Neera Chandhoke - Democracy and Revolutionary Politics

Democracy and
Revolutionary Politics

THEORY FOR GLOBAL AGE

Series Editors: Gurminder K. Bhambra and Robin Cohen

Editorial Board: Michael Burawoy (University of California Berkeley, USA), Neera Chandoke (University of Delhi, India), Robin Cohen (University of Oxford, UK), Peo Hansen (Linkping University, Sweden), John Holmwood (University of Nottingham, UK), Walter Mignolo (Duke University, USA), Emma Porio (Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines), Boaventura de Sousa Santos (University of Coimbra, Portugal).

Globalization is widely viewed as a current condition of the world, but there is little engagement with how this changes the way we understand it. The Theory for a Global Age series addresses the impact of globalization on the social sciences and humanities. Each title will focus on a particular theoretical issue or topic of empirical controversy and debate, addressing theory in a more global and interconnected manner. With contributions from scholars across the globe, the series will explore different perspectives to examine globalization from a global viewpoint. True to its global character, the Theory for a Global Age Series will be available for online access worldwide via Creative Commons licensing, aiming to stimulate wide debate within academia and beyond.

Each book in the series focuses on a particular theoretical issue or topic of empirical controversy and debate, addressing theory in a more comprehensive and interconnected manner in the process. With books commissioned from scholars from across the globe, the series explores understandings of the global and global understandings from diverse viewpoints. The series will be available in print, in eBook format and free online, through a Creative Commons licence, aiming to encourage academic engagement on a broad geographical scale and to further the reach of the debates and dialogues that the series develops.

Also in the series

Connected Sociologies

Gurminder K. Bhambra

Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism

Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson

On Sovereignty and Other Political Delusions

Joan Cocks

Postcolonial Piracy: Media Distribution and Cultural Production in the Global South

Edited by Lars Eckstein and Anja Schwarz

The Black Pacific: Anticolonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections

Robbie Shilliam

Forthcoming titles

Cosmopolitanism and Antisemitism

Robert Fine and Philip Spencer

Debating Civilizations: Interrogating Civilizational Analysis in a Global Age

Jeremy Smith

John Dewey: The Global Public and Its Problems

John Narayan

Stark Utopia: Debt as a Technology of Power

Richard Robbins and Tim Di Muzio

Democracy and
Revolutionary Politics

Neera Chandhoke

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Civil society was a key political concept at the close of the twentieth century associated, as it was, with social movements in Eastern Europe that heralded the end of the Soviet Union and the bipolar world that the cold war had sustained. The twenty-first century, in turn, began with similar social movements, in other parts of the world, against monarchical regimes and authoritarian polities. From Nepal to Tunisia to Libya, people organized collectively and consistently for civil and political liberties and for democracy in various forms. While the relationship between civil society and democracy has long been charted, that between violent protest or political violence and democracy, less so. And yet, many of these collective mobilizations were also violent and not just contingently so.

In her important book Democracy and Revolutionary Politics, Neera Chandhoke argues for the necessity of examining the idea of violence, and the specificities of political or revolutionary violence, in the context of classical concerns with the main subjects of political theory justice and the state. Since Weber, the latter has been directly associated with a claim to legitimacy for a monopoly over violence within a given territory, with democratic sovereignty the currently accepted basis of that claim to legitimacy. Given the impact of violence and, in particular, revolutionary violence, upon the shaping of democratic states, Chandhoke argues, it is not possible simply to dismiss non-state violence, or to look for single-issue explanations justifications or condemnations that either place it outside the dynamics of democratic politics or as hostile to it. Instead, the book is a meticulous working through of the complexities and ambiguities of political violence and an intimate examination of its relation to theoretical and actual contradictions of democratic politics.

This work of theory is undertaken through an examination of the armed struggle waged by Maoists in democratic India and asks two interrelated questions: can revolutionary violence be justified in democratic contexts and in what circumstances can it be justified? Even if it can be justified, Chandhoke continues, is it a prudent way of doing politics in democracies? This ambiguity forms the central point of the argument. As Chandhoke perceptively notes, what is at issue here is the necessity, always, of being able to claim justice from the state, even if and perhaps especially if that state understands itself as democratic. While much of the book addresses violence through an empirical lens focused on the politics of the Maoists, the conclusion addresses the political thought of one of the most renowned proponents of non-violence, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

The book is a superb illustration of one of the key aims of the Theory for a Global Age series, namely, of seeking to understand what theory might look like if we started from places other than Europe and from persons other than European thinkers. The focus on an episode from the history of the global South is illuminating about that episode, but actually does much more as well. It provides an excellent exposition of the possibilities of how the conceptual and political debates on violence, especially political violence, can be broadened and enriched by taking a global perspective.

Gurminder K. Bhambra

I began work on this project when I joined Rainer Forsts research programme Justitia Amplificata, Goethe University, Frankfurt, as senior fellow (20122013). I wish to express my profound gratitude to Rainer for his support and friendship. During the period of the fellowship, I stayed at Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften at Bad Homburg. The institute provided ideal surroundings for sustained work, as well as relaxation amidst the company of other scholars. Thanks to Ingrid, Beate and Andreas for making my stay such a pleasant one. I recollect our treks in more than ankle-deep snow in the middle of the German winter, to visit a restaurant or a micro-brewery, with great nostalgia.

Back in Delhi, I began to write up the work as National Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi (20132015). Thanks to Professor Sukhdeo Thorat, the chairman of the ICSSR, Professor Ramesh Dadich, member-secretary, and Dr Sanchita Dutta, for their co-operation and help. I was affiliated to the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti House, New Delhi, during the period of the fellowship. As always, it is a pleasure to work in the magnificent library of the NMML, stroll through sylvan surroundings and participate in seminar programmes. My gratitude to Professor Mahesh Rangarajan and Dr Balakrishnan. May NMML flourish even more under the able guidance of Mahesh.