The Muddle of Modernity

An important volume of essays was published in India in 1975 to mark the bicentenary of the “father of modern India,” Rammohun Roy (1774–1833), under the title Rammohun Roy and the Process of Modernization in India.1 Even at that late date, the word “modernization” created no consternation among academics. And nobody raised an eyebrow when the Indian historian Barun De remarked in the 1970s: “It is possible that some future historians … might put the 19th and early 20th centuries [in India] at the end of a medieval period of uncertainty, instead of the beginning of the modern period, which still awaits us in the third world.”2 How our tastes in words change!3 Modernity is a word that has undergone a change of fortune in the last three or four decades. A sense of discomfort about periodization based on a Eurocentric idea of modernity is now global. The sentiment has been given powerful scholarly impetus by Kathleen Davis's sustained and searching examination of the category “feudal” in her 2008 book Periodization and Sovereignty.4 My point of departure, however, is the sentiment itself that animates much of the hesitation on the part of contemporary historians over using labels like “medieval,” “modern,” and “modernity.” Words such as these imply value judgments from which most contemporary historians want to distance themselves.5 If someone is “modern,” then he or she is so with regard to somebody who is not. That “somebody” may come to be seen as “backward” or “premodern” or non-modern or waiting to be made “modern,” consigned, as I put it in Provincializing Europe, to the “waiting room of history.”6 “Modernization” and “modernism” are also tainted words today. Eugen Weber's observation in 1976 that modernization in rural France in the nineteenth century involved a process akin to “internal colonization” was made without any sense of irony. Today, however, we can read it only ironically.7 As S. N. Eisenstadt and Wolfgang Schluchter averred in introducing an issue of Daedalus (1998) devoted to the question of “early modernities,” the idea of modernization as a process that resulted in the economic, political, and cultural “convergence” of the world on a model that was broadly Western would inspire “substantially less confidence” today than in the 1960s.8 The term “modernism” has undergone a similar shift in usage. Writing before the age of postcolonial criticism, Marshall Berman defined “modernism” as our aesthetic response to modernization.9 Berman took the value of the aesthetic for granted, for his exemplar of modernism was Baudelaire. Modernism thus conceived involved some strong judgments on aesthetic matters. Clement Greenberg, the master thinker of modernism in painting in the 1930s and later, would insist on the distinction between “art” and “kitsch,” for instance.10 Satyajit Ray, the “modernist” Indian filmmaker, saw his lifework predicated on a distinction between “art film” and the popular mindless kitsch of “Hindi” films churned out by studios in Bombay and Madras.11 Historians of art today, as they enlarge their scholarly canvas to include the art of non-Western nations, cannot any longer think in such terms without encountering political, that is to say moral, criticism.12 The distinction between judgment (an impersonal reasoning tied to some explicit or implicit notion of public good) and preference (private and personal) has been increasingly eroded in these postcolonial times. Also, contemporary artistic production would not in many cases be amenable to analyses based on the opposition between “high” and “low”—or even good and bad—art.13 The spirit of rebellion against modernism and modernist ideas of modernity was everywhere, in all areas of humanities in Anglo-American universities, by the 1990s.14 The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah included a statement in his semi-autobiographical book In My Father's House that captured the spirit of this revolt: “the modernist characterization of modernity must be challenged.”15 Similarly, historians, when they have not abjured the word “modernity,” have been busy democratizing its use, distributing the epithet over a wide period of time (thus the “early modern” period) or between classes. Others have discovered alternative, multiple, and vernacular modernities in an attempt to rid the idea of modernity of all exclusivist and judgmental pretension.16 Does democratizing a word make it more precise, however? I want to argue that the democratizing gesture does not always leave us with conceptual clarity. Historians need to be clearer about what is at stake for them in discussions of modernity. Otherwise we argue past one another. Patrick Wolfe spoke for many historians when, sweeping aside all discriminatory divisions between the premodern and the modern, he asserted that “colonialism's centrality to the global industrial order … means that the expropriated Aboriginal, enslaved African American, or indentured Asian is as thoroughly modern as the factory worker, bureaucrat, or flaneur of the metropolitan center.”17 The sentiment is noble, but if these disparate figures are all equally modern, and thoroughly so, then clearly their “modernity” has little to do with differences in their levels of education, urbanity, or any other forms of cultural capital. In what sense could they then be equally modern? Is “modern,” then, simply a synonym for the “global industrial order,” and is anybody caught up in it modern by definition? J. M. Blaut seems to share Wolfe's sentiment in his insistence that “Africa, Asia, and Europe shared equally in the rise of capitalism prior to 1492.”18 Given the enormous internal heterogeneity of the continents mentioned, it would not make sense to take the word “equally” literally. Rather, it stands for a sentiment of egalitarianism. Instructive in this regard is the case of the category “early modern,” which has become popular among historians of South Asia. My thoughts are indebted here—as I am for the title of this article as well—to Randolph Starn's witty essay “The Early Modern Muddle.” Starn makes the perceptive suggestion that the conceptual muddle surrounding the category “early modern” is symptomatic of a “democratic” temperament that has come to pervade the discipline of history over the last several decades.19 “Early modernity,” he writes, “has become a patent remedy for the problem of periodizing the time between medieval and modern history. The results can be summed up as an imperial extension of temporal, topical, and disciplinary range, though this is usually touted as a democratic alternative to the old high culture eras, Renaissance to Enlightenment.”20 European historians