Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Community, Common good and Democracy :
Indian Response to Western Communitarianism

Dr .P. Kesava Kumar
Lecturer, Dept. of Philosophy
Pondicherry University

Introduction to Communitarianism
The concept of community is constructed and deployed in recent social and political theory. Community has very often continued to be articulated in recent political and public policy debates. Today there are many on going struggles centred around the concept of community. The struggles for rights were based imagination of citizen, nation and community and had implication for democracy. ‘Community’ is invoked as a justification for reorganization of state institutions, as the source of care and support for individuals, and as an entity that is valuable in its own right and must therefore be sustained and defended. As Putnam identifies that, social capital is a key component to building and maintaining democracy. In the West, the political theory based on community identified as ‘communitarianism’ has emerged as a new philosophical thought in opposition to ‘classical liberalism’ and ‘capitalism’. They consider these traditions as ontologically and epistemologically incoherent and advocating phenomenon such as civil society. Communitarians seek to bolster social capital and the institutions of civil society. . Communitarians have often embraced one form or another of ‘social constructionism’.Of course, invariably one may find tensions and contradictions within the concept of community. Community is both inclusive and exclusive, both organized and unstructured, both hierarchical and egalitarian. The analysis of the concept ‘community’ reveals the role of ideas and ideals in shaping political action, and also the barriers to the realization of community in practical context. It is even to difficult to place communitarians either in wholly right or left and many claim to represent a sort of radical middle.The strength or weakness of communitarians lies in its advocacy of common good evolved from the practices of multicultural societies. Common good serves as a substantive vision for ethical life of community. This plays a decisive role in articulating rights and defining democracy.
The word community connotes many meanings depending on the context. Community is linked to locality, in the physical, geographical sense of a community that is located somewhere. Communities of place, or communities based on geographical location. Communities of memory have refers to imagined communities that have a shared history going back several generations. Besides tying us to the past, such communities turn us towards the future — members strive to realize the ideals and aspirations embedded in past experiences. Psychological communities or communities of face-to-face personal interaction have governed by sentiments of trust, co-operation, and altruism. This refers to a group of persons who participate in common activity and experience a psychological sense of togetherness as shared ends are sought.

Communitarians have sought to deflate the universal pretensions of liberal theory. Libertarianism is an individualist philosophy, with a strong focus on the rights of citizens in a democracy. Whereas the libertarian Rawls seemed to present his theory of justice as universally true, communitarians argued that the standards of justice must be found in forms of life and traditions of particular societies and hence can vary from context to context. Rawls argues that we have a supreme interest in shaping, pursuing, and revising our own life-plans. He neglects the fact that our selves tend to be defined or constituted by various communal attachments (e.g., ties to the family or to a religious tradition). Communitarians believe that there is too much focus on these concerns, arguing that "the exclusive pursuit of private interest erodes the network of social environments on which we all depend, and is destructive to our shared experiment in democratic self-government. They believe that rights must be accompanied by social responsibility and maintenance of the institutions of civil society if these rights are to be preserved, but libertarians believe that government actions to promote these ends actually result in a loss of individual liberty. Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor argued that moral and political judgment will depend on the language of reasons and the interpretive framework within which agents view their world, hence that it makes no sense to begin the political enterprise by abstracting from the interpretive dimensions of human beliefs, practices, and institutions. Michael Walzer developed the additional argument that effective social criticism must derive from and resonate with the habits and traditions of actual people living in specific times and places. In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre defended the Aristotelian ideal of the intimate, reciprocating local community bound by shared ends, where people simply assume and fulfill socially given roles.

Some of the features of communitarianism are: By nature, human beings are social animals. They always exist in a network of other people and within the social institutions and culture of their society. No sharp distinction can be drawn between the public and private spheres. The private sphere is a fluctuating social construct with few if any intrinsic contents of its own. Although it is important that there be a private sphere, to protect against undue encroachments of public pressure and to acknowledge the diversity of human tastes, values, and ways of life, what counts as private will be a societal decision. communitarian will begin with the welfare of a society as a whole as the analogous starting point—understanding "welfare" in the broadest sense, as encompassing the traditions, political institutions, characteristic practices and values, and culture commitments of a society.
In India, there are serious debates on performance of democracy after a half century. There are many social aspirations and political articulations in building the nation state and its citizenship. On the issues of freedom and rights tensions prevail over liberal and socialist ideals. The individual interests are in conflict with the interests of community. Some times, the politics in the name of community has seen threat to the very ideals of the democracy. In this context, the politics based on communitarianism has to be evaluated on different criteria such as common good for deliberating democracy.

