Christophe Jaffrelot's Summaries | Sociology Mains Optional for UPSC 2024 PDF Download

 Page 1


 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
Summaries of Christophe Jaffrelot's 3 important articles on Religion 
 
No room for liberal doubt 
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/sabarimala-temple-women-en
try-protests-bjp-5454465/ 
The choice in Sabarimala is clear :  
It's ethno-religious political entrepreneurs vs Social reform. 
Three historical-constitutional variables in order to look at present situation with a 
clearer perspective: 
1.  Reformers are lonely figures - reformers have always had to face opposition 
when they stood against socio-religious traditions. 
Ex - Rammohan Roy (sati), Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (widow remarriage), 
Mahatma Gandhi (untouchability). 
2.  Some liberals who are uncertain about the right attitude in the Sabarimala case 
assume that the people's opposition is spontaneous. 
But one needs to distinguish between PURE CONSERVATIVES, who believed in 
Sanaatan Dharma like Madan Mohan Malaviya, from traditionalists who defended 
ancient practices in terms of identity politics like Bal Gangadhar Tilak.  
(Excerpt:  
Tilak’s worldview is well reflected in the controversy around the Age of Consent 
Bill — a bone of contention similar to the Sabarimala affair. At the end of the 19th 
century, western India debated the issue of legislating on the age of consent for 
consummation of marriages.  
While reformers including Jyotirao Phule were in favour of a law to abolish child 
marriage, Vishwanath Narayan Mandlik and Tilak were not — for two different 
reasons. The former, like the Sanatanists, considered that child marriage should 
continue because the shastras allowed such practices. Tilak offered a different 
perspective.  
Page 2


 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
Summaries of Christophe Jaffrelot's 3 important articles on Religion 
 
No room for liberal doubt 
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/sabarimala-temple-women-en
try-protests-bjp-5454465/ 
The choice in Sabarimala is clear :  
It's ethno-religious political entrepreneurs vs Social reform. 
Three historical-constitutional variables in order to look at present situation with a 
clearer perspective: 
1.  Reformers are lonely figures - reformers have always had to face opposition 
when they stood against socio-religious traditions. 
Ex - Rammohan Roy (sati), Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (widow remarriage), 
Mahatma Gandhi (untouchability). 
2.  Some liberals who are uncertain about the right attitude in the Sabarimala case 
assume that the people's opposition is spontaneous. 
But one needs to distinguish between PURE CONSERVATIVES, who believed in 
Sanaatan Dharma like Madan Mohan Malaviya, from traditionalists who defended 
ancient practices in terms of identity politics like Bal Gangadhar Tilak.  
(Excerpt:  
Tilak’s worldview is well reflected in the controversy around the Age of Consent 
Bill — a bone of contention similar to the Sabarimala affair. At the end of the 19th 
century, western India debated the issue of legislating on the age of consent for 
consummation of marriages.  
While reformers including Jyotirao Phule were in favour of a law to abolish child 
marriage, Vishwanath Narayan Mandlik and Tilak were not — for two different 
reasons. The former, like the Sanatanists, considered that child marriage should 
continue because the shastras allowed such practices. Tilak offered a different 
perspective.  
 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
On one hand, he argued in 1881 that “every son of Aryavarta must toil hard to see 
this custom eradicated”; on the other, he refused any change to tradition:  
“We would not like that Government should have anything to do with regulating 
our social customs or ways of living, even supposing that the Act of Government 
will be a very beneficial and suitable measure.” 
(Tilak preferred to mobilise the people against the reforms he approved of, in order 
to promote his political agenda.) 
Today, it is apparent that the same was being done by various Hindu organisations 
in Sabarimala affair. 
3.  Besides politicising a religious issue, Hindutva forces have openly opposed a 
decision of Supreme Court , same thing is happening in Ayodhya case (demand of 
law to build ram temple). 
In both the Sabarimala and Ayodhya cases, what is at stake is prestige and authority 
of the SC vis -a-vis entrepreneurs in identity politics who use traditions in order to 
mobilise and polarise people. 
 