did not have the need for such a category, for “modern history on the continent … was already ‘early,’ designating a period between the Middle Ages and contemporary history … which in turn begins with the French Revolution or the ‘double revolutions,’ political and industrial, of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.”21 A “colonial misnomer” according to Starn, the “ungainly” category of early modern appears to have been invented in the United States in the late 1940s, and it went on to attain popularity in the Anglo-American academy from the 1970s.22 European historians have also adopted the tag “early modern” in order to dilute the sense of discontinuity between the so-called medieval and the modern, so that the “early modern” is sometimes referred to as “late medieval” as well.23 If European historians rejected epochal divides on “high cultural” grounds, historians of precolonial India in the late 1980s and the 1990s began to reject descriptions of the eighteenth century as a period of decline or disorder in pursuit of two historiographical objectives: rescuing the precolonial centuries in the subcontinent from the stigma of being “premodern,” and denying the colonial period any exclusive claims on “modernity.”24 South Asianists came to the term late. And one interesting difference was that while Europeanists (as Constantin Fasolt argues) intended to extend the historical life of what had previously been considered “medieval,” historians of South Asia wanted to move in the opposite direction: they wished to give the so-called modern period a longer and “indigenous” past extending into the centuries before British rule. To most South Asian historians today, Barun De's description of contemporary India as “late medieval” would sound scandalous. Starn's remark that “Early, partly, sometimes, maybe modern, early modernity is a period for our period's discomfort about periodization” holds, ironically, in both cases.25 I will give two examples here of the use of the period “early modern” in recent “revisionist” writings on India to show how such use often functions by under-specifying the meaning of the word “modern.” Let me begin with Richard Barnett, who clearly puts himself in the camp of the “revisionists” advocating the use of the label “early modern”: Early modern India's revisionists are not laying out a theory of Mughal decline … They are responding to growing evidence of continuity … , of local and regional economic growth, of ecological pragmatism and political realism … , of entrepreneurial activity indigenous to India … The new impetus … is free from Eurocentric, … Mughal-centric, and essentialist viewpoints … We revisionists are not reckoning exclusively with [Mughal] immortality.26 Sanjay Subrahmanyam's wide-ranging essay “Hearing Voices: Vignettes of Early Modernity in South Asia, 1450–1700” is a well-known example of the application of “early modern” as a periodizing device in Indian history. He offers, among other things, a rich discussion of a play about caste that was produced in Tanjavur (Tamil Nadu) during the rule of the Martha king Shahji Bhonsle (r. 1684–1712). The material raises many interesting questions about changing caste relations, linguistic diversity, and other aspects of the history of the region. Subrahmanyam's discussion succeeds in questioning the idea of an unchanging precolonial India. He shows, non-controversially, that there were ideas about the “public” in precolonial India that did not conform to Habermas's idea of the “public sphere,” and he rejects—rightly—any preordained quest in precolonial Indian material for equivalents to European developments. But his proposition that all this constituted some kind of “early modernity” still leaves us in the dark about the meaning of the word “modernity” itself: For several years now, I have tried to argue that modernity is historically a global and conjunctural phenomenon … It is located in a series of historical processes that brought hitherto relatively isolated societies into contact, and we must seek its roots in a set of diverse phenomena: the Mongol dream of world conquest, European voyages of exploration, activities of Indian textile traders in the diaspora, the “globalization of microbes.”27 But “ambiguous” or not, why would certain institutions and periods in precolonial India qualify for the label “early modern”? John F. Richards attempted a serious answer in 2003 that is worth considering in some detail. In his essay “Early Modern India and World History,” Richards clarified what he meant by “early modernity”: “[Between 1500 and 1800] human societies shared in and were affected by several worldwide processes of change unprecedented in their scope and intensity … I call these centuries the early modern period.” As a label, it was better than “Mughal” or “late medieval,” for it made India seem less “exceptional, unique, exotic,” and less “detached from world history.”29 Richards explained that “early modernity” referred to the following “global” developments over the period 1500–1800: “At least but processes the early modern They were “global that to and “the rise of a global world “the of … and other “the of the world “the use of or of indigenous and “the of several new … World and to them the early modern for itself: of and of the use of and of new In a Historians of early modern India give modernization a and as is much of value It does us to to use Subrahmanyam's how were And it does make India a in world history. But in what sense is that is to say “the global industrial to Wolfe's the as for the words have in Eurocentric A thinker such as would have had no problem in this For would not have been a synonym for industrial production or He would have had a for of capitalism or modernization as an in human history over what came before and that would have been part of his of human The category would had in it the idea of the idea of the that as as the idea of and thus the of the a his of And in response to of would have that there was a certain given to in his But is not to a historian who has and Modernity in the thus to two that are to processes of the institutions and to and that are when we of The other to the of a of judgmental about these The is what is often by the term “modernity.” The distinction of only for the of ideas and the of institutions are in But has explained this distinction between modernization and “The one is the of over the of The one is the of over or at least over forms of human and to political and economic could say that the or constituted a certain kind of European with regard to the the of European “early modernity” in part and in political are to all discussions of