Democracy and Bio-moral Politics: An Analysis of the Contemporary Possibilities of Intermediate Spheres(<Special Theme>The Problematique of Intermediate Groups)

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the potentiality of intermediate spheres, with particular reference to India. It addresses the relevance of intermediate spheres in the context of today's world, where the functions and agents of politics are undergoing significant transfbrmation. The central question here is the possibility of democracy under "bio-politics," where life has become the central concern of politics. The issue is how to create a political space for living a 'good life' rather than just maintaining life. The intermediate sphere constitutes a central place in such political space. I introduce three sets of concepts in order to understand contemporary political transformations and consider the structure and role of intermediate spheres therein: 'politics of liberation' in 'civil society,' 'politics of demand' in 'political society,' and 'politics of relationships' in 'moral society.' The 'politics of liberation' is the orthodox enlightenment type of democracy that aims to guarantee human rights to all, based on the universal ideals of liberty and equality. However, in reality, that ideology not only presupposes the existence of power relationships based on differences in class, race and gender, but also often legitimizes the structure of exclusion based on those distinctions. That ideology provided the justification for British colonial rule in India. It was thought that Indian people were embedded in caste and religion, and lacked the ability for rational thinking as autonomous individuals, and thus could not be responsible for their actions and required protection. The English-educated Indian elites created a sphere of civil society under