Liberal Vs Communitarian Debate
The debate between liberals and communitarians is in part a dispute about what democracy requires. Liberals insist that democratic self-government requires a fair and neutral political framework in which individuals can enjoy freedom and be treated as equals. As such, a democratic state must be as minimal as possible; its primary function is to maintain the social conditions and political institutions under which free and equal persons can live harmoniously together. On the communitarian view, democracy requires that individuals embody the virtues that make them capable of the true freedom of self-government , and that these virtues can be properly nurtured only within the context of a proper community. Therefore, the state in a democratic society must undertake the project of forming its citizens' characters by providing the necessary conditions under which communities, and hence the individuals who compose them, can flourish. A state that fails to embrace this formative role is illegitimate since it fails to provide the conditions necessary for freedom; it "cannot secure the liberty it promises, because it cannot sustain the kind of political community and civic engagement that liberty requires.
Liberals posit a self that is by nature autonomous and thus enters into social associations by voluntary choice. The democratic state is one among many associations that the self may choose to join, and it does so as a way of furthering its own interests. Accordingly, the democratic state must remain neutral with regard to questions about what individuals ought to pursue in life, about what kind of life is good. The individual's capacity to choose a conception of the good for himself is the essence of liberty. The policies of a democratic state must therefore not presuppose any specific moral conceptions beyond those required for protecting the individuals it governs. Communitarians argue that such a view of the nature of the self is false. According to communitarians, selves are essentially tied to the social contexts within which they live. Such contexts form the dispositions, desires, interests, and commitments of individuals. Communitarian thinkers in the 1980s such as Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor argued that Rawlsian liberalism rests on an overly individualistic conception of the self. Whereas so close to us that they can only be set aside at great cost, if at all. This insight led to the view that politics should not be concerned solely with securing the conditions for individuals to exercise their powers of autonomous choice, as we also need to sustain and promote the social attachments crucial to our sense of well-being and respect, many of which have been involuntarily picked up during the course of our upbringing.
Both liberals and communitarians have appealed to the idea of public deliberation as a way of meeting their opponents' challenges. Liberals insist that democratic self-government requires a fair and neutral political framework in which individuals can enjoy freedom and be treated as equals. As such, a democratic state must be as minimal as possible; its primary function is to maintain the social conditions and political institutions under which free and equal persons can live harmoniously together. Of course, liberals disagree about the proper boundaries of state action. Robert Nozick criticizes John Rawls's Difference Principle for being too intrusive, and Nozick is in turn criticized for reducing the liberal state to a night watchman. Despite disagreements over the details, liberals maintain that any state action that aims for something beyond protecting freedom and maintaining equal treatment constitutes unjust and unjustifiable interference with liberty. Liberals proposes a negative theory of liberty.
The communitarianism rejects the negative theory of liberty. On the communitarian view, democracy requires that individuals embody the virtues that make them capable of the true freedom of self-government, and that these virtues can be properly nurtured only within the context of a proper community. Therefore, the state in a democratic society must undertake the project of forming its citizens' characters by providing the necessary conditions under which communities, and hence the individuals who compose them, can flourish. A state that fails to embrace this formative role is illegitimate since it fails to provide the conditions necessary for freedom; it "cannot secure the liberty it promises, because it cannot sustain the kind of political community and civic engagement that liberty requires"[i] Communitarians argue that such a view of the nature of the self is false. According to communitarians, selves are essentially tied to the social contexts within which they live. Such contexts form the dispositions, desires, interests, and commitments of individuals. As these initial contexts are not the products of individual choice, selves are not essentially apolitical, autonomous, and freestanding; they are essentially "situated" and "encumbered" [ii] Sandel's call for a politics based upon "settled roots and established traditions," Communitarians reject moral epistemology entailed by liberal individualism, arguing that moral values are socially, not individually derived.
To certain extent, communitarian theory shares with post modernists and feminist in their criticism against the abstract individual of liberalism. Both communitarians and Feminists share a common point on the attack of the liberalism on the issue of modernity, on the ground that it denies the embeddedness in social the social world that is definitive of human life. Both claim that the Cartesian subject ‘disembodies’ in the sense that it denies the contextual life of the body within a social setting.’[iii]But at the same time, feminist politics will take different direction. Some of the Feminists are even about both liberalism and communitarianism by suspecting that both may ultimately leads to patriarchy. The communitarian politics are also looked differently in the Middle East, especially countries like Iran in its post revolutionary era.[iv] In India, rise of communitarian politics of majoritarian hindu nationalism provides an occasion to understanding of the complexity of communitarian politics in practice.
A response to Western Liberal vs. Communitarian debate
The debate that took place in West, between liberals and communitarians has different meanings in Indian context. In western political theory, Liberalism has established as a dominant tradition in the line of market logic. Against this, Marxist radicalism and religious conservatism leveled their criticism from two different perspectives. The former derives its theory from collective labour and the latter from collective life shaped by the age old customs and religious beliefs. With the changed situation, to address the rights and democratic concerns of the groups/individuals in a multicultural set up, communitarianism as a political theory got its importance. It has internalizes both conservative and Marxist streams, to argue against liberal theory. As it is identified both liberalism and communitarianism had its own limitations. This reflects the crisis of western political theory. Some of the scholars argue that the basic foundations of western political theory lied on weak premises. The non- western nations like India may provide some insights to address this in meaningful way because of its different political process. The nationalist thinkers emerged out of anti-colonial struggles will definitely broaden the political theory with their rigor of justice and democracy. Gandhi and Ambedkar are of two such thinkers operates on two different realms for realization of the common good and democracy of the nation.
In India, from late eighties onwards politics are forcefully articulating on the basis of community. On one hand, hindu communalism by projecting the idea of homogeneous Indian identity, selectively invoking the past. On the other hand marginalized communities like dalits, women and adivasis asserting their identity by resisting the homogeneous identity projected by the dominant groups. Both ways, these communities felt the ‘loss of self’, and had conscious attempts to ‘assert their self’. This is coincided with the rapid globalization phenomenon and it had a threat to the native cultural past. It is difficult to jump into the conclusion that these assertions are essentially in response against globalization. This is a much more complex and ambiguous phenomenon.
The scholars in India (Akel Bilgrami, Javeed Alam, Rajeev Bharghava and so on), demanding a careful understanding of communitarianism in Indian context. They are critical about the way communitarian politics in practice. They expressed a view that, if communities are left to some communitarians they might turn authoritarian. Javed Alam criticises the communitarian logic on the ground that it lacks egalitarian motivation. Akeel Bilgrami’s criticism operates at a different level, and felt that communities may not have an internal reason and hence will have to negotiate with the help of an external reason, like, the moral state. Bharghava too share with them and reminds the uncomfortable fact that societies remember their heroic deeds but suppress the memory of collective injustice. These thinkers are critical about the liberal theory that is operating in tune with capitalism. In other words critical about modernity facilitating by the capitalism. And on the other hand rather rejecting the modernity, argues in favor of reappraisal of modernity in Indian contemporary times in support of democratic aspirations and social imagination of the oppressed communities. The contemporary debates of communitarian politics of India may be revisited by reading Gandhi and Ambedkar.
Debating Gandhi and Ambedkar in the contemporary Indian political scenario, exclusively in the context of globalization, not only provide two different view points on communitarian politics, and they had greater implications in understanding democracy. The theory and practice culminated in both leaders and emerged as power symbols of contemporary indian society. Both of them imbibed strong liberal impulses and always looked individual in relation to society. They argued infavour of reflexive individualism as against liberal abstractive and possessive individual. Their individual is located in the social and cultural context. The individual had source in religion. For them religion acts as a moral community. Both of them differ with Marxism to certain extent by emphasizing on spiritualism.Both of them ultimately developed their theories of politics on moral autonomy of individual rather abstract individual. The morality has seen inseperable from the shared social beliefs lies such as in community, religion or nation. Gandhi as a thinker he operated on the imagination of the community of ideal Hindu Society based on varnashramadharma. At the same time Ambedkar is critical about hindu social order in any of its form and argued for moral community based on Buddhism. He does not confirm to either Hindu ideal community or Marxist conception of community based on participation in production process. His conception of community is moral and ethical. When Ambedkar criticises Hindu community for its oppressive nature, he does it with a standard of individual liberty and freedom. When he is talking about suffering of individual members of Dalit community he is projecting an ideal moral community based on equality, liberty and fraternity. An ideal society should be mobile, should be full of channels for conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts. In ideal society many interests consciously communicated and shared and the social practices are grounded in democratic ideals.

