essay on political culture in india

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• > The Journal of Asian Studies
• > Volume 30 Issue 1
• > The Culture of Indian Politics: A Stock Taking

Article contents

The culture of indian politics: a stock taking.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Political culture in India is not merely a reflection of community life-style. It is also the link between historical experiences of politics and model identities, on the one hand, and the needs of new political forms, on the other. Defined thus, it becomes not only an emergine national idiom, but also a cultural vector diat is gradually entering the community's life-style as a legitimate force of social change.

There are four historical stages in the development if the culture of Indian politics. The contemporary political culture also consists of four strands, each with its own psychological problems of adaptation and their typical cultural expressions. These strands are related, on the one hand, to the four corresponding historical stages and, on the other, to different levels of personality functioning in the model Indian. Within this framework, a new approach can be taken to the analysis of the major themes and symbols in Indian politics. It is possible, for example, to decompose some of the major themes into their stage-specific contents which, again, can be related to the larger adaptive problems faced by the community at different historical phases.

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The author is grateful to D. L. Sheth and Rajni Kothari whose reactions have structured this paper to a great extent.

1 The most successful of these is perhaps Weber , Max in The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism , ( Glencoe : Free Press , 1958 ). Google Scholar

2 For an informative but blinkered work, see Desai , A. R. , Social Background of Indian Nationalism , ( Bombay : Popular , 1959 ). Google Scholar

3 A recent example is Spratt , P. , Hindu Culture and Personality , ( Bombay : Manaktalas , 1966 ). Google Scholar

4 For an interpretation which generalizes the conflict of identity in this group to the national scene, see Pye , L. W. , “The Political Cultures of India and China,” in R. M. Maru and Rajni Kothari (ed.), China and India: Contrasts in Development Google Scholar , forthcoming book. For two historical accounts of the period, see Majumdar , R. C. , British Paramountcy and Indian Rennaissance , Part II, ( Bomflict bay : Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan , 1961 ) Google Scholar ; and Mishra , B. B. , Indian Middle Classes , ( London : Oxford University , 1961 ) Google Scholar . Of the Syncretist culture of the babus , perhaps the best description is in Shastri , Sivanath , Ramtamu Lahiri O Tatkalin Banga Samaj (1909), ( Calcutta : New Age , 1957 ). Google Scholar

5 For a general account of this period, see Majumdar , , op. cit. Google Scholar The last phase of the era has been described by Haridas , and Mukherji , Uma , India's Fight for Freedom or the Swadeshi Movement , ( Calcutta : Firma K. L. Mukhopadhaya , 1958 ) Google Scholar ; and Tripathi , A. , The Extremist Challenge , ( Bombay : Orient Longmans , 1967 ) Google Scholar . On the varying British response to different social groups in India see Rudolph , L. I. and Rudolph , Susanne H. , Modernity of Tradition , ( Chicago : University of Chicago , 1967 ) Google Scholar , Part 2. The Rudolphs also indirectly deal with some of the psychosocial forces which helped initiate the Gandhian phase. Two examples of internalization of Western image of the babus , and the resulting brutal self denigration, in nationalist writers are Bankim Chandra Chatterji, “Babu,” (1873) in Cranthabali , Vol. 1, (Calcutta: Sahitya Parishad, 1958 ) Google Scholar ; and Chatterji , Sarat Chandra , Sreekanta , Part 1 (1917), ( Calcutta : G. Chatterji , 1940 ) Google Scholar . For examples of the same self criticisms ending in an aggressive syncretist stance see Dutt , Madhu Sudan , “Ekei ki Bole Sabhyata,” ( 1860 ) Google Scholar and “Buro Saliker Gharhe Ro,” (1860) in Rachanabali , (Calcutta: Sahitya Sangsad, 1967 ) Google Scholar , and Shastri , , op. cit. Google Scholar , passim.

6 The third and fourth stages and idioms they have generated have been studied in great detail. Two papers which deal specifically with political culture are Morris-Jones , W. H. , “Behaviour and Idea in Political India,” Spann , R. N. (ed.), Constitutionalism in India , ( Bombay : Asia , 1963 ) pp. 74 – 91 Google Scholar ; and Weiner , Myron , “India: Two Political Cultures,” in Pye , L. W. and Verba , S. (ed.), Political Culture and Political Development , ( Princeton : Princeton University , 1965 ) pp. 199 – 244 . Google Scholar

7 Samartha , S. J. , The Hindu View of his History: Classical and Modern , ( Bangalore : Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society , 1959 ) Google Scholar ; see brief reviews in W. Rowe, Values, Ideology and Behaviour of Emerging Indian Elites, unpublished monograph, 1964, p. 12; and in Narayan , Dhirendra , “Indian National Character in the Twentieth Century,” The Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science , 03 1967 , 370, pp. 124 – 132 Google Scholar , particularly p. 130.

8 Two obvious examples of heightened and almost obsessive consciousness of time are Rammohun Roy and his personal collection of about 150 clocks and Ghandhi and his famous watch. A popular nationalist myth tells how Surendranath Bannerji once threw away his slightly slow-running watch because he was late for a public meeting.

9 See Kluckhohn , Florence R. , “Dominant and Variant Value Orientations,” Kluckhohn , C. , Murray , H. A. and Schneider , D. M. (ed.), Personality in Nature, Society and Culture , ( New York : Knopf , 1953 ) pp. 342 – 357 . Google Scholar

10 On the traits see Carstairs , G. M. , The Twiceborn , ( Bloomington : Indiana , 1957 ) Google Scholar , passim, particularly, pp. 137–169; Taylor , W. S. , “ Basic Personality in Orthodox Hindu Culture Patterns ,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , 43 ( 1948 ) pp. 3 – 12 CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed . The more intuitive and impressionistic approaches are provided by Maughum , W. S. , The Summing Up , ( New York : Doubleday , 1943 ) Google Scholar ; Chaudhuri , N. C. , Autobiography of an Unknown Indian , ( London : Macmillan , 1951 ) Google Scholar ; Eliot , T. S. , “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets , ( London : Faber and Faber , 1959 ) p. 13 Google Scholar ; Priestly , J. B. , Man and Time , ( London : Aldus , 1964 ) pp. 171 – 173 . Google Scholar

11 Some examples drawn from different periods of history are: Roy , Rammohun , English Worlds , Vols. 1–7, particularly Vol. 2; ( Calcutta : Sadharon Brahmo Samaj , 1947 ) Google Scholar ; Chatterji , Bankim Chandra , op. cit. , Vols. 1 Google Scholar and 2, particularly, the novel Anandamath ( 1876 – 1878 ), Vol. 1 Google Scholar ; Vivekananda , Swami , Modern India , ( Almora : Advaita Ashram , 1913 ) Google Scholar . See also more recent attempts in Radhakrishnan , S. , Eastern Religions and Western Thought , ( London : Oxford University , 1940 ) Google Scholar ; Panikkar , K. M. , Hindu Society at Cross Roads , ( Bombay : Asia , 1955 ). Google Scholar

12 Smith , D. E. , India as a Secular State , ( Princeton : Princeton University , 1963 ) p. 40 . CrossRef Google Scholar

13 See Kapp , K. W. , Hindu Culture, Economic Development and Economic Planning , ( New York : Asia , 1963 ) Google Scholar , for an interesting discussion of the relationship between concepts of cyclical time resistence to economic growth. See also Goheen , J. , Srinivas , M. N. , Karve , D. G. and Singer , M. , “ India's Cultural Values and Economic Development: A Discussion ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , 7 ( 1958 ) pp. 1 – 22 CrossRef Google Scholar , which deals with the problem of relating such themes to economic growth in general.

14 Some aspects of these attempts to alter traditional status and the conflicts associated with these attempts have been analysed by Srinivas , M. N. , Caste in Modern India and Other Essays , ( Bombay : Asia , 1962 ) Google Scholar ; Rudolph , L. I. and Rudolph , Susanne H. , “ The Political Role of India's Caste Associations ,” Pacific Affairs , 33 ( 1960 ) pp. 1 – 22 CrossRef Google Scholar ; see the series of studies in Kothari , Rajni (ed.), Caste in Indian Politics , ( New Delhi : Orient Longmans , 1970 ) Google Scholar ; for another indirect reference to this problem in the context of the emerging elites, see Cormack , Margaret , She Who Rides a Peacock.: Indian Students and Social Change , ( New York : Frederick A. Praeger , 1962 ), pp. 18 – 19 . Google Scholar

15 For detailed analyses of these Concepts in Western terms, see Zimmer , H. , Philosophies of India , ( London : Pantheon , 1951 ) Google Scholar ; see also Schweitzer , A. , Indian Thought and its Development , ( New York : Beacon , 1959 ) Google Scholar . Brief introductions are provided by Dandekar , R. N. , “Brahmanism,” de Bary , W. T. et al. (ed.), Sources of Indian Tradition , ( New York : Columbia University , 1958 ) pp. 1 – 36 Google Scholar ; and Hume , R. E. , The Thirteen Principal Upanishads , ( London : Oxford , 1958 ) pp. 32 – 42 , 52 – 57 . Google Scholar

16 Morris-Jones , W. H. , op. cit. Google Scholar ; Dutta , D. M. , “Political, Legal and Economic Thought in Indian Perspective,” Moore , C. A. (ed.), Philosophy and Culture, East and West . ( Honolulu : University of Hawaii ) pp. 569 – 593 Google Scholar . Advaita Ashram, no date). This is reflected in social interpretation too, see Goheen , et al. op. cit. Google Scholar , and the response to it in Dasgupta , D. , Economic Development and Cultural Change , 13 ( 1964 ) pp. Google Scholar

17 Two examples of authoritative attempts at reinterpretation are Aurobindo , Shri , The Life Divine , ( Pondycheri : Shri Aurobindo Ashram , 1943 ) Google Scholar ; Vivekananda , Swami , Prachya O Praschatya ( 1900 – 1902 ), ( Almora : Advaita Ashram , no date) 100 – 102 Google Scholar . Also Panikkar , , op. cit. Google Scholar and also Dutta , , op. cit. Google Scholar see my “Defiance and Conformity in Science: The Identity of Jagadis Chandra Bose,” forthcoming Bommonograph, for a discussion of the process of reinterpretation as a part of historical adaptation; also Elders , J. , “Industrialism in Hindu Society,” Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University , 1959 . Google Scholar

18 Reincourt , , op. cit. , p. 9 Google Scholar ; see also Dandekar , R. , Role of Man in Hinduism , ( New York : Ronald , 1953 ) Google Scholar ; and Dutta , , op. cit. , pp. 574 – 575 Google Scholar . For a more extended discussion of the textual basis of the concept see Hume , , op. cit. , pp. 9 – 69 . Google Scholar

19 Murphy , G. , In the Minds of Men: The Study of Human Behaviour and Social Tensions in India , ( New York : Basic Books , 1953 ) pp. 44 , 268 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Anand , M. R. , Is There An Indian Culture , ( Bommonograph, bay : Asia , 1963 ), p. 80 Google Scholar ; Carnell , F. , “Political Ideas and Ideologies in South and South East Asia,” in Rose , S. (ed.), Politics in Southern Asia , ( London : Macmillan , 1963 ) pp. 261 – 302 Google Scholar ; Dutta , , op. cit. , p. 575 Google Scholar ; Bhaskaran , R. , Sociology of Politics , ( Bombay : Asia , 1967 ) pp. 57 – 58 Google Scholar ; see also my “Defiance and Conformity,” which develops this theme in some detail.

20 Tonybee , A. , A Study of History, Vol. 8: The Modern West and the Hindu World , ( London : Oxford University , 1954 ) pp. 580 – 623 Google Scholar ; Hay , S. N. , “Western and Indigenous Elements in Modern Indian Thought: The Case of Rammohan Roy,” in Jansen , M. B. (ed.), Changing Japanese Attitudes Towards Modernisation , ( Princeton : Princeton University , 1965 ) pp. 311 – 328 Google Scholar . Chaudhuri gives a scintillating, albeit literary, account of this synthetism; see his Autobiography , pp. 178 – 218 Google Scholar ; also Tangri , S. S. , “ Intellectuals and Society in Nineteenth Century ,” Comparative Studies in Society and History , 3 ( 1961 ) pp. 368 – 394 . CrossRef Google Scholar

21 For example Aurobindo , , op. cit. , passim Google Scholar ; Vivekananda , , op. cit. Google Scholar , passim.

22 See my “Defiance and Conformity;” E. Shils, “The Culture of the Indian Intellectual,” (Chicago: University of Chicago Reprint, 1959 ) Google Scholar ; Raju , P. T. , “Religion and Spiritual Values in Indian Thought,” C. A. Moore, op. cit. , pp. 263 – 292 Google Scholar , particularly pp. 282–284.