Page 3


 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
Summaries of Christophe Jaffrelot's 3 important articles on Religion 
 
No room for liberal doubt 
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/sabarimala-temple-women-en
try-protests-bjp-5454465/ 
The choice in Sabarimala is clear :  
It's ethno-religious political entrepreneurs vs Social reform. 
Three historical-constitutional variables in order to look at present situation with a 
clearer perspective: 
1.  Reformers are lonely figures - reformers have always had to face opposition 
when they stood against socio-religious traditions. 
Ex - Rammohan Roy (sati), Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (widow remarriage), 
Mahatma Gandhi (untouchability). 
2.  Some liberals who are uncertain about the right attitude in the Sabarimala case 
assume that the people's opposition is spontaneous. 
But one needs to distinguish between PURE CONSERVATIVES, who believed in 
Sanaatan Dharma like Madan Mohan Malaviya, from traditionalists who defended 
ancient practices in terms of identity politics like Bal Gangadhar Tilak.  
(Excerpt:  
Tilak’s worldview is well reflected in the controversy around the Age of Consent 
Bill — a bone of contention similar to the Sabarimala affair. At the end of the 19th 
century, western India debated the issue of legislating on the age of consent for 
consummation of marriages.  
While reformers including Jyotirao Phule were in favour of a law to abolish child 
marriage, Vishwanath Narayan Mandlik and Tilak were not — for two different 
reasons. The former, like the Sanatanists, considered that child marriage should 
continue because the shastras allowed such practices. Tilak offered a different 
perspective.  
 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
On one hand, he argued in 1881 that “every son of Aryavarta must toil hard to see 
this custom eradicated”; on the other, he refused any change to tradition:  
“We would not like that Government should have anything to do with regulating 
our social customs or ways of living, even supposing that the Act of Government 
will be a very beneficial and suitable measure.” 
(Tilak preferred to mobilise the people against the reforms he approved of, in order 
to promote his political agenda.) 
Today, it is apparent that the same was being done by various Hindu organisations 
in Sabarimala affair. 
3.  Besides politicising a religious issue, Hindutva forces have openly opposed a 
decision of Supreme Court , same thing is happening in Ayodhya case (demand of 
law to build ram temple). 
In both the Sabarimala and Ayodhya cases, what is at stake is prestige and authority 
of the SC vis -a-vis entrepreneurs in identity politics who use traditions in order to 
mobilise and polarise people. 
 
 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
Hindu rashtra, de facto 
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/hindu-rashtra-de-facto-bjp-rss-gau-rakshak-
mob-lynching-5301083/ 
The media often presents cow-related lynching cases as spontaneous reactions of 
the mob. But this is not that spontaneous. the perpetrators' ideological orientation 
could be surmised from the fact that they often make their victims raise slogans 
such as jai shri ram , gau mata ki jai etc. 
Most visible organisation in this domain - Gua raksha dal (GRD), has its presence in 
many states.  
Haryana -one of the strongholds of movement, the GRD emblem is a cow's head 
flanked by two AK47S. 
In Haryana, the GRD and police arrived at a division of labour.  
GRD has a huge network of volunteers and informants and act very fast whenever 
they receive information, volunteers set up joint nakas with help of local police. The 
GRD thus acts as a COMMUNITY CULTURAL POLICE. 
In Haryana, cow task force has been created within the state police (convergence of 
two types of policing - official and unofficial). 
The national vice president of the GRD sat on the board of the Gau Seva Ayog, a 
Haryana Govt.'s institute for cow welfare. 
These developments showing a new dynamics of state formation, as defined by 
Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, in their study The Unhappy Valley.  
Berman and Lonsdale distinguish the formation of the state as a social institution 
and state-building as an administrative process.  
Reasoning solely in terms of state-building tends to reduce authority only to official 
agents and their actions.  
Berman and Lonsdale take into account private actors who work their way into the 
process of state formation through the “vulgarisation of power”, which involves 
commandeering public authority to further private ends.  
Page 4


