HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

OF CIVIL SOCIETY
INTRODUCTION
 The State and civil society in India are often
characterized as complex realms of socio-political
engagement given the very nature of their origin and
development under colonial and postcolonial
conditions
 While the State in India had been undergoing changes

during the colonial days, the civil society had become

vibrant in the context of the challenges of modernity
and the rising tempo of nationalism.
 The State had the pressure of colonial administration

and all its requirements, but the civil society in its

multitudes developed its own concerns and responses
from different vantage points.
 These concerns and responses were manifested in
the anti-colonial struggle, nationalist aspirations,
anti-caste/socio-religious reform movements, civil
liberty activities etc.
 In the postcolonial conditions, the State and civil

society further went through a variety of

experiences largely because of the new challenges
of state-building and nation-building.
PRE-COLONIAL, COLONIAL AND POST
COLONIAL ERA
 The value of the concepts of State and civil society in a Third World context
has been heavily criticised, as arguments against the universal applicability of
the concepts developed within western political philosophy have been raised
 The modern State was in the West paradoxically developed simultaneous
with a civil society, a process covering centuries, which included a gradual
shift towards a more powerful and efficient State, but also towards a stronger
and more independent civil society.
 In the Third World the power of the pre-colonial State was, in most cases,
not absolute in the same sense as in the West, with influential religious and
traditional power structures often outside the immediate reach of State
power.
 Every Third World society and every democracy has its own special
construction of State–civil society relations, and almost all States have had a
colonial history that influenced these relations.
 While differing from country to country the colonial period meant a serious
break with traditional political organisation, and although such breaks are
not necessarily negative for the development of democracy the close relation
between the economic sphere and the state proved fatal for the development
of both political democracy and civil society.
 Olle Törnquist outlines how a symbiotic relation between
politics and economy developed, where the State dominated
the economic sphere and where economic success came
through political power rather than skillful use of labour and
capital.
 The domination of the colonial powers stopped the growth of
a domestic capital owning middle class necessary to challenge
both the State and the feudal order, and capitalism was,
instead, introduced by external forces and controlled by an
alliance between the colonial State and the ruling feudal
classes.
 The middle classes outside the domination of the feudal
system were very weak, as was the basis for a strong civil
society.
 Although capitalism expanded in some areas, the expected
process of social and political modernisation failed to show,
largely because of the strong connection between the political
and the economic sphere, and the feudal system was instead
of being replaced, incorporated in the colonial capitalism.
 The symbiotic relation between politics and economy
continued in the postcolonial period also. State-led
modernisation plans became the order of the day,
with a major role for the State within the economy
and with continuously weak domestic capitalists.
 Also in this new setting the road to economic power
ran through the political elite and through the state.
 The symbiosis of the political and economic spheres
is one example of how State-civil society relations
developed differently in the Third World, which has
consequences on how the civil society theory can be
applied
 The relatively slow and—at least partly—peaceful
growth of civil society and the development of civil
and political rights in Western Europe have little or
no correspondence in postcolonial States
 Mobilisation within the civil society in India was evident already
in the colonial period but the formation of both State and civil
society in India was different from that of Western Europe
 While the modern State in the West developed simultaneous with
civil society, a process covering centuries and included a gradual
shift towards a more powerful and efficient State, but also
towards a stronger and more independent civil society, the
development of civil society in the rest of the world has not
followed the same pattern.
 The powers of both the pre-colonial and the colonial State were
not absolute: the State coexisted with influential religious and
traditional power structures outside its immediate reach and the
effects of these alternative power structures were evident also in
the formation of the civil society.
 One example is the tendency of the British colonial State to
respect religious differences and to divide the population
according to faith.
 In the Indian case, this practice led to a strong position of the
native religious elites, and the strengthening of religious identity
in both the private sphere and in civil society
 PRE-COLONIAL ERA:
 It seems to be relevant here to explain some aspects of the

nature of Indian State in the pre-colonial era and also its mode of
governance in the society.
 The political arrangements in the traditional India appear to have

been stretched over three distinct levels.

