Understanding Partha Chatterjee, Scholar and ‘Anti-National’

Is Partha Chatterjee’s argument lost in the wave of hyper-nationalism dominating TV debates and Twitter timelines?

Partha Chatterjee is a respected postcolonial scholar & a fierce critic of the Western model of nationalism. (Photo: Harsh Sahani/The Quint)

Partha Chatterjee, a respected postcolonial scholar and a fierce critic of the Western model of nationalism, is in the middle of a frenzy over his article in The Wire, which ostensibly draws comparisons between General Dyer in Punjab and the Indian Army in Kashmir.

TV anchors have accused Chatterjee of providing Pakistan with ‘ammo’ to attack Indian democracy. The Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Venkaiah Naidu, has accused him of ‘ridiculing the Army’ and Twitter believes he is complicit in ‘#ArmySeGaddari’. Even journalists stand divided on the issue, with editors attacking him for “troll-quality intellectual laziness”.

But has Partha Chatterjee really committed a colossal mistake? Or is his argument lost in the din of the hyper-nationalism that has dominated TV screens, Twitter timelines, government policies, and public discourse?

Also Read: Partha Chatterjee Likens Army Chief Rawat to Gen Dyer, Draws Ire

Lot’s of ‘ammo’ to go around. (Photo Courtesy: Times Now/Twitter)

What’s The Furore About?

In the essay, Chatterjee argues that there are uncomfortable, but undeniable similarities in the tone of the justification for the actions of the British Indian Army in Punjab in 1919 and the Indian Army in Kashmir and other counter-insurgency areas in 2017.

It’s a provocative essay; because it evokes an emotional association that Indians feel at the mention of General Dyer’s horrific atrocities in Jallianwala Bagh.

Indeed, most critiques of the essay are fixated on this one question: How dare Chatterjee compare General Reginald Dyer, the “Butcher of Amritsar” to General Bipin Rawat, Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army?

However, the essay’s argument is not about the similarities between these two very different personalities. Instead, it focuses on the structural similarity in the manner in which the British Army in Punjab in 1919 and the Indian Army in Kashmir in 2017 justified their ‘innovative’ methods of dealing with ‘violent crowds’. (Dyer’s ‘crawling lane’ and Gogoi’s ‘human shield’)

As Chatterjee himself clarifies at the end of the essay on The Wire:

It would be unfair to suggest that General Rawat’s motives are the same as those of Dyer. Rather, the similarity in their words stems from a structural feature that is now being revealed in the way in which the Indian army is permanently deployed in regions under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act – like an occupying force in a conquered colony.

While analysing the statements where General Bipin Rawat supports Major Gogoi, Chatterjee raises pertinent questions about the extent to which the Indian Army should go to maintain its authority over an antagonistic civilian population. He asks, do we, like the British Indian Army, want an armed force which is feared by civilians?

It’s a logical question to pose, especially when General Bipin Rawat said on 28 May 2017 that civilians ‘must be afraid’ of the Army.

Adversaries must be afraid of you and at the same time your people must be afraid of you. We are a friendly army, but when we are called to restore law and order, people have to be afraid of us.

General Bipin Rawat, Chief of Army Staff, Indian Army

But Partha Chatterjee isn’t the only one asking this question. 

Also Read: QRant: How Does Questioning the Army Make Me Anti-National?

The Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisations, a union of twenty civil liberties and democratic rights association in India, released a statement criticising Rawat’s support of Major Gogoi. The conglomerate includes human rights organisations from Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and Nagaland and they said:

An army, which gives in to what Carl von Clausewitz described as “rude acts of mere instincts”, and believes that people must fear their army, is desperately desirous of playing the role army plays in Pakistan, the very country General Bipin Rawat blames for the imaginary ‘proxy war’ today in Kashmir.

Statement by Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisations

In a similar vein, Partha Chatterjee writes about the extent of political support for General Dyer in 1919 and General Rawat in 2017 and raises the larger question of the role of Indian Army in a political discourse. Especially in India, where the Army is used extensively in counter-insurgency operations across the country. Chatterjee writes:

What is not being realised is that there is only a small gap between a privileged place of honour and the paternalist claim to the power to punish, especially for a branch of the state that has an overwhelming superiority in the use of armed violence. When does a nation’s army start to believe that to preserve its authority, it must be feared by its own people?

So, is Partha Chatterjee being called a ‘traitor’ to India because of his ‘illogical’ analysis? Or is our inability to critically look at the Indian Army the real reason underlying the hate directed against him?

Who Is Partha Chatterjee?

The backlash against Partha Chatterjee is intensely personal, with prime-time debates and trolls on social media calling him a ‘paid agent’, ‘ex-JNUite’ and in a baffling accusation, ‘a liberal.’ So, who is Partha Chatterjee?

Well, he certainly didn’t study in JNU.

Considered to be a pioneer in postcolonial theory, Partha Chatterjee studied in Presidency College in Kolkata and is a professor of anthropology in Columbia University.

While he is a widely taught scholar, he is most famously known for his 1993 book ‘The Nation and Its Fragments’. The book challenges a Western model of nationalism and instead argues that Indian nationalism should not be merely an imitation of nationalism as is understood in Europe.

He does this most powerfully in the book’s first chapter, “Whose Imagined Community?” – an academic clapback to scholar Benedict Anderson’s definition of a ‘nation.’

Simply put, Anderson argued that a nation is imagined into existence. Chatterjee counters that by asking why this power to ‘imagine’ a nation should only belong to Europe and the Americas?

In the book, Chatterjee argues that nationalism for postcolonial countries like India should be ‘spiritual’ – defined by literature and language – rather than a ‘material’ nationalism of territory and borders, as defined by the state.

Twenty-four years ago, Chatterjee caused a stir in social sciences when he asked why colonies like India should adopt the concept of ‘nationalism’ from the West.

In 2017, he is being called an ‘enemy of the nation’.

Somewhere, the gods of irony must be grinning in amusement.