End Notes
[i] Sandel, Micheal. 1996. Democracy's Discontent. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. P 24
[ii] Sandel , Micheal. 1982. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 179.
[iii] Hekman, Susan. The embodiment of the subject: Feminism and Communitarian critique of liberalism, The Journal of the Politics Vol.54 No.4 November. 1992
[iv] Dalacoura, Katerina. A Critique of Communitarianism with reference to Post -Revolutionary Iran, Review of International studies (2002) 28, pp.75 -92
Select Bibliography
Bhargava, Rajeev, Amiya Kumar Bagchi and R.Sudrashan(Eds.),1999. Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy, Oxford University Press
Buchnan, Allen E. Assesing Communitarain Critique of Liberalism, ethics, Vol. 99, No.4 July (1989) Pp. 852-882
Chatterjee, Partha. Rights of the Governed, Identity, Culture and Politics Vol.3, No.2, December, 2002
Dalacoura, Katerina. A Critique of Communitarianism with reference to Post -Revolutionary Iran, Review of International studies (2002) 28, pp.75 -92
Dworkin, Ronald. [1978] 1984. "Liberalism." In Liberalism and Its Critics, ed. Michael Sandel. New York: New York University Press.
Etzioni, Amitai. 1993. The Spirit of Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Kymlicka, Will. 1998. "Liberal Egalitarianism and Civic Republicanism." In Debating Democracy's Discontent, ed. Allen and Regan. New York: Oxford University Press.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.
------. 1998. "Politics, Philosophy, and the Common Good." In The MacIntyre Reader, ed. Knight. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
------. 1985. "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical." Reprinted in Samuel Freeman, ed., 1999. Pp 1098-1119
------. 1996. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
------. 1999. Law of Peoples. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sandel, Michael. 1982. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. [1984] 1992. "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self." In Communitarianism and Individualism, ed. Shlomo Avineri and Avner de-Shalit. New York: Oxford University Press.
------. 1996. Democracy's Discontent. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
------. 1998a. "A Response to Rawls' Political Liberalism. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. 2d ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. 1998b. "The Limits of Communitarianism." Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. 1998c. "Reply to Critics." In Debating Democracy's Discontent, ed. Anita Allen and Milton Regan. New York: Oxford University Press.
------, ed. 1984. Liberalism and Its Critics. New York: New York University Press.
Taylor, Charles. 1985a. "Atomism." In Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. 1985b. "What's Wrong with Negative Liberty?" In Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. [1989] 1995. "Cross Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate." In Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
------. 1990. Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books.

