tries to do?

Efforts of collective assembly or mobilization, apart from being viewed with the rejection of state authority and attempts to gain inclusion binary, should also be read as a way of communication with the state. The various forms of collective assemblies that are discussed in the book are methods that the people adopt to communicate with the state and its extensions, to raise their voices and to hold the authorities accountable. In this context, questions like who needs to communicate with the state and for what reasons or why become inevitably important and the book does drive towards this direction. An interesting take in the book is that while the powerful and the resourceful can afford to speak as individuals as they expect to be seen and heard by the state, the poor, the powerless and the oppressed are compelled to come together and form a collective to seek an audience with the authorities. Thus, these sites of collective assemblies are filled with social categories that have been marginalised for a large part of history. But what is peculiar and could make us rethink this proposition is that in recent times in India, we have witnessed the collective assembly of dominant groups in different parts of the country to claim what was meant for the marginalised- affirmative action, particularly in the form of reservation in the public sector.

Amongst the argumentative edge that the book yields is a direct refutation of Western scholarship that suggests the origin of methods of general strike and more broadly the idea of civil society, exclusively in Europe. The author argues with evidence that collective assemblies in the form of general strikes by workers were a part of British India much before documented instances began to be reported from Europe and the West. These assemblies, contrary to the assumptions and portrayal of Western scholarship, were not unruly and violent. They were highly organised with clear motives and effective communication strategies. By digging up new evidence from the archives, the author establishes that what is known as civil society has functioned in the Indian context much before the gaining of independence. Thus, it would be incorrect to say that civil society as an idea and mechanism has originated from European soil and has been adopted by other regions of the world.

The book is conceptually very vibrant, so much so that there is a democracy framework ensuing throughout, dealing with the relationship between democracy and collective assemblies. It also dwells on the significance of these collective assemblies for a democracy in general and more centrally, for a democracy like India. In election times, promises are made but whether these promises are kept or abandoned is decided during the non-election times. Collective assemblies are ways to hold elected and administrative officials accountable for their duties and promises in case they fail to do so. Bringing in Rousseau, the author has tried to argue that forms of collective assembly can be read as examples of direct democracy in the larger frame of liberal democracy that pervades the world in current times. Through these collective assemblies, people directly participate in a democracy that has failed them till today and fight for rights and freedom. These collective assemblies, much like the practice of voting during elections keep a democracy fresh and alive.

The coming together of a large mass of people raises imperative questions about identity, recognition and belonging. The author argues that there are no prefixed and rigid identities, rather through the process of assembling collectively and mobilisation, identities get formed. Identities are outcomes of collective mobilisations and not a pre-existing foundation on which mobilisation happens. In the various forms that collective assembly has been discussed in the book, rail roko (blockade of trains) and road roko (blockade of public buses) have received considerable attention as a political practice, as sites for political messaging and communication. We have seen this in India as well with the recent farmers’ protest and the Agniveer protest. The claim that the book, however, would make that these assemblies were not necessarily a ‘protest’ in the sense of rejection of state authority in toto, but simply to seek a hearing and visibility.

The book intends to offer a fresh perspective and for that, Hailing The State deserves attention but also, understandably, has minor shortcomings. The book did not draw a conceptual differentiation between the forms of collective assembly that it brought up for discussion such as- garjanas (roar), strike, rally, bandh, yatras, blockades, dharna, hunger strike, chakka jam, gherao, human chain etc. Furthermore, the way the state has been conceptualised in the book often goes against the actual functioning of the state which fails to honour and acknowledge the marginalised. How the state sees the marginalised and how it responds to their assertion through collective mobilosation is an element missing from theoretical discussions. Additionally, the argument that access to public places for collective assembly has been consistently shrinking with the rapid onset of liberalization in India remained underexplored and underdeveloped. Moreover, while the book portrays the state as an agent of transformation it is not clear how much these collective assemblies have transformed the state itself. We do not have enough evidence to show that collective actions lead to change on the part of the state especially when the matter concerns the marginalized. Like, can we look at these assemblies as something other than an extension of the state in the realm of civil society?