Dr.Brainerd Prince
The rich get richer and the poor have a fire in their belly to get rich, but it is the middle class, who seemingly have enough, who continue to dwell in the land of mediocracy. The stories of the rich belong to Page Three of our newspapers, while the poor make the headlines because of the ‘makeover’ and ‘turnarounds’ they have experienced. The recent Indian athletic sensation, Dutee Chand rightfully occupies the Indian headlines. The story of Dutee Chand from Jajpur, Odisha, is truly an inspiring story. She comes from a ‘below poverty line’ weavers’ family and rises to become a star. India has many such stories. From a chaiwala Prime Minister to a clerk’s family becoming India’s richest business house, India is full of rags to riches stories that capture the headlines in our country. On the other hand, there are equal number of Page Three stories about the children and the grandchildren of the kandhani rich and famous – be it from the filmi families in Bollywood or the dynastic political class – all born with a silver spoon in their mouths.
But what about the middle class?I am not going to do a Pawan Varma here! If you want a rant on the great Indian middle class, you will find a thoroughly accomplished job in Varma’s book that goes by the same title. Varma must definitely be remembered for being the first to apply the ‘middle-class’ identity marker in the Indian context and for providing some sort of a historical framework for its emergence and growth.Insightfully, he writes, ‘the great Indian “liberalized” economic machine was all set to roll with the middle class as its engine…’But the rest of the book is a neo-Marxist rant against the liberalized and globalized emerging class of people known as the middle class.Varma himself is part of the middle class he critiques, often superficially, and without appropriate justification, particularly with regard to their ‘reduced sensitivity to the poor and the legitimization of corruption’. He calls them as being ‘morally rudderless, obsessively materialistic, and socially insensitive to the point of being unconcerned with anything but its own narrow self-interest.’ But a central idea that one is left with after reading the book is that the middle class is stuck, going around in circles, like frogs in a well, fulfilling mediocre goals of buying cars and houses – a kind of chasing after one’s tail – never to rise above the primal dirt of their existence.
One of the critiques of Varma’s work has been that his idea of the Indian middle class is vague and entails all kinds of people, thus not being a clear identity marker. But, this is not completely Varma’s fault. Class has never ever been an identity marker in the Indian sub-continent. Mind you, we have all kinds of identity markers, for example, caste, jati, tradition, tribe, state, language, or ethnicity but definitely class is not one of them. This is what happens when we use a category cross-culturally without appropriate appropriation. Therefore,if class is not necessarily an economic category or a general identity marker in India, then who are the middle-classers in the Indian context? I would like to use the language of ‘tradition’ a la Macintyre, in trying to answer this question. I would like to propose that the people we call as the middle class are those who have opened themselves up to a new bundle of traditions which can be categorized as ‘secular traditions.’ In so doing, they have undergone an intrinsic change in their ontologies, becoming a kind of secular beings, and I want to argue that it is these groups of people whom we call as the Indian middle class.
So how did Indians encounter the secular traditions? Primarily in three ways: Firstly, these traditions were brought to us as part of the colonial encounter with the various European nations. Europe has itself been undergoing secularization or getting converted to secularism over the past 500 years. A great book that traces Europe’s tryst with secularism is Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, a must read for anyone interested in understanding the great Indian middleclass. Unless we understand the birth and growth of European secularism, we will never have the conceptual tools necessary to understand secular traditions in India.Along with Christianity, secularism too was brought to India by the colonial powers. The religious ideals of secularism come packaged in liberal thought, democratic institutions, capitalist economies, scientific thinking, educational institutions and the English language.
It is interesting to note, that Hindu fundamentalists, who are opposed to being colonised by Christianity, readily become converts to secularism, without realizing that both Christianity and secularism are siblings and children of Latin Christendom. The language of growth and progress, human rights, and development, all belonging to secular traditions, continue the Judeo-Christian worldview in an abstracted manner. I tell my Hindu brothers and sisters, particularly of the RSS brand, that if they want to truly fight against foreign religions, thenthey ought to primarily fight against secular traditions.Christianity in India has miniscule influence and does negligible damagein comparison to the catastrophe being brought about by secular traditions. Therefore, to give Christian traditions any attention is indeed a waste of time and resources.
Secondly, post-independence, as a reaction to colonial capitalism, Nehruvian socialism got currency in the newly formed Indian State – a secular institution, yet without a well-articulated secular ideology. Nehruvian socialism seemed a good fit for a nation filled with poor citizens. Furthermore,India, needed the guidance of those who have been older adherents of the secular traditions. Therefore, India leaned towards Russia and a form of Marxist socialism got privileged. No wonder JNU founded in the sixties has strong Marxist/socialist leanings. But there is a blind spot in socialism’s egalitarian quest. There is always an elite politburo which governs the majority plebs in the society! Therefore, the national elites soon filled the Politburo space in socialist India and dynastic rule was established.
The third way secularism came into the Indian sub-continent was through the globalization and liberalizationpolicies since the early nineties primarily by the opening up of the Indian economy to foreign investments. If the first wave of secularism was political as it was colonial, and the second was social, in terms of the ideals that India sought to embody in its society, then the third wave was corporate in the domain of business and economy, particularly with the MNCs coming in with their values and practices.
Of course, each of these waves brought in deeper structures and ideologies of the secular traditions and ‘converted’ India. By the time India entered the twenty-first century, it had become deeply secular, particularly its ‘middle class’, numbering over 400 million in the sub-continent.
This is not to say two things: first, that secular traditions like any other traditions, have good in them that can benefit India, and secondly, that there is great value in the dialogue of traditions, for example, a creative and collaborative dialogue between Naga and Secular traditions would have value for both Naga traditions in India and Secular traditions in the West.But, however good and valuable, if a tradition is intent on colonizing and imposing itself on often unsuspecting populations, then even its good becomes evil.
What should we then do? How shall the Indian middle class respond to the secular traditions that are dominating their lives and condemning them to mediocracy? The boon of the great Indian middle class liesin re-inhabiting their inherited traditions even as they continue their engagement and dialogue with the secular traditions.
I say thisto all Indians, irrespective of religion or caste or tribe – get rooted in your ‘Indianness’. I can see your worried face, don’t be. What is ‘Indianness’? Is there a single ‘India’ with a singular ‘Indianness’ to which all Indians are to confirm? India is a land of a million gods and a thousand rivers. There is nothing singular in India. Even to talk about ‘India’ in the singular is to do violence to Indians. A recent Times of India article titled Finally, Companies Wake up to a Million Indias, talks about how the corporate world is waking up to the diversity of India and how that should inform their marketing strategies.The ‘million Indias’ refer to the plurality of traditions, castes and tribes present within India. And Indianness is the essence of the local and historical tradition that one inherits. Therefore, to get rooted in Indianness is to get rooted in whatever local tradition in which one is born.To understand one’s local traditions and the communities and to reclaim and re-inhabit them. This will empower you and give you a song that only you can sing. Our inherited traditionsare no longer a bane but a boon, even as they shape our unique voice and place in the predominantly secular world.
But we don’t live in isolation. We cannot ignore secular traditions, nor can we ignore some of the dominant Indian traditions. We will always be a beautiful tapestry of a multitude of traditions, interwoven intricately and powerful. Then we will have a voice in the world, a seat at both the national and the global table. We will have something to say and be, that is unique. The great Indian middle class can then leave its secular mediocrity and develop a voice that will reach for the skies.
