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Strangled Modernity
By Gopal Guru

The concept of modernity by far is the most contested one appearing differently to different people. Even the above title may not be free from seemingly varied problems and paradoxes. In its present form, the idea of a ‘strangled modernity’ might suggest that various social and political forces have been strangling modernity. But one might as well argue that modernity can also have a strangling impact on certain section(s) of a society. It suggests a two-way process of ‘strangling’ and ‘getting strangled’. Modernity may get strangled in terms of rights getting marginalized. Several contributions in the Eastern Quarterly on the issue MODERNITY, TRADITION AND CONTESTED SPACE (Volume 3, Issue II) have brought out that in the Northeast region rights are restricted both in terms of time and space. The mobility is so much restricted in the event of the public spaces being saturated by growing militarization of civic life. The issue on MODERNITY, TRADITION AND CONTESTED SPACE brings out this strangling dimension of modernity. On the other hand, modernity itself is being strangled by different reactionary forces.
In India, modernity is being strangled by the reactionary forces that are trying to overwhelm it by re-emphasizing the importance of Vedic science. Meera Nanda’s article ‘How Modern Are We? The Cultural Contradictions of India’s Modernity’ rightly warns us about this stamping out of modernity. In fact, she very rightly pinpoints the ambiguous response of the right reactionary towards modernity. She calls them ‘reactionary modernists’ who want to adopt technological modernity awhile clinging to constraining past.

The question that needs to be answered is: ‘How does one solve this problem?’ Modernity has posed a peculiar dilemma for those who are on the fringes of society. If one clings to modernity, it bites, if one leaves it then tries to run away. That is to say, at one level it has become a necessary evil. Some of the scholars tend to argue that this evil has been handed down to us by the colonial rule in the country. This attempt to dispense everything on the colonial rule has to answer the following question. Does modernity choose its nationalism or is it the other way round? If ‘colonial modernity’ was the problem and it played havoc with the country and the people, then why did not Indian nationalism throw it in the Arabian Sea right in 1947? It only implies that it is not modernity that chooses its nationalism, but it is nationalism that chooses its modernity. We chose modernity because we could not have managed without it. We were not in a position to recover alternative modes of modernity. Perhaps, we were deficient in terms of resources that could help us provide alternative modernity.

It is quite important to address another question that, in India, modernity as a value framework is yet to arrive replacing the old value structure. One does not need to provide evidence as to how communities are the primary source of human rights violation and how they are strangling the individuals. Modernity underlies the dialectic between the individual and the community. However, in most part of the country this dialectic gets suspended as the community strangles the individual. The opposition to inter-caste marriage is an obvious example to prove the point. Or, the tension between the community and the individual in the Northeastern societies in India sufficiently prove this point. However, this tension gets resolved in the political process both in the larger Indian context and the Northeast in particular. In fact, political interest, both individual as well as collective, forces dialogues on tradition and vice-versa. Thus, one need not see a complete separation between tradition and modernity. They are most often adequately accommodated for cross-purposes. As Bhagat Oinam has pointed out in ‘Receiving Communities: The Encounter with Modernity’, this marriage between tradition and modernity is already taking place in the context of Manipur. In case of the Northeast (and also many other regions), it should be noted that modernity arrived in the Northeast through theological route rather than the state. One has to find out to what extent modernity has provided background for undermining the constraining impact of theology.

Finally, the issue of Eastern Quarterly also addresses one more important question—whether modernity has a creeping sense of shame in its attempts to occupy different space. One of the contributions by Yengkhom Jilangamba ‘The “Priestly” State: Flyover Development, Politico-Aesthetics, Protests in Manipur’ brings out this aspect of modernity. I tend to agree with the view that modernity does not have the creeping sense of shame. Modernity in its developmental avatar, celebrates only those personalities that have only symbolic importance as far as various developmental projects are concerned. Some of them are privileged just because they have the power to inaugurate the Dam, Flyover or other project. In the same mode, Ritupan Goswami’s article ‘Nature and the Nation-State: Towards the History of the Modern River’ also offers the critique of modernity taking the case of ‘modern river’. He rightly argues that modernizing river leads to uneven distribution of fruits of development accruing from water. In the first case modernity renders invisible those working hands, which are responsible for creating these modern monuments. The process of modernity is riffed with this moral tension within itself. This is even true about the institutions that it throws up in the process. One may very well ask this question: ‘Do the public institutions thrown up by modernity have a sense of shame?’ The answer to this cannot be given in the positive affirmation as far as the experience of the Northeast is concerned. Whether it is the Central government and its apparatus operating in the area or the state governments at the local level, both these forms have not provided to us with any convincing evidence of decency. Modernity also lacks a sense of shame in as much as it renders the epistemological space as the competitive terrain thus encouraging the poacher from outside to benefit from it both intellectually and materially. It is in this sense, fresh and authentic writing on the issues through Eastern quarterly is a welcome development.