A crumbling edifice

The German sociologist-historian Norbert Elias had in a life time of exciting intellectual adventure explored many uncharted themes and c...

The German sociologist-historian Norbert Elias had in a life time of exciting intellectual adventure explored many uncharted themes and created several innovative concepts before he died in 1991. "Internalisation" was one such concept. Elias was not the first scholar to coin this term; it has indeed been used extensively and in different meanings. The most widespread use of the term has usually been in the sense of imbibing the ideas, notions and ideology of a class or a stratum that is alien or hostile to one’s own or is at least its "other." Thus the peasantry internalising feudal value of loyalty, or the working class internalising the acquisitive ideology of capitalism or women internalising patriarchal notions of honour etc. But this was not how Elias saw the term.

Elias was chiefly preoccupied with the contrast of the modern and the medieval worlds, which for him meant Europe. He emphasised that the economy of the ordering of modern society essentially lay in the replacement of the state’s enforcement of laws and norms by their internalisation in each individual. Beginning with enforcement effected through punishment of infringement of laws in the form of fines, imprisonment etc., modern society in Elias’s vision has evolved into an organism where norms have both been universalised and so internalised by their citizens that the costs — economic, political and cultural — of supervision and enforcement by the state have considerably diminished. Whether it be in the sphere of traffic rules, office procedures, punctuality or the weight and quality of commodities on sale, payment of taxes or the management of crime, one can be fairly certain of adherence to publicly known laws and norms and there is scarce need to demonstrate one’s position or pelf to get things done. Itsobverse side is the awareness that position and pelf do not insulate one from punitive consequences following violation of norms or rules. This has allowed the state to withdraw itself increasingly from the sites of citizens’ everyday life. A first-time Indian visitor to Europe is surprised at the car driver stopping, even when no police constable is around, to give way to the pedestrian who has priority in the right of way, or the cursory examination of one’s passport at the entry or the exit point, as long as the visa does not arouse suspicion of forgery. Perhaps the most overpowering evidence of the economy of internalisation is the fact that Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, had the vice squad of two policemen in 1994!

It is true that the contrast between medieval and modern societies even in Europe in terms of one being organised exclusively or even predominantly around the use of force and the other similarly around internalisation is a bit too stark for comfort. Medieval societies too had the acceptance of the legitimacy of the social order as an organising principle underneath the ever-present military force of the feudal lord; and even as modern society regulates itself through internalisation of the laws and norms, and the state gradually withdraws, the awareness of the state’s presence in the background as the agency of punishment to ensure the orderly functioning of society remains in tact. But Elias was constructing a set of paradigms, sort of ideal types, to draw the dividing lines between what he perceived as characteristics of the medieval and the modern.

It is here much more than in the arena of science and technology that present-day Indian society falls short of Elias’s measure of "modernity." Even as independent India enshrined its cherished objective of equality before the law in the Constitution, the political process has been vitiated by two interrelated flaws: the inability of the state to command enough resources — more in terms of will than of material resources — to enforce the laws of the land; and hence public demonstration by the wealthy and the powerful that the laws could be defied and subverted with impunity. The consequence: loss of respect for the law, a loss that has gradually percolated to the lower ranks of society.

What increasingly appears as ever-growing lawlessness in our society is a reflection of the emulation of the behaviour of the elites as role models. Its concomitant consequence has been the desire to acquire wealth and power regardless of the means, as a guarantee of immunity from the reach of the law and norms. When Sanjay Nanda mowed down five young men under the wheels of his BMW and casually remarked, Log to girtey, padtey rahtey hain, yahan se chalo (Ordinary mortals like these keep getting crushed all the time, therefore let us flee) and actually fled from the site of the accident, he and his friends, standing at the front ranks of India’s most modern class, encapsulated the entire history of India’s transition to "modernity". For, he knew that he would get away with the crime, and he would have, if only his car’s oil tank had not leaked. Just as a one-time socialist, former Prime Minister of the country, Chandra Shekhar is getting away with the acquisition of 600 acres of public land, witheveryone looking the other way. Just as numerous ministers, chief ministers and prime ministers who have acquired crores have got away, what with all the inquiries pending against them.

Thus, if Elias’s "world" followed the path of enforcement of respect for the law, and the gradual internalisation of this respect by all citizens, Indian elites have established contempt for the law as their distinctive characteristic and have thus established a model for emulation. The lawlessness that is manifesting itself in every day murders and daylight robbery and, above all, the utter and public contempt of the law-enforcing agencies, i.e. the state, has its origin in the kind of lawlessness made into a fine art by independent India’s political and economic elites. They also gradually become its targets.

In some ways, crime is therefore acquiring a degree of legitimacy bestowed upon it by the behaviour of the society’s role models. Far from internalising compliance with the law, defiance of it is increasingly turning into a status symbol at all levels of society. This is happening as older institutions of social control of individual behaviour like the family, caste or community are breaking down and the state has not been allowed to establish its authority by its own managers. We are yet far away from realising that if compliance with the law can become pervasive, defiance of it too has similar dynamics.

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The writer is a professor of medieval history at Jawaharlal Nehru University

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