Some 20 years ago, Kanchan Chandra- who, being ethnic, had very special educational needs indeed, which, as the other side of the bargain, she herself now provides as a Professor of Politics at NYU- wrote a foolish paper titled 'Ethnic Bargains, Group Instability, and Social Choice Theory
She failed to make the obvious point- viz. some ethnicities may define themselves by the belief that they are destined to displace or rule over all others. There can be no bargaining with such groups. Either you flee, accept servile status, pay protection money, or beat them till they become very quiet and nice.
The silly lady thinks Social Choice Theory can be useful in this context. Yet as Chichilnisky & Heal had already shown, the 'Goldilocks condition' re endowments and preference diversity is not met in such cases. There can be no 'local arbitrage' involving 'bargains' of any type. Another way of putting things is to say that we have a 'separating', not a 'pooling', equilibrium based on a ''costly' to disguise signal. In this case, there may be arbitrage between two discoordination games and this could be called 'political entrepreneurialism'. There may be competition between such entrepreneurs to become Schelling focal and achieve 'obligatory passage point' status. This means there will be competition between interessement mechanisms. This silly lady represents one, utterly useless, such availability cascade.
Notwithstanding all manners of 'cheap talk' going on in the background, unless the underlying payoff matrix is a 'conserved system', or 'anti fragile', there may be a partition event. More generally, where there is significant preference or endowment diversity, the core of the game may be empty. We could say that there is a n+1 player who is conserving the system by confiscating any net gain or making up for any net loss. This would be a 'stationary bandit' who may correspond to an Imperium or hegemon of some other type. The problem is that if profits are increasing then rebels or rivals are attracted while the accumulation of losses makes hegemony not worth the price.
This is not to say 'mathematical politics' is essentially game theoretic or, indeed, strategic. Group formation may itself be a planned activity and involve non-rival or non-excludable or ontologically dysphoric or incompossible positional goods and services. We may speak of 'nation building' or 'community building' or the creation of class or other types of consciousness. However, provided there are situations where one and only type of group affiliation is salient, identities are not multiple. This means there is a partial order on preferences with respect to particular matters which may become 'wedge issues'- i.e. situations where the importance attached to the topic diverges greatly from utility. This again may be a field characterized by a ruthless or preference falsification based political entrepreneurship. However Social Choice theory has little to say about this topic except that
1) (Gibbard Satterthwaite) there is no strategy proof voting method or preference revelation mechanism. But mechanism design based on the Revelation principle can improve matters, if utility is transferable, though there will still be an efficiency trade-off
2) (McKelsey Chaos) Don't make the decision space multi-dimensional otherwise there will be a struggle for Agenda Control which ends up as being 'anything goes'- i.e. any outcome whatsoever is possible.
Chandra, being blissfully ignorant of all this, states in her abstract-
This article makes two arguments: first, it argues that theories connecting ethnic group mobilization with democratic bargaining are based, often unwittingly, on primordialist assumptions that bias them toward overestimating the intractability of ethnic group demands
No. Democratic bargaining has to do with Shapley values within coalitions of voters. The problem is that a particular ethnicity may not want democracy. Its leaders won't stick to any bargain they strike. They will seek to up the ante, or threat point, by violent or agitational means.
On the other hand, a particular ethnic group may remain quiet if it needs to do more work on acquiring a written language and a 'bildungsburgertum' capable of taking over the administration. Geopolitical considerations may be yet more salient. There is no point mobilizing an ethnicity if it is pounced upon and enslaved as a result.
. Second, it proposes a synthesis of constructivist approaches to ethnic identity and social choice theory
i.e. a synthesis of turds and vomit. 'Constructivism' would look at how an ethnic identity is developed and articulated such that some of its members increasingly benefit from joint action.
to show how we who study ethnic mobilization
but are as stupid as shit
might build theories that rely on the more realistic and more powerful assumption of instability in ethnic group boundaries and preferences.
ethnic groups are defined by ancestry. That's an uncorrelated asymmetry which dictates a 'bourgeois strategy' which is eusocial. The majority- or the plurality capable of exerting state power- sets the rules and minorities either play ball or run away. On the other hand, a highly productive minority- e.g. Jews, Zoroastrians etc- can be accommodated because they don't want to increase their numbers by proselytizing.
It illustrates the promise of this approach through a study of the language bargain struck in India’s constituent assembly between 1947 and 1949
There was no 'language bargain'. Congress was already committed to promoting Assamese, Oriya, Telugu etc, etc. just as the British had done. The knotty question of linguistic re-organization of the states was left to the future. The one significant change in Congress policy was that 'Hindustani' was dropped in favor of Hindi in Devanagari script. However, more work was needed on standardizing this script and associated usage at the Central level.
The downgrading of Urdu was seen as a punishment for Muslim perfidy in voting overwhelmingly for the League in 1946. Muslims were excluded from all reservations and affirmative action programs. Those who had crossed the border in panic were not allowed back. Indian independence involved Hindu ceremonies to a greater extent than Pakistan's independence involved Islamic ritual. Nehru was consecrated using some Chola Empire liturgy which involved a golden scepter and the sprinkling of holy water and the chanting of verses from the Tevaram.
Incidentally, the Nehrus have always used Hindu ceremonies for their weddings. Sonia continued this practice with Priyanka. A senior Shankaracharya did her 'Grha Pravesh' ceremony in 1998. He was the pontiff she said would build the Ram Temple if the Courts allowed it.