23 An example of a Gandhian Islamic scholar articulating the idiom is Azad , A. K. , Speeches, 1947–1955 , ( Delhi : Publications Division, Government of India , 1965 ) pp. 20 – 21 Google Scholar ; also Hussian , Abid , The National Culture of India , ( London : 1963 ) Google Scholar ; Radhakrishnan , S. R. , op. cit. , and East West: Some Reflections , ( London : Allen and win , 1955 ) p. 40 Google Scholar . All of them trace the various aspects of Congress consensualism to this linkage, See a brief review in Rowe , , op. cit. , pp. 11 – 14 . Google Scholar

24 On the older concept of concensus in the context of a changing society, see Derrett , J. D. M. , “ The Administration of Hindu Law by the British ,” Comparative Studies in Society and History , 4 ( 1961 ) pp. 15 – 16 CrossRef Google Scholar . Rudolph , L. I. and Rudolph , Susanne H. , Modernity of Tradition , ( Chicago : Chicago University , 1967 ) pp. 187 – 190 , 254 – 268 Google Scholar ; Wood , E. , “Patterns of Influence within Rural India,” in Park , R. L. and Tinker , Irene (ed.), Leadership and Political Institutions in India , ( Princeton : Princeton University , 1959 ) pp. 372 – 379 Google Scholar . For systematic statements of the modernized and politicized versions of an ancient position, see Roy , M. N. , Power, Parties and Politics , ( Calcutta : Rennaissance , 1960 ) Google Scholar ; and Narayan , J. P. , “Organic Democracy,” in Ayar , S. P. and Srinivas , R. (ed.), Studies in Indian Democracy , ( Bombay : Allied , 1965 ) pp. 325 – 344 Google Scholar ; for analyses of the role of the theme in party politics see Kothari , Rajni , “Opposition in India,” Robert A. Dahl (ed.), Regimes and Oppositions , (New Haven: Yale University, press). Google Scholar

25 Shils , Edward , “Influence and Withdrawal: The Intellectual in Indian Political Development,” Marvick , D. (ed.), Political Decision-makers , ( Glencoe : Free Press , 1961 ) pp. 29 – 59 Google Scholar ; Harrison , Selig , “Leadicized ership and Language Policy in India,” in R. Park and Irene Tinker, op. cit. , pp. 151 – 166 . Google Scholar

26 The concept of dharma is almost impossible to translate. “Duty” is a very inadequate rendering. The best description the concept is of course in Kane , P. V. 's History of Dharmashastra , ( Poona : Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute , 1946 ), Vol. 3 , pp. 241 , 825 – 829 Google Scholar . More sociological analyses are available in Karve , Irawati , Hindu Society: An Interpretation , ( Poona : Deccan College , 1961 ) Google Scholar ; and Prabhu , P. H. , Hindu Social Organisation , ( Bombay : Popular , 1954 ) Google Scholar . On the influence of the concept on traditional power structures and jurisprudence, see Bendix , R. , Nation-Building and Citizenship , ( New York : Wiley , 1964 ) pp. 215 – 298 Google Scholar . The concept of nishkama karma of Geeta has also been repeatedly given new meanings by different commentators. Some of the most influential of the reinterpretors have been Vivekananda, Tilak, Aurobindo, and Gandhi. Personality correlates of the theme have been mentioned by Taylor , W. S. , op. cit. , passim Google Scholar ; Carstairs , , op. cit., pp. 137 – 169 . Google Scholar

27 Mukherji , R. K. , Social Structure of Values , (London: Macmillan, no date) p. 83 Google Scholar ; Green , E. , The Far East , ( New York : Rinehart , 1959 ) p. 310 . Google Scholar

28 On the metaphysical and personality correlates of this primordial individualism, see Dutta , , op. cit. , pp. 571 – 573 Google Scholar ; and Spratt , P. , op. cit. Google Scholar , passim; on the individual's withdrawal from public concerns, see Sinha , D. N. , “Psychologist in the Arena of Social Change,” Presidential Address, Section of Psychology and Educational Science, 53rd Indian Science Congress , (Chandigarh, 1966 ) p. 9 Google Scholar ; A. Canrepeatedly tril, “The Indian Perception of the Sino-Indian Border Clash,” (Princeton: Institute of International Social Research, 1963 ) Google Scholar . Also, Lamb , Beatrice , India, A World in Transition , ( New York : Fredcrik A. Praeger , 1963 ) p. 41 Google Scholar ; Morris-Jones , , “Behaviour and Idea,” p. 83 . Google Scholar

29 Kane , , op. cit., Vol. 5, p. 1629 Google Scholar ; Sarkar , B. K. , The Political Institutions and the Theories of the Hindus , ( Leipzig : Market and Petters , 1922 ) Google Scholar . For analysis of this in the context of traditional sectors in modern India, see McClelland , D. C. , The Achieving Society , ( New York : Van Nostrand , 1961 ) CrossRef Google Scholar ; and “Motivational Patterns in the South East Asia with special reference to the Chinese Case,” Journal of Social Issues , 16 ( 1963 ) pp. 9 – 19 Google Scholar ; Hitchcock , J. T. and Mintern , Leigh , “The Rajputs of Khalapur,” in Whiting , Beatrice B. (ed.), Six Cultures , ( New York : Wiley , 1963 ) pp. 203 – 361 . Google Scholar

30 Smith , , op. cit. , pp. 25 – 30 , 40 . Google Scholar

31 Weiner , M. , “The Politics of South Asia,” in Almond , G. A. and Coleman , J. S. (ed.), The Politics of Developing Areas , ( Princeton : Princeton University ) pp. 153 – 246 Google Scholar , see pp. 166–167.

32 Mencher , Joan , “ Growing up in South Malabar ,” Human Organisation , 22 ( 1963 ) pp. 54 – 65 CrossRef Google Scholar , Cormack , , op. cit. , 1961 , p. 21 . Google Scholar

33 On segmentation see Morris-Jones , , “Behaviour and Idea,” pp. 82 – 83 Google Scholar ; Rowe , , op. cit. , p. 16 Google Scholar ; and Cormack , Margaret , The Hindu Woman , ( Bombay : Asia , 1961 ) p. 25 Google Scholar . On political perfectionism. see Morris-Jones , W. H. , “Stability and Change in Indian Politics,” Rose , S. (ed.), Politics in Southern Asia , ( Bombay : Asia , 1963 ) pp. 9 – 32 Google Scholar , especially pp. 10–11. Segmentation also reinforces the distinction between the functions of political and religious authorities, and the resulting contemporary stress on secularism. Smith , , op. cit. Google Scholar , Chapters 2, 3, and 4; Weiner , M. , op. cit. , pp. 153 – 246 Google Scholar , particularly p. 160.

34 See the papers in Kothari , R. (ed.), Caste in Indian Politics , op. cit. Google Scholar ; also Bailey , F. G. , Tribe, Caste and Nation , ( Manchester : Manchester University , 1960 ). Google Scholar

35 Kothari , , op. cit. , passim Google Scholar ; Rudolph , and Rudolph , , op. cit. , Part 1 Google Scholar ; Srinivas , , Caste in Modern India Google Scholar , passim, particularly Chapter 1.

36 Ibid. , particularly pp. 87–97, 112–119.

37 Weiner , M. , op. cit. , p. 166 . Google Scholar

38 Shils , Edwards , “Indian Students; Rather Sadhus than Philistines,” (Chicago: University of Chicago, Reprint, 1961 ) p. 3 . Google Scholar

39 Morris-Jones , W. H. , Parliament in India , ( London : Longmans , 1957 ) pp. 33 – 37 Google Scholar ; “Behaviour and Idea,” pp. 78 Google Scholar ; Dutta , , op. cit. , pp. 576 – 577 Google Scholar ; Murphy , , op. cit. , p. 56 Google Scholar ; Tinker , H. , “ Authority and Community in Village India ,” Pacific Affairs , 32 ( 1959 ) pp. 93 – 133 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Rudolph , L. I. and Rudolph , Susanne H. , “ Generals and Politicians in India ,” Pacific Affairs , 37 ( 1964 ) pp. 3 – 19 . CrossRef Google Scholar

40 Opler , M. , Rowe , W. L. , and Stroop , Mildred L. , “Indian National and State Elections in a Village,” Aiyar and Srinivas, op. cit. , pp. 641 – 654 . Google Scholar

41 Lamb , , op. cit. , p. 106 . Google Scholar

42 Murphy , , op. cit. , p. 52 Google Scholar ; see also Chaudhuri , N. C. , The Continent of Circe , ( London : Chatto and Windus , 1965 ) pp. 97 – 115 Google Scholar . Hitchcock , and Mintern , , op. cit. , passim Google Scholar ; Carstairs , , op. cit. Google Scholar , passim.

43 Roy , Rammohun , op. cit. , Vol. 2, particularly pp. 135 – 189 Google Scholar . Roy also explicitly rejected pacifism because he considered it a cause of Hindu degradation.

44 Carstairs , , op. cit. , passim Google Scholar ; Koestler , Arther , The Lotus and the Robot , ( London : Macmillan , 1960 ) Google Scholar , Part I.

45 See Gandhi , M. K. , My Non-Violence , ( Ahmedabad : Navajiwan , 1950 ) Google Scholar ; and Bose , N. K. , Selections from Gandhi , ( Ahmedabad : Navajiwan , 1948 ) Google Scholar . For two interesting analyses, see Rudolph , Susannc H. , “ Self-Control and Political Potency: Gandhi's Asceticism ,” American Scholar , 35 ( 1965 – 1966 ) pp. 79 – 97 Google Scholar ; and Bondurant , Joan , The Conquest of Violence , ( Princeton : Princeton University , 1958 ). Google Scholar

46 Morris-Jones , , “Stability and Change,” p. 11 Google Scholar ; Cormack , , op. cit. , pp. 24 – 25 Google Scholar ; see also Gandhi , M. K. , Hindu Dharma , ( Allahabad : Navajiwan , 1950 ) p. 16 . Google Scholar

47 Reincourt , , op. cit. , p. 51 Google Scholar ; see also Rowe , , op. cit. , pp. 34 – 36 . Google Scholar

48 On the relative autonomy of politics from society see Weiner , M. , “India's Two Political Cultures,” in Political Change in South Asia , ( Calcutta : Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay , 1965 ) Google Scholar ; “India: Two Political Cultures;” Morris-Jones , , “Behaviour and Idea,” Google Scholar and “Stability and Change;” Srinivas , M. N. , Caste in India Google Scholar ; Eisenstadt , S. N. , “ Transformation of Social, Political and Culutral Orders ,” American Sociological Review , 30 ( 1965 ) pp. 659 – 673 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Smith , , op cit. , pp. 57 – 62 . Google Scholar

49 Chaudhuri , , Autobiography , pp. 214 – 215 Google Scholar ; Schweitzer , A. , op. cit. Google Scholar See a review of this argument in Goodwin , W. F. , “ Mysticism and Ethics: An Examination of Radhakrishnan's Reply to Schweitzer's Critique of Indian Thought ,” Ethics , 67 ( 1956 ) pp. 25 – 41 CrossRef Google Scholar . Brief discussions of this subject are available in Mahadevan , T. M. P. , “Indian Ethics and Social Practice,” in C. A. Moore, op. cit. , pp. 476 – 493 Google Scholar ; also Keith , A. B. , The Religion and Philosophy of Veda and Upanishads , ( Cambridge : Harvard University , 1925 ) pp. 584 – 586 Google Scholar ; Hume , , op. cit. , pp. 58 – 66 . Google Scholar

50 Lamb , , op. cit. , p. 113 . Google Scholar

51 On the lack of mutuality and interpersonal distrust, see Chaudhuri , , Autobiography , pp. 212 – 213 Google Scholar ; Carstairs , , op. cit. Google Scholar , Chapter 3, particularly.

52 Reincourt , , op. cit. , p. 400 Google Scholar ; Panikkar , K. M. , A Survey of Indian History , ( Bombay : Asia , 1963 ) pp. 18 – 20 . Google Scholar

53 Mujumdar , , op. cit. Google Scholar , Chapter 1; Mishra , , op cit. Google Scholar , passim.

54 John , and Useem , Ruth , The Western Educated Man in India , ( New York : Dryden , 1955 ) Google Scholar ; Narayan , Dhirendra , op. cit. Google Scholar ; Chaudhuri , , The Continent of Circe . Google Scholar

55 Some of the studies which provide empirical basis of the observations made in this section are Carstairs, op cit. ; Rudolph and Rudolph, op. cit. ; Hitchcock and Mintern, op. cit.

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• Indian Politics Essay

Essay on Indian Politics

The functioning of the political system is crucial for the smooth development of any country. India is no different. From being the largest democracy in the world and having the Prime Minister as the supreme leader of the country, Indian politics has its own charisma. 

In the given below Indian politics essay, one can read all about the Indian political system, it's functioning, and the problems faced by it. For India, political scenarios and events play an important role. 

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India is the largest democracy in the world. Almost 1 out of every 6 humans in the world is an Indian. With such an enormous and diverse population, there are a number of political ideologies and political parties which are present and functioning all over the country. The constitution of India gives the right to every citizen of the country to form political parties and contest elections in the country. Although, Politics in India is not only limited to just political parties but has become central to all walks of life among everyone. Politics is said to be the art of influencing the will of the state. We have seen various pressure groups, advocacy groups, interests groups, etc which work in tandem with the political organizations. The work of the political parties is not just limited to winning elections, but it is the duty of every citizen of the country to ensure that our representatives remain responsive to the demand of the people and fulfill their electoral promises. 

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Long Essay on Indian Politics

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It is safe to say that the political scenario can be changed for the greater good of the country and society. 

Short Essay on Indian Politics

The information given below is suitable for the Indian politics essay 10th class syllabus. Students can make use of it during their examinations. In this short essay on Indian politics, one can read about the nuances of Indian politics. 

Indian politics is compared to a great circus where different political parties fight till the end. Most of the elections are marred by corruption on a large scale. Sadly, the country's political climate decides on the communal, social, and economic condition of the country. In this paragraph on Indian politics, one finds out that when the political situation is unstable, then it gives rise to unwanted problems like civil wars and revolutions, as seen in Libya, Syria, and Egypt. 

