DIALOGUES-Fourth Critical Studies -Capitalism

Abstract

“That, today, we should have to deplore the scarcity of water in our country, is of comparatively minor import. The main cause of that scarcity is our real regret–the fact that society has lost interest in itself and all its attention is directed outwards. […] What in English concepts is known as the State was called in our country Sarkar or Government. This Government existed in ancient India in the form of kingly power, but there is a difference between the present English State and our ancient kingly power. England relegates to State care all the welfare services in the country; India did that only to a very limited extent [..]. Today, of our own accord, we are ready to hand over to the government, one by one, the duties which had belonged to society. Many new communities appeared in our samaj in course of time and made special rules and conventions for themselves, while remaining within the Hindu fold; Hindu society never found fault with them. But everything is now tied down to the rigidity of the Englishmen’s law and any departure whatever is compelled to declare itself non-Hindu. The innermost core of our samaj, which we have guarded through the ages with the deepest concern, is exposed at last to outside aggression and the result is confusion. That is where the danger lies, and not in the scarcity of water supply [..]”.

Rabindranath Tagore, “Society and State”, 1904

Starting from a discussion of Tagore’s words in the essay “Society and State”, my paper will focus on the political dimension of the colonial and postcolonial State logistical expansion. I will first move from a crucial question for India, the issue of water and water supply. The issue became particularly relevant after the drought and famine of the end of the 19th. Century. As Mike Davis has described, famine and drought were both political products and political tools in the development of the colonial state. Not surprisingly then Tagore’s essay focuses on the issue of water, and from that elaborates on the political and social shift that went with the integration of India in the Imperial market and the implementation of rule of law political logic in India. Although Mike Davis underlines the predatory approach of Capitalism in 19th century India, the picture that Tagore gave tell us about a redefinition of political relations that is predicated on a redefinition of social relations. This redefinition is related to the development of Capital’s logic, and one can refer also to Marx’s writings on India on this aspect: while Marx missed points that are now crucial the post-colonial readings of capitalistic development he nonetheless grasped some of the peculiarity of capitalistic expansion: that is to say, the translation of former social relations into Capital. This shift, paved with violence and force, came with the implementation of “rule of law” in India, through colonial administration and finally the nation-state logic in the post-independence era. Former society has not been erased towards industrial society and labor relationships, or nation-State, but has been re-inscribed into this context. The paper will briefly discuss this endless transition in his contemporary political dimension, arguing that a political logistic accompany the developmental logistic that lead to the so-called “Logistical age” in India. It will conclude asking some crucial questions, like for instance: how was this “Logistical age” in some way anticipated by the implementation of Imperial market and the rule of law in colonial India? How is the materiality of logistic related to the “materiality of politics”? How is the materiality of governmentality and administration related to political imagination? How do the challenges posed by the “Logistical age” interact with new forms of subjectivation? Starting points will be the necessity not to look on Indian reality as an ‘other’ with respect to the Western nation-state history, but as intertwined to it; the permanent tension, of the ‘formal’ relation between humans and nation-state form, namely citizenship; the emergence of hybrid relationships between sovereignty, territory, rights (we can refer to as “assemblages”, following Saskia Sassen); the existence (or rather persistence) of multifarious forms of governance and political societies.

Bionote

Giorgio Grappi is a research fellow at the department of Politics, Institution, History of the University of Bologna. He received his academic education at the faculty of Political Science, with a dissertation on radical democracy and contemporary concept of freedom. He completed thereafter his PhD in History of Political Thought, with a dissertation on antifederalism and the framing of the United States Constitution, in 2007. After participating to the Sixth Annual Winter Course on Forced Migration organized by CRG in 2008, he has been part of two EU funded projects: GeMIC (Gender, migration and intercultural interactions) and MIG@NET (Transnational digital networks, migration and gender) in 2009 and 2010. His current scientific activities include citizenship and migration studies, State and postcolonial theory. He is conducting a research on the development of postcolonial State and new forms of Citizenship in India. In addiction to scholar activity, he is part of migrants and antiracist networks in Italy and Europe.