 The micro foundations of power lay in the structure of village

communities over which regional kingdoms exercised a real and

proximate political authority.
 Power at the level of the village community exercised through the

logic of the caste system

 Historically, the Aryans had compartmentalised the Indian social

system into four ‘Varnas’: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra

in accordance with the four functions that allotted to them
respectively, knowledge: production and interpretation of the
existing knowledge system, defence: the psychical protection of
the people belonging to the other three varnas, wealth: trade and
commerce, labour: the physical labour to the above three varnas
of the social hierarchy
 According to Manu’s code of law, the duties/functions
broadly called ‘dharma’ is societally assigned to the
individual and s/he has no choice at all to take
decision on his own matters as concerned with the
work or has no right to cross-cut this pre-fixed Social
boundary .
 The Varna classification is a generalised one within
which there existed umpteen numbers of castes (Jatis)
and sub castes.
 This made the Indian social system more complex
which resisted any generalisation. Indeed, to a greater
extent this system of stratification made the Indian
society static for a long period of time.
 This had been the prime instrument of exclusion
which had frozen the intellectual and social
development of the communities which were
historically marginalised from the mainstream path.
 Given the nature of this system, the State could not act
as the symbol of society as a whole.
 The State itself was subject to the systemic control
 Unlike the territorial division of the modern nation-

state, in the traditional Indian State, each significant

practice would have a territorial structure specific to
itself.
 Religious and economic domains demonstrated greater

stability in comparison with the ‘high mortality’ of

ruling dynasties and their general fragile States.
 The pre-colonial type of authority was not an authority

for appeal against widespread structural injustice,

oppressions of social process.
 The State had neither the great advantages nor the

great responsibilities of being the universal institution,

which assumed at least symbolic responsibility for
society’s general good or evil
 Both the Mughals and the Britishers had not altered the
system much.
 The society was under various conflicting power centres and
was hierarchically ordered.
 The Britishers pursued a policy in which the colonial
administration had linked the governmental authority with
those power centres and avoided a direct link between the
colonialists and the people in general.
 The colonial reluctance to intervene in the ‘private’ slowed
down the possibility of social transformation.
 The British colonialism introduced a new type of regime
which favoured wealth compared to the previous one
 The contact of the Indian society with the colonial power
was a contact of two very different principles of
construction of society and state.
 The colonialists dealt with the system with the support of
their rationalist discourses and gave primacy to commerce
and economic control.
 In the traditional Indian social thinking, commerce and
economic activities were politically insignificant.
 The State only ‘squeezed’ the economy rather than

restructuring it.
 The State and society were in a harmonious relation and the

State never altered the Hindu social order.

 The Mughals also did not disturb this social system.
 They had established a ‘subordinate empire’ on the top without

altering the caste-based village structure on the ground.

 COLONIAL ERA:
 The British colonialism destabilised this dualism
 The Britishers had created a public sphere which they filled with

the European model of institutions and laws

 This rule of colonial difference was challenged by the

nationalists
 However, the colonial State was marginal and remained as a

thin stratum of institutions, which focused on the maintenance

of colonial order and the extraction of the public revenue
 The colonialists did not make any attempt to
radically change the society, but followed a tricky
business of extraction and accumulation.
 However, the impact of colonialism was
multifaceted.
 Most importantly, it altered the peaceful
coexistence of different communities.
 Historically, Indian society was complex and in their
day today experiences in the pre-colonial India,
people had developed a composite culture.
 The political practices under the colonial rule
fragmented the society along the line of caste and
religious differences.
 There were no communal conflicts reported before
the nineteenth century except two incidents in
1710 and 1740
 From the nineteenth century onwards, we can see a chain of
communal riots and caste wars.
 In a multi-religious society like India where the relation

between religion politics being a complex one and the

internal compositions of religion and modern politics were
contradictory, this is not surprising.
 The Britishers ruled India not only by coercion alone but also

by the power of their rational discourses which enabled them

to sustain psychological domination among the natives.
 It should be noted that in the post-Mughal period the Indian