Indian politics has seen it all, right from the birth of the two single largest parties in India, the partition, emergency period, India-Bangladesh war, and the terror attacks. It is a colorful game indeed with plenty of good and bad happening side-by-side. One can hope that India progresses and matures with time. Hopefully, it will be for the greater good and development of the nation. The essay about Indian politics has shown that the freedom of choosing the kind of ideology one wants to take itself lies in Indian democracy.

Conclusion 

To conclude the Indian politics essay in English, the Indian political scenario has seen it all. Rulers of dynamic capabilities and charismatic character have taken over the realms of the country. 

Likes of Jawaharlal Nehru and Narendra Modi have adorned the coveted position of this country, which is a moment of pride for any Indian. 

FAQs on Indian Politics Essay

1. What can one learn from the essay on Indian Politics?

The Indian politics essay reveals the existing Indian political system in the country. It is similar to a game of snake and ladders. Friends become one's enemies, and sworn enemies share the dais during election rallies.

It is becoming a common sight today. Indians can be proud of the fact that they are the largest democracy existing in the world. In Indian politics, the prime minister is the head, and power is equally divided between the central and state governments.

2. Does it help Indian Politics in electing educated ministers?

The main issue plaguing the Indian political system is the lack of education. Even ministers occupying senior positions in the country are devoid of quality education. One can blame the lack of criteria when electing the minister.

This has been going on for decades, and quick changes must be imminent for the betterment of the country. It would help in routing problems like corruption that is the root cause of all issues in the country.

3. What is Politics?

Politics is a very wide subject that does not have one definite answer, for most people it is about winning elections and getting the key to state power. However, according to one of the widely accepted definitions, Politics is the art of influencing the will of the state, which means that not only the political parties and the politicians but every citizen has an active role to play in the politics of this country.

4. Which is a democracy?

According to the famous definition given by Abraham Lincoln, Democracy is a form of government that is for the people, by the people, and of the people. This is good to give a basic sense of the idea of democracy but in the more general sense, it is people deciding what is good for them and taking an active part in the decision-making process of the country.

5.  What is the difference between a democracy and a republic?

Democracy is the form of government in which it is considered that the people will be deciding how to govern themselves. While in a Republic, the people give the franchise of their mandate to a selected candidate who represents them in the seat of governance. So the Republic is the enshrinement of the will of the people into a system that selects the people who govern them while democracy makes them responsive to the people who vote for them.

6. How can the write ups along with important questions for Indian Politics be downloaded from Vedantu?

The Online resources at Vedantu can easily be accessed using 4 steps:

Open the Website of Vedantu on your Laptop or you can log in to the Vedantu App through your phone.

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Enter OTP and then the solutions will be sent to your email id

You can avail all the well-researched and good quality chapters, sample papers, syllabus on various topics from the website of Vedantu and its mobile application available on the play store.

7.  What is the importance of elections in Indian democracy?

Elections play a very vital role in any functioning democracy in the world. Elections are the litmus test on how democracy has been working because without a free and fair election process, No true democracy can survive and if the election process is not free and fair then the belief of people will turn away from democratic politics. However, elections should not be seen as the endgame of democracy as a public partition in the development process must be ensured to keep democracy vibrant.

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Understanding Modern India

In this reading, the author introduces five themes that are central to understanding modern India. As with any set of generalizations, there are exceptions, and not all authorities will agree with the author. As you study more about India you will be better able to come back to Buultjen's five ideas and decide whether you agree with him.

Five important features which will perhaps give us some aid in understanding modern India:

• Its diversity
• The depth of culture
• A land of minorities
• Its future depends on the interaction between two worlds:
• In the cities and rural India, poverty, spirituality and modernity mix and coexist

Many people in the Western world think of India as an inert and distant [grouping] of people and poverty, a combination of the exotic and tragic. This misperception, popularized through years of media stereotyping, conceals reality.

In fact, India is a vibrant society with an increasingly vigorous internal dynamic and an increasing influence, directly and indirectly, in the world. Its significance lies not only in its size—some 930 million Indians are 15 percent of the planetary population—but also in the questions raised by the path India has chosen in domestic and foreign policy. This nation is the largest functioning democracy, with regular and freely contested elections. Thus, it is the test of whether democracy is a suitable system of govemment for large numbers of relatively poor people_in a world where democracy, as we understand it, is a much-endangered political species, especially in Third World countries.

Modern India is also a test of two middle-ground philosophies. As an early proponent of non-alignment in international politics, India has attempted to establish a [middle] position between Western and [communist] oriented states. Over the years, its leadership in carving out a Third World posture demonstrated that there is a viable route for nations who did not want to take sides in Cold War politics, an approach which many other nations in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East have followed and hope to sustain.

India's economic policies have also broken new ground. They were the first large-scale test of the modern mixed economy: central government planning with a combination of both private and public ownership of economic enterprises. It is perhaps still too early to evaluate the results. On the one hand, poverty remains [widespread] and unemployment is high. On the other, Indian agriculture has performed much better than either Soviet or Chinese agriculture. (India now feeds her population and has imported hardly any grain in the past four years.) Also, India now ranks as the ninth largest industrial economy in the world. A further significance of India today comes from the geopolitics of South Asia. Bordering the Indian Ocean into which the Persian Gulf flows, it is a key location in an era of oil logistics. Add the proximity of Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China, and India's situation becomes critical to the tensions and interactions of current global politics. From this perspective alone, apart from the many human, cultural and other reasons, it behooves thoughtful people around the world to make efforts to understand this vast and vital nation.

It is possible to say almost anything about India and have it apply to some part of that subcontinent. India is a land of [poverty] and, in some ways, of plenty. It is a nation both powerful and weak, ancient and modern, climatically dramatic in its contrasts. The very term "India" implies a unity which exists more as a tentative political form than as a human and socio-cultural reality. From the intertwining of its complex history with contemporary society, one can distill five important features which will perhaps give us some aids in understanding modern India.

The first feature to remember when thinking of India is its diversity. It is a country in which there are 15 official languages, over 300 minor languages and some 3,000 dialects. Twenty-four languages have more than one million speakers each. The largest spoken language is Hindi, but this is the mother tongue of only about 40 percent of the population. Often Indians cannot understand each other and frequently use English as a link or administrative language. But language is not the only diversity. There are four principal social groupings, what we sometimes call castes, and several thousand sub-categories of the castes. Although predominantly Hindu, all the world's major religions are represented in India. Ethnic differences also [abound]. This mosaic is culturally extraordinary. It is a source of divisiveness in a nation where particular loyalties have a deep meaning, both spiritually and physically. Given this diversity, it is remarkable that India has remained and grown, and continues to grow, as one nation.

A second feature is the depth of culture, which contrasts with the newness of the nation in its present form. There has been over 4,000 years of philosophical and cultural development in India, going back to early Aryan civilization. Since then, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Sikh and other influences have left deep imprints on society. Every Indian, even the poorest illiterate, can tell stories of myth and history, a consciousness of a great civilizational heritage which is unusually widespread. Yet, there was no India as we know it until the achievement of independence in 1947. Before that there were various fragmented (some very large) territories. Many of these were absorbed into the British Indian Empire which mixed direct British rule with supervision of many areas ruled by traditional princes and local kings or maharajas. The modern state of India is only 34 years old and its development must be understood in the context of trying to impose a national framework on old cultural patterns. The consciousness of the great past and the newness of the present sometimes produces an abrasive reaction.

The third feature is that India is a land of minorities. About 80 percent of the population are Hindus. But Hinduism is an amalgam of pluralistic beliefs and forms, often containing conflicting elements. An additional 12 percent are Muslims, deeply aware of their Islamic faith. Hindu, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telegu, Punjabi and other languages create minorities of their own. Tribal and neo-aboriginal peoples number almost 40 million. No contestant for political office can be successful without an awareness of these constituencies. And this, in turn, conditions both domestic and foreign policy.

A fourth feature of modern India is that, broadly speaking, its future depends on the interaction between two worlds: the cities of India, where 20 percent of the population live, and rural India, where about 600,000 villages contain the rest of the population. Urban India is the India of modern industry, national politics and foreign policy, government planning, the national media, the major universities, business, the armed forces, science and technology. Its best products are frequently as good as the best in the world, its orientation is cosmopolitan. Rural India is the India of age-old patterns where tradition is the principal dynamic of society, where outsiders come and go but life continues, often without much change. When the two Indias mesh effectively, India is a success, as in the expansion of education, the reduction of illiteracy, the extension of the average lifespan, the introduction of some basic health care, the sustenance of a democratic political system. When they do not connect effectively, India is in trouble, as with population control and unemployment. For the nation to realize its considerable potential, the linkage between those two Indias has to be expanded and strengthened.

The fifth and final feature we must remember is that poverty, spirituality and modernity mix and coexist in India, without the paradoxical implications which a Western perspective suggests. It is the essence of Indian spirituality which enables even the most deprived to endure poverty and it is modernity which provides the prospect of improvement.

It is this spirit, a composite of many small individual visions and inspirations, which characterizes modern India and offers the best hope for the nation and its people.

Author: Ralph Buultjens.

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The Indian paradox : essays in Indian politics

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Essay on Indian Politics

Students are often asked to write an essay on Indian Politics in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Indian Politics

Introduction to indian politics.

Indian Politics is a broad subject which involves the activities related to governance of India. It includes a multitude of political parties, each with their unique ideologies and agendas.

Political Structure

India, known as the largest democracy in the world, has a federal structure. It is divided into central and state governments, each with their own jurisdictions and responsibilities.

Political Parties

Major political parties in India include the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian National Congress (INC), and various regional parties. They play a vital role in shaping the country’s policies.

Role of Politics

Politics in India is crucial for law-making, maintaining law and order, and ensuring the welfare of the citizens. It impacts every aspect of society.

250 Words Essay on Indian Politics

Introduction.

Indian politics, a complex and multifaceted arena, is a vibrant blend of democratically elected representatives, political parties, and their ideologies. It is a reflection of the nation’s diverse socio-cultural fabric, with its roots deeply entrenched in the democratic ethos of the world’s largest democracy.

The Political Structure

India follows a federal structure, with power distributed between the central government and individual states. The President is the head of state, while the Prime Minister is the head of government. The Parliament, consisting of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, is the legislative body, and the judiciary ensures the constitution’s supremacy.

Political Parties and Ideologies

Indian politics is characterized by a multitude of political parties, each with unique ideologies. The Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are two prominent national parties. The ideologies of these parties range from secularism and socialism to nationalism and Hindutva, providing a broad spectrum of political thought.

Role of Caste and Religion

Caste and religion significantly influence Indian politics. Political parties often use these factors to mobilize voters, leading to identity-based politics. This can sometimes result in social divisions, highlighting the need for political maturity and responsible leadership.

Indian politics, while dynamic and diverse, faces challenges such as corruption, criminalization of politics, and the misuse of power. However, the democratic structure provides mechanisms for checks and balances. The future of Indian politics lies in strengthening these mechanisms, promoting inclusive politics, and ensuring the welfare of all citizens.

500 Words Essay on Indian Politics

The democratic framework.

India, the world’s largest democracy, operates under a federal structure of government, although the word is not used in the Constitution itself. The President of India is the ceremonial head of state, while the Prime Minister is the head of government and runs the country’s day-to-day operations. The Indian political structure also comprises the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and the Lok Sabha (House of the People), forming a bicameral parliament.

Political Parties and Coalition Politics

Indian politics is characterized by a multi-party system. The Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are two of the major national parties. However, regional parties also play a pivotal role in the political sphere. Coalition politics has become a norm in Indian politics, reflecting the diversity of the country. It ensures that various regional and community interests are adequately represented, enhancing the democratic spirit.

Politics of Socio-Economic Development

Identity politics.

Identity politics, based on religion, caste, language, or regional identity, is a significant aspect of Indian politics. While it has led to empowerment of marginalized communities, critics argue that it has also resulted in increased polarization and social divisions.

Politics and Corruption

Corruption remains a pervasive issue in Indian politics, undermining the democratic ethos. Despite numerous anti-corruption movements and legislation, the problem persists. It is a pressing challenge that needs to be addressed to ensure transparency and accountability in the political system.

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• The Arena Current Issues

Sense and Sensibilities in India’s Political Discourse

May 17, 2021 12:24 ist.

India's political discourse, which was shaped by Mahatma Gandhi's unifying call for independence, has gone through various phases in the seven decades since freedom, each reflecting the political sentiments that have been at play. Photo: The Hindu Archives.

India's political discourse, which reached a national characteristic during the freedom struggle, has travelled through several phases since Independence. If the pre-1947 period was a time for messages of unity and commonality, the first breath of independent India was rife with political elan, an aspiration for modernity. In the later decades, India heard varying levels of rhetoric and political vocabulary to suit the times. As the nation approaches its seventy-fifth Independence anniversary next year, facts-based debates are off the public space and the popular discourse has plummeted to a low point in which hate speech sets the tone for divisive narratives. In this Essay, G.N. Devy, Chairperson of the People’s Linguistic Survey of India and cultural and literary critic , contextualises the changes in the country’s political vocabulary. He takes a broad view of India’s political values and the accompanying use of language. Observing the public narratives over seven decades of independent India through the lens of sociolinguistics, Devy draws out the linkages between popular discourses and the political ambience of the nation at various periods; and expresses concern that the political discourse on the block is weakening the respect for constitutional values.

