2020.01.26 谁是印度人？

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Who Is an Indian?
The question facing the country 70 years after it became a republic is similar to that from decades prior.

By Madhav Khosla
People hold signs and India's national flag during a protest in New Delhi, India.
Demonstrators protest against the new citizenship law in New Delhi, India. (Danish Siddiqui / Reuters)
JANUARY 26, 2020
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India houses more democratic citizens than any other country in the world. But for weeks, it has been in the throes of an intense argument over who those citizens should be. The passage of a new citizenship law that treats non-Muslims from three neighboring countries differently from Muslim ones has sparked much outrage. Yet even though this law is new—and arguably the single largest blow to India’s secular character—debates over the country’s religious and ethnic diversity, over how its people should be defined and identified, have been part of India’s history for more than a century. Seventy years on from the implementation of its constitution, a central question continues to vex the country: Who is an Indian?

The circumstances surrounding India’s birth—the partition of British India into two separate countries, India and Pakistan—are well known. The hurried withdrawal of the British Raj, the movement of millions across borders, and the ensuing displacement and violence have been unpacked and interrogated for decades. The philosophical context of the event is less appreciated, though. The division of British India marked a constitutional failure of gigantic proportions, underlining a breakdown over how to navigate identity and a failure to agree on the political form by which India’s millions should be represented.

India’s diversity is unique—it has long had the world’s second-largest Muslim population—but the question it is dealing with, of what makes a citizen, poses a challenge for democracies around the world. With battles over immigration and citizenship, membership and belonging, acquiring intensity not only in India but also in the United States and Europe, it is worth asking whether, as India’s founders felt, the ultimate solution will be found not in some ideal pact among communities but rather in a system where one is treated as an individual. That is, an arrangement in which Indians would not be seen as simply members of a particular community, be it a religion or caste. This is hard to achieve, and requires constant political work. The equality promised would demand the intense suppression of one’s instincts and impulses, but holds the possibility of creating a self-sustaining politics.

Read: Indian democracy is fighting back

Imperial rulers consistently saw India as a collection of groups, and Indians as people without a past and without a future. The territory was not populated by individuals who could deliberate, form opinions, exercise judgments, and make choices, but by fixed and permanent identities. They were not free agents but rather members of a group—Hindu or Muslim, Brahmin or Dalit—people condemned to communities whose interests were predetermined. The task of political life was to manage tensions among these groups, to discover some kind of balance among distinct categories of people, rather than people themselves.

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This way of thinking cast a deep imprint on Indian political thought. In the years preceding the end of the British empire, few efforts were made to reimagine political representation in a way that focused on individual freedom. Historians have, for example, long debated the real intentions that drove Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan: Did Jinnah seek a separate nation-state, an independent homeland for Muslims, or did he instead seek more power within a single united country? For those who believe the latter claim, the birth of Pakistan is seen less as the product of a clear ideology and more as an unintended consequence of political negotiations that went astray.

If one focuses not on territoriality but on representation, it becomes clear that regardless of whether Jinnah wanted one nation or two, he certainly saw Hindus and Muslims differently. He famously observed that whether one considered “culture and civilization” or “customs and calendar,” Muslims had a “distinctive outlook on life and of life.” For Jinnah, irrespective of how the matter of territory was to be settled, citizenship was to be mediated through one’s community. Hindus and Muslims were to be seen as Hindus and Muslims, rather than as individuals who happened to be Hindu or Muslim.

The idea that Muslims were a distinct community was pervasive. From Syed Ahmed Khan, the preeminent South Asian Muslim intellectual of the 19th century, onward, Muslim leaders undertook a widespread effort to draw a line between one’s political commitments and one’s religious faith. Even for Abul Kalam Azad, an important voice for Hindu-Muslim unity and a senior leader in the Indian National Congress—the party of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru—the question of belonging was often framed in religious terms.