society was so obsessed with certain practices of the

religious belief system; specifically, Hinduism was beset with
idolatry, polytheism and superstition. These practices were
being challenged by various unorthodox sects which
emerged in almost all parts of India.
 The nineteenth century intellectuals generally believed that

the superstitious belief systems and social practices of the

Indian society were a stumbling block on the path of
progress.
 The Hindu religious reformers strongly opposed the
superstitious belief system of their religion.
 The newly emerged intelligentsia generally believed that

the acceptance of Western Enlightenment values was the

only panacea to shift the ‘insecure’ Indian social system
into a ‘secure community.’
 The emerging modern nation-state in the West was viewed

as symbol of security and development.

 The modern nation-state was a product of Western

modernity, accompanied by the emergence of capitalist

system, the advanced form of social division of labour and
the transition from a theocentric world order towards a
humanocentric order
 The Western Enlightenment project divided the world into

two—the ‘civilised’ West and the ‘uncivilised’ East. The

discourses were based upon the assumption that the West
was a rational socio-political order and the rest were
guided by unreason and superstitions.
 In India, the British colonial authorities had
maintained their hegemony over the inhabitants
through various ways.
 Besides the civilian and military superiority, the
colonialists also employed the power of rational
discourses.
 They introduced railways, scholastic institutions,
judicial system, defence infrastructure etc. to
facilitate the better extraction from the colony
 The influences of Western education in the colonies
had produced a new set of intelligentsia who
strongly supported the inevitability of the Western
Enlightenment values.
 The educational policy of the British was to fulfil the
administrative needs of the empire in India and also
to sustain an ideological hegemony over the natives.
 While the educational programmes were oriented to
the regeneration of the country, the Indian
intellectuals pursued an educational strategy which
promoted education through the medium of the
vernacular languages.
 This new educational system gave primacy to science
education, and it was the result of the growing
awareness among the intelligentsia about the need of
science for the progress of the country
 The formation of civil society and state-building in
India was quite different from how it developed in the
West.31
 The civil society developed in the West simultaneously
with the modern nation-state. It took much more
difficult trajectory for the civil society to achieve its
powerful and independent status in the Third World
countries, including India..
 Various socio-religious reform movements developed in
India, throughout 19th century, trying to reform the Indian
society from within and some of them developed to
counter the influence of foreign influences upon Indian
society.
 Brahmo Samaj (1843), Theosophical Society (1875), Arya
Samaj (1875), Ramakrishna Mission (1922), etc., were the
most popular ones
 All these organisations played an important role, not just
in the reformation of Hindu society and freedom
movement, but in the strengthening of civil society as
well.
 The Indian National Congress (INC), spearheading the
national freedom movement became the main source of
civil society activism in British India in the 20th century.
 Large segments of people were drawn into political and
social activism when the INC started developing into a
mass movement.
 Other forms of social movements gained strength in the
first half of the 20th century.
 The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was formed
in 1920 to look into the disputes of Indian trade workers
and factory owners.
 So did various peasant movements, including, the Moplah
revolt of 1921, contributed in the formation of civil
society in India
 POST COLONIAL PERIOD CIVIL SOCIETY AND
INFLUENCE OF GANDHI
 Soon after the independence of India, Gandhi had
proposed to disband the INC.
 He wanted to see it as a social service organisation, since
Indian society needed further reformation.
 He argued that political Swaraj should be accompanied by
social and economic independence. Hence, he called
upon the INC to focus on social service sector.
 For him, panchayats and village committees were
the best instruments of decentralisation, and it was
for the INC to make efforts to create the necessary
conditions for the development of these
institutions that would foster democracy at the
grassroots.
 Various associations that have been working on

the Gandhian ideals are All India Spinners

Association, All India Village Industries Association,
Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Harijan Sevak Sangh, etc
 Gandhi sowed the seeds of social activism,