1. Discourse at the Margin

There is no exact synonym for the word 'discourse' in my mother-tongue, Marathi. It is not available in Gujarati and Hindi as well, the two other Indian languages I know. If one seeks to locate the concept, 'discourse', in Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi and many other Indian languages, one would have to inevitably invoke the term  paribhasha,  a derivation from Sanskrit. However, there is an element in both 'discourse' and ' paribhasha'  indicating a close kinship between their semantic formation. The two prefixes— pari  in  paribhasha  and  dis  in 'discourse'—provide this link. Pari   of Sanskrit extraction, indicates the peripheral, as against the essential, central, or substantial.  The Latin  dis , which in other contexts may mean 'death' or 'non-being', means in conjunction with  cursus  exactly the same: 'away', 'far', 'distant'.

A common dictionary definition of the English term, 'discourse', indicates that it is of late Middle English origin. It denoted ‘the process of reasoning’. It was drawn upon the Old French  discours , which, in turn, was drawn upon  discursus  in Latin. In its original Latin usage, it meant 'running to and fro'.  Understandably, therefore, dictionaries of synonyms pair 'discourse' with 'chat', 'colloquy', 'conversation', 'dialogue', 'exchange' and 'discussion'. In all of these, the most significant denominator is the mode of communication—speech.

Discourse is speech or conversation somewhat off the mark from the central tenets of the area being discussed.

Thus, discourse is speech or conversation somewhat  off the mark , away from the central tenets or arguments of the area being discussed. Political discourse, understood from this perspective, is what is  being said about  and not the fundamentals of governance or principles of political philosophy. Political discourse, therefore, is as related and at the same time as much unrelated to the course of political actions as is a publisher’s catalogue to the published books. Discourse in its various forms is an advert, an addendum, an address, and not the thing, action or thought itself.

2. Politics and the Language of Discourse

Normally, when foundational political values change, a similar shift takes place in the discourse related to them. A classic example can be drawn by comparing some of the Vedic texts with texts from a later era, both produced under different political contexts. Two references drawn from two different periods of ancient India are indicative of how political philosophy has evolved.

The section of  Yajur Veda, now recognised as the  Ishovasya Upanishad (Isa Upanishad),  begins with the famous dictum, 

Ishavasyam idam sarvam yat kim cha jagatyam jagat;

Tena  tyaktena bjunjita, ma gridhah kashyasvid dhanam., "(know that) all this, whatever moves in this moving world, is enveloped by god. therefore find your enjoyment in renunciation; do not covet what belongs to others." 1.

The political context for this formulation, during the closing centuries of the second millennium BCE, was provided by a setting in which neither were the lives of a population fully in the grip of a feudal state, nor were human-land relations governed entirely by ideas of ownership.

A thousand years later, the  Manusmriti,  compiled under a different political backdrop and has since then been India’s gravest stumbling block in creating a humane and equitable social order, states: "Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahmana; on account of the excellence of his origin, the Brahmana is, indeed, entitled to all." 2

The political context for this formulation was the tussle between Buddhism and Brahminism. D.D. Kosambi, probably the most perceptive commentator of social strife in ancient India, discusses at length how 'the middle path' propounded by Buddhism was different from the life of the forest dwelling hunter-gathers of the time and the more settled society following ' yagna ' (rituals of offering). This inevitably brought the 'middle path' in clash with the established class of priests and merchants and, eventually, receded into the background, even as it spread outside India without much use of force and violence. 3

Surprisingly, the key phrases in the verse from the  Ishovasya Upanishad  and the one from  Manusmriti  have a remarkable linguistic closeness.  Just as the former uses the phrases ‘yat kin chit' (not even a small bit) and ' jagatyam jagat', the latter uses ' yat kin chit' and ' jagatigatam' (pass your life in this world).  These two phrases occur in both texts; and one need not think of this as a mere coincidence. Not just that, the design of Manusmriti rests on the use of the Anushtubh poetic meter, the most preferred by some of the major Upanishads. It is interesting to note that the other major texts of the period such as Bharat’s Natyashastra and Gautama’s Dharmasutra had moved to a mix of prose and verse.  Manusmriti kept close to the traditional style and meter.  In one of its dictums (verse 4.124), it states that the Yajur Veda was meant for use by humans, while the Rig Veda was for the gods.  The affinity ends when we come to the ideas promoted through the Manusmriti .  The closeness of vocabulary cannot be seen as merely incidental but needs to be read as a deliberate subversion of the original. The Manusmriti is full of such undermining of the noble ideas in the Upanishads that had historically preceded it.  The linguistic affinities helped this smriti in claiming authority among the followers of the Vedic rituals. Nonetheless, they provide foundations for two diametrically opposed political philosophies: the aspiration for equity versus the justification of hierarchical superiority.  Here, the political philosophies had changed, the related discourse had changed; but their linguistic expressions had not.

It is also quite possible that although the principles of politics show no significant shift from one era to another, the political discourses of given two eras are significantly different.  A good example of this can be seen in the long history of feudal kingdoms in India (or elsewhere).  The political discourse about the feudal system during the 12 th  century and the 16 th  century shows a major shift as exemplified, for instance, by Kalhana's  Rajatarangini   (1184 AD) and Al Badouni's  Tarikh-i-Badayuni  (1595 AD).  At first sight, the intents of Kalhana and Badouni look very much alike and so do the structures of their works.

Though spaced apart by four centuries,  Kalhana and Badouni may appear fairly similar to a 21 st century reader.

Kalhana as well as Badouni enjoyed royal patronage and had the express intention of depicting the ruler as the epitome of princely qualities.  Both works, Rajatarangini   and Tarikh-i-Badayuni , spend enormous energy in drawing up long lists of preceding rulers, presenting complicated genealogies, and establishing claims over ancestry which, on a proper historical scrutiny, appear more imaginative than factually accurate.  Kalhana tried to cover the period from 1182 BCE to his own time, and Badouni from 977 AD (going back to the first Islamic ruler Sabuktigin) to his own time. Though spaced apart in time by four centuries, with Kalhana in the 12 th century and Badouni in the 16 th century, they may appear fairly similar to a reader in the 21 st century.  However, on more careful reading, it becomes clear that Badouni is capable of irony and sarcasm when commenting on the royalty of his day while Kalhana displays no comparable 'critique' of Sri Harsha of Kashmir.  Badouni had ample criticism of Akbar's religious views to offer; and his work had to kept guarded for a decade after Akbar's death, well until Jahangir's hold over the Mughal empire was well established. By comparing Kalhana with Badouni what we learn is that a shift in discourse style cannot always be taken as an indication of a corresponding shift in the politics that the discourse depicts.

The apparent disconnect between politics of a given era, its discourse and the linguistic expression used by the discourse cannot, however, be seen as an indication of non-relation among them.  Politics and political culture are not the only source of a given political discourse.  It arises primarily out of the linguistic resources available in that era.

3. Long Lasting Dreams in Different Language-Styles

A settled terminology used for discussing politics gives way to a different one due to several factors such as changes in labour practices, emergence of new technologies, economic shifts and population migrations, which are all intimately linked with politics but cannot be described as politics.  In other words, political discourse acquires new forms not only when a new power system emerges but also without such a power-shift having taken place: when the language in which the discourse circulates undergoes a significant style-shift.

Two examples from two different periods from another country are instructive. About a century and half ago, a short speech made at Gettysburg by Abraham Lincoln, brought a war-torn U.S. back to its senses.  He was speaking about Americans who gave their lives so that equality continues to live:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. we are met on a great battle-field of that war. we have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives so that nation might live. it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this..., it is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us --– that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion –-- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain –-- that this nation, under god, shall have a new birth of freedom –-- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (november 19, 1863)." 4.

In the last week of May 2020, a Black American victim of police violence, George Floyd, in his last 127 words spread over an 8-minute desperate final gasp for breath, said exactly the same as Lincoln had said. Or, as Joe Biden put it during his election campaign for the U.S. Presidency, "There can be no realization of the American Dream without grappling with the original sin of slavery." 5  Floyd's words will go down in history as an immortal outcry for the right to dignity and equality:

"It's my face man; I didn't do nothing serious man; Please; Please; please I can't breathe; please man; please somebody; please man; I can't breathe; I can't breathe; please (inaudible); man can't breathe; my face; just get up; I can't breathe; please; a knee on my neck; I can't breathe; … I will.  I can't move. Mama; Mama. I can't; my knee; my neck; I'm through; I'm through. I'm claustrophobic. My stomach hurt; my neck hurts; everything hurts; some water or something; please, please. I can't breathe officer don't kill me. They're gonna kill me, man. Come on man. I cannot breathe.  I cannot breathe; they're gonna kill me; they're gonna kill me. I can't breathe. I can't breathe.  Please sir, please, please, please. I can't breathe." 6

Floyd's words, literally his dying declaration, had a question in it and that was: 'is not a black person in America entitled to the right to life to the same degree as the white people are?'  Lincoln, having fought the civil war precisely on that question, put it more eloquently in his immortal speech.

What is even more important for us to know than the ideal of equality embedded in the two articulations is that the Floyd case put in sharp relief the right-wing hatred generated and legitimised during Donald Trump’s presidency.  The entire Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that changed the outcome of the U.S. Presidential elections in 2020, found deep resonance in the minds of Indians who felt perturbed by the rampant instances of mob-lynching of Dalits and Muslims in India and the support they received from the Modi regime.  The infamous outpouring of venom towards protesting Muslims by a prominent BJP politician, ' goli maro salon-ko'' 7 in early 2020 brought to mind the entire George Floyd episode and the BLM in the U.S. and made one think as to why such a movement had not immediately sprung up in India.

The difficulties in deciding if discourse is merely a linguistic extension of political action; if change in discourse-style is necessarily change in discourse; and if no such change in style is at all any indication of continuity of ideas, trends, moves and mobilisations in the political arena, any conclusions drawn about changing political discourse merely on the basis of linguistic, cinematic or artistic articulation related to politics are essentially tendentious and tentative.  With this caveat, I turn to recording the style-shifts in political semiotics in my experience.

4. Political Semiotics Since Independence

I was born in the year India became a Republic and my political awareness started acquiring a definite character when India experienced the Emergency during the mid-Seventies. The intervening decades had seen the rise of sartorial political statements. Gandhi's charkha and khadi were still in the air; but a greater elan had entered the sartorial habits of public figures. The clothes they wore were starched and ironed and jackets they wore had a shine that the coarse khadi in the past never had. In those same decades, larger than life posters of netas started capturing the imagination of people.

From 'unity in diversity' and 'scientific temper', slogans moved closer to the imagery of commands, demands and desires.

Particularly in large metropolises, these posters, vying with cinema-posters, had become an essential element of the urban public art. The sartorial texture, the tone of the pigments used for the posters as well as the language used in public spaces started to change in the Seventies. Compared with phrases in the Fifties and Sixties, 'unity in diversity' and 'scientific temper', the slogans moved closer to the language and imagery of commands, demands and desires. Catchwords such as "so and so  amar rahe" , "so and so  ki jay" , "so and so  zindabad , or "so and so  murdabad" —all denoting either praise or protest—started looking dated. The new slogans were, in contrast, either command phrases such as " garibi hatao" , "Indira hatao, desh bachao" somewhat reminiscent of the 1942 ' chale jao ’ (quit India) movement; or they were explicit desire words such as ' nav-niramn ,' ' sampurn-kranti ’', 'X revolution'.

One interesting word, a strange mix of noun and verb, that came in use was ' gherao' . It worked both as a noun and as a verb; it was also a visual image and it tied up with numerous past cultural practices involving a community dance in a circle such as the garba in Gujarat, Raas in the Hindi heartland and Bihu in Assam. It stuck to the public imagination.  The political diction of the Fifties and the Sixties was dominated by the remnants of the freedom struggle, the idiom of the Seventies and the Eighties was driven by Left politics, with West Bengal on the forefront.  Words like hartal , boycott, satyagraha and picketing had started looking worn out and inconsequential, and the words that sounded politically more potent were 'strike', 'lock-out', 'campaign', 'encounter', 'defection', 'lobby-crossing', 'syndicate' and even 'Indicate' (group loyalty to Indira).

The generation of the 1980's that grew up watching TV and with access to STD booths, cordless telephones, fax machines and early versions of computers befriended a new political lingo. In it, initially, 'taking India to the 21 st century', 'modernisation', ' roti-kapada-makan ' and then, 'coalition' and 'fronts' overtook the era of the terms like ' jal-jungle-jamin ’, strike and gherao. But during the Nineties, after the Babri Masjid demolition, terms close to various shades of violence and bloodshed took centre stage. These terms included 'terrorism', encounter, ' Mandir-Masjid' , riots, and a very quaint and comically ancient looking 'rath-yatra'.

The decade that followed, which also marked the start of a new century, was relatively a digression from this rather violent public discourse.  The terms in greater circulation in political space were: stock-market, the BSE, spectrum, liberalisation (though of 1990 vintage), globalisation, 2K, GenX, millennium babies, and—with meaningless frequency—'sustainable', 'transparent' and 'accountable'.  The soothing terms became a bit subdued. After 2008, as banks and economies started collapsing the world over, these passed through a phase of serious self-doubt. In India, for a while the terms that appeared in political news stories with great frequency were 'coal-block', 'spectrum' and 'scam'; but having served their political purpose, these terms quickly took a backseat, and a completely new set of terms entered the news-TV studios and the ever-reduced number of newspaper pages.

5. Post-Truth Jargon of Street-Smart Politics

These new terms, initially confusing as they were street-smart, were in most instances quite ungainly. Besides, they were not derived from existing dictionaries of political terms in which a word and its meaning had a fairly respectable correspondence.  These terms came from an unprecedented glossary called 'post-truth.'  Their claim to truth-value was based on just the fact that they were uttered for the followers of a neta to 'forward' them habitually on social media in all directions without worrying if they meant what they are supposed to mean.