Other political thinkers didn’t make much progress in framing national belonging as separate from religion either. Hindu nationalists such as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and M. S. Golwalkar—heroes in India’s current political climate—spoke in universal terms, but their universalism was predicated on all true Indians being Hindu. Savarkar emphasized neither geography nor birth, but rather “common blood” underlying the cultural and social practices that tied Hindus together. Muslims, he felt, could never make India their homeland. Their gaze was “ever turned towards Mecca and Medina,” and they were “often found to cherish an extra-territorial allegiance.” For him, as for Golwalkar, national unity lay in underlining the similarities that Hindus shared and their differences with others.

The Indian National Congress, the party behind India’s struggle for independence, saw citizenship very differently. Even though it rejected communalism, it did not quite put forth any positive idea of representation centered on the individual. At the time of the independence movement, Nehru distracted from the problem, seeing tensions among communities as reflections of underlying economic conflicts. In his mind, there was no real problem to address. For Mahatma Gandhi, the emphasis was on political practice, on the power of example. He sought unity and held a radical view of individual agency, but his answer was a noninstitutional one. It did not involve any theory of representation.

The partition of British India changed all this. The event captured how a politics structured around competing identity claims was unsustainable. For decades, Indians had responded to the claims of different communities with proposals ranging from political quotas to separate electorates. But the division of territory revealed the instability of such solutions—the only answer to the competing claims was a new nation. It was, as Jinnah made clear, the conversion of a minority group into a majority. Partition displayed how any framework centered on identity would fail to satisfy everyone. The only solution could lie in moving to a new representative system, one centered on individuals who could participate as free agents and create and re-create majorities and minorities within the crucible of politics.

Read: How Hinduism became a political weapon in India

Today, as India celebrates the 70th anniversary of its constitution, the document’s liberal vision is under serious challenge. To be sure, the decline of constitutional principles has been steady, perhaps in motion ever since the death of Nehru, India’s prime minister for its first 17 years and the man who cemented the principles of liberal democracy. But the test at present is perhaps as serious as it has ever been. India has faced the dangers of an authoritarian state before, most notably during the 1970s, when then–Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a national emergency. Yet it has never seen such a direct attack on the idea of individual citizenship; it has never witnessed the legislative remaking of the nation along religious and community lines.

In India’s current situation, the colonial model of citizenship has come back with a vengeance. The people have been viewed as having preset interests; they have been defined as permanent majorities and minorities. Their preferences are taken to be fixed matters that exist outside the domain of politics. And the nation faces the same challenge it did a century ago—it lacks a robust political alternative in which citizenship is imagined and defended on individual terms. Though the social unrest that has spread across India in recent weeks has been genuine and extensive, a new political vision has yet to emerge.

For the makers of India’s constitution, who strove to create democracy in a country that had long been regarded as unfit for it, the promise of self-rule was that a person’s interests were not predetermined. Rather than being divined on the basis of one’s identity, they would instead be formulated and reformulated in politics. The democratic ideal enabled the idea of majorities and minorities to be ever changing, constantly subject to alignment and realignment. Such a vision could liberate individuals from prior associations and allegiances, and create new loyalties.

The idea that one’s preferences were not imposed from either above or below was a modern one; it marked a departure from the ancient and medieval world where one’s choices were not exercised but assumed. As India’s republic turns 70, many of its citizens are wondering whether it can become modern again.

Madhav Khosla teaches law and politics at Columbia Law School and Ashoka University, and is the author of India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy.