Chandra has been living in a fantasy world where Indian independence was not the direct consequence of the rise and rise of Hindu nationalism. In an article written in 2019 she stated that 'In 1947, when India was created, Hindu nationalism was an elite ideology—and a marginal one at that'. She was blissfully unaware that both the Garam and Naram dal of Congress was Hindu nationalist. They only differed on the use of violent means in securing 'Swaraj'. Gandhi and Motilal had been part of the setting up of the Hindu Mahasabha. The former promised 'Ram Rajya' and was a great champion of cow protection. But so was Alan Octavian Hume- ICS officer turned Vedantist- who set up the Indian National Congress. Nehru, it is true, was a Socialist. But he was consecrated as India's new ruler by Hindu priests. Still, till about 2009, it was plausible to say that the Left had some ideological role in India and that 'Socialist, Secularism' was mandated by the Constitution. This turned out to be false. At the Center, there was either a Brahmin Dynasty on the one hand or a Hindu Nationalist party on the other. The casteist dynasts are against 'Hindutva' because it is anti-caste.
Consider what appears to be one of the most indivisible of symbolic goods:
The Ram Temple is not a merely symbolic good. It represents the provision of a high value adding flow of services over time to a particular- very large- group of people
the dispute over a mosque in the north Indian town of Ayodhya, which Hindu nationalists claimed stood directly over the razed remains of a Hindu temple. Hindu nationalist organizations demanded the construction of a Hindu temple in precisely the same spot in which the mosque stood, while Muslim political leaders saw any attempt to disturb the status quo as a direct assault on the position of the Muslim minority. The mosque was unlawfully demolished by Hindu nationalists in December 1992. However, the destruction of the mosque was preceded by more than a century of various bargaining arrangements, which “divided” the site between Hindus and Muslims by attaching the dimension of time (Hindus and Muslims were each able to pray at certain times for a certain number of hours), and of space (Hindus were given access to the east side of the site, Muslims to the north side).
No Muslim worship had been permitted since 1949. A priest performed Hindu rituals once a year before, in the Eighties, the site was opened to general Hindu worship. Under Islamic law, the structure was not a mosque since no Islamic worship occurred there. Indeed, it would be 'haraam' to offer Islamic prayers in such a place because of the presence of idols. In the end, the Court decided that the temple idol- which has legal personality in Indian law- had title to the entire site.
This was not a 'bargaining problem'. It was a legal problem. 'Ram Lala', the deity of the temple, owned the site.
If the good itself was successfully divided among Hindus and Muslims for more than a century, then the breakdown of the bargain must lie in factors other than “indivisibility.”
In 1947/'48 there was ethnic cleansing of Muslims from the area. Muslim worship- which had occurred once a week under Police escort since 1937- was wholly discontinued. The question was whether the Archaeological Survey of India would conduct excavations and make amazing discoveries there. I'm kidding. Indian archaeologists are utterly shit.
Consider a second example of a seemingly indivisible good: the demand that the language of one group be made the official language of the state.
This is a service not a good. Only one plot of land was under dispute in Ayodhya. You can't magically create a second plot of land on that spot. You can offer a particular service in different languages. The thing is non-rival except in so far as scarce resources are expended.
There are several ways in which official recognition might be divided in degrees.
This is not 'division'. It is 'provision'.
For example, the lowest degree of recognition might involve according official status to a language at the local level, followed by recognition at the regional level, followed by recognition at the national level.
There is provision of a service in a particular language in some places, not others. But nobody really loses- assuming little money is spent- on provision of the service in another language.
A third example of a seemingly indivisible symbolic good frequently demanded by ethnic groups is “sovereignty.”
America has dual sovereignty but when the Confederacy tried to secede they discovered that the thing didn't actually exist. English speakers don't lose if additional signs in Spanish are put up though, no doubt, some racists may not like it.
A close look, however, reveals that sovereignty too is not indivisible:
unless that's what it is. This lady probably thought J&K in India had some shred of sovereignty. In 2016 the Bench decided otherwise. But this was always obvious.
it may be conceded in degrees, ranging from administrative autonomy to federal status to confederation all the way to independence.
No. Sovereignty isn't what people say it is. You may think a particular entity has it or doesn't have it but actual events may prove you wrong.
Consider, finally, the demand for religious instruction in schools, which also appears to be indivisible: either children undergo religious instruction or they do not.
No. Either such provision is made in State Schools or it isn't. There is no question of 'divisibility'.
However, religious instruction may be incorporated into the curriculum in different degrees, ranging from morning prayer, to a separate class imparting religious instruction, to the teaching of all subjects from within a religious framework.
Not if there is 'separation of Church and State' or laicism as a constitutional doctrine.
It may also be divided according to the percentage of students who are given religious instruction, ranging from a minority, to a fifty-fifty split, to the majority of students.
Provision can be made compulsory. There is no question of divisibility here. Thus, all kids may be required to learn Arithmetic even if they don't like the subject.
While degrees of divisibility no doubt vary, the examples above suggest that all symbolic goods are amenable to some degree of division and partial satisfaction.
Not if there is a constitutional doctrine to the contrary. Thus sovereignty in India is solely concentrated in the Union. Similarly, laicism in France means zero religious instruction in State Schools. There are workarounds and local exceptions (e.g. in Alsace) but the doctrine itself is indefeasible.
I have suggested above that the proposition that the goods demanded by ethnic groups are indivisible is hard to sustain.
Yet, it is obvious that they are in fact indivisible. An Islamic Republic isn't going to make a Lesbian Jew its head of state.
