G W Hegel suggested that the end of history is setting up of a nation state. He even went on to assign people who lived life without a state to prehistory. We can hear the echoes of the views of Hegel in our days with the claims that 70 years of Congress rule amounted to nothing while everything good and honourable occurred only during the Modi regime. This claim has no qualms as it brushes aside the reign of BJP’s very own Vajpayee. Even the rule of Parrikar in Goa is forgotten because of similar Hegelian concerns that seem to have sipped deeply into BJP which seems to have become engrossed with the aim of painting its present as golden. But this focus on a golden present is based on the amnesia of the past. Maybe we can critically consider Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idealisation of the state of nature as a state of civilisation. We, in India, seem to have taken upon ourselves to give a Hegelian future to what has been deemed as a golden past in Rousseau’s fashion. This means the project of Hindu Rashtra is seeking to offer a golden future to what has been deemed as a golden past. What seems to be operating in our country is a Rousseau-Hegelian vision of time and history.
Although this linear, vertical and hierarchical version of time is in some conflict with a circular vision of time and history in our country, we do not seem to question it. The sense that history begins with the new BJP under Modi seems to be offering a galvanising up thrust to the right-wing forces to work to the advancing of a fore-closed future that is named as a Hindu Rashtra. It is ironic to think that history had to wait for Modi to begin. Some seem to believe that we have arrived from nature to culture only under Modi while others disagree and say that we have reached a fallen state of being terribly uncultured that is un-Indian. But the triumphant march of history to its fore-closed destination has all the seeds of totalitarianism that we can find in any Hegelian version of history. We can trace Hegelian dialectical or oppositional logic that requires an anti-thesis/other to push history towards a synthesis/desired end. This is why we have a continuous politics of ‘us and them’ (Hindu/ Muslim, Mandir/ Masjid, Rahul/Modi, etc) which seems to fire our hope in the coming of a foreclosed future named as Hindu Rashtra.
India has an alternative view of time. This cyclic view cannot put the coming of a nation state as an end of history. History cannot begin or end when we have a circular paradigm of time. The Western linear flow of time has been absorbed by us and we may say that colonisation has come to full circle with colonisation of our minds. Against this Western political thinking that places the coming of a nation state as an end of history, we have the work of French Anthropologist Pierre Clastres who studied tribal communities in Paraguay. His work manifests that these communities of Guayaki did not need a perilous epitome of history trapped into progressivist modernity. The chieftainship of these communities was rooted into disempowerment. Clastres tells us that the chief stood for peace and reconciliation within the tribe. There is no idea of substantive power in the community. Perhaps, Buddhist idea on non-substantive self might give us an insight into non-substantive notion of power. Clastres says that the chief owes infinite debt to his society. The chief has only one way relation with his society. There are no reciprocal relations. Society is not constituted by exchange. Reciprocity does not regulate circulation of goods, wives and words (oratory skills). Power remains outside the society.
It is only by nullifying power that these societies become political. This is why Clastres affirms that they were societies against the state. It just means everyone is only concerned with giving. No one gives with the condition to take/ get. Thus, the members may have to fight to protect their wives, goods and their chieftain. The fight is regarded as their honour. Everything is one-way relations. This one-way relations move in a circle to form their society. This one-way circle assured that everyone gets what one needs. Hence, these societies are democratic without a state. These societies locate power everywhere and nowhere. Everyone is indebted to everyone. There is no notion of a value exchange that cancels indebtedness. The work of Clastres shows how a state is not the end of history in these societies which seem to have circular one-way mode of understanding time. There is no cyclic return which is part of Indian thinking.
The fact that societies in Paraguay can think power differently without the need of state does contest our linear appropriation of time and history as well as the placing of the Hindu Rashtra as its crowing moment in our country. This deconstructs the view that history only began with Modi and manifests that with all its investments to look desi what is for now deemed as Hindu Rashtra in embedded in the colonial linear notion of time and history and, therefore, is not truly Indian. The Indian cyclic return of time is not dialectical or reciprocal. It is also one-way relation depending on the karma of the individual. The Indian ethos does not seem to have a state as crowning point/end of history. The leap outside the cyclic return is an individual’s attainment of Mokxa. Thus, in the light of the work of Clastres, we might have to re-imagine what we deem as Hindu Rashtra. There is no beginning or end in a circular vision of history and time. Our vision of time is more a cyclic return of time till one leaps out of it through Mokxa. This is why we cannot admit that history only began with Modi. We have to look for leaps or jumps out of the cyclic return of time. Hindu Rashtra in its true sense cannot be fore-closed end point of history but has to open our leap into a new time cycle.
(Fr Victor Ferrao is an independent researcher attached to St Francis Xavier Church,Borim, Ponda)