150 "Presenting" the Past
adds strength to the state, social pluralism prevails over class solidarity
in the society. Although often challenged, the Indian state has demon-
strated enormous "capacity to manage, manipulate, or repress a society
that is eager but only partially able to speak for itself." Although India
has a competitive party system, a good degree of social mobilization, and
a plethora of voluntary organizations, "the associational life has proved
too fragmented to agree or act on alternative national political doctrines."
Class politics has never been the medium for representing the classes of
Indian society or for expressing conflicts among them. Organizations rep-
resenting languages, castes, and territorial interests, and those speaking
for disadvantaged minority groups such as "backward" classes, untouch-
able castes and tribes, Muslims, and other sectoral interests such as agri-
culture have been more successful in creating consciousness and identity
and in influencing political action and policy agendas.^13
Despite the mind-boggling pluralistic nature of Indian society, absence
of class-based mobilization, lack of positive or charismatic political lead-
ership, and virtual impossibility of moving this huge nation of more than
one billion people (living in 27 cities with a population of one million and
above, more than 4,000 towns, and some 594,000 inhabited villages) to
any single political cause, India is holding together and moving forward.
In the absence of any revolutionary agenda, overt class conflicts have
become more acute within the ruling classes between the major segments
of industrial and agricultural capital. The oppression of the lower castes
has become more intensified. However, "increased mass awareness of civil
and democratic rights has led to an opening up of new political spaces
in which political movements and parties would be well placed to raise
the demands of the backward castes, scheduled castes, Dalits, adivasis and
other oppressed sections of society. It is the long-term consequences of
this development that will constitute the backbone of future politics in
India."^14
It is this promising development that induces a curiosity about the
impact of the communal relations between Hindus and Muslims in the
evolving Indian civil society. A full-blown civil society, as Havel and Mich-
nik have postulated, will be marked by an ethic of civic responsibility,
civic courage, practical morality (humanly measured care for our fellow
human beings), and civil disobedience. Decades ago Mahatma Gandhi
raised these concerns, lived this philosophy, and let the world hear loud
and clear through his actions. He argued in one of his early and seminal
works,
The English have not taken India; we have given it to them. They are not in India
because of their strength, but because we keep them They came to our country
originally for purposes of trade.... They had not the slightest intention at the
time of establishing a kingdom. Who was tempted at the sight of their silver? Who