However, while symbolic goods may be divisible in theory,
they are not divisible. There are competing concepts of what the symbolic good should be. I may want an Islamic Republic in which women are unveiled because I believe Islam only requires 'modest appearance' not burqa or hijab. That is the 'symbolic good' I want other Muslims in my country to buy into. However, other people may have a different notion of what the symbolic good denoted by 'Islamic Republic' actually means.
ethnic groups may not settle for partial amounts of the desired good in practice. In every case, would the ethnic group not demand the maximal amount of each good?
There is no non-arbitrary metric- or one all would agree on- by which Pakistan could be said to be more or less Islamic than Malaysia. Kanchan is making an intensional type of fallacy. The 'extension' of a particular intension- e.g. Islamic Republic- is not well defined nor can it have a 'buck stopped' definition.
Perhaps when Rustow and others argue that there is no middle ground in conflicts over language or religion, they mean not that such a middle ground does not exist but only that it will never be chosen.
Or that any compromise or 'stand still' agreement won't endure. But no one knows the future.
If so, then the proposition must rely on the assumption that the group as a whole has a collective preference over all alternatives, since if group preferences were internally varied, then some individuals might prefer less of the good and others more
Nonsense! One can have a preference over intensional entities whose extension is not known. I'd love to be married to Beyonce. I don't know whether she will expect sex from me. I'd prefer to just hold hands. Still, maybe if she bought me a Rolex, I'd be willing to put out.
. Furthermore, the proposition relies on the second assumption that ethnic groups are stable entities, since if the groups themselves vary, then the good that they seek must also vary.
Nope. That's not how intensional propositions work. The extension can change without the intension changing. Thus I may say 'everybody likes Beyonce'. This is not refuted by your pointing out that some of those people have died and thus can't have a liking for anything.
To summarize, the “indivisibility” proposition depends upon a claim, not about the indivisibility of goods but about the indivisibility of groups.
Nope. Saying Jews don't like working on the Sabbath is true even if some Jews converted to Scientology while you were speaking.
It holds only in those cases where each group has a collective preference for a single amount of the good in question and where group boundaries are unchangeable.
No. If a group has a preference for an intensional entity- e.g. Islamic Republic- then it does not matter if the extension is not well defined or even if members of the group are defecting.
Zero-Sum Game The zero-sum proposition stipulates that ethnic politics is a zero-sum game in which making one group better off necessarily implies making another worse off.
This is the case if the object of contention is rival or 'excludable' in a certain sense.
As Claus Offe puts it, “It is extremely difficult and often plainly impossible to draw a line at which all the rights of the minority are fulfilled but at the same time none of the rights of the majority is violated.”
This is because the 'Hohfeldian incidents' of rival and excludable goods have this property. The bigger problem is that the people administering the 'vinculum juris' or bond of law, may be highly prejudiced.
However, the logic of this proposition does not apply uniquely to ethnic groups but to demands made by any type of group in distributive conflicts where the size of the pie is fixed.
But, by definition, different 'ethnicities' represent 'discoordination games'- i.e. situations where agents get more advantage for interacting with people like themselves. Firstly, the Chichilnisky & Heal condition for 'local arbitrage' breaks down. Preference diversity is too great for the cooperative or coordinated solution to be chosen. Secondly, there are dynamic effects which may militate for one side to run away or keep its head down.
In fact, to the extent that ethnic groups seek symbolic goods, we should expect the opposite to be true.
Only if we are as stupid as shit. Also there's a little thing called the 'Price equation'. A preference of demographic replacement of the alterity with people closer to you in blood is encoded in our genes. In any case, there are external economies from this- unless your people are utterly shitty.
There are exceptions and workarounds. An ethnos may only survive by serving a master race or permitting its own re-education.
Because the satisfaction of symbolic goods is not limited by some fixed resource base, they should be even easier to concede than material goods. For example, one of the ways in which the demand for “recognition” by multiple religious groups in India has been conceded is by institutionalizing multiple religious holidays in the official calendar.
Which was cool because Government officers were harming the country when they bothered to show up for work. The good news is that when the festivals of two different religions- more particularly the 'peaceful' religion- coincide there can be a wonderful riot and plenty of arson and murder and rape.
In another example, Ladino elites in Guatemala’s 1996 accords found it easier to concede the cultural demands of indigenous groups, including the right to education in twenty-three indigenous languages, than the demands for a redistribution of land and wealth.
Why not concede what you can't prevent? It must also be said that the West had become much more appreciative of the civilizational accomplishments of the First Nations.
With symbolic demands, therefore, it should be easier, not more difficult, to have a positive sum game, where the needs of all groups are simultaneously satisfied.
There are diminishing returns to this approach. Moreover, there is a risk that Identity Politics will usurp other type of solidarity. Oh. Silly me. That was always the point- right?
Instead of government skools which teech gud, why not replace Calculus with Fuzzy Wuzzy studies?
Such arrangements may produce inefficiencies in governance, but they are nevertheless successful bargains, where success is defined as the acquiescence of all sides to the final outcome.
Meaningless shite aint a bargain. It's a fucking nuisance.
In one subset of cases, however, symbolic demands appear to assume the character of a zero-sum conflict. This is the case where ethnic groups accord equally high symbolic value to the same good.
No. This is a conflict over a 'signal', not a good. The election of a woman or an African American is a signal of a particular type. Some people will be opposed to it, even if they stand to gain by it.
The following example cited by Joseph Rothschild illustrates this point well: T'he difficult task of governing New York City is somewhat eased by the convenient fact that its strong ethnic groups do not share, and hence do not compete in, their symbolic demands on the municipal government. The Irish Catholics expect a green stripe to be painted down Fifth Avenue on St. Patrick’s day; the Jews to have parking prohibitions suspended on Passover and so forth. Each group’s demand is relatively irrelevant and inoffensive to the other. Imagine the contrast if another ethnic group were sufficiently strong and assertive to demand an orange stripe down Fifth Avenue on March 17!'
