India, Habermas and the
Normative Structure of
Public Sphere
Muzaffar Ali
First published 2023
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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ISBN: 978-1-032-37099-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-49230-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-39275-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003392750
Typeset in Sabon
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Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xi
1 Indian Political Theory & Search for a Normative
Public Sphere 1
2 The Idea of Public Sphere in Habermas 28
3 Indian Engagements with Habermas: Why Public Sphere? 67
4 The Indian Situation as an Exception to Habermas 84
5 Deuniversal Rationality and the Imagined Indian
Public Sphere 117
Endnote 140
Bibliography 142
Index 158
Preface
The book is a critical introduction to the philosophy of the Indian public
sphere that has hitherto remained under the overarching and dominant the-
oretical gaze of the Eurocentric philosophical landscape. Beginning with the
colonial offensive, Indian philosophers and political theorists have been
fighting solitary battles to respond, overcome or transcend the hegemonic
stance of this dominant philosophical landscape. There has been a lively
debate to pursue “creative political theory,” “genuine political theory,”
“strong political theory,” “culturally grounded political theory,” “svarajist
political theory,” “authentic political theory” and “decolonized political
theory” within the discursive spaces of Indian political theory to seek a
meaningful transcendence from the Western theoretical hegemony. A simi-
lar anxiety has prevailed within the academic philosophy circles and calls
for “revitalization,” “revival” or “reunderstanding” of Indian philosophy
have often been made by influential Indian philosophers. Despite orienta-
tional overlaps, these solo-disciplinary projects have scarcely been put
together to allow the crucial insights to be evolved into a conceptual and
theoretical toolbox. The need to turn such solitary endeavours into a mutual
and collective learning process so that a native theory of the Indian public
sphere can be developed is the aim of this book. Thus, the arguments made
to conceptualize an Indian public sphere emerge from the dynamic space
between Indian political theory and contemporary Indian philosophy which
from a rigid and (maybe) the institutionalized view is their “differential
frontier.” However, I construe that space less as a differential marker and
more as a collaborative space for both disciplines to engage, come together
and speak to each other in order to address the questions raised rather than
to make them more well known. The collaborative space throws open a
possibility to conceive the Indian public sphere as re-founded and anchored
in a non-Eurocentric contemplative process. To borrow from Boaventura de
Sousa Santos, such a contemplative process involves the reassertion of
native conceptions and simultaneously advancing a counter-understanding
of established and hegemonic Eurocentric conceptions. The book attempts
to do both so that a reimagination of the conceptual infrastructure of the
Indian public sphere can be proposed. By employing the wide-ranging and
rich works of Indian political theorists, historians and social theorists, it
Preface ix
transforms the dominant Habermasian conception of the public sphere,
which posits a false and purported universalism into a native understanding
of the Indian public sphere. Simultaneously, it underlines the need to pro-
pose deuniversal rationality as the alternative epistemological terrain to
anchor the deliberative structure of the native conceptualization of Indian
public sphere. Deuniversal rationality is a conceptual reassertion of the dia-
logical structure of Indian philosophy that has been at the centre of recent
debates among contemporary Indian philosophers. The Occidental notion
of rationality even after making an epistemological shift from the
Enlightenment understanding to a communicative understanding in
Habermas, I argue, keeps unfounded universalism at its foundation.
Deuniversal rationality, on the other hand, while emerging from the inter-
sectionality of Indian and counter-western intellectual discourses makes no
misleading assertion for a false or purported universalism. Rather than
beginning with and affirming a fictitious notion of universalism, it leaves
the question of universality to the genuine scrutiny of philosophers, histori-
ans and social and political theorists (acting as eschatologists). To put it
differently, deuniversal rationality as a natively conceptualized dialogical
structure of the Indian public sphere is meant to reaffirm and recognize the
possibility of alternatives to the dominant and hegemonic Eurocentric intel-
lectual trajectories. De-universal is not anti-universal. The “de” is not a
negative. It does not propose an anti-universal approach seeped in particu-
larity and contextuality; nor does it claim an outright declaration of any
universalism. De-universal is not post-universal. It does not subscribe to
any post-universal ideology to announce the redundancy of the universal.
On the contrary, it brings the universal “down,” “down from” and “off” the
institutionalized pulpit of abstraction that has rigidified the domains of
knowledge and acts as a monopoly of humanity. Deuniversal rationality is
therefore de-universal in the sense, that it aims to move “away” from the
false and taken-for-granted universalist claims that are intrinsic to the dom-
inant understanding of rationality. And in the process of this moving
“away,” it reattempts to turn the universal from a fictitious claim to a real
truth-principle—subject to eschatological examinations.
The book opens by posing the question of the theoretical necessity to
re-found the normative foundations of the Indian public sphere while draw-
ing methodological cues from the three-decade-long underdevelopment
debate within Indian political theory and some analogous debates within
contemporary Indian philosophy (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 acquaints the
reader with the key twists and turns in the theoretical development of the
Habermasian public sphere while emphasizing that the Eurocentric critique
remains an unexplored area in this evolution. Chapter 3 focuses on the
Indian engagements with the Habermasian public sphere and establishes
the argument that these studies are either comparative or evaluative in ori-
entation. Despite their epistemic importance, these engagements remain
fragmentary and suggest a need to move past the critical, response-mode
and interrogative approach. Chapter 4 focuses on the conceptualization of
x Preface
contemporary Indian situation as being constitutive of an overlap of philos-
ophy, an openly religious society and an imposed colonial context that are
crucial to sustaining a samvāda with the Habermasian categories of public
sphere and rationality. It is in the conceptualization of the Indian situation
that the notion of practical rationality emerges as a possible alternative for
anchoring the non-Eurocentric conceptualization of the public sphere.
Chapter 5 aims at reframing, recalibrating and reconstituting the notion of
practical rationality into deuniversal rationality. The process of reconstruc-
tion involves the substitution of the contextual component (of practical
rationality) with the experiential component so that the immediate experi-
ences prevalent within the Indian context can get reflected within the
imagined Indian public sphere minus the sacred order of norm-fact,
abstract-concrete, theory-experience, mind–body divide.