谁是印度人？
国家成为共和国70年后面临的问题与之前几十年的问题相似。

马达夫-霍斯拉报道
在印度新德里的抗议活动中，人们手持标语和印度国旗。
在印度新德里，示威者抗议新的公民身份法。(Danish Siddiqui / Reuters)
2020年1月26日

印度比世界上任何其他国家拥有更多的民主公民。但几个星期以来，它一直处于关于这些公民应该是谁的激烈争论之中。一项新的公民法的通过，使来自三个邻国的非穆斯林人与穆斯林人的待遇不同，引发了很多人的愤怒。然而，尽管这项法律是新的--可以说是对印度世俗特征的最大打击--关于国家宗教和民族多样性的辩论，关于其人民应该如何定义和识别的辩论，已经成为印度一个多世纪以来历史的一部分。印度宪法实施70年后，一个核心问题仍然困扰着这个国家。谁是印度人？

围绕印度诞生的情况--英属印度被分割成两个独立的国家，即印度和巴基斯坦--是众所周知的。几十年来，人们一直在解读和审视英国王室的匆忙撤离、数百万人的跨界流动以及随之而来的流离失所和暴力。然而，这一事件的哲学背景却不太被人重视。英属印度的分裂标志着一个巨大的宪法失败，强调了在如何引导身份认同方面的崩溃，以及未能就代表印度数百万人的政治形式达成一致。

印度的多样性是独一无二的--长期以来，它拥有世界上第二大的穆斯林人口--但它正在处理的问题，即什么是公民，对全世界的民主国家构成了挑战。不仅在印度，而且在美国和欧洲，关于移民和公民身份、成员资格和归属感的争斗都在加剧，值得一问的是，正如印度的创始人所感受到的那样，最终的解决方案不是在社区之间的某种理想契约中找到，而是在一个人被当作个人对待的体系中找到。也就是说，在这种安排下，印度人不会被看作是某个特定社区的成员，无论是宗教还是种姓。这很难实现，需要持续的政治工作。所承诺的平等将要求强烈压制一个人的本能和冲动，但有可能创造一个自我维持的政治。

阅读：印度民主正在反击

帝国统治者始终将印度视为一个群体的集合体，而印度人则是没有过去和没有未来的人。领土上居住的不是能够审议、形成意见、行使判断和做出选择的个人，而是固定和永久的身份。他们不是自由的代理人，而是一个群体的成员--印度教或穆斯林，婆罗门或达利特--他们被置于利益已被预先确定的社区。政治生活的任务是管理这些群体之间的紧张关系，在不同类别的人之间发现某种平衡，而不是人本身。

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这种思维方式给印度的政治思想打下了深深的烙印。在大英帝国结束之前的几年里，人们很少努力以注重个人自由的方式重新想象政治代表。例如，历史学家长期以来一直在争论推动巴基斯坦创始人穆罕默德-阿里-真纳的真正意图。真纳是在寻求一个独立的民族国家，一个穆斯林的独立家园，还是在一个统一的国家内寻求更多的权力？对于那些相信后一种说法的人来说，巴基斯坦的诞生与其说是一种明确的意识形态的产物，不如说是政治谈判误入歧途的一个意外结果。

如果我们不关注领土问题，而是关注代表权问题，就会发现，无论真纳想要一个国家还是两个国家，他对印度人和穆斯林的看法肯定是不同的。他有一个著名的观点，即不管是考虑 "文化和文明 "还是 "习俗和日历"，穆斯林都有 "独特的人生观和生活观"。对真纳来说，无论领土问题如何解决，公民身份都要通过自己的社区进行调解。印度教徒和穆斯林将被视为印度教徒和穆斯林，而不是碰巧是印度教徒或穆斯林的个人。

穆斯林是一个独特的社区的想法是普遍存在的。从19世纪南亚杰出的穆斯林知识分子赛义德-艾哈迈德-汗（Syed Ahmed Khan）开始，穆斯林领导人普遍努力在个人的政治承诺和宗教信仰之间划清界限。即使对阿布-卡拉姆-阿扎德来说，他是印度教-穆斯林团结的重要代言人，也是印度国民大会--印度第一任总理贾瓦哈拉尔-尼赫鲁的政党--的高级领导人，归属问题也经常以宗教术语的形式出现。