These are 'non-rival' goods. Moreover they are signals which merely reaffirm a particular identity. Still, there was a lot of opposition in New York to a mosque coming up near 'Ground Zero'.
Examples of exactly such a collision of values can be found in the clash between Serbs and Albanians over Kosovo or between Hindus and Muslims over Ayodhya.
These are clashes over territory or particular pieces of real estate. There need have been no big controversy over Ayodhya. The Courts could have decided the case or else Rajiv could have built the Temple while giving a bigger Hajj subsidy or other such sop to the Muslims.
For a zero-sum conflict of the above type to exist, however, there must exist stable groups with a collective preference for a single alternative.
No. Zero-sum conflicts arise where the good is rival whether or not groups are stable. Only one person can be Prime Minister at a given time. It doesn't matter whether individuals or groups scheming for the top job are stable or as unstable as fuck.
For Kosovo to become a zero-sum conflict, both Serbs and Albanians must share collectively in separate symbolic frameworks, each of which ranks Kosovo highest in a hierarchy of symbols.
Nonsense! Albanians may hold some other place more significant but they are the majority in Kosovo. Furthermore, it was Milosevic more than anybody else who shat the post-Communist bed in what was Yugoslavia. Serbs may be nice peeps but their leader was an irresponsible fool who created the worst hyper-inflation Europe has ever seen. The joke is that there are plenty of good economists in that part of the world.
It is obvious that there was a positive sum solution- viz everybody joins the EU and gets rich
Consider a situation where a collective preference does not exist, so that clusters of Serbs and Albanians ascribe higher values to a range of symbols other than Kosovo. In this case, the possibility exists for making sections of both groups better off through the provision of these alternatively desired symbols.
How about considering a situation where Serbs kicked in the head of Milosevic before he fucked up so badly?
Similarly, consider a situation where the contending groups are themselves unstable. Many individuals who identified strongly with their Hindu religious identity in 1989 identified more strongly with their caste identity in 1990. As Hindus, they ranked the temple at Ayodhya highest in their ordering of preferences. As members of a caste category, however, they ranked caste quotas in the civil services as the most highly desired good.
Nonsense! One can be for Mandal and Mandir. The elites didn't notice this at the time but the RSS was already busy promoting OBCs like Modi.
In this case, instability in group boundaries denuded the situation of its zero-sum character.
No. The fact is, India is a country under the rule of Law. The Courts had to decide who owned the land.
To summarize, the zero-sum proposition does not hold in all situations where ethnic groups make demands.
That depends on the ethnic group in question. If it has a history of ethnic cleansing or forcible conversion, it might be time to sell up and run away once 'demands' start being made.
And in order for a zero-sum conflict to exist in even a subset of cases, a single group will and stable group boundaries must also exist.
Nonsense! There is zero-sum conflict over rival goods or positions of authority- e.g. who gets to be Prime Minister.
Relative Gains Seeking A third proposition stipulates that ethnic group demands are difficult to bargain over because ethnic groups are concerned more about relative than absolute gains.
But relative gains have incentive effects which affect absolute gains or losses.
According to Horowitz, Symbolic claims are not readily amenable to compromise.
Unless they are. Symbols lose their power if over used.
In this, they differ from claims deriving wholly from material interests. Whereas material advancement can be measured both relatively and absolutely, the status advancement of one group is entirely relative to the status of others.
There was a time when 'lady' meant somebody who has a servant to do up her buttons and hooks. That's why women's jackets have the buttons on the wrong side. Gentlemen might have to dress themselves before escaping from the window of their mistress when her husband returned home unexpectedly.
Where the primary objective of each group is to maximize not its own absolute welfare but the distance between its own position and that of others, the set of mutually acceptable solutions is believed to be limited. The relative gains proposition depends, as do the previous two, on the existence of stable groups with a collective preference. If preferences within each group are heterogeneous, then there exists a potential for the coalescence of individuals or clusters across groups and so the possibility of a successful bargain becomes more likely.
No. There will be no 'bargain'. Just an amorphous modus vivendi which different people interpret differently
Alternatively, if groups themselves are unstable, then relative gains seeking becomes less likely.
Nonsense! If groups are unstable there's no harm in coopting somebody from the 'subaltern' group. Tokenism will prevail. But 'unstable groups' can't be ethnicities. They may be political parties the vast majority of whose members belong to a particular ethnicity. But that isn't the same thing.
For relative gains seeking to occur, individuals in each group must have a strong sense of distinctiveness.
No. They must have confidence they will gain by belonging to the group. Political parties engage in relative gain seeking even if they have no ideology and are opportunistic simply.
However, if individuals are used to switching between identity dimensions, then they are less likely to be concerned with relative gains seeking since maximizing relative gains on one dimension of identity might mean a loss on another.
No. They pick and stick with the most advantageous identity. When passing through Immigration, I'm a British citizen not a South Indian or a citizen of the world.
Finally, if groups are unstable, even if relative gains seeking occurs between groups as they are defined at any one point in time, it is less likely to prevent a bargained outcome.
There is no 'bargained outcome' unless it is incentive compatible or else there is an enforcement mechanism. That is why there are few bargains and many modus vivendi.
The Indian National Congress struck plenty of bargains with the Muslim Leaguue. But they weren't incentive compatible.. Everyone assumed no bargain would be kept. Consociationalism tends to fail unless there is an enlightened despot or kick-ass army. But despots die and armies can become demoralized.
