Is Multi Culturism an answer to Ugly Majoritarianism?

Mukul Kesavan had done a series of articles on majoritarianism, the latest of which is “Noble Experiment” and can be read here https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/the-importance-of-having-been-pluralist/cid/1830296

Mukul Kesavan is one my most favorite columnists, whose insights, and power of story telling, are sharp and persuasive.  And the series on majoritarianism, offers much food for thought.  However, having read all the essays, and in particular, his critique of French Laicite, I find some aspects of Kesavan’s advocacy of pluralism puzzling.

A secular state for me is a noble attempt to create the maximal space for personal freedom of an individual: in her choice of life style, pursuit of her faith, or conformity to social norms.  The site at which you maximize the freedom of choice is the individual citizen - the person - not the least because we exist as persons, first and foremost.  Then comes family, social circle, community, religion, culture, and nation or state. 

However, this has not always been so.  Pater-familia, tribal codes, caste, even nations, have served as alternate sites to the person or the individual.  

The tyranny of joint families in a patriarchy, fully reinforced by ancestor worship, was the world’s first political, economic, and cultural unit, complete in itself.  

We all know the tyranny it produced, even as it provided sustenance to all in the family. The Pater had power of life and death over members through much of antiquity, up until the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 CE.  Most laws in a modern state still recognize the core of what was pater-familia, the new codes are woven around that core, to create space for an individual to emerge from the family fortress if she chooses to, or to live within it if she so chooses, but with a minimum of state guaranteed dignity.

In the natural world, the power to think, to feel, to experience life, to create and innovate, vests with the individual.  A Family doesn’t paint, write a story or a poem, innovate to create a widget.  

The soul, - the Brahman if you will - is profoundly individual.  When it stands before God - any God of any faith - she stands alone; absolutely alone; and she alone is responsible of any act of omission or commission.

The family, tribe, clan, nation or even the priesthood representing the religion doesn’t stand in her stead.  In fact, they are not even there to argue her case.  So here is the first point I wish to make.  

If I alone am responsible for my conduct before my creator, what right have others to make life choices for me?  Is any one of them going to the purgatory for me, for the choices they imposed on me?

So whichever way you wanna break this up, every God - without exception - be it Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Islam or whatever, on judgement day, it is the Individual who stands before her God.  

No Ummah, no bhajan mandly, no priesthood, no nation, no state, no pater, uncle ji, or omniscient aunt, accompanies the individual.  If there is a God, then He chose the individual as the site, at which He put a part of himself [soul or the Brahman] in this world.  

That is what every religion teaches us.  Then by what right can anybody demand the site at which we maximize the freedom of choice in this world be anything but the individual?

You cannot have anarchy of course. 

As a species we have survived by learning social skills - language in particular - that has enabled us to create and store vast amounts of knowledge in a shared memory, that far exceeds the capacity of any one individual. Access to this shared resource necessitate certain rules that individuals obey.  These break out into various cultural codes - social, economic, religious, cultural, legal - and to varying degrees the individual must comply with them to order to access shared community resources.  

But while all these codes are necessary for society, they are like traffic rules, meant to ensure efficient access to all - including pedestrians - to get from point A to point B. They are not end in themselves.  

These cultural codes exist to facilitate the life of an individual.  The moment you forget the centre of the universe - God at one focus of the ellipse, soul at the other - you let in a whole host of organized barbarians - the family, community, priesthoods, state and the UNSC - claiming the absolute right to tell me how to live my life - without any responsibility when things go wrong.  

So Mukul’s first duty, as the guardian of our episteme, is to make sure we understand this absolute principle in every religion or society.  You stand alone before your creator, and must be responsible for every act of commission and commission.  No one can substitute for you.  And from thence flow your core right - freedom of choice - subject only to the similar claims of others like you.

Back to Mukul’s essay, in his criticism of Laicite, Mukul has subtly substituted the individual with the community - in this case the Muslims - without specifying who represents the community, or how this representation comes about.  

Which is not to say that there is no prejudice against Muslims or Muslim cultural codes in France.  There is plenty of that.  And any means to contain it are welcome.  But the question is: whose freedom of choice are you trying to maximize?  Do you even know what the choice is?