其他政治思想家在将民族归属感与宗教分离方面也没有取得多大进展。印度教民族主义者，如维纳亚克-达莫达尔-萨瓦尔卡和M.S.戈尔瓦卡--印度当前政治气候中的英雄--以普遍的术语发言，但他们的普遍主义是以所有真正的印度人都是印度教为前提的。萨瓦尔卡既不强调地理，也不强调出生，而是强调将印度人联系在一起的文化和社会习俗的 "共同血液"。他认为，穆斯林永远不可能把印度作为他们的祖国。他们的目光 "总是转向麦加和麦地那"，而且他们 "经常被发现怀有领土外的忠诚"。对他来说，就像对戈尔瓦克一样，民族团结在于强调印度人与其他人的相似之处和不同之处。

印度国民大会，即印度独立斗争背后的政党，对公民身份的看法非常不同。尽管它反对社区主义，但它并没有完全提出任何以个人为中心的积极的代表权思想。在独立运动时，尼赫鲁转移了对问题的注意力，认为社区之间的紧张关系是潜在经济冲突的反映。在他看来，并没有真正的问题需要解决。对圣雄甘地来说，重点在于政治实践，在于榜样的力量。他寻求统一，并对个人机构持有激进的看法，但他的答案是一个非制度性的。它不涉及任何代表权理论。

英属印度的分治改变了这一切。这一事件表明，围绕着相互竞争的身份要求而形成的政治是不可持续的。几十年来，印度人用从政治配额到独立选区等各种建议来应对不同社区的要求。但是，领土的划分揭示了这种解决方案的不稳定性--解决相互竞争的要求的唯一答案是建立一个新的国家。正如真纳明确指出的那样，这是一个少数群体转化为多数群体的过程。分治显示了任何以身份为中心的框架都无法满足所有人。唯一的解决办法是转向一个新的代议制，一个以个人为中心的代议制，他们可以作为自由人参与，在政治的熔炉中创造和重新创造多数派和少数派。

阅读：印度教如何成为印度的一种政治武器

今天，在印度庆祝其宪法颁布70周年之际，该文件的自由主义愿景正受到严重挑战。可以肯定的是，宪法原则的衰落是稳定的，也许自从印度前17年的总理尼赫鲁去世后就开始了，他是巩固自由民主原则的人。但目前的考验也许是前所未有的严重。印度曾经面临过专制国家的危险，最明显的是在20世纪70年代，当时的总理英迪拉-甘地宣布全国紧急状态。然而，它从未见过如此直接攻击个人公民权的想法；它从未见证过按照宗教和社区路线对国家进行立法改造。

在印度目前的情况下，公民权的殖民模式又回来了，而且是报复性的。人民被视为具有预设的利益；他们被定义为永久的多数派和少数派。他们的偏好被认为是存在于政治领域之外的固定事项。这个国家面临着与一个世纪前相同的挑战--它缺乏一个强有力的政治选择，在这个选择中，公民身份被想象并以个人的条件来捍卫。尽管最近几周蔓延到印度各地的社会动荡是真实而广泛的，但新的政治愿景还没有出现。

对于印度宪法的制定者来说，他们努力在一个长期被认为不适合民主的国家创造民主，自治的承诺是一个人的利益不是预先确定的。与其说是根据一个人的身份来判断，不如说是在政治中制定和重新制定。民主的理想使多数人和少数人的想法不断变化，不断受到调整和重新调整。这样的愿景可以将个人从先前的关联和忠诚中解放出来，并创造新的忠诚。

一个人的偏好不是从上面或下面强加的，这是一个现代的想法；它标志着与古代和中世纪世界的不同，在那里，一个人的选择不是被行使，而是被假设。在印度的共和国成立70周年之际，许多公民都在想，它是否能再次成为现代国家。

马达夫-科斯拉在哥伦比亚大学法学院和阿育王大学教授法律和政治，他是《印度的建国时刻》的作者。一个最令人惊讶的民主国家的宪法。