By Shivam Kumar
This essay does not claim to offer an academic answer to the under-theorization of a system like ‘neighbour’ in political theory but primarily undertakes a nascent, rudimentary and sympathetic endeavour to delve into, understand, associate and explore a subject seemingly relevant to the time and space we are living in. Political theorists and sociologists have undoubtedly done their parts of imagining and theorizing this little appreciated social organization but not enough to sensitize, popularize and essentialize such a living, visible and resilient institution behind and beside all of us.
Conceptualizing
The imagination of humankind indifferent and isolated from each other is impossible to think of particularly in this age of globalization. We co-exist, share our dependency, form a language of friendship, build a bond of love and trust, become part of collective memory and live, die and relive in relation to each other. As Aristotle would say, ‘one who is incapable of sharing or who is in need of nothing through being self-sufficient is no part of a city, and is either a beast or a god.’ The concern is not merely about dependency and self-sufficiency which is obvious and natural on its own but also about learning to live with somebody other than ourselves. These, the other half of us, in whose company we become complete humans are our neighbours. To juxtapose, think of our existence without them. They teach us not only civility, an essential quality in civic engagement but also how to deal with oneself. They are trans-identity, trans-geography and trans-memory. In every space, within and beyond the boundaries of caste, race, gender, region, religion, or nationality, the nearest creation, both animate and inanimate, conscious and unconscious, is a neighbour. How one treats one such neighbour determines how one visualizes the world to be.
To make an analogy, our relationship with our neighbour (which could also mean in an extended sense the larger surrounding we inhabit) is like a relation between two of our arms. We are independent yet dependent, separate but co-joined, and perform different functions based on our capabilities. When in need of each other, we naturally come to each other’s defence and strengthen our collective will.
Debating
Human history in the last three-four hundred years has been marked by the development of an individual consciousness under the patronage of the self-proclaimed modern ‘liberal’ nation-states. It made humans atomistic, aloof, apathetic, self-indulgent and what C. B. Macpherson would call, “possessive” beings. On the one hand, it revolutionarily established the notion of a ‘rational’ being but on the other, it destroyed the ‘relational’ nature of humans which philosopher Herbert Marcuse viewed as the creation of a ‘one-dimensional man’. Nevertheless, in postmodernist thinking, it was credibly expected and entrusted that it would generate a new wave of thinking in re-inventing human values and relations but surprisingly it is making people more indifferent instead of cultivating genuine empathy, making citizens confused and dormant instead of fostering activism and passion and most importantly, like modernity, it is similarly engaged in disregarding and de-emphasizing the natural characteristics of human beings which are realized in collective living, caring and sharing for and with one another, where there is no quest for power or persuasion, dominance or dependence but only respect, acknowledgement and compassion for one another.
There are other evils too besides modernity and its asocial child individualism and materialistic grandchild consumerism like racism, casteism, sexism, vainglory of several kinds and such, that one can actually experience in their everyday life. Alongside, there are issues that society, nation and humanity, in general, are struggling to find peace with like terrorism, civil wars, dictatorship, states’ excesses, religious and cultural fundamentalism and a global rise in intolerance.
These destructive forces, consequently, do bear the capability to blow away the adorable mirror of humankind and mind you, it will prick and bleed each one of us.
We are living in a testing time. We need each other. If we don’t come now, it would be too late for us to realize this. Our fellow human beings, who are in a disadvantageous or needful position (which can happen with anyone by the way), need our support, the mourning environment needs attention, treatment and healing and above all, we all need each other to participate, encourage, appreciate, celebrate, agitate and stand in solidarity with one another – from individual’s causes to causes of the collectives.
Metamorphosing
Once this consciousness is well implanted where we recognize, associate and feel or at least aspire to feel for every single being and matter in this cosmos, not in a fixed manner but through a diversity of methods, approaches and perspectives considering the distinctiveness and uniqueness of every sentient and insentient being as sacrosanct in themselves, showing respect and honour to them; would then the idea of ‘neighbourliness’ would be fully realized. As Gandhi would say, “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”
Gandhi’s conceptualization of the ‘Oceanic Circle’ where he places individuals at the centre not in isolation but in complete association with one another could be another way of making sense of the integrated view of humans. In this system, Gandhi writes, “the last is equal to the first or, in other words, no one is to be the first and none the last”.
Ambedkar, emerging from the critical tradition, makes a corrective contribution here. He denounces any such act done in human history to classify humankind into categories as “superficial” and “demonstrably wrong”. He doesn’t accept Plato’s classification of individuals into categories of soul. He believed that the utilization of the qualities of individuals is incompatible with their stratification by classes since the qualities of individuals are so variable. He says Plato “had no recognition of the infinite diversity of active tendencies and combination of tendencies of which an individual is capable of”. In a similar line of argument, Ambedkar denounces and rejects the Chaturvarna system, the four-fold division of castes, “as totally irrational, unscientific and inhuman”.
Gerhart Husserl, similarly, in his essay, ‘The Political Community Versus the Nation’ (1939), raises a crucial question that he himself answers also and which can likewise be applied or paraphrased for an individual, society, community or any group of humankind.
‘What is the true mission of a nation?’, he asks.
‘This and only this: To make a contribution to the civilization of mankind through a full and free development of its own characteristic culture; and to do this in a peaceful collaboration with other nations, which are, if different, not, therefore, inferior exponents of humanity.’
It is paradoxical that ‘neighbour’ in human conception has become the ‘farthest’ relation despite the all-encompassing beauty of human relations in its ‘closest’ vicinity.
Reimagining Political Theory
The objective of the essay, which I humbly stated in the beginning is not to attempt a total theorization of the concept which, to be honest, is beyond the intellectual might of the author but surely to provoke a discourse wherein we also discuss and theorize, institutions, concepts, ideas, phenomena which are meaningful, space-time dependent, dealing with real-local concerns and can open new ways to study political possibilities and realities. Some of these could be, besides neighbour, institutions like family, village, community and society; ideas like dharma, karma, emancipation, enlightenment and moksha or liberation and matters of political discourse like truth, non-violence, self-awareness and awakening, reform and service, to name a few.
This re-imagining and re-invention of political theory, therefore, should keep happening and it should also endeavour to evolve itself into a multi-branch discipline where each branch is nourished, nurtured and enriched in its own unique ways which would ultimately broaden and deepen the dimensions and horizons of political theory and political science, alike.
References:
*Gandhi, M. K. (1921), “No Culture Isolation For Me”, Young India, P. 170, 1st June 1921.
*Gandhi, M. K. (1946), Harijan, 28th July 1946, p. 236.
*Husserl, Gerhart (1939), “The Political Community Versus the Nation”, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp 147, The University of Chicago Press.
*Jayaraj, Hemlata and A. M. Rajasekhariah (1991), “Political Philosophy of Dr B. R. Ambedkar”, The Indian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 52, No. 03. p. 361.
*Lord, Carnes (2013), ‘Aristotle’s Politics, The University of Chicago Press, Page 44, Chicago.
*MacPherson, C. B (1962), ‘The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism- Hobbes to Locke’, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
*Marcuse, Herbert (1964), ‘One-Dimensional Man’, Beacon Press, Boston.
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