Indian Exceptionalism: Colonial Stereotypes and Postcolonial Realities

The construction of myths about Indians and Indian society was central to strategies of British colonial rule in the subcontinent. Some of these well-known generalizations about Indians are easily recalled: Hindus and Muslims were two different nations and peoples who could not live together; Indians were primarily a religious people or religious peoples; Indian communities were prone to violence; Indians were uncivilized, even if in an earlier golden age they had been civilized; liberal values such as democracy or freedom of thought and expression were unknown to Indians.

Numerous scholarly works have examined how these stereotypes reflected a colonial agenda and were used to justify acts of colonial violence. The subject is far from exhausted; it continues to be a rich source of material for historians of the colonial period as well as for postcolonial theorists.

In the post-independence context, however, it is worth examining whether at least some of these colonial stereotypes have now become our postcolonial realities. Does the constant invocation of the famed Indian qualities of pluralism, coexistence, openness and communal harmony--- a familiar narrative of Indian exceptionalism---effectively function as a means of avoiding the fact of these realities and the reality of these facts?

In its crudest forms, Indian exceptionalism manifests itself as nationalist, chauvinist, and fundamentalist sentiment, often mingling unhealthily with other kinds of closed-minded imperatives. Examples from just the last few years: the louts in the Shiv Sena who annually go beserk against those who celebrate Valentine's Day; the self-appointed moral policemen who attempted to impose a dress code on women in Aligarh Muslim University; any number of Hindu nationalist initiatives in India and the diaspora to censor or harass voices opposed to them; the harrasment of artistes on charges of obscenity; holier-than-thou vigilantes crusading against vulgarity.

Every one of the individuals or groups on this distinguished roster uses the exceptionalist argument to justify their actions, violent or otherwise. The targets of their ire, they tell us, contradict Indian values and culture. It is not in 'our culture'. This is not 'true' Indian culture. The exceptionalist argument, of course, is also a populist argument. The self-anointed moral guardians always claim to speak for the morals of the majority. The moral guardians appear to lack any self-critical ability or are unconcerned about consistency: in claiming to protect Indian culture or fight vulgarity, they have no qualms in violating Indian traditions of debate, discussion, artistic freedom and freedom of speech. They are not particularly
hesitant either in resorting to threats and violence or using their political clout to stifle any criticism.

But even those who strongly protest religious conflict, political violence, violations of rights, or attacks on freedom of expression regularly argue that such incidences run contrary to an Indian ethos of tolerance and amity. They also often make an exceptionalist argument.

I am not, by any means, dismissing this latter position, which reflects courageous political commitments as much as it reflects certain modes and traditions of sociological or historical reasoning. But it seems to me that such views constantly displace and preserve an idea of Indian exceptionalism, without addressing how the very idea of a unique Indian ethos might contribute to that violence.

If there is a riot in an Indian city, the argument is often presented that people in rural India, in contrast, live in communal harmony. If there is an act of violence in a village, a typical response is that the people are misguided and superstitious and awakening them to India's rationalist and enlightened heritage will solve the problem. An innate secularism thought to flow through Indian history and society is depicted as a natural antidote to the poison of communalism. The moral failings of Indian society are described as the consequence of the forgetting of Gandhian values which capture the true essence of Indian society. (This ignores, among other things, the profoundly performative and invented nature of much of Gandhian politics.) The critique of the free market insists on a natural proclivity among Indians toward collectivism. The defense of the free market will point, likewise, to Indians' innate ability, long stifled under socialism, to excel in such conditions.

The long and short of it is that the shifting, elusive, and ultimately illusory center of Indian exceptionalism survives unscathed and uninterrogated. From the far right to the extreme left, many different voices in Indian society collude in preserving the illusion. My take on it: Indian society may be exceptional, but only to the extent that any and every other society in the world is also exceptional. Dismantling the myth of uniqueness, while preserving an emphasis on the richness and particularity of Indian social practices and customs, may be a first step toward thinking about the sources of violence in Indian society. We have only to look at the dangers of other exceptionalisms (or earlier incarnations of our own) to recommend such an approach.

(Post script: I have set aside here the question of the particular processes and practices through which such a transformation from colonial stereotype to postcolonial reality might have taken place. I also want to signal my disagreement with those commentators who, with all good and liberal intention, constantly harp on the need to enlighten backward Indians by injecting them with progressive doses of rationality and scientific reason. My objective is essentially to question the exceptionalism that discourses across the Indian left and right appear to share.)