[1] Sandel, Micheal. 1996. Democracy's Discontent. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. P 24
[1] Sandel , Micheal. 1982. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 179.
[1] Hekman, Susan. The embodiment of the subject: Feminism and Communitarian critique of liberalism, The Journal of the Politics Vol.54 No.4 November. 1992
[1] Dalacoura, Katerina. A Critique of Communitarianism with reference to Post -Revolutionary Iran, Review of International studies (2002) 28, pp.75 -92
Select Bibliography
Bhargava, Rajeev, Amiya Kumar Bagchi and R.Sudrashan(Eds.),1999. Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy, Oxford University Press
Buchnan, Allen E. Assesing Communitarain Critique of Liberalism, ethics, Vol. 99, No.4 July (1989) Pp. 852-882
Chatterjee, Partha. Rights of the Governed, Identity, Culture and Politics Vol.3, No.2, December, 2002
Dalacoura, Katerina. A Critique of Communitarianism with reference to Post -Revolutionary Iran, Review of International studies (2002) 28, pp.75 -92
Dworkin, Ronald. [1978] 1984. "Liberalism." In Liberalism and Its Critics, ed. Michael Sandel. New York: New York University Press.
Etzioni, Amitai. 1993. The Spirit of Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Kymlicka, Will. 1998. "Liberal Egalitarianism and Civic Republicanism." In Debating Democracy's Discontent, ed. Allen and Regan. New York: Oxford University Press.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.
------. 1998. "Politics, Philosophy, and the Common Good." In The MacIntyre Reader, ed. Knight. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
------. 1985. "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical." Reprinted in Samuel Freeman, ed., 1999. Pp 1098-1119
------. 1996. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
------. 1999. Law of Peoples. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sandel, Michael. 1982. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. [1984] 1992. "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self." In Communitarianism and Individualism, ed. Shlomo Avineri and Avner de-Shalit. New York: Oxford University Press.
------. 1996. Democracy's Discontent. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
------. 1998a. "A Response to Rawls' Political Liberalism. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. 2d ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. 1998b. "The Limits of Communitarianism." Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. 1998c. "Reply to Critics." In Debating Democracy's Discontent, ed. Anita Allen and Milton Regan. New York: Oxford University Press.
------, ed. 1984. Liberalism and Its Critics. New York: New York University Press.
Taylor, Charles. 1985a. "Atomism." In Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. 1985b. "What's Wrong with Negative Liberty?" In Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. [1989] 1995. "Cross Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate." In Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
------. 1990. Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books.

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