Consider a Muslim girl trying to decide if she must wear a burqa or not in France.  If she is like me, and doesn’t like to be told what to wear - which girl does? - what are her options?  Should the Muslim community have the right to dictate her choice?  From where does this right flow?  How is it validated by a community?  

To merely say that Muslims must have the freedom to follow their own cultural codes is a null and void - an empty - statement; an empty Set - with nothing in it. William of Ockham called such nouns empty or nominal.  [For clarity we may use the Set theory.  “Muslim community” here is a Set.  But an empty Set.  It has no members.  It is only when it becomes populated by individuals does it become a functional or proper Set.]  

To have any meaning individuals must be added to that Set you call Muslim Community - one individual at a time - and you must ask each if she wants to wear a burqa.  Does the Muslim Community, the empty Set not populated by any member, allow the girl such a choice?  If not what is the legitimacy of their claim to govern such choices?  

You may then ask of the converse.  If the Muslim Community cannot dictate the girl’s choice, can the state do so?  Can the French state tell the girls she must not wear a burqa?

In any ideal world, Laicite or not, the state has no right to tell the girl not to wear a burqa.  It is primarily her choice, and if she wishes to follow her community’s cultural code [as she sees it], she should be free to do so.  

Why then is there a conflict?  Essentially the dispute is political and needs to be addressed in the political domain.  The French want a direct contract between the State and the citizen - un-intermediated by any clergy of any kind, Muslim or Christian - and part of that deal is that no religious symbols of any kind may be worn in public.  In short, the state seeks to stay out of public religion, and contain it in the private domain.  Does it have the right to do so?  Well that’s a straightforward political issue, subject to debate, discussion, and a vote.  

What then in Mukul’s point?  Where and why does Mukul see “majoritarianism” at play here in this context?  

Let us concede that there are Muslim girls, who may want to wear the burqa, if only to make a point that they prefer privacy to being googled at by wolves.  I know.  I wear hoodies in airports; even in planes, not knowing when you may drop off to sleep.  And that such girls will be discomfited by French ban on burqa. But only such girls have the legitimate right to question the ban.  Not the community elders, not the overly pious male louts, or the timorous parents.  None other than the girl herself has such a right, and the French state must answer her truthfully.  How is it that the state can tell can tell her not to wear a burqa?

As I said earlier, your right to free choice is subject only to similar claims of others like you.  

In this case: girls who may be forced to wear a burqa by parents, or street bullies to appoint themselves as guardians of their communities, family elders, or even community leaders; constitute the group who may be discomfited by your desire to wear a burqa. And they probably out number you by a wide margin.  And then there will be girls of other communities as well.  So a compromise becomes necessary.

Such things need to be aggregated and a decision made in a way that the maximand is maximal freedom of choice to individuals.  Has the French state met that standard?  You have to concede it has.  Therefore, when you freedom conflicts with freedom of others just like you, one needs a compromise - a mediation, not resolution,  since a resolution is impossible - and a reasoned choice made.  You are accepting some constraint in order to preserve the totality of your freedom of choice.  Nothing wrong in such an outcome whatsoever. 

Like the French state, the Indian state, gave you a marginalized, out and out rebel, against the majority community, to create a constitutional order, based entirely on individual’s inalienable fundamental rights, and a social contract primarily between the individual and the state, un-intermediated by family, community, culture, religion.  

And Dr B R Ambedkar was that rebel. His genius created such a constitutional order.  

Having done so, he carefully picked out where the family, community, religion and culture must necessarily come in, and formally recognized these exceptions through law - be it Muslim personal laws, Hindu Joint family codes, right to have own educational institutions to promote a common community culture. And much else besides.  

The constitutional schema can’t be faulted.  Dr B R Ambedkar is highly underrated. He, better than Nehru, understood that the centre of focus in the modern world is the individual, and not anything else; a notion that many in the public sphere still don’t grasp fully.