Language is a strange system of signification.  In it, deciding the meaning of some really difficult-looking terms is easier than explaining the meaning of some easy looking terms. For instance, the emergence of humans as "a significant force in the Earth System, altering key process rates and absorbing the impacts of global environmental changes" prompted scientists to propose that the current geological period (since the 18 th century), be called the 'Anthropocene' epoch. 8 In this era, "the expansion of mankind, both in numbers and per capita exploitation of Earth's resources has been astounding" to the extent that "mankind will remain a major geological force for many millennia, maybe millions of years, to come." 9   As I have noted elsewhere, this is also a phase in human civilisation in which there is an admission that "the human footprint on Nature has crossed the tipping points." 10

In contrast, 'nature', a relatively simple looking term, may pose great difficulties in explaining it with certainty. Does it mean 'all that exists before and after Life'? Does it mean 'human characteristics, the human nature'? Or is it 'all that is not culture', or something else and divine? And if it means all of these, the inner contradictions between them make one wonder how or why this term carries within it so much paradox. 11

Though created for explaining meaning, no good dictionary pretends to know what 'meaning' means.  This is not because compilers of dictionaries are ignorant but because they know quite well that meanings of words shift from time to time, and often words are employed precisely in order to cause such a shift.  Over the last few years, one has noticed a conspicuous shift in meanings of several words and expressions.  Here is a random list, though by no means exhaustive. 12

The gentle folk who like to talk about books, culture and politics over a cup of coffee or a friendly peg are now called 'the Khan Market intellectuals'.  Those who feel that injustice anywhere—whether in Kashmir or Chhattisgarh, in a university or outside—is their concern and voice it are 'the tukde-tukde gang'.  Those who think that humans are humans irrespective of one’s religion are 'pseudo-secularists'. Anyone pointing out that the government is anti-people is 'a traitor or desh-drohi ’.  A person critical of the Prime Minister is 'an urban Naxalite.' A mob that wants to lynch an innocent person is 'protector of cows'.  The person who gets lynched is 'an offender deserving of an FIR.' ' Gharme ghusake marunga'   (will chase into their houses and thrash them) and ' chun-chunke marunga' (will get to everyone and beat them to pulp) oddly enough means the 'new idea of a welfare state’! Grant of citizenship means ‘not allowing people of a certain religion to reside in India’. ‘ kapde-se pahechane jate hei ’ ‘their dress reveals it all' means 'the people who do not like the Hindutva idea'. This last, by the way, is an antonym of ' suit-boot-ki sarkar'  which means ' Hindutva dressed up in a half-million worth jacket.' 13

The current political discourse has a high voltage sarcasm and a special like for Orwellian euphemisms.

The current political discourse,  thus, throws up a surfeit of iconoclastic attacks on ideas and ideals held dear by Indian people over the past decades.  It also has a high voltage sarcasm and a special like for Orwellian euphemisms.  In George Orwell’s famous work 1984, for instance, "the Ministry of Truth is the Ministry whose duty it is to propagate lies—that is to say, to alter history from time to time as may be convenient to the masters of the Party". 14   Politicians in India appear to have far surpassed Orwell’s skills in this department.

The post-2014 accent in political discourse owes a lot to the changing media technology.  The virtual and digital manifestation of politics has travelled a long way from the banners, posters, cheap print handbills and the political evening-bulletins. Political communication has recently become virtual and the enormous speed with which it comes in and goes out makes veracity of what is sent out superfluous.  If thousands of paid IT techies are appointed by a leader or a party to splash by the hour laudatory views and visuals, it is not difficult for the leader or the party to acquire a super-human image in a brief time.  Holograms, rather the person in flesh and blood, tweets rather than conversations,  images clad in fancy costume rather than real time media interviews are used to captivate minds of the people, it is not so difficult to divert the nation’s attention from the grey patches and policy-blunders.

Thus, demonetisation, which hit the economy in its solar-plexus, was depicted as the last stop on the road to bring black- money out; the loss of soldiers on the Chinese border as a diplomatic victory; discrimination against Muslims at the heart of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) 15 as great piety shown to foreigners seeking shelter; the handing over of education to private sharks as bringing dignity to Indian knowledge and the tragic plight of the nation in the COVID-19 pandemic as 'we have defeated Corona'.

In order to cement the cracks developing in this 'feel good' blitz, the news of the PM being received with an overwhelming welcome by countries outside India, or his receiving various international awards, images of his mystifying meditation visit to caves in the Himalayas, were doled out.   If one raised any doubt about the material conditions of the country, the techies double over as trolls and do a carpet bombing of abusive messages.  The discourse has indeed gone high tech and fast speed.  In the process, it has made political realities and economic facts the least important part of what is being talked about.

Labour, production, distribution, rights, entitlements, justice and such other terms – once central to the political discourse – are no more necessary as the discourse moves from the real world to the virtual world.  The Ministry of Truth is all about 'positivity' in the minds of citizens.  Anything less, or anything else stands the risk of being jeered at or simply being described as 'sedition'.  The sedition law has become more supple than ever before.

There is no point in looking up the etymological roots of the terms that have gained currency during the BJP rule in India, for its roots are in the non-scientific theses on Indian culture, society, history and philosophical traditions postulated by the founders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). 16   As one switches on the All India Radio news bulletin, the very first words that roll out are "pradhan mantri Narendra Modine aaj kaha..." (Prime Minister Modi said today); and seldom is a word uttered about citizens dying in crowded hospitals for want of oxygen supply and ventilator beds.  One saw in the recent West Bengal elections, top leaders exercising phonetic skills that amounted to 'cat-calls', with the term ' didi' (dear sister) said in a manner that verges on the lewd and at the same time vengeful.

The current discourse displays the art of misnomers cultivated to the point of being a refined 'science'.  This involves inventing new names in order to wipe out the old popular usages.  Aurangzeb Marg in Delhi, a road that has importance in India’s modern history, is named Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road.  The statue for India's first Home Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, is made the 'tallest' so that the debate about who was taller as a leader—the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru or Patel—can be given a sense of finality.  The birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi is named ' swachchata din' (cleanliness day), and posters of Barrister M.K. Gandhi as just a suggestive pair of glasses are put up, reducing the world-famous leader of the Indian freedom struggle into no more than a cleanliness faddist.  The discourse is fast busy wiping out historical memories that are associated with all ideologies other than the one that the RSS claims as its own.

Nearly a century after the freedom struggle, the political discourse, politics, and political values are seen as being in an organic unity.  The difference between the freedom struggle and the present phase in India's history is that the freedom movement had elevated people's horizons by bringing them close to the dream of a free nation with possibilities of reducing inequalities.  The present discourse, and its attendant politics and political vision fly straight in the face of  the constitutional guarantees and values.  They are over busy depicting an imaginary picture of ancient India as a civilisation with no philosophical flaws, no social warts, no moral deficiencies and coaxing unwilling citizens to own that imaginary past as the highway to India's future as a ‘vishwaguru' (mentor of the world).  Post Truth is a term that Donald Trump would have gleefully used to describe it.

6. The Jargon and Future of the Indian Dream

The study of Mass Psychology may explain aggressive verbal behaviour as part of a strategy of appealing to the baser elements in the ego-field for creating a new brand of politics. Historians may place this political discourse in the category of vandalised public morality. Linguistics has a different take on this matter.  It investigates and assesses viability of the discourse.  Language, whatever else it may be, is a social system.  Once new meanings get associated with some already existing expressions, they no longer admit the monopoly of their first users.  This means more and more members of the political class will use them, more and more frequently.  Contempt and hatred offer to their first users a sense of self-proclaimed moral superiority, albeit a false sense.  When they are used by all, such words besmirch the terrain ethical. 17

Once new meanings get associated with already existing expressions, they no longer admit the monopoly of their first users.

The hate school has managed to degrade the public discourse to the level of a gladiatorial contest with jeering onlookers.  In his time, Mahatma Gandhi contributed to the public discourse words like ' swaraj' , ' satyagraha' , ' ahimsa' , 'civil-disobedience' and 'truth'.  Together, they gave a moral edge to the freedom struggle. What the hate school has contributed to India’s public discourse has by now become commonplace.  Every family, every evening, gets a taste of this new discourse as the TV sets are switched on. Violence in language is worrisome; its normalisation and socialisation, even more so. 18

Dictionaries may find it difficult to pin down the meaning of 'meaning'; but human societies certainly know how to negotiate assault of violent language on civility and common decency in public discourse. Language, indeed, is a strange system.  It has an inner resilience: when aggressive language tends to become language aggression, language declares a semantic strike. It disallows communication and the possibilities of dialogue come close to an end.  Any Linguist will tell us that the wide-spread anti-CAA protests in India were not just a rejection of the discriminatory CAA, the National Register of Citizens, and the National Population Register. The sit-in dharna of the farmers over the last several months asking for the repeal of the farm laws is not just about agriculture.  It is a lot more. It is saying that unless the 'hate school' does not cure itself of the hate filled language, dialogue of any kind will be impossible. 19

The political discourse is weakening the respect for constitutional values expected of those who come to power.

The political discourse on the block is weakening the constitutional propriety and respect for the constitutional values expected of those who come to power and take an oath of safeguarding the constitution, not as an omission but as a deliberate commission.  Next year, the country will have completed seventy-five years of Independence.  That glorious moment was marked by the hope of equality, dignity, and freedom to all, which soon after got enshrined in the Constitution of India.

The trajectory of India's political discourse from that point till today can be captured by re-reading side by side the two verses, respectively, from the Isa Upanishad  and the Manusmriti .  Mahatma Gandhi stated in his discourse on the Isa Upanishad that that particular verse reflects the very best in India’s history. It is for us to decide if the present regime has not reserved its best compliments for the verse from Manusmriti , which in a contemporary application, justifies and entrenches new and avoidable hierarchies in today’s socio-political context.

Note: Parts of this Essay were earlier published by the author in a column, "Speaking Violence", at The Telegraph Online , on February 6, 2020. [https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/speaking-violence/cid/1742920].

[ Dr G. N. Devy , is the Chairperson of the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), a project to capture how people identify, name and perceive what they speak, which has published 38 volumes on the Languages of Indian States, Indian Sign Language, and International Languages. A Padma Shri awardee for Literature and Education (2014),  Devy has authored and edited books on Literary Criticism, Anthropology, Education, Linguistics and Philosophy. He can be contacted at [email protected] ].

References:

[ All URLs are last accessed on May 14, 2021 ]

1. Radhakrishnan, S. 1953. The Principal Upanishads , George Allen & Unwin, London, p. 567.  [https://ia802507.us.archive.org/10/items/PrincipalUpanishads/129481965-The-Principal-Upanishads-by-S-Radhakrishnan.pdf]. Return To text.

2. Panda, N.C. (Ed). 2014: Manusmirti (Text with Sanskrit Commentary and English Translation) , Volume-I Bharatiya Kala Prakashan, Delhi. p. 41. Return to Text.

3. Kosambi, D.D. 1965. The Culture and Civilisation of  Ancient India . London: Routledge and KeganPaul. pp. 97-103.  Return to Text.

4. Abraham Lincoln Online [n.d.]: The Gettysburg Address , November 19, 1863. [http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm].

Note by author : Ever since Lincoln wrote it in 1864, this version has been the most often reproduced, notably on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. It is named after Colonel Alexander Bliss, stepson of historian George Bancroft. Bancroft asked President Lincoln for a copy to use as a fundraiser for soldiers ("Bancroft Copy"). However, because Lincoln wrote on both sides of the paper, the speech could not be reprinted, so Lincoln made another copy at Bliss's request. It is the last known copy written by Lincoln and the only one signed and dated by him. Today it is on display at the Lincoln Room of the White House. Return to Text.

5. Smith, A. and Memoli, M. 2019 . Biden delivers most significant speech yet on race, says silence on hate 'is complicity' , nbcnews.com , September 16. [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-delivers-expansive-speech-race-says-silence-hate-complicity-n1054601]. Return to Text.

6. Oppel Jr., R.A. and Barker, K. 2020 . New Transcripts Detail Last Moments for George Floyd , The New York Times, July 8. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/george-floyd-body-camera-transcripts.html]. Return to Text.

7. Hindustan Times . 2020. BJP supporters erupt into 'goli maro' slogans at Delhi poll rally, asked to stop , February 7. [https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bjp-leaders-quick-to-stop-goli-maro-slogans-in-hari-nagar-rohini/story-uW6Wh8y67MWko61MBQkjsM.html]. Return to Text.

8. Moore III, B. 2000. Sustaining Earth's life support systems – the challenge for the next decade and beyond , Global Change News Letter, The International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme (IGBP), The Royal Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, May, No 41. p. 2. [http://www.igbp.net/download/18.316f18321323470177580001401/1376383088452/NL41.pdf]. Return to Text.  

9. Crutzen, P.J. and Stoermer, E.F. 2000. The "Anthropocene", Global Change News Letter , The International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme (IGBP), The Royal Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, No 41. pp. 17-18. [http://www.igbp.net/download/18.316f18321323470177580001401/1376383088452/NL41.pdf]. Return to Text.

10. Devy, G.N. 2020. Speaking Violence: Public discourse and the democratic response , The Telegraph Online, February 6. [https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/speaking-violence/cid/1742920]. Return to Text.

11. Ibid. Return to Text.

12. Ibid. Return to Text.

13. Ibid. Return to Text.

14. Hollis, C. 1956. A Study of George Orwell- The Man and His Works, Racehorse Publishing (2017), New York. p. 192. Return to Text.

15. The Gazette of India. 2019. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 , Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India, December 12. [https://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf]. Return to Text.