In this case, an outcome that is unacceptable to the bargaining parties as a whole at one point in time might be acceptable at a future point simply because the group that might have challenged it is itself transformed. I will return to this point in the study of language politics in India later in this article.
In 1947, there was massive ethnic cleansing. Pakistan would have Urdu as its language. India would have Hindi. No bargaining occurred.
Chandra, being a silly billy, has been reading about the paradox of voting and comes up with the following example
In the early 1980s, many Sikhs in Punjab demanded a separate Sikh state.
Punjab was created as a majority Sikh state. Indira thought the Sikhs loved her because of this. That is why she relied on Zail Singh and Buta Singh. Sadly, they- being 'backward' and 'Dalit' caste respectively- were intent on cutting the Jats down to size, which is why Congress sponsored Bhrindinwale to split the Jat vote.
A “separate Sikh state,” however, was variously interpreted to mean secession, confederation, or greater administrative autonomy within India’s existing federal structure.
India has a unitary, not a federal, structure. Pakistan wanted a separate Khalistan so there was some money on the table for separatism. The complicating factor was the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. That's why the Americans got involved.
Imagine a three-person group of Sikhs with different preferences over these three alternatives. The set of alternatives and the preferences of each individual are summarized below. Alternatives: {secession, confederation, autonomy} Sikh 1: secession > confederation > autonomy Sikh 2: confederation > autonomy > secession Sikh 3: autonomy > secession > confederation
This is crazy shit. The Sikhs could choose between running the fuck away from Punjab as it went up in flames or doing some killing before getting killed themselves. Secession wasn't on the table. Autonomy wasn't on the table. The choice was between doing crazy shit or getting to somewhere safe. The good news was that Khalistani networks were good at getting refugee status for those who could pay to get out. I believe this continues to be the case.
It is clear that no group will exists for the Sikhs.
No. It is clear that the Sikhs- a fine people- have a 'group will' to work hard and rise by thrift, enterprise and sobriety. When I was young, some older Sikhs enjoyed rich food and alcoholic beverages. My generation tended to go the other way- studying scripture and adopting a sober lifestyle. Sadly, drug dealers were able to get their hooks into some young people back in the Pind. Still, I would say that religiosity and spirituality has increased in Punjab. Why? Religion in South Asia has a high Income elasticity of demand. Living a godly life makes you happier. Wealth accrues to you and your family if you stick to the straight and narrow path.
If faced with the three alternatives simultaneously, no single alternative emerges as the collectively desired choice. And different binary choices would produce different group choices, so that secession or confederation or autonomy might all be expressed as the group will depending upon the particular set of alternatives faced by the group.
This is ignorant shite. Sikhs were a minority in every district pre-Partition. They couldn't get a separate State. The 'Punjab Suba' movement was for a state where they would be the majority. The Hindus got Haryana and Himachal. But Sikhs were a bare majority in Punjab. If Dalits and Ramgarhias sided with the Hindus or if the Jat Sikh vote got split, then the Akalis would be out of power- as, indeed, they are now that the cunning Bania, Kejriwal, is running things from Delhi.
The implications for bargaining are obvious.
There was no fucking bargaining. The Sikhs were ethnically cleansed from Muslim majority areas and ethnically cleansed Muslims to make room for their own people. This was war to the knife not the fucking voter's paradox.
Future Bargaining Power A fourth proposition argues that ethnic demands are intractable because they are usually about goods that contribute to future bargaining power.
Some ethnicities may make such demands. But many don't.
As Horowitz points out, “ethnic groups do not compete in merely one task or one game but in lifelong games.”
Unless they turn to a God who doesn't want them to get busy killing infidels.
To lose out in the present, then, decreases one’s chances of winning in the next round. Because existing gains and losses are magnified in the future, the argument goes, the stakes for which ethnic groups play are abnormally high. And because the stakes are so high, groups are unlikely to make even minimal concessions in the present for fear of incurring disproportionately large losses in the future.
This is why no fucking bargaining occurs. There is an uncorrelated asymmetry to do with which side is more populous or has greater killing power and then a 'bourgeois strategy' whereby they set the rules. At the margin there may be mutually beneficial accommodation. But, equally, there may be sporadic pogroms of one type or another.
In this part of the article, I illustrate, through a case study of the dispute over India’s national language in the Constituent Assembly of India between 1947 and 1949, how the incorporation of the assumption that groups are unstable allows us to explain successful ethnic bargains that seem otherwise anomalous.
This is stupid shit. Congress was committed to Hindustani but, to send a message to Muslims, settled on Hindi in Devanagari script- one of Godse, Gandhi's assassin's, demands.
The purpose of this case study is not to uncover any new data. Rather, it shows how the approach advanced in this article can provide a fresh perspective on old data and allow us to explain outcomes that we could not previously.
There could have been no other outcome. Thanks to Gandhi- whose spoken Hindi was poor- Congress was committed to Hindustani as the national language. It had swept the polls in 1946. The problem was that Hindi speakers like Nehru weren't particularly keen on Shuddh Hindi. The can was kicked down the road with Hindi being declared the 'official' language which no official needed to know. English would remain. Later, Tamil opposition meant that Hindi was excluded from that one state- which is why Tamils like me made a point of not just learning Hindi but also Urdu.
There was no bargain here- except in so far as 'Hindustani' (which was more acceptable to Muslims) was consigned to oblivion. By contrast, the Directive Principle on Prohibition and Cow Protection were considered permissive and became the basis of Legislation in some States.
The language bargain in India between 1947-49 is an illuminating case because it is a “crucial case study” that meets each of the conditions that predict a failed bargain.