modernity or and still to on in a that may not in other of “early For India in the period this with regard to the process of modernization has to be than how to to “the epochal of early modernity” into the sense of of and the of He did not with the question of the past in the that early modern Europe came to with history. In the and the of were not as it were … early modern Europe, the came to be from the the that our of the European and two historical from it seems to the notion of early modernity from its European and in global its at a similar at the end of his in in the labels “early modern” and “late the terms to the of periodizing the time before British rule in India. He some by of premodern India and and shared a wide of about the of the of and their to the and the of … a would also point up how the two began to in the late century … Indian political theory produced and but no or … Indian theory produced and but no or I need to that point is not an of precolonial India. It is possible that Indian in the of and did not any (as to of on the institutions that Richards in his of “early modern” developments in the if would simply be a it would not point to some in Indian history. But the might us from the history of “modernization” or in India with modernity made this point in an but of an important book about in of Writing in South which for the of a certain kind of in the by a that would be historical in contemporary is no that the in in the material that modernity as a global is if in the of may have it as such … seems that modernity Asia may have without But this turn out to continuity and not no need to the is no in But there a between the two has as “modern,” they would have so as a of their sense of and their times. They would have that and a that was about their in the word and about their of and And they would have so without any to the of that the later, may can have such a The history of “modernization” of institutions can be only a and often to historical of sense of being modern did not always the of European colonial rule as and not on the of for modernity thus often the modernization that some of them As historians, we can think only out of the and discussions of our about which we can be as as future historians might the of the past the that we can be about of our the and labels under which we these and our cannot such They are of the judgments we we evidence of or similar material in of the world that may have been or and we to the “early modernity” for this of we certain or The gesture is of our preference for for not the to be the of the and so We these as though they were who have claims to We thus some kind of an to in order to a between of and The sentiment is but it of the that most historians share today. But they of our here is to that of the who was modern he or she himself or to be We have of the past we would like to be on the not become even if makes them is not, however, an against judgments or judgments are in history. is in an for our judgments as such and for not them with that which in our forms of who today for “early modern” in Asia often end up Asian and of made out of of historical and them as from a It is they who to us like The of now on non-Western is But the and of the past we in this may have like some serious but at stake in their on and a of today does not us any for that they were more in their of their than we historians are today in our of the may have been as much an of their and as may be of The is to be about these as as possible and to our is not an against the of historical I am not that history is a of the of the is not a of point that at history from the point of of an early from that of a from that of an from that of a is no point in which was the point of was the only one possible for the who adopted I have does not historical may have over time the of and My point is and me it with a and For John F. the that the adopted the in of had it by and the European was simply an of not a in his discussion of early modernity in for a Indian historian of an who in the late Mughal period and who the of as to his of a this was symptomatic of what was at the of the Mughal was and sometimes even He the that in the Mughal attempt was made by any Indian or to European He the of the there had been between India and but our and only European of for European no not even the and was by the Mughal or the They only what to their and we are of the of and even of his But the here is not about historical can always the many in historical that his and his may today seem was with his judgment or which would have been in his But the gesture that simply and the word “modernity” of all in order to at some of modernization processes in of the world also a that is to a The point is to think about and what is at stake in the judgments we make as historians of modernity we for these how we the modernity from which our judgments of the from his of modern of his in Indian history was devoted to his quest for a of the India had for from a The of the Mughal was a for in his here he like someone who for the roots of “modernity” in precolonial the to make India into a modern The to the of the volume of the of the Mughal that as the of the and the between India and the and thus … the for the modernization of India and the of an Indian in some the their by a series of in the eighteenth a in its and was less than a to the by and India had to for British to the of a For all its has the of us that claims to in any are of both and To be is to of time and and thus new for But it is also to take and political for the of us up to the of the of to If it is that in India in the “early modern” period in about institutions that constituted our then historians to be to to life such from precolonial India on their are of our contemporary and To however, new while in is not Historians have to take for the that the word “modernity,” with all its diverse and has the time of European colonial the past must be on its but we also be to say as we it what it is from the past that we do not want to any longer in our and what may our today. in Asia and in the nineteenth and centuries often did And the words and here do not to any in any If modernization has had a global there is no why on that history have to only on the by of as or to the question of or not “early modern” was an of periodizing history in the Indian question would Indian or South Asian from the precolonial period, then, must we still with in or about democratic forms of public But historians can such questions only if they to and their what is at stake for them in about modernity. The word is not if it is as a synonym for or change over is to for