16. Devy, G.N. 2020. Op. Cit. Return to Text.

17. Ibid. Return to Text.

18. Ibid. Return to Text.

19. Ibid. Return to Text.

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How the Diploma Divide Is Remaking American Politics

Education is at the heart of this country’s many divisions..

Blue America is an increasingly wealthy and well-educated place.

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Americans without college degrees were more likely than university graduates to vote Democratic. But that gap began narrowing in the late 1960s before finally flipping in 2004 .

John F. Kennedy lost college-educated voters by a two-to-one margin yet won the presidency thanks to overwhelming support among white voters without a degree. Sixty years later, our second Catholic president charted a much different path to the White House, losing non-college-educated whites by a two-to-one margin while securing 60 percent of the college-educated vote. The latest New York Times /Siena poll of the 2022 midterms showed this pattern holding firm, with Democrats winning 55 percent of voters with bachelor’s degrees but only 39 percent of those without.

A more educated Democratic coalition is, naturally, a more affluent one. In every presidential election from 1948 to 2012, white voters in the top 5 percent of America’s income distribution were more Republican than those in the bottom 95 percent. Now, the opposite is true: Among America’s white majority, the rich voted to the left of the middle class and the poor in 2016 and 2020, while the poor voted to the right of the middle class and the rich.

In political-science parlance, the collapse of the New Deal–era alignment — in which voters’ income levels strongly predicted their partisan preference — is often referred to as “class dealignment.” The increasing tendency for politics to divide voters along educational lines, meanwhile, is known as “education polarization.”

There are worse things for a political coalition to be than affluent or educated. Professionals vote and donate at higher rates than blue-collar workers. But college graduates also comprise a minority of the electorate — and an underrepresented minority at that. America’s electoral institutions all give disproportionate influence to parts of the country with low levels of educational attainment. And this is especially true of the Senate . Therefore, if the coalitional trends of the past half-century continue unabated — and Democrats keep gaining college-educated votes at the expense of working-class ones — the party will find itself locked out of federal power. Put differently, such a development would put an increasingly authoritarian GOP on the glide path to political dominance.

And unless education polarization is substantially reversed , progressives are likely to continue seeing their reform ambitions pared back sharply by Congress’s upper chamber, even when Democrats manage to control it.

These realities have generated a lively intra-Democratic debate over the causes and implications of class dealignment. To some pundits , consultants, and data journalists , the phenomenon’s fundamental cause is the cultural divide between educated professionals and the working class. In their telling, college graduates in general — and Democratic college graduates in particular — tend to have different social values, cultural sensibilities, and issue priorities than the median non-college-educated voter. As the New York Times ’s Nate Cohn puts the point, college graduates tend to be more cosmopolitan and culturally liberal, report higher levels of social trust, and are more likely to “attribute racial inequality, crime, and poverty to complex structural and systemic problems” rather than “individualist and parochial explanations.”

What’s more, since blue America’s journalists, politicians, and activists are overwhelmingly college graduates, highly educated liberals exert disproportionate influence over their party’s actions and identity. Therefore, as the Democrats’ well-credentialed wing has swelled, the party’s image and ideological positioning have grown more reflective of the professional class’s distinct tastes — and thus less appealing to the electorate’s working-class majority.

This theory does not sit well with all Democratic journalists, politicians, and activists. Some deny the existence of a diploma divide on cultural values, while others insist on its limited political salience. Many progressives attribute class dealignment to America’s pathological racial politics and/or the Democrats’ failures of economic governance . In this account, the New Deal coalition was unmade by a combination of a backlash to Black Americans’ growing prominence in Democratic politics and the Democratic Party’s failures to prevent its former working-class base from suffering decades of stagnant living standards and declining life expectancy .

An appreciation of these developments is surely indispensable for understanding class dealignment in the United States. But they don’t tell the whole story. Education polarization is not merely an American phenomenon; it is a defining feature of contemporary politics in nearly every western democracy . It is therefore unlikely that our nation’s white-supremacist history can fully explain the development. And though center-left parties throughout the West have shared some common failings, these inadequacies cannot tell us why many working-class voters have not merely dropped out of politics but rather begun voting for parties even more indifferent to their material interests.

In my view, education polarization cannot be understood without a recognition of the values divide between educated professionals and working people in the aggregate. That divide is rooted in each class’s disparate ways of life, economic imperatives, socialization experiences, and levels of material security. By itself, the emergence of this gap might not have been sufficient to trigger class dealignment, but its adverse political implications have been greatly exacerbated by the past half-century of inequitable growth, civic decline, and media fragmentation.

The college-educated population has distinct ideological tendencies and psychological sensibilities.

Educated professionals tend to be more socially liberal than the general public. In fact, the correlation between high levels of educational attainment and social liberalism is among the most robust in political science. As early as the 1950s, researchers documented the tendency of college graduates to espouse more progressive views than the general public on civil liberties and gender roles. In the decades since, as the political scientist Elizabeth Simon writes , this correlation has held up with “remarkable geographical and temporal consistency.” Across national boundaries and generations, voters with college degrees have been more likely than those without to support legal abortion, LGBTQ+ causes, the rights of racial minorities, and expansive immigration. They are also more likely to hold “post-material” policy priorities — which is to say, to prioritize issues concerning individual autonomy, cultural values, and big-picture social goals above those concerning one’s immediate material and physical security. This penchant is perhaps best illustrated by the highly educated’s distinctively strong support for environmental causes, even in cases when ecological preservation comes at a cost to economic growth.

Underlying these disparate policy preferences are distinct psychological profiles. The college educated are more likely to espouse moral values and attitudes associated with the personality trait “ openness to experience .” High “openness” individuals are attracted to novelty, skeptical of traditional authority, and prize personal freedom and cultural diversity. “Closed” individuals, by contrast, have an aversion to the unfamiliar and are therefore attracted to moral principles that promote certainty, order, and security. Virtually all human beings fall somewhere between these two ideal types. But the college educated as a whole are closer to the “open” end of the continuum than the general public is.

All of these distinctions between more- and less-educated voters are probabilistic, not absolute. There are Catholic theocrats with Harvard Ph.D.’s and anarchists who dropped out of high school. A nation the size of the U.S. is surely home to many millions of working-class social liberals and well-educated reactionaries. Political attitudes do not proceed automatically from any demographic characteristic, class position, or psychological trait. At the individual level, ideology is shaped by myriad historical inheritances and social experiences.

And yet, if people can come by socially liberal, “high openness” politics from any walk of life, they are much more likely to do so if that walk cuts across a college campus. (And, of course, they are even more likely to harbor this distinct psychological and ideological profile if they graduate from college and then choose to become professionally involved in Democratic politics.)

The path to the professional class veers left.

There are a few theoretical explanations for this. One holds that spending your late adolescence on a college campus tends to socialize you into cultural liberalism: Through some combination of increased exposure to people from a variety of geographic backgrounds, or the iconoclastic ethos of a liberal-arts education, or the predominantly left-of-center university faculty , or the substantive content of curricula, people tend to leave college with a more cosmopolitan and “open” worldview than they had upon entering.

Proving this theory is difficult since doing so requires controlling for selection effects. Who goes to college is not determined by random chance. The subset of young people who have the interests, aptitudes, and opportunities necessary for pursuing higher education have distinct characteristics long before they show up on campus. Some social scientists contend that such “selection effects” entirely explain the distinct political tendencies of college graduates. After all, the “high openness” personality trait is associated with higher IQs and more interest in academics. So perhaps attending college doesn’t lead people to develop culturally liberal sensibilities so much as developing culturally liberal sensibilities leads people to go to college.

Some research has tried to account for this possibility. Political scientists in the United Kingdom have managed to control for the preadult views and backgrounds of college graduates by exploiting surveys that tracked the same respondents through adolescence and into adulthood. Two recent analyses of such data have found that the college experience does seem to directly increase a person’s likelihood of becoming more socially liberal in their 20s than they were in their teens.

A separate study from the U.S. sought to control for the effects of familial background and childhood experiences by examining the disparate “sociopolitical” attitudes of sibling pairs in which one went to college while the other did not. It found that attending college was associated with greater “support for civil liberties and egalitarian gender-role beliefs.”

Other recent research , however, suggests that even these study designs may fail to control for all of the background factors that bias college attendees toward liberal views before they arrive on campus. So we have some good evidence that attending college directly makes people more culturally liberal, but that evidence is not entirely conclusive.

Yet if one posits that higher education does not produce social liberals but merely attracts them, a big theoretical problem remains: Why has the population of social liberals increased in tandem with that of college graduates?

The proportion of millennials who endorse left-wing views on issues of race, gender, immigration , and the environment is higher than the proportion of boomers who do so. And such views are more prevalent within the baby-boom generation than they were among the Silent Generation. This cannot be explained merely as a consequence of America’s burgeoning racial diversity, since similar generational patterns have been observed in European nations with lower rates of ethnic change. But the trend is consistent with another component of demographic drift: Each successive generation has had a higher proportion of college graduates than its predecessor. Between 1950 and 2019, the percentage of U.S. adults with bachelor’s degrees increased from 4 percent to 33 percent.  

Perhaps rising college attendance did not directly cause the “high-openness,” post-material, culturally progressive proportion of the population to swell. But then, what did?

One possibility is that, even if mass college attendance does not directly promote the development of “high openness” values, the mass white-collar economy does. If socially liberal values are well suited to the demands and lifeways inherent to professional employment in a globally integrated economy, then, as such employment expands, we would expect a larger share of the population to adopt socially liberal values. And there is indeed reason to think the professional vocation lends itself to social liberalism.

Entering the professional class often requires not only a four-year degree, but also, a stint in graduate school or a protracted period of overwork and undercompensation at the lowest ranks of one’s field. This gives the class’s aspirants a greater incentive to postpone procreation until later in life than the median worker. That in turn may give them a heightened incentive to favor abortion rights and liberal sexual mores.

The demands of the professional career may influence value formation in other ways. As a team of political scientists from Harvard and the University of Bonn argued in a 2020 paper , underlying the ideological divide between social liberals and conservatives may be a divergence in degrees of “moral universalism,” i.e., “the extent to which people’s altruism and trust remain constant as social distance increases.” Conservatives tend to feel stronger obligations than liberals to their own kin and neighbors and their religious, ethnic, and racial groups. Liberals, by contrast, tend to spread their altruism and trust thinner across a wider sphere of humanity; they are less compelled by the particularist obligations of inherited group loyalties and more apt to espouse a universalist ethos in which all individuals are of equal moral concern, irrespective of their group attachments.

Given that pursuing a professional career often requires leaving one’s native community and entering meritocratic institutions that are ideologically and legally committed to the principle that group identities matter less than individual aptitudes, the professional vocation may favor the development of a morally universalistic outlook — and thus more progressive views on questions of anti-discrimination and weaker identification with inherited group identities.

Further, in a globalized era, white-collar workers will often need to work with colleagues on other continents and contemplate social and economic developments in far-flung places. This may encourage both existing and aspiring professionals to develop more cosmopolitan outlooks.

Critically, parents who are themselves professionals — or who aspire for their children to secure a place in the educated, white-collar labor force — may seek to inculcate these values in their kids from a young age. For example, my own parents sent me to a magnet elementary school where students were taught Japanese starting in kindergarten. This curriculum was designed to appeal to parents concerned with their children’s capacity to thrive in the increasingly interconnected (and, in the early 1990s American imagination, increasingly Japanese-dominated) economy of tomorrow.

In this way, the expansion of the white-collar sector may increase the prevalence of “high-openness” cosmopolitan traits and values among rising generations long before they arrive on campus.

More material security, more social liberalism.

Ronald Inglehart’s theory of “ cultural evolution ” provides a third, complementary explanation for both the growing prevalence of social liberalism over the past half-century and for that ideology’s disproportionate popularity among the college educated.

In Inglehart’s account, people who experience material security in youth tend to develop distinctive values and preferences from those who do not: If childhood teaches you to take your basic material needs for granted, you’re more likely to develop culturally progressive values and post-material policy priorities.

Inglehart first formulated this theory in 1971 to explain the emerging cultural gap between the baby boomers and their parents. He noted that among western generations born before World War II, very large percentages had known hunger at some point in their formative years. The Silent Generation, for its part, had come of age in an era of economic depression and world wars. Inglehart argued that such pervasive material and physical insecurity was unfavorable soil for social liberalism: Under conditions of scarcity, human beings have a strong inclination to defer to established authority and tradition, to distrust out-groups, and to prize order and material security above self-expression and individual autonomy.

But westerners born into the postwar boom encountered a very different world from the Depression-wracked, war-torn one of their parents, let alone the cruel and unforgiving one encountered by common agriculturalists since time immemorial. Their world was one of rapid and widespread income growth. And these unprecedentedly prosperous conditions engendered a shift in the postwar generation’s values: When the boomers reached maturity, an exceptionally large share of the cohort evinced post-material priorities and espoused tolerance for out-groups, support for gender equality, concern for the environment, and antipathy for social hierarchies.

Since this transformation in values wasn’t rooted merely in the passage of time — but rather in the experience of abundance — it did not impact all social classes equally. Educated professionals are disproportionately likely to have had stable, middle-class childhoods. Thus, across the West, the post-material minority was disproportionately composed of college graduates in general and elite ones in particular. As Inglehart reported in 1981 , “among those less than 35 years old with jobs that lead to top management and top civil-service posts, Post-Materialists outnumber Materialists decisively: their numerical preponderance here is even greater than it is among students.”  

