<nettime> Yogendra Yadav: Rajni Kothari, the political scientist of India,

["Patrice Riemens" <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

original to:
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/political-scientist-of-india/99/

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajni_Kothari



Rajni Kothari, the political scientist of India
by Yogendra Yadav, January 20, 2015

Where did he teach you? I mean in school or college, or where?? The
question came from my son, curious about this old gentleman we would meet
at the gate of our housing complex. I had told him that I touched his feet
because he was my teacher. His question was a natural follow-up.

My mind wandered to my undergraduate days. I had found an untouched Hindi
translation of Rajni Kothari?s book, Politics in India, in the library of
my college, Khalsa College, Sri Ganganagar. Despite its tough prose, made
worse by a heavy Sanskritic translation, the book was a breath of fresh
air. I didn?t quite understand the complex argument. But somehow, the book
taught me to think about politics in a radically new way. It also made me
decide to study politics.

Kothari was not a favourite author for my Marxist teachers at the
Jawaharlal Nehru University. But they encouraged us to study him so as to
critique his ?liberal bourgeois? reading of Indian politics. So I reread
his book, this time the English original. I appreciated him better now and
was convinced that his reading of Indian politics was far more
illuminating than the crude Marxist reading that we learnt in classrooms.
I never got to meet him or communicate with him at that stage of my life.
But I read everything he wrote and fancied myself as an Eklavya who learnt
from his guru in his absence.

As I look back at all that I have learnt from his books, what stands out
for me is his intellectual and cultural self-confidence. He resisted two
tendencies prevalent among students of Indian democracy prior to him. He
refused to treat Indian politics as a re-enactment of the script written
by Western democracies. At the same time, he debunked the idea that the
democratic experiment in India was culturally unique. He made it possible
to think of India as yet another ?normal? democracy, distinctly modern and
specifically Indian at the same time. I have learnt that it is easier to
acknowledge this agenda than practise it. Theorising Indian democracy in
these terms is still an unfinished intellectual agenda for our times.

Also Read: Ex-Plan panel member Rajni Kothari dies at 86

Unlike most academics, Kothari evolved with the times and had the courage
to change his formulation, and even position. Politics in India was an
instant classic when it was published in 1970, when he was barely 40 years
old. Kothari then expanded his horizons to think about the globe and
joined a group of thinkers in reimagining the future of the world order.
This led to the journal Alternatives. Then came the Emergency, which shook
the democrat in Kothari.

He had the courage to revisit his formulations and chart out fresh
directions for his intellectual pursuits. His writings thereafter,
especially State Against Democracy, were a critique of the Indian state.
His search for alternatives now took him towards the people?s movements
that operated outside mainstream politics. He brought together many
leading Indian intellectuals to formulate an agenda for India. He was more
sympathetic now to the critique of the very idea of development. By the
mid-1980s, Kothari had anticipated most of the key ideas that continue to
dominate our democratic imagination today.

In this phase, Kothari was a public intellectual, not just an academic. He
never made a sharp distinction between academic and popular writing. Many
of his well-known articles appeared in Seminar. He wrote regularly for
newspapers as well. His emphasis on a new brand of non-party politics led
him to a unique research-cum-action project, Lokayan. Along with Dhirubhai
Sheth and Vijay Pratap, he discovered and taught to my generation a new
vocabulary to make sense of this new form of politics.

His intellectual engagement with movements often led him to direct
activism. He had helped organise resistance to the Emergency outside
India. It is well known that he was among the writers of the manifesto for
the Janata Party in 1977. He was among the founders of the People?s Union
for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and went on to become its president. In the
aftermath of the anti-Sikh massacre in 1984, he was among the authors of
the path-breaking report, ?Who are the guilty??, which dared to name some
of the guilty Congressmen. Kothari was a friend, philosopher and guide to
all people?s movements. I was involved with many of these ? Samata
Sangathan, Samajwadi Jan Parishad and National Alliance for People?s
Movements. My colleagues there were not very fond of Kothari or Lokayan,
but I found his frame to be very helpful in making sense of this new and
exciting political practice. Above all, I learnt from him that the
boundary between academic and popular writing, between intellectual and
political work, is not watertight.

My limited direct learning from Kothari began after I joined the Centre
for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 1993. This institution was
founded by Kothari in 1963 ? when he was just 33 years old ? and was known
as ?Kothari?s Centre?. After joining the CSDS, I came to appreciate
Kothari?s approach to institution-building. He gathered a group of
exceptionally talented social scientists and turned the place into a
school of thought. Legend has it that he recruited a faculty member who
demanded a higher salary than Kothari himself. Unlike most Indian
institution builders, he stepped aside from the leadership of his own
institution when he turned 50. That is one of the key reasons why the CSDS
made a generational transition and is still a leading intellectual centre
after completing its golden jubilee.

My mind went through all this as I turned to my son and said: ?He was the
teacher who never taught me.? Somehow, he understood.

The writer is senior fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies,
currently on leave, and chief spokesperson of the Aam Aadmi Party


Rajni Kothari passed away, January 19, 2015


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org