wherever he went.
 His ideas still continue to inspire hundreds and

thousands of civil society organisations in India

 While spearheading the Indian national movement,
he ensured that the INC reaches the remotest
corners in India.
 He was apprehensive of the idea that the INC
should transform itself into a political party, fight
and win elections, and form government.
 He was opposed to the way modern state
functioned.
 He had an immense faith in civil society as an agent
of socio-economic and political change, which
opposes the coercive power of state. He envisioned
civil society to exist independent of state.
 His faith in the decentralised institutions of power
was due to his belief in the moral well being of the
human beings, rather than state power which he
considered as impersonal and immoral
 Gandhi believed that power should rise from below rather than
ascend from above.
 Therefore, forms of governance were to develop from the
centres at the grassroots level.
 Gandhi was more inclined towards civil society because he saw
moral reasoning in voluntarism.
 He believed it to be an action where an individual exercises
self-control and self-direction.
 He related state and its apparatus to coercion. For him
autonomy is precondition of morality.
 Like many political concepts, ideas and institutions, civil
society has its origin in the western political thought.
 It evolved, as we discuss it in its present form, in the European
historical context.
 Gandhi contributed in a huge manner to the idea of indigenous
roots and autonomous functioning of civil society with
reference to India.
 He added new dimension to the concept which was, otherwise,
solely a product of European historical context.
 Despite independence of India and dismantling of
the capitalist state, the pattern of state-dominated
economy continued in India.
 For many decades to come central planning was
promoted, which focussed on state action, thus,
civil society was not in much picture during these
days.
 The 1960s saw India facing many challenges
including, that of drought and subsequent food
crisis, and wars with China and Pakistan.
 Both rural and urban groups started to protest,
against the poor response of the Indian state and
administration towards addressing these problems.
 These protest movements soon gained the
ideological form having influenced by Gandhism
and Marxism.
 Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India saw
these movements as threat to her regime and she
imposed Emergency in 1975, which remained until
the elections in 1977.
 The post-1977 phase saw an increase in the civil
society movements across India.
 They perceived the Emergency as the curtailment of
civil and political rights and wanted the state to be
more accountable, democratic and transparent with
lesser scope for arbitrary discretionary powers.
 New social movements, such as, environmental
groups and women‟s organisations sprouted during
this period.
 Through increased mobilisation, civil society began
to challenge the state at local, regional and national
level.
 Many factors contributed to the rise of these civil society
groups that included the following:
1. The oppression of the state provoked these social and
political forces to organise against state oppression.
2. The progressive image of liberal-democratic state was
seriously dented in the wake of Emergency and sizeable
sections got inclined toward making their concerns felt
through civil society.
 Several groups, thus, came to the fore to reclaim the

rights guaranteed by Indian constitution and to fight

against the perceived injustices.
 State-led development began to be questioned as a

project.
 From 1980s onwards, state started encouraging many

NGOs to take up the responsibility of social development.

 Since then, the number of NGOs is continuously growing.
 The coming of international NGOs into the scene
and the setting up of various neo-liberal reforms
by international regimes, like, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the WB is also a reason
behind this expansion.
 Globalisation, privatisation and the accompanied

partial withdrawal of state from many sectors and

services has resulted in more expansion and
activism of civil society.
 Too much state control, including, technological

advances made civil society to come into picture to

prevent state from monopolising technology
 The case was entirely different with India, where

civil society came into picture, because state failed

to deliver fruits of technology to its citizens, evenly
 Arguing about the problems related to introduction
of Information Technology (IT) in India, it had to
pass many barriers.
 The digital divide which always favoured urban and

developed India to dominate over rural and

underdeveloped India, produced many inequalities
than making administration efficient.
 Similarly, E-governance was more focussed on

centralising the administrative machinery and

involvement of high degree of bureaucracy,
therefore, failing to deliver.
 Civil society comes into picture in the situations

like these. Standing for egalitarianism and just

social order
 The civil society protests against too much power
being usurped by the centre or state, and opposes
too much involvement of the bureaucracy as well.
 Therefore, civil society in India came into being to

make democracy functional from grassroots. It

tries to create spaces and forums for social
discourses on important issues.
 It is not against the introduction of IT and e-

governance but has reservations against both,

when the fruits are not distributed evenly, and
decisions are taken without considering public
opinion and the interest of the marginalised.
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