As with most big-picture models of political development, Inglehart’s theory is reductive and vulnerable to myriad objections. But his core premise — that, all else being equal, material abundance favors social liberalism while scarcity favors the opposite — has much to recommend it. As the World Values Survey has demonstrated, a nation’s degree of social liberalism (a.k.a. “self-expression values”) tightly correlates with its per-capita income. Meanwhile, as nations become wealthier, each successive generation tends to become more socially liberal than the previous one.

Critically, the World Values Survey data does not show an ineluctable movement toward ever-greater levels of social liberalism. Rather, when nations backslide economically, their populations’ progressivism declines. In the West, recessions have tended to reduce the prevalence of post-material values and increase support for xenophobic parties. But the relationship between material security and cultural liberalism is demonstrated most starkly by the experience of ex-communist states, many of which suffered a devastating collapse in living standards following the Soviet Union’s fall. In Russia and much of Eastern Europe, popular support for culturally progressive values plummeted around 1990 and has remained depressed ever since.

Inglehart’s theory offers real insights. As an account of education polarization, however, it presents a bit of a puzzle: If material security is the key driver of social liberalism, why have culture wars bifurcated electorates along lines of education instead of income? Put differently: Despite the material security provided by a high salary, when one controls for educational attainment, having a high income remains strongly associated with voting for conservatives.

One way to resolve this tension is to stipulate that the first two theories of education polarization we examined are also right: While material security is conducive to social liberalism, the college experience and demands of professional-class vocations are perhaps even more so. Thus, high-income voters who did not go to college will tend to be less socially liberal than those who did.

Separately, earning a high income is strongly associated with holding conservative views on fiscal policy. Therefore, even if the experience of material security biases high-income voters toward left-of-center views on cultural issues, their interest in low taxes may nevertheless compel them to vote for right-wing parties.

Voters with high levels of education but low incomes, meanwhile, are very often children of the middle class who made dumb career choices like, say, going into journalism. Such voters’ class backgrounds would theoretically bias them toward a socially liberal orientation, while their meager earnings would give them little reason to value conservative fiscal policy. Perhaps for this reason, “ high-education low-income voters ” are among the most reliably left-wing throughout the western world.

In any case, whatever qualifications and revisions we would wish to make to Inglehart’s theory, one can’t deny its prescience. In 1971, Inglehart forecast that intergenerational value change would redraw the lines of political conflict throughout the West. In his telling, the emergence of a novel value orientation that was disproportionately popular with influential elites would naturally shift the terrain of political conflict. And it would do so in a manner that undermined materialist, class-based voting: If conventional debates over income distribution pulled at the affluent right and the working-class left, the emerging cultural disputes pulled each in the opposite direction.

This proved to be, in the words of Gabriel Almond, “one of the few examples of successful prediction in political science.”

When the culture wars moved to the center of politics, the college educated moved left.

Whether we attribute the social liberalism of college graduates to their experiences on campus, their class’s incentive structures, their relative material security, or a combination of all three, a common set of predictions about western political development follows.

First, we would expect to see the political salience of cultural conflicts start to increase in the 1960s and ’70s as educated professionals became a mass force in western politics. Second, relatedly, we would expect that the historic correlation between having a college degree and voting for the right would start gradually eroding around the same time, owing to the heightened prominence of social issues.

Finally, we would expect education polarization to be most pronounced in countries where (1) economic development is most advanced (and thus the professional sector is most expansive) and (2) left-wing and right-wing parties are most sharply divided on cultural questions.

In their paper “Changing Political Cleavages in 21 Western Democracies, 1948–2020,” Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty confirm all of these expectations.

The paper analyzes nearly every manifesto (a.k.a. “platform”) put forward by left-wing and right-wing parties in the past 300 elections. As anticipated by Inglehart, the researchers found that right-wing and left-wing parties began to develop distinct positions on “sociocultural” issues in the 1970s and that these distinctions grew steadily more profound over the ensuing 50 years. Thus, the salience of cultural issues did indeed increase just as college graduates became an electorally significant demographic.

As cultural conflict became more prominent, educated professionals became more left-wing. Controlling for other variables, in the mid-20th century, having a college diploma made one more likely to vote for parties of the right. By 2020, in virtually all of the western democracies, this relationship had inverted.

Some popular narratives attribute this realignment to discrete historical events, such as the Cold War’s end, China’s entry into the WTO, or the 2008 crash. But the data show no sudden reversal in education’s political significance. Instead, the authors write, the West saw “a very progressive, continuous reversal of educational divides, which unfolded decades before any of these events took place and has carried on uninterruptedly until today.” This finding is consistent with the notion that class dealignment is driven by gradual changes in western societies’ demographic and economic characteristics, such as the steady expansion of the professional class.

The paper provides further support for the notion that education polarization is a by-product of economic development: The three democracies where college-educated voters have not moved sharply to the left in recent decades — Ireland, Portugal, and Spain — are all relative latecomers to industrialization.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the authors established a strong correlation between “sociocultural polarization” — the degree to which right-wing and left-wing parties emphasize sharply divergent cultural positions — and education polarization. In other words: Countries where parties are highly polarized on social issues tend to have electorates that are highly polarized along educational lines.

It seems reasonable then to conclude (1) that there really is a cultural divide between educated professionals and the working class in the aggregate and (2) that this gap has been a key driver of class dealignment. Indeed, if we accept the reality of the diploma divide, then an increase of education-based voting over the past 50 years would seem almost inevitable: If you have two social groups with distinct cultural values and one group goes from being 4 percent of the electorate to 35 percent of it, debates about those values will probably become more politically prominent.

And of course, mass higher education wasn’t the only force increasing the salience of social conflict in the West over the past half-century. If economic development increased the popularity of “post-material” values, it also made it easier for marginalized groups to contest traditional hierarchies. As job opportunities for women expanded, they became less dependent on the patriarchal family for material security and thus were more liable to challenge it. As racial minorities secured a foothold in the middle class, they had more resources with which to fight discrimination.

And yet, if an increase in sociocultural polarization — and thus in education polarization — is a foregone conclusion, the magnitude of these shifts can’t be attributed to the existence of cultural divides alone.

Rather, transformations in the economic, civic, and media landscapes of western society since the 1970s have increased the salience and severity of the diploma divide.

When the postwar bargain collapsed, the center-left failed to secure workers a new deal.

To polarize an electorate around cultural conflicts rooted in education, you don’t just need to increase the salience of social issues. You also need to reduce the salience of material disputes rooted in class. Alas, the economic developments of the past 50 years managed to do both.

The class-based alignment that defined western politics in the mid-20th century emerged from a particular set of economic conditions. In the early stages of industrialization, various factors had heightened the class consciousness of wage laborers. Such workers frequently lived in densely settled, class-segregated neighborhoods in the immediate vicinity of large labor-intensive plants. This close proximity cultivated solidarity, as divisions between the laborer’s working and social worlds were few. And the vast scale of industrial enterprises abetted organizing drives, as trade unions could rapidly gain scale by winning over a single shop.

By encouraging their members to view politics through the lens of class and forcing political elites to reckon with workers’ demands, strong trade unions helped to keep questions of income distribution and workers’ rights at the center of political debate and the forefront of voters’ minds. In so doing, they also helped to win western workers in general — and white male ones in particular — unprecedented shares of national income.

But this bargain between business and labor had always been contingent on robust growth. In the postwar era of rising productivity, it was possible for profits and wages to increase in tandem. But in the 1970s, western economies came under stress. Rising energy costs and global competition thinned profit margins, rendering business owners more hostile to labor’s demands both within the shop and in politics. Stagflation — the simultaneous appearance of high unemployment and high inflation — gave an opening to right-wing critics of the postwar order, who argued that the welfare state and pro-labor macroeconomic policies had sapped productivity.

Meanwhile, various long-term economic trends began undermining industrial unionism. Automation inevitably reduced the labor intensity of factories in the West. The advent of the shipping container eased the logistical burdens of globalizing production, while the industrialization of low-wage developing countries increased the incentives for doing so. Separately, as western consumers grew more affluent, they began spending less of their income on durable goods and more on services like health care (one needs only so many toasters, but the human desire for greater longevity and physical well-being is nigh-insatiable). These developments reduced both the economic leverage and the political weight of industrial workers. And since western service sectors had lower rates of unionization, deindustrialization weakened organized labor.

All this presented center-left parties with a difficult challenge. In the face of deindustrialization, an increasingly anti-labor corporate sector, an increasingly conservative economic discourse, an embattled union movement, and a globalizing economy, such parties needed to formulate new models for achieving shared prosperity. And they had to do so while managing rising cultural tensions within their coalitions.

They largely failed.

Countering the postindustrial economy’s tendencies toward inequality would have required radical reforms. Absent policies promoting the unionization of the service sector, deindustrialization inevitably weakened labor. Absent drastic changes in the allocation of posttax income, automation and globalization redistributed economic gains away from “low skill” workers and toward the most productive — or well-situated — professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs.

The United States had more power than any western nation to standardize such reforms and establish a relatively egalitarian postindustrial model. Yet the Democratic Party could muster neither the political will nor the imagination to do so. Instead, under Jimmy Carter, it acquiesced to various policies that reinforced the postindustrial economy’s tendencies toward inequality, while outsourcing key questions of economic management to financial markets and the Federal Reserve. The Reagan administration took this inegalitarian and depoliticized model of economic governance to new extremes. And to highly varying degrees, its inequitable and market-fundamentalist creed influenced the policies of future U.S. administrations and other western governments.

As a result, the past five decades witnessed a great divergence in the economic fortunes of workers with and without college diplomas, while the western working class (a.k.a. the “lower middle class”) became the primary “losers” of globalization .

The center-left parties’ failures to avert a decline in the economic security and status of ordinary workers discredited them with much of their traditional base. And their failure to reinvigorate organized labor undermined the primary institutions that politicize workers into a progressive worldview. These shortcomings, combined with the market’s increasingly dominant role in economic management, reduced the political salience of left-right divides on economic policy. This in turn gave socially conservative working-class voters fewer reasons to vote for center-left parties and gave affluent social liberals fewer reasons to oppose them. In western nations where organized labor remains relatively strong (such as Norway, Sweden, and Finland), education polarization has been relatively mild, while in those countries where it is exceptionally weak (such as the United States), the phenomenon has been especially pronounced.

Finally, the divergent economic fortunes of workers and professionals might have abetted education polarization in one other way: Given that experiencing abundance encourages social liberalism — while experiencing scarcity discourages it — the past half-century of inequitable growth might have deepened cultural divisions between workers with degrees and those without.

The professionalization of civil society estranged the left from its working-class base.

While the evolution of western economies increased the class distance between college graduates and other workers, the evolution of western civil societies increased the social distance between each group.

Back in the mid-20th century, the college educated still constituted a tiny minority of western populations, while mass-membership institutions — from trade unions to fraternal organizations to political parties — still dominated civic life. In that context, an educated professional who wished to exercise political influence often needed to join a local chapter of a cross-class civic association or political party and win election to a leadership position within that organization by securing the confidence of its membership.

That changed once educated professionals became a mass constituency in their own right. As the college-educated population ballooned and concentrated itself within urban centers, it became easier for interest groups to swing elections and pressure lawmakers without securing working-class support. At the same time, the proliferation of “knowledge workers” set off an arms race between interest and advocacy groups looking to influence national legislation and election outcomes. Job opportunities for civic-minded professionals in think tanks, nonprofits, and foundations proliferated. And thanks to growing pools of philanthropic money and the advent of direct-mail fundraising, these organizations could sustain themselves without recruiting an active mass membership.

Thus, the professional’s path to political influence dramatically changed. Instead of working one’s way up through close-knit local groups — and bending them toward one’s political goals through persuasion — professionals could join (or donate to) nationally oriented advocacy groups already aligned with their preferences, which could then advance their policy aims by providing legislators with expert guidance and influencing public opinion through media debates.

As the political scientist Theda Skocpol demonstrates in her book Diminished Democracy , college graduates began defecting from mass-membership civic organizations in the 1970s, in an exodus that helped precipitate their broader decline.

Combined with the descent of organized labor, the collapse of mass participation in civic groups and political parties untethered the broad left from working-class constituencies. As foundation-funded NGOs displaced trade unions in the progressive firmament, left-wing parties became less directly accountable to their less-educated supporters. This made such parties more liable to embrace the preferences and priorities of educated professionals over those of the median working-class voter.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a thriving civic culture, voters became increasingly reliant on the mass media for their political information.

Today’s media landscape is fertile terrain for right-wing populism.

The dominant media technology of the mid-20th century — broadcast television — favored oligopoly. Given the exorbitant costs of mounting a national television network in that era, the medium was dominated by a small number of networks, each with an incentive to appeal to a broad audience. This discouraged news networks from cultivating cultural controversy while empowering them to establish a broadly shared information environment.

Cable and the internet have molded a radically different media landscape. Today, news outlets compete in a hypersaturated attentional market that encourages both audience specialization and sensationalism. In a world where consumers have abundant infotainment options, voters who read at a graduate-school level and those who read at an eighth-grade level are unlikely to favor the same content. And the same is true of voters with liberal and conservative sensibilities — especially since the collapse of a common media ecosystem leads ideologues to occupy disparate factual universes. The extraordinary nature of today’s media ecology is well illustrated by this chart from Martin Gurri’s book, The Revolt of the Public :

This information explosion abets education polarization for straightforward reasons: Since the college educated and non-college educated have distinct tastes in media, in a highly competitive attentional market, they will patronize different outlets and accept divergent facts.