A failed consensus- sure. There was no question of a bargain. It wasn't the case that lawyers who had been speaking and writing Urdu all their lives would suddenly be comfortable with Devanagari. The truth is the Central Government only got around to standardizing Devanagari communication circa1966.
In 1947, Hindi-speaking delegates, who constituted approximately 40 percent of the constituent assembly, made a strong bid to establish Hindi as the national language of India. By the term national language, they meant the language that would be given symbolic recognition as preeminent among India’s multiple languages and also be used for all official business by the Union Government of India.
Hindi speaking voters hoped to monopolize Government jobs. It was explained to them that they were too stupid to do anything but collect cow dung. Their political representatives might have pretended that collecting cow dung is the proper purpose of the higher administrative cadres but Nehru told them to shut the fuck up and go collect some nice cow dung already. Seriously, there is little point debating stuff if everybody is laughing at you or pointing out nice piles of cow dung for you to collect.
At independence, English was the language of the higher levels of administration.
It still is.
The pro-Hindi delegates demanded that Hindi replace English for official purposes immediately or after a brief transition period. During the transition period, if there was one, they demanded that official business be transacted in Hindi, while English might also be used if necessary. Opponents of the pro-Hindi delegates, mainly from the South, conceded that Hindi should be the national language.
more particularly if collecting cow dung was involved.
The problem faced by the Indian constituent assembly in 1947, therefore, was the following:
the nutter Gandhi had been totes for Hindi. But everybody thought Hindi was a rustic language chiefly concerned with the collection of cow dung. Thus, English should be kept on while the pretense was made that Hindi would one day stop concerning itself solely with the collection of cow dung. After all, the distribution of cow dung, too, is a complex epistemic problem.
a language policy that did not adopt Hindi as the national and official language of India risked the noncompliance of the single largest language group in the country.
Because they might cease speaking any sort of language altogether. This would lead to a shortfall in cow dung collection. The Americans might invade and take over that lucrative industry.
On the other hand, the adoption of Hindi as the national and official language risked the noncompliance of the substantial section of the population in the South, West, and East, who did not speak Hindi.
Only if Nehru was fool enough to try to impose it by fiat- in which case Congress would lose the up coming General Election.
The situation fulfils each five of the conditions identified in Section I that predicts a failed bargain.
There is no bargain unless each side is giving up something in return for something else. There was a failure of consensus here which itself arose because of 'preference falsification'. People who thought Hindi was best suited for talking about cow dung collection had pretended it was a marvelous language. They needed a face-saving method of getting out of their commitment to the loathsome thing.
First, the dispute was over language, which subscribers to the first proposition describe as the most indivisible of goods. “How,” Horowitz asks, “does a policy maker divide up the glorification of the national language?” implying in the rhetorical tone of the question the futility of finding an answer.
Glorify it, but don't actually use it. Actually, there was a coalition between Southern Brahmins and Arya Samajis and Madan Mohan Malviya's BHU such that Shuddh Hindi was a substitute for Sanskrit. In other words, it was an artificial language spoken by a few Banarasi Pundits which other Brahmins (or Keralites, whose 'manipravalay' language was highly Sanskiritised) could take to with relish. This left the Kayasthas and Punjabis and Purabiyas out in the cold but seems to have gone done quite well in the Central Provinces. Still, the popular feeling was that shuddh Hindi was a Brahminical imposition. The K.M Munshi-Ayyangar formula was certainly seen in that light. The poor old Mahatma, being ignorant of Sanskrit, hadn't spoken shuddh Hindi. Yet, in his name, that is what was imposed on Northern States where the thing was unintelligible. A popular joke of the period was that the Radio announcer should say not 'now please listen to the News in Hindi' but 'now please listen to some Hindi in the News'.
Second, the issue of the national language was proposed by Hindi speakers as a zero-sum game, where the elevation of one language as the national language implied the downgrading of all others.
For a brief moment, Hindi speakers were envisioning cornering all the Government jobs while Tamils and Bengalis were left out in the cold. Later, the Tamils objected to Hindi because, quite hilariously, they believed they were better at English and thus could get more Government jobs!
Third, because status as a national language is a “positional good,”
No it isn't. If I go into the Taj Hotel speaking shuddh Hindi the staff assume I've come to collect cow dung. If I expect good service I need to speak American and flash a Rolex.
where the status of the national language depends upon its relative distance from other languages,
No. The national language differs from regional dialects in that it draws more on a Classical language- e.g. Latinate 'Chancery English'- and conforms to elite, metropolitan, usage. In England we speak of 'Received Pronunciation' and 'the King's English'.
the dispute fulfilled the relative-gains condition. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, both Hindi speakers and non-Hindi speakers were bargaining over a policy that was crucial to their relative positions in the future. As Dasgupta points out, Hindi leaders were convinced that the task of framing a constitution involved a set of long-range interests too fundamental to be settled by ephemeral conciliation and piecemeal compromise. A decision of the Assembly concerning the national or official language of India would, for example, usher in a chain of substantial chances in the educational processes, prospects of comparative mobility of social classes, and relative mobility of regional elites in the country.
This is nonsense. Politicians weren't utterly stupid. They knew that Hindi was like khaddar or Ahimsa- i.e. it was merely a slogan to catch votes. Now the country was independent, it needed English more not less. That's why Indians born after 1947 were not required to know any Indian language to get into the IAS till about 1980 when a simple, qualifying, exam in Hindi was introduced. By contrast, under the Brits, Indians had to learn at least one classical and one vernacular Indian language. That's why Rajiv Gandhi read out his Hindi speeches in Roman script. Rahul and Priyanka, on the other hand, are fluent in Hindi. But they take pride in a more Indglish pronunciation and syntax rather than the traditional Eton style Dosco accent. Nehru, of course, both looked and sounded like Alaistair Sims- headmistress of St. Trinians.