So what went wrong in India?  Why has ugly majoritarianism raised its evil head?  The faults are many, ranging from Congress’ corruption of secularism, a withering state unable to prevent communalization of its electoral politics, to the huge advantage our society confers - at least in the short term - on those who play communal politics in complete violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution.  I won’t go into them here but confine myself to the context of Mukul’s limited point.

That fact is secularism is designed to contain majoritarianism, and prevent it from tyrannizing the minority; or minorities.  

Which it does by insisting that its relationship with the citizen is not intermediated by community, priesthood, or religion.  This disenfranchises the priesthood in all communities, in which precisely the priesthood has been the most dominant force - be it Muslims or Hindus.  So all these groups have a vested interest in flouting precisely those parts of the Constitution that seek to keep them out of the power structure.

Not surprisingly, all of them have used some part of their ungoverned religious or culture code, to defy the State, and emphasize their right to practice their own codes, regardless of the spirit, or even the letter, of the Constitution.  

And the minorities have been more aggressive in this behalf, mindless of the fact that such acts would invariably attract retaliation. 

But do remember, if X opposes burqa, while Y wants it, they both have a common vested interest in keeping this issue alive, in order to whittle down the larger adversary - the secular constitution.  And it is this commonality of interests between rival priesthoods, not always made transparent, that defeats the state, shrinking it further.

Minorities, and such thinkers as Mukul, not surprisingly, favor such a thing as pluralism - or MultiCulturism - where the public sphere is divided into a majority and a minority, whereby each runs its own sub-sphere, in accordance with its own community codes.  

But no representational system to determine and administer these codes exists in such communities, or has ever been thought of.  

How does the Muslim Ummah decide whether there should be burqa or not?  Does the clergy decide?  How? When? Where?  By a majority vote?  Who votes?  By hermeneutics of scriptures?  What scriptures?  

The same questions would arise in case of Hindus, or Sikhs, or Buddhists.  Clearly, while it is easy to talk of pluralism and Multiculturalism, in practice, the resulting system would be a nightmare.  

In such a world the first loser would be the weakest of them all - the individual - for whose benefit the family, community, nation or state exist!  It would be like throwing out the baby, to preserve the bathtub.

What bothers me in Mukul’s articles is the conflation of individual with minority.  

At the risk of repetition, the seculars state exists to protect individuals from tyranny of others, including itself, and not minorities, or majorities.  

It is fact that in protecting individuals, you also simultaneously put more than proportionate restraints on the majority, and enhance the freedom for a minority.  

But no secular state should go beyond protection of individuals. Protection of minorities must be justified on the common principle of maximizing personal freedom of individuals in all communities

The moment you forget that, the ugly rise of majoritarians become politically impossible to contain, and the secular state is itself imperiled.

Mukul is spot on in holding that the Indian Constitutional order is an unique experiment in world political history that merits global attention.  That it came about is itself a miracle, and a tribute to the genius & plurality of our founding fathers.

The challenge from majoritarianism that India faces is not unique.  

Majoritarianism is raising its head worldwide. Right-wing militancy is on the march to dismantle liberalism.  

Somewhere down the road the music will stop, and the march will break up. 

The majoritarianism we face in India is premised on a false history, corrupted hermeneutics, misinterpreted philosophy, and not rooted in the ethos of our people over the millennia.  

We have always debated the most fundamental of issues and not forced solutions to disputes.  

The foundational dispute - if a Brahman in every individual exists, or not - stands unresolved in our philosophy.  

And it is a dispute on which two entirely different religions of the world were founded out of Hinduism - Jainism and Buddhism.  

So if some bigots think solutions can be imposed by fiat from Nagpur, they are mistaken.  They have only to look to history - and its invasions - to see where that attitude leads.  So it my belief that sanity will return - sooner than later.

Meanwhile let us not add to existing problems by foraying into pathways that lead nowhere but into arid lands.  

A secular state, even today, remains the most credible guarantor of an individual’s freedom.  

Let us not dismantle it through any multiculturalist utopia that hasn’t yet been thought through, but has become a propaganda prop for those who seek to dismantle the state itself, and substitute it with tribal barbarism in the name of religious freedom.