 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
Summaries of Christophe Jaffrelot's 3 important articles on Religion 
 
No room for liberal doubt 
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/sabarimala-temple-women-en
try-protests-bjp-5454465/ 
The choice in Sabarimala is clear :  
It's ethno-religious political entrepreneurs vs Social reform. 
Three historical-constitutional variables in order to look at present situation with a 
clearer perspective: 
1.  Reformers are lonely figures - reformers have always had to face opposition 
when they stood against socio-religious traditions. 
Ex - Rammohan Roy (sati), Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (widow remarriage), 
Mahatma Gandhi (untouchability). 
2.  Some liberals who are uncertain about the right attitude in the Sabarimala case 
assume that the people's opposition is spontaneous. 
But one needs to distinguish between PURE CONSERVATIVES, who believed in 
Sanaatan Dharma like Madan Mohan Malaviya, from traditionalists who defended 
ancient practices in terms of identity politics like Bal Gangadhar Tilak.  
(Excerpt:  
Tilak’s worldview is well reflected in the controversy around the Age of Consent 
Bill — a bone of contention similar to the Sabarimala affair. At the end of the 19th 
century, western India debated the issue of legislating on the age of consent for 
consummation of marriages.  
While reformers including Jyotirao Phule were in favour of a law to abolish child 
marriage, Vishwanath Narayan Mandlik and Tilak were not — for two different 
reasons. The former, like the Sanatanists, considered that child marriage should 
continue because the shastras allowed such practices. Tilak offered a different 
perspective.  
 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
On one hand, he argued in 1881 that “every son of Aryavarta must toil hard to see 
this custom eradicated”; on the other, he refused any change to tradition:  
“We would not like that Government should have anything to do with regulating 
our social customs or ways of living, even supposing that the Act of Government 
will be a very beneficial and suitable measure.” 
(Tilak preferred to mobilise the people against the reforms he approved of, in order 
to promote his political agenda.) 
Today, it is apparent that the same was being done by various Hindu organisations 
in Sabarimala affair. 
3.  Besides politicising a religious issue, Hindutva forces have openly opposed a 
decision of Supreme Court , same thing is happening in Ayodhya case (demand of 
law to build ram temple). 
In both the Sabarimala and Ayodhya cases, what is at stake is prestige and authority 
of the SC vis -a-vis entrepreneurs in identity politics who use traditions in order to 
mobilise and polarise people. 
 
 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
Hindu rashtra, de facto 
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/hindu-rashtra-de-facto-bjp-rss-gau-rakshak-
mob-lynching-5301083/ 
The media often presents cow-related lynching cases as spontaneous reactions of 
the mob. But this is not that spontaneous. the perpetrators' ideological orientation 
could be surmised from the fact that they often make their victims raise slogans 
such as jai shri ram , gau mata ki jai etc. 
Most visible organisation in this domain - Gua raksha dal (GRD), has its presence in 
many states.  
Haryana -one of the strongholds of movement, the GRD emblem is a cow's head 
flanked by two AK47S. 
In Haryana, the GRD and police arrived at a division of labour.  
GRD has a huge network of volunteers and informants and act very fast whenever 
they receive information, volunteers set up joint nakas with help of local police. The 
GRD thus acts as a COMMUNITY CULTURAL POLICE. 
In Haryana, cow task force has been created within the state police (convergence of 
two types of policing - official and unofficial). 
The national vice president of the GRD sat on the board of the Gau Seva Ayog, a 
Haryana Govt.'s institute for cow welfare. 
These developments showing a new dynamics of state formation, as defined by 
Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, in their study The Unhappy Valley.  
Berman and Lonsdale distinguish the formation of the state as a social institution 
and state-building as an administrative process.  
Reasoning solely in terms of state-building tends to reduce authority only to official 
agents and their actions.  
Berman and Lonsdale take into account private actors who work their way into the 
process of state formation through the “vulgarisation of power”, which involves 
commandeering public authority to further private ends.  
 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
This approach has obvious heuristic advantages for the analysis of Hindu vigilante 
groups and their relationship to the state. 
Collusion between police and Hindu nationalist movements is indeed evidence of 
the start of a transition from a state-building process, in which the administrative 
and coercive apparatus is supposed to treat all citizens equally, to a state-formation 
process wherein majoritarian non-state actors impose a social and cultural order.  
What adds a layer of complexity to Berman and Lonsdale’s model is that in India, 
these non-state actors enjoy state protection.  
Though the authority they exercise is illegal, it is nevertheless seen as legitimate by 
the state in that it is inspired by the values and interests of the dominant community 
to which the government is accountable.  
In that sense, the Hindutva forces are more of India’s deep state than a parallel 
government, all the more so as the ruling BJP is part of the Sangh Parivar.  
This shift from a neutral state to an ideological Hindu Rashtra illustrates a form of 
violent majoritarianism that can be observed in all countries where vigilantes bring 
minorities to heel with the more or less tacit agreement of shadow forces that share 
their biases or ideology (the relationship between white supremacists’ militias and 
the police in the US could provide other examples). 
If the executive, legislature or judiciary do not effectively oppose lynchings, India 
may remain a rule-of-law country only on paper and, in practice, a de facto 
ethno-state. 
 