Further, in the specific economic and social context we’ve been examining, the modern media environment is fertile terrain for reactionary entrepreneurs who wish to cultivate grievance against the professional elite. After all, as we’ve seen, that elite (1) subscribes to some values that most working-class people reject, (2) commandeers a wildly disproportionate share of national income and economic status, and (3) dominates the leadership of major political parties and civic groups to an unprecedented degree.

The political efficacy of such right-wing “populist” programming has been repeatedly demonstrated. Studies have found that exposure to Fox News increases Republican vote share and that the expansion of broadband internet into rural areas leads to higher levels of partisan hostility and lower levels of ticket splitting (i.e., more ideologically consistent voting) as culturally conservative voters gain access to more ideologically oriented national news reporting, commentary, and forums.

What is to be done?

The idea that education polarization arises from deep structural tendencies in western society may inspire a sense of powerlessness. And the notion that it emerges in part from a cultural divide between professionals and working people may invite ideological discomfort, at least among well-educated liberals.

But the fact that some center-left parties have managed to retain more working-class support than others suggests that the Democrats have the capacity to broaden (or narrow) their coalition. Separately, the fact that college-educated liberals have distinct social values does not require us to forfeit them.

The commentators most keen to acknowledge the class dimensions of the culture wars typically aim to discredit the left by doing so. Right-wing polemicists often suggest that progressives’ supposedly compassionate social preferences are mere alibis for advancing the professional class’s material interests. But such arguments are almost invariably weak. Progressive social views may be consonant with professional-class interests, but they typically represent attempts to universalize widely held ideals of freedom and equality. The college educated’s cosmopolitan inclinations are also adaptive for a world that is unprecedentedly interconnected and interdependent and in which population asymmetries between the rich and developing worlds create opportunities for mutual gain through migration , if only xenophobia can be overcome. And of course, in an era of climate change, the professional class’s strong concern for the environment is more than justified.

Nevertheless, professional-class progressives must recognize that our social values are not entirely unrelated to our class position. They are not an automatic by-product of affluence and erudition, nor the exclusive property of the privileged. But humans living in rich, industrialized nations are considerably more likely to harbor these values than those in poor, agrarian ones. And Americans who had the privilege of spending their late adolescence at institutions of higher learning are more likely to embrace social liberalism than those who did not.

The practical implications of this insight are debatable. It is plausible that Democrats may be able to gain working-class vote share by moderating on some social issues. But the precise electoral payoff of any single concession to popular opinion is deeply uncertain. Voters’ conceptions of each party’s ideological positioning are often informed less by policy details than by partisan stereotypes. And the substantive costs of moderation — both for the welfare of vulnerable constituencies and the long-term health of the progressive project — can be profound. At various points in the past half-century, it might have been tactically wise for Democrats to distance themselves from the demands of organized labor. But strategically, sacrificing the health of a key partisan institution to the exigencies of a single election cycle is deeply unwise. Meanwhile, in the U.S. context, the “mainstream” right has staked out some cultural positions that are profoundly unpopular with all social classes . In 2022, it is very much in the Democratic Party’s interest to increase the political salience of abortion rights.

In any case, exactly how Democrats should balance the necessity of keeping the GOP out of power with the imperative to advocate for progressive issue positions is something on which earnest liberals can disagree.

The case for progressives to be more cognizant of the diploma divide when formulating our messaging and policy priorities, however, seems clearer.

Education polarization can be self-reinforcing. As left-wing civic life has drifted away from mass-membership institutions and toward the ideologically self-selecting circles of academia, nonprofits, and the media, the left’s sensitivity to the imperatives of majoritarian politics has dulled. In some respects, the incentives for gaining status and esteem within left-wing subcultures are diametrically opposed to the requirements of coalition building. In the realm of social media, it can be advantageous to make one’s policy ideas sound more radical and/or threatening to popular values than they actually are. Thus, proposals for drastically reforming flawed yet popular institutions are marketed as plans for their “abolition,” while some advocates for reproductive rights insist that they are not merely “pro-choice” but “ pro-abortion ” (as though their objective were not to maximize bodily autonomy but rather the incidence of abortion itself, a cause that would seemingly require limiting access to contraception).

Meanwhile, the rhetoric necessary for cogently theorizing social problems within academia — and that fit for effectively selling policy reforms to a mass audience — is quite different. Political-science research indicates that theoretical abstractions tend to leave most voters cold. Even an abstraction as accessible as “inequality” resonates less with ordinary people than simply saying that the rich have too much money . Yet Democratic politicians have nevertheless taken to peppering their speeches with abstract academic terms such as structural racism .

Relatedly, in the world of nonprofits, policy wonks are often encouraged to foreground the racial implications of race-neutral redistributive policies that disproportionately benefit nonwhite constituencies. Although it is important for policy design to account for any latent racial biases in universal programs, there is reason to believe that, in a democracy with a 70 percent white electorate and widespread racial resentment, it is unwise for Democratic politicians to suggest that broadly beneficial programs primarily aid minority groups.

On the level of priority setting, it seems important for college-educated liberals to be conscious of the fact that “post-material” concerns resonate more with us than with the general public. This is especially relevant for climate strategy. Poll results and election outcomes both indicate that working-class voters are far more sensitive to the threat of rising energy prices than to that of climate change. Given that reality, the most politically viable approach to reducing emissions is likely to expedite the development and deployment of clean-energy technologies rather than deterring energy consumption through higher prices. In practice, this means prioritizing the build-out of green infrastructure over the obstruction of fossil-fuel extraction.

Of course, narrowing the social distance between college-educated liberals and working people would be even better than merely finessing it. The burgeoning unionization of white-collar professions and the growing prominence of downwardly mobile college graduates in working-class labor struggles are both encouraging developments on this front. Whatever Democrats can do to facilitate labor organizing and increase access to higher education will simultaneously advance social justice and improve the party’s long-term electoral prospects.

Finally, the correlation between material security and social liberalism underscores the urgency of progressive economic reform. Shared prosperity can be restored only by increasing the social wage of ordinary workers through some combination of unionization, sectoral bargaining, wage subsidies, and social-welfare expansion. To some extent, this represents a chicken-and-egg problem: Radical economic reforms may be a necessary precondition for the emergence of a broad progressive majority, yet a broad progressive majority is itself a precondition for radical reform.

Nevertheless, in wealthy, deep-blue states such as New York and California, Democrats have the majorities necessary for establishing a progressive economic model. At the moment, artificial constraints on the housing supply , clean-energy production, and other forms of development are sapping blue states’ economic potential . If such constraints could be overcome, the resulting economic gains would simultaneously increase working people’s living standards and render state-level social-welfare programs easier to finance. Perhaps the starting point for such a political revolution is for more-affluent social liberals to recognize that their affinity for exclusionary housing policies and aversion to taxation undermines their cultural values.

Our understanding of education polarization remains provisional. And all proposals for addressing it remain open to debate. The laws of political science are more conjectural than those of physics, and even perfect insight into political reality cannot settle disputes rooted in ideology.

But effective political engagement requires unblinkered vision. The Democratic Party’s declining support among working-class voters is a serious problem. If Democrats consider only ideologically convenient explanations for that problem, our intellectual comfort may come at the price of political power.

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Elon Musk Shares Manipulated Harris Video, in Seeming Violation of X’s Policies

The billionaire owner of the social media platform X reposted a video that mimics Vice President Kamala Harris’s voice, without disclosing that it had been altered.

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By Ken Bensinger

• July 27, 2024

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has waded into one of the thorniest issues facing U.S. politics: deepfake videos.

On Friday night, Mr. Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform X, reposted an edited campaign video for Vice President Kamala Harris that appears to have been digitally manipulated to change the spot’s voice-over in a deceptive manner.

The video mimics Ms. Harris’s voice, but instead of using her words from the original ad, it has the vice president saying that President Biden is senile, that she does not “know the first thing about running the country” and that, as a woman and a person of color, she is the “ultimate diversity hire.”

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The version posted on X does not contain a disclaimer, though the account that first uploaded it Friday morning, @MrReaganUSA, noted in its post that the video was a “parody.” When Mr. Musk reposted the video on his own account eight hours later, he made no such disclosure, stating only, “This is amazing,” followed by a laughing emoji.

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Kamala Harris and the Threat of a Woman’s Laugh

Criticism of emotional expression has long been a weapon of choice for those wanting to cut down women in political power.

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

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Donald Trump doesn’t really laugh. He smirks; he bares his teeth silently. Sometimes he folds his arms or shakes his head to register humor, as he did during a 2019 rally in Florida, when he asked the assembled crowd what to do about migrants crossing the border and a spectator shouted in response, “Shoot them!” But he hardly ever laughs out loud. Mary Trump, his niece, has said that Fred Trump, the former president’s father, drilled into his son that “laughing is to make yourself vulnerable, it’s to let down your guard in some way, it’s to lose a little bit of control. And that can’t happen.”

Clearly, for Trump, laughter is loaded. Caught short by the disorienting speed with which Vice President Kamala Harris has become the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee for president, Trump has struggled to come up with attack lines against her. But his comments during a rally on Saturday suggested one specific target: Harris’s laugh. “I call her ‘laughing Kamala,’” he said. “Have you ever watched her laugh? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh … She is nuts.” Harris does indeed laugh; on TikTok, videos of her cackling joyfully during panel discussions and interviews have been making the rounds, with most commenters failing to find them anything but endearing. “Her laugh is wholesome,” one woman wrote below a Daily Mail montage . “It’s honest and human,” another added, and a third said, “I love her laugh. It’s genuinely hers.”

This last point is what some on the right seem to be trying to latch on to—the idea that Harris’s laughter might betray something else about her. “The woman continually laughs this ridiculous laugh,” the far-right Australian commentator Teena McQueen said on Sky News Australia last year. “I don’t know what drugs she’s on, or what makes her so happy all the time, but she’s an absolute disgrace and she hasn’t done women any favors.” Women who laugh in public have historically been associated with a lack of social modesty, with hysteria , and even with madness . In insisting that Harris’s laugh is somehow a sign of psychological depravity or narcotic-induced lack of inhibitions, conservatives are doing their best to couple Harris in people’s subconscious with a specific reaction: disgust.

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As the philosopher Kate Manne notes in her 2017 book, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny , disgust has long been the weapon of choice for conservatives faced with women who try to gain political power. Disgust, Manne writes, is “a moralizing influence that intensifies and even drives novel moral judgments—in some cases, powerfully. It turns out that even mild ‘pangs’ of disgust can cause some people to judge that someone is suspicious and up to no good , even when such judgments clearly have no rational basis—when what the person was doing was entirely innocent, even praiseworthy.” And conservatives, as the science writer Kathleen McAuliffe reported in The Atlantic in 2019, are more likely to have disgust reactions triggered by specific images than liberals, which makes them more likely in turn to “make harsher moral judgments.”

This is by no means the first time that the politics of disgust have been deployed—crudely but effectively—against women. In 2007, when Hillary Clinton first announced that she was running for president, Rush Limbaugh questioned on his radio show whether the country really wanted to see “a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis.” Clinton’s laugh, too, was mocked, and associated with awkwardness and weirdness . When Trump cites Harris’s laugh as evidence of the fact that she’s supposedly “nuts,” he’s not just calling out a distinctive laugh; he’s helping his audiences draw a connection in their own minds between her emotional composure in public and her moral standing as a political leader.

Conservatives haven’t stopped at Harris’s laugh. Over the past few days, Megyn Kelly has taken aim at Harris’s personal life, writing on X that she “did sleep her way into and upward in California politics.” Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, in archival footage from a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson, lambasted her for not having had children, calling her a “childless cat lady” with no “direct stake” in America. Both of these attacks are aimed to engender disgust. Both are transparent attempts to get the public to see Harris as a promiscuous opportunist and a threat to the traditional social fabric of America. And both are wholly unoriginal lines with which to smear a woman in politics, which is perhaps why, for now at least, they’re failing to stick.

Those who seem triggered by Harris’s laugh, though, might feel the way they do for a reason. In her book The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter , the media scholar Kathleen Rowe Karlyn remarks that when women laugh on film and television, they reframe themselves as subjects rather than objects, asserting their right to an emotional response “that expresses anger, resistance, solidarity, and joy.” In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as women became more politically active in the United States, wild rumors circulated that some who went to vaudeville shows or comic movies ended up laughing themselves to death. “Fun-loving women,” the literature professor Maggie Hennefeld writes , “were being terrorized into believing that their unrestrained pleasure could destroy them.”

In many recent cultures, laughter for women has been an outright transgressive act. Under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the former first lady Laura Bush noted in a 2001 speech, women faced beatings if they were seen laughing. And when the former Turkish deputy prime minister counseled women in 2014 not to laugh in public, lest they signal their “moral corruption,” Turkish women responded on social media by posting pictures of themselves defiantly laughing. “The men of a country in which women are not allowed to laugh are cowards,” one man wrote in solidarity at the time.

Part of what makes the attacks on Harris’s laugh seem so bizarre is that her laugh is both genuine and contagious—a sign of a woman expressing joy without neurosis or self-consciousness or repression. Laughter has a social function that binds people together and signals connection; we are 30 times more likely to laugh out loud in groups than we are alone. These acts of recognizable nonlinguistic communication are a key part of what makes us human. “Let me just tell you something: I have my mother’s laugh,” Harris told Drew Barrymore earlier this year. “And I grew up around a bunch of women in particular who laughed from the belly. They laughed. They would sit around the kitchen, drinking their coffee, telling big stories with big laughs.” They also taught her, she said, not to be limited by “other people’s perception” of how a person should be. What Trump interprets as vulnerability may end up being a sign of Harris’s greatest strength.

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