Non-Hindi speakers, however, were deeply aware that giving official status to Hindi would damage their own position in the future.
No. Like Hindi-speakers they didn't want to have listen to cow dung collectors babbling about 'bhains' and 'lathi'.
As one non–Hindi speaking delegate put it, Our children will have to learn a language so like the German where they will have to see that they do not make mistakes in their sentences by using wrong verbs
we prefer to use wrong verbs in Inglis because it is our revenge on Robert Clive.
. . . . I am not willing to reconcile myself to the position that for the next fifteen, twenty or thirty years the sons of the Hindi-speaking people, whether they belong to UP or to CP, will preponderate in the all-India services.
But Hindi-speakers themselves didn't want their kids studying Hindi. English made you smart. Hindi was mainly concerned with buffaloes and lathis.
Finally, the issue of the national language was embedded within a larger narrative of the emancipation of the nation from colonial rule. The debate over language was inseparable from the larger questions of how to define the national self. The fulfillment of all these conditions simultaneously should surely have resulted in failure. The outcome, however, was a successful bargain to which all sides acquiesced.
A modus vivendi is not a bargain. Suppose the Hindi speakers really liked Hindi they could have agreed to a quota system so non-Hindi speakers did not fear their kids would be shut out of the Civil Service. This didn't happen, because if you can't have pukka English Civil Servants at least you could have English speaking Civil Servants who didn't spend all their time roaming around the countryside looking for cow dung to collect.
The terms of the bargain, adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 14 September 1949, were as follows: (1) No single language was named the “national” language of India. (2) Hindi was named the “official” language of the Indian Union. (3) Even as the “official” language, the status of Hindi was in suspension. The Constitution stipulated that English would continue to be used for fifteen years from the commencement of the Constitution. Even after fifteen years, the use of Hindi as the official language was not certain, since Parliament could provide for the continued use of English (which in fact it did). The language compromise, as I point out below, represented a rejection of each of the central claims of the Hindi bloc.
Because there was no bargain. There was a stand-still agreement or rather a consensus that this was stupid shit not worth further discussion. It was obvious that Indians would have to run things pretty much as the Brits had run things. The experience of Provincial Autonomy had shown that replacing languages is a laborious task. Land records can't be put into a different language overnight- which is why the Patwari in the Punjabi village tended to be an Urdu afficionado.
Why did they acquiesce to the agreement instead of holding out for a better deal or attempting to impose their views on the rest of the country?
Party discipline- or, to put it more bluntly, the danger of losing their seats and being denied further preferment.
Explaining the successful language bargain in the Indian case requires, in effect, explaining the acceptance of the deal by Hindi speakers.
No. What needs to be explained is that Indians weren't sure a strong center was possible. Thanks to Nehru's popularity, it was. But this was also because linguistic reorganization of the States meant that existing Provinces would have their boundaries redrawn. Rajaji was fiercely pro-Tamil and kept Madras for TN. Radhakrishnan was a fiercely pro-Telugu. Previously, both were 'Madrasis' of the same caste and philosophical temperament.
The interpretation that the language bargain represented a defeat for the pro-Hindi group is a contested one and so requires some justification. Jyotindra Dasgupta, the author of one of the major studies of India language policy, reaches precisely the opposite conclusion: “The acceptance of this provision by the Constituent Assembly of India clearly suggests that in spite of many concessions on details, the Hindi bloc was successful in getting its major demand accepted by the framers of the Constitution.”
Gandhi had made Hindi a central plank of Congress many years previously. That was why poor old Rajaji was stuck with that unpopular policy as Premier of Madras.
Dasgupta appears to have arrived at this conclusion based on the fact that Hindi was recognized as the sole official language of the Indian constitution. I argue, however, that the recognition of Hindi as the official language should be seen as a defeat rather than a victory to the extent that it was a deliberate refusal to concede the demand to name Hindi as the “national” language. As Dasgupta points out himself, in another section of his study, “in a multilingual society, the distinction between national and official language is of major significance.”
Not really. Delhi was the Capital and Hindi was its language. Nehru's family had moved to Delhi at the beginning of the eighteenth century. English was the language used by high officials- the Nehrus had become 'vakils' to John Company before the Mutiny- and that remained the case- indeed, it is the case to this very day.
Everyone in India knows that by July 1947- when Westminster passed the Independence of India act- Partition was inevitable. Congress was in no mood to appease Muslims. Thus Hindi replaced 'Hindustani'. Yet Chandra writes-
In the critical vote in July 1947 described earlier, the majority of delegates in the Congress Assembly Party voted to replace Hindustani with Hindi as the national language of India. Supporting the elevation of Hindi in place of Hindustani is not compatible with what is generally identified as a moderate position; yet this position commanded the support of most Hindi-speaking delegates. If they were not “moderates” in 1947, what made them “moderates” two years later?
Getting rid of 'Hindustani' was a message to the Muslims. They would lose every concession previously made to them. The question was whether they would face ethnic cleansing. In Delhi, the answer was yes. Delhi's Muslim's had foreseen this outcome in 1923 itself.
Second, every piece of available evidence on the regional background of the delegates who took up the positions coded as “moderate” and “extremist” positions points to the concentration of delegates from different regions in the different ideological camps.
There were no 'ideological camps'.