 
Page 5


 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
Summaries of Christophe Jaffrelot's 3 important articles on Religion 
 
No room for liberal doubt 
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/sabarimala-temple-women-en
try-protests-bjp-5454465/ 
The choice in Sabarimala is clear :  
It's ethno-religious political entrepreneurs vs Social reform. 
Three historical-constitutional variables in order to look at present situation with a 
clearer perspective: 
1.  Reformers are lonely figures - reformers have always had to face opposition 
when they stood against socio-religious traditions. 
Ex - Rammohan Roy (sati), Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (widow remarriage), 
Mahatma Gandhi (untouchability). 
2.  Some liberals who are uncertain about the right attitude in the Sabarimala case 
assume that the people's opposition is spontaneous. 
But one needs to distinguish between PURE CONSERVATIVES, who believed in 
Sanaatan Dharma like Madan Mohan Malaviya, from traditionalists who defended 
ancient practices in terms of identity politics like Bal Gangadhar Tilak.  
(Excerpt:  
Tilak’s worldview is well reflected in the controversy around the Age of Consent 
Bill — a bone of contention similar to the Sabarimala affair. At the end of the 19th 
century, western India debated the issue of legislating on the age of consent for 
consummation of marriages.  
While reformers including Jyotirao Phule were in favour of a law to abolish child 
marriage, Vishwanath Narayan Mandlik and Tilak were not — for two different 
reasons. The former, like the Sanatanists, considered that child marriage should 
continue because the shastras allowed such practices. Tilak offered a different 
perspective.  
 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
On one hand, he argued in 1881 that “every son of Aryavarta must toil hard to see 
this custom eradicated”; on the other, he refused any change to tradition:  
“We would not like that Government should have anything to do with regulating 
our social customs or ways of living, even supposing that the Act of Government 
will be a very beneficial and suitable measure.” 
(Tilak preferred to mobilise the people against the reforms he approved of, in order 
to promote his political agenda.) 
Today, it is apparent that the same was being done by various Hindu organisations 
in Sabarimala affair. 
3.  Besides politicising a religious issue, Hindutva forces have openly opposed a 
decision of Supreme Court , same thing is happening in Ayodhya case (demand of 
law to build ram temple). 
In both the Sabarimala and Ayodhya cases, what is at stake is prestige and authority 
of the SC vis -a-vis entrepreneurs in identity politics who use traditions in order to 
mobilise and polarise people. 
 
