Biography of the Indian State
Can a weak state be a civilization-state?
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How capable is the Indian state? Is Modi’s civilization-state a failed democracy or weak state in disguise? One key predicament is central to understanding the Indian and South Asian states both before and after Independence in 1947. These states sought to establish a monopoly over the legitimate use of force to control their subjects and citizens. But, as Joy Chatterji writes, “trying to control people is one thing; succeeding is another.”
The biography of the State is the focus of the India World Power World History Tour this week. Our guide is Joya Chatterji, Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century.
The South Asian State: Is India a civilization state?
This World History Tour explores India on the premise that Bharat has become one of five great states or “civilization states” in the world. Many Indian commentators and elites make this claim to be a civilizational state with growing global influence and self-confidence. They mock their partitioned embittered sister Pakistan as a failed terrorist state.
Many Western and Chinese-affiliated commentators tend to mock these claims of India with an imperious sneer. They back their disparagement of Indian development with charts comparing sluggish South Asia with China’s economic miracle. Or question the backsliding on democracy driven by “Hindu nationalism.” But all the statistics in the world cannot conceal the imperialist attitudes of contempt for the befuddled, benighted ‘Hindoos’, inherited from the colonial Raj or revolutionary Maoist traditions.
Chatterji’s discussion of the South Asian state offers a different angle on this issue. She notes that over the twentieth century
“the state has struggled - with varying degrees of energy - to tackle different tasks: to maintain its sovereign powers, support large armies, ‘know’ the people and govern them, and to raise revenue to pay for all of this. In their post-colonial guise, the states of South Asia also struggled to deliver development, to ‘modernise’ the economy, and feed, clothe, and educate their people.”
(Chatterji, Shadows at Noon, p. 206)
The question prompted by their struggle is: were these failed, weak or strong states? The civilization state is not even on Chatterji’s agenda. Her answer is these states were patchwork states, with some sloppy stitching, tears, and a few oversized studs.
“If insurgents challenged their physical unity and integrity, they could jump on them from a great height, all guns blazing. If there was a ‘crisis of governability’, you might get a spell of dictatorship Emergency-style in India [referring to Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule between 1975 and 1977], or a stretch of vigorous military rule in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Yet low-grade chaos and lawlessness - whether within the family or neighbourhood, in large estates in the countryside, or on the long coasts where smugglers flourished, or in the stalking lands of the banditti - officials had little time (or stomach) to deal with.”
(Chatterji, Shadows at Noon, p. 206)
Unlike many authors, Chatterji focuses on the failure to prevent or to control violence against women and minorities as critical evidence that the state was not what it claimed to be. In particular, India failed to meet Max Weber’s classical social theory definition of the state: the monopoly of the legitimate use of force.
The independent states of South Asia tolerated a remarkable degree of disorder in matters that their leaders regarded as being peripheral to their core purposes. They also presided over growing scales of violence, provided that their targets were women, Dalits, minorities, or party enemies (depending on the state).
(Chatterji, Shadows at Noon, p. 206)
This failure is the context of Joy Chatterji’s wise observation: “trying to control people is one thing; succeeding is another.” Chatterji may be a little harsh on the South Asian states for their failures. All states tolerate disorder in matters that their leaders regard as being peripheral to their core purposes. Few states have succeeded in controlling violence against women, even my own jurisdiction of Victoria, which once proclaimed it would eliminate all family violence. After 33 years in government, I can attest that states rarely succeed in controlling people to conform with their grand objectives.
In the deep dive below this week, I explore Chatterji’s assessment of the Indian state, and its ambitions to be a civilization state.
Book Recommendation: William Dalrymple
Chatterji notes that the Indian state is formed by layers of past historical regimes. It is not unique in that. She briefly discusses the British East India Company which governed India until the Rebellion of 1857, after which Queen Victoria crowned herself Empress of India, and stole the Koh-i-Noor diamond to set it in that crown.
One book to explore this story more deeply is William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company (2019). Dalrymple tells the story of the notorious East India company as a premonition of the predatory transnational corporations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His telling does not reckon with the integration of the networks of the British imperial state with this rogue company. Most British parliamentarians and Cabinet Ministers owned shares in the company after all. The leading intellectuals of British state liberalism, such as John Stuart Mill and his father, were products of this corporate culture. It is the great weakness of Dalrymple’s tale, but does not dampen the pleasure of his history. Despite some weaknesses in his conceptualisation of power and history, William Dalrymple is a brilliant storyteller.
Indeed, for that reason, I do recommend reading William Dalrymple’s series of books on the history of the Indian world, of which the three best are:
Of these four books by Dalrymple, my favourite is The Last Mughal: The Fall of Delhi, 1857. It tells the story of the 1857 Rebellion as an elegy for a lost world of Mughal and mixed culture. Dalrymple is the most popular of British historians of India. He is much better than most popular historians. However, his post-imperial melancholy for Mughal India does make the aristocratic Scotsman Dalrymple into a somewhat controversial figure among the Hindu Indian history-reading public. Enjoy him, but sample some of the other books I will recommend on this tour.
Content Catch-up
You might also want to catch up on my content over the last big week!
I released a highlight segment from last week’s live stream, 5 SIGNS the game of world politics has changed
I did a live stream with Warwick Powell, Will Australia fight China? How China changed the world economy & order | Geopolitics & History E2 (1:39:31)
I released shorter segments of the whole interview,
on the alliance dilemma for Australia in the USA’s belligerence towards China, Warwick Powell: A USA War with China is the WRONG question for Australia (30:56)
on how China’s development has changed models of economic history, including reflections by Adam Tooze, How China changed the WORLD economy. Two views from experts, Adam Tooze and Warwick Powell
on China’s Civilizations initiative, the idea of civilization, and whether China’s harmonious diplomacy will be tested by the issue of the succession of the Dalai Lama (coming on Sunday)
I did a deep dive video on John Curtin looking to America in the depth of the British imperial crisis of 1942 and how it compares with the Australia-America relationship today, How Australia Fell into the Strategic Abyss of Two Empires (Britain 1942 & USA 2025)
I posted the second instalment of the Slow Read Re-run via Notes, with week two, Chapter One focussed on the fog at dawn of the East European Enlightenment, including Jacob Frank’s messianic rebellion
Pearls and Irritations published my article, Progressive patriotism fails the independence test, and
I signed An Open Letter in Defense of Academic Freedom and the Ukrainian Historian Marta Havryshko. Marta has suffered death and rape threats for exposing the Ukrainian regime’s shadows. Please read the Open Letter and consider adding your name in support.
I will also be speaking with Marta next week about the protests that have developed in the last few days in Ukraine. It will be a must-watch interview that will come out on the Burning Archive YouTube channel on Tuesday morning (Monday evening US time).
On Notes, I committed to do a post on the idea of the civilization-state. I was prompted by a post by Alexander Dugin that displayed some common traits of confused thinking about the historical concept of civilisation.
While I prepare this post or longer article, do check out my post from March 2024, When Ancient Civilisations become Modern Great Powers Reflections on epic statecraft in India, that is Bharat, in which I wrote:
I think it wiser to talk about cultures of statecraft, than civilisation states.
And that returns us to the theme of this week’s deep dive in the India World History tour.
A quick reminder for regular readers. I am integrating my book recommendation and deep dive posts into a single email on Saturday. My aim is to give you each weekend a whole week’s deep reading into history, without overloading your in-box.
Many thanks to all my subscribers, paid and unpaid, for supporting me in this fantastic journey through history. I hope it helps you to live in tune with a changing world. Please consider upgrading your subscription to get more from my guides, deep dives, and slow reads.