Of the fourteen members that Austin identifies as “Hindi extremists,” 11 were from UP
the most vociferous was Pt. Dhulekar- a Maharashtrian Brahmin. Another was PD Tandon- a Punjabi Khattri from the Radha Soami sect. Another such was Marwari.
and CP, and one each from Bihar, Bombay and East Bengal.
so, the thing was just 'gesture-politics'. Everybody wanted English- more particularly 'the last Englishman to rule India'.
On the other hand, of the Hindi-speaking delegates who spoke in favour of a broad interpretation of Hindi in the Constituent Assembly were almost all from outside the core-Hindi states, including Punjab and especially Bihar.
Shuddh Hindi was Brahminical. 'Broad Hindi' was about cow dung collection.
The fact that the “extremists” are exclusively from one region
but the lady says there was an extremist from East Bengal!
while the moderates from another suggests that the ideological split was derivative of regional identity.
Caste- maybe. There were 'Brahminizers' on the one side and more practical people on the other.
I should point out that the shift from an undifferentiated identity as Hindi speakers to separate regional identities within the broader linguistic category does not imply the invention of new identity categories, or the renunciation of the old one. Rather, latent identity categories were simply activated, not produced anew.
Nope. There was Brahminical Shuddh Hindi on the one side and there was living breathing vernaculars on the other side. Modi takes care to speak in a somewhat nasal way suggestive of a prosperous farmer from some unspecified AJGAR dominated region.
Why did the Brahminical version win despite the fact that the UP Brahmin himself didn't want to speak it? The answer is obvious. If you talk nothing but bureaucratic bollocks you might as well do it in a high falutin' language unintelligible to the masses.
Chandra ends on this moronic note--
First, while the argument above demonstrates that instability makes successful bargains possible,
Nonsense! There is no point striking a bargain with an unstable person or a group which is likely to dissolve.
the conditions that make them more or less likely require further specification.
Bargains can be struck if parties to it are stable and have 'well ordered' preferences. There is a contract curve- i.e. the game has a 'core'. Still, hold-out and free-rider problems exist. Absent an external enforcement mechanism, the deal must be 'incentive compatible'. This means that remedies to rights' violations are provided by the obligation holder because that is what is in their own 'enlightened self-interest'.
To identify these conditions, we would need to model the process by which new alternatives and dimensions are generated.
Rubbish! The configuration space is exogenously determined. Nobody can generate 'new dimensions' so as to travel to galaxies far far away.
In the study of the language bargain above, for example, the key variable in bringing about a successful bargain was the generation of the new choice between narrow Hindi and broad Hindi.
Nonsense! Nobody gave a toss for either. Everybody agreed that Hindu domination would be signaled by a Hindu language and script. Some babbled about reviving Sanskrit. But Brahmin domination of Congress- which Kayasthas and Khatris and Banias acquiesced in- meant that Shuddh Hindi got the nod. But everybody knew that English must be retained otherwise the administration would turn to cow dung.
Consider Vajpayee's dad- a Sanskrit Pundit. On his retirement he joined his son to audit Law lectures in the hope of being able to supplement his pension as an advocate conversant with Certiorari and Estoppel rather than 'vidhi' or 'upadhi'.
However, the generation of this new alternative was a random event, brought about as a by-product of the process of translating the Constitution.
Nope. Most people thought Tandon won this round though it was Munshi and Ayyangar who had done the dirty work.
In other cases, new alternatives or new dimensions may be deliberately introduced by political entrepreneurs. However, political entrepreneurship has not so far lent itself to systematic analysis.
Chandra hasn't heard of 'Actor-Network theory'.
Riker himself describes the process by which new alternatives emerge as “more random than the natural selection of species.”
There is nothing random about the fitness landscape. Exploring it may involve randomization at some deep genetic level. But exploration is not selection.
However, institutionalist approaches to the study of ethnicity have made some attempt to identify the alternatives most likely to be generated by political entrepreneurs, or at least, the set of alternatives that might be excluded.
Rubbish! These guys are as thick as shit.
This is one direction of research that might prove illuminating.
Nope. It is stupid shit.
Furthermore, this article suggests that there are grounds for a reassessment of the relationship between ethnic politics and democratic stability.
Ethnicity is different from Confessional faith. The subcontinent was partitioned on the basis of the latter not the former. Sadly, no nice Professor explained this to Chandra.
Interest groups and classes are generally seen as positive influences on democratic politics, while ethnicity, most would argue, “has a bad name and more or less deserves it.”
Some ethnicities- e.g. the British ethnicity- are very attached to democracy. That's one reason why non-Brits want to settle here. Their son or grandson might become Prime Minister even if he is dark skinned. On the other hand, Russia and China and many other countries may never become parliamentary democracies. India, obviously, isn't quite a democracy though if the Dynasty continues to die nasty, it may become so in a thorough going fashion. But this is because Hindus like elections.
This article suggests that there may be a more benign relationship between ethnic and democratic politics than we have imagined so far.
A particular ethnicity may want democracy while another wants a Caliphate while yet another prefers the rule of Jedi knights with light sabers.
Further research should explicitly compare demands made by ethnic groups to demands made by groups that define themselves in nonethnic terms
e.g. Religious terms. Jats are Jats though some Jats are Muslim and some are Sikh and some are Hindu. When I was young, plenty were Communists of a very advanced stripe.
to assess what unique consequences ethnic demand making has, if any, for democratic politics
Ethnic demands are likely to feature secessionism if there is 'irredentist' backing from a contiguous state or there is some other foreign sponsor. The Quebecois movement might be worth studying but for the fact that Canadians are involved. They truly are the most boring people on earth. On the other hand, only by watching 'The Love Guru' again and again can you aspire to Chandra's level of stupidity.
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