 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
Hindu rashtra, de facto 
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/hindu-rashtra-de-facto-bjp-rss-gau-rakshak-
mob-lynching-5301083/ 
The media often presents cow-related lynching cases as spontaneous reactions of 
the mob. But this is not that spontaneous. the perpetrators' ideological orientation 
could be surmised from the fact that they often make their victims raise slogans 
such as jai shri ram , gau mata ki jai etc. 
Most visible organisation in this domain - Gua raksha dal (GRD), has its presence in 
many states.  
Haryana -one of the strongholds of movement, the GRD emblem is a cow's head 
flanked by two AK47S. 
In Haryana, the GRD and police arrived at a division of labour.  
GRD has a huge network of volunteers and informants and act very fast whenever 
they receive information, volunteers set up joint nakas with help of local police. The 
GRD thus acts as a COMMUNITY CULTURAL POLICE. 
In Haryana, cow task force has been created within the state police (convergence of 
two types of policing - official and unofficial). 
The national vice president of the GRD sat on the board of the Gau Seva Ayog, a 
Haryana Govt.'s institute for cow welfare. 
These developments showing a new dynamics of state formation, as defined by 
Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, in their study The Unhappy Valley.  
Berman and Lonsdale distinguish the formation of the state as a social institution 
and state-building as an administrative process.  
Reasoning solely in terms of state-building tends to reduce authority only to official 
agents and their actions.  
Berman and Lonsdale take into account private actors who work their way into the 
process of state formation through the “vulgarisation of power”, which involves 
commandeering public authority to further private ends.  
 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
This approach has obvious heuristic advantages for the analysis of Hindu vigilante 
groups and their relationship to the state. 
Collusion between police and Hindu nationalist movements is indeed evidence of 
the start of a transition from a state-building process, in which the administrative 
and coercive apparatus is supposed to treat all citizens equally, to a state-formation 
process wherein majoritarian non-state actors impose a social and cultural order.  
What adds a layer of complexity to Berman and Lonsdale’s model is that in India, 
these non-state actors enjoy state protection.  
Though the authority they exercise is illegal, it is nevertheless seen as legitimate by 
the state in that it is inspired by the values and interests of the dominant community 
to which the government is accountable.  
In that sense, the Hindutva forces are more of India’s deep state than a parallel 
government, all the more so as the ruling BJP is part of the Sangh Parivar.  
This shift from a neutral state to an ideological Hindu Rashtra illustrates a form of 
violent majoritarianism that can be observed in all countries where vigilantes bring 
minorities to heel with the more or less tacit agreement of shadow forces that share 
their biases or ideology (the relationship between white supremacists’ militias and 
the police in the US could provide other examples). 
If the executive, legislature or judiciary do not effectively oppose lynchings, India 
may remain a rule-of-law country only on paper and, in practice, a de facto 
ethno-state. 
 
 
 
www.YouTube.com/SleepyClasses 
www.SleepyClasses.com 
 
Coalition country 
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/coalition-country-united-opposition-bjp-201
9-lok-sabha-elections-5229461/ 
The late Ravinder Kumar, (director of the Nehru Memorial Musuem and library) 
defined India as a Civilisation-State, rather than a nation-state, because of its 
capacity to amalgamate into one coherent whole a large number of cultural 
influences. 
This approach - articulated by an historian in a long duration perspective - has a 
clear political implication: India is also a coalition-state. 
Unlike some European countries or China , India has never been governed 
successfully in a centralised manner.  
Sovereign had to build coalitions of regional satraps and maintain them through a 
constant bargaining process, even the great Akbar spent his half-life in traveling 
across his empire in managing his empire. 
India after 1947 inherited a centralisation legacy from the British raj, but only after 
some years , Nehru had to built coalition again (he sent letters to CMs every 15 
days). 
Issue of states formation on the lines of language also become prominent in 1950s 
only. 
Whenever Prime ministers tried to emancipate themselves from coalition, the 
quality of governance has suffered the most. Example - Indira Gandhi's emergency 
period. 
Paradoxically, after a difficult transition of 10 years, India experienced more 
stability under coalition govt. , from 1999 onwards. 
More stability as coalition forced Centre to acknowledge the state's autonomy 
because Centre depends upon regional forces. It limits concentration of power. 
Coalitions apart from political parties also includes social groups. 
One may argue that India cannot afford a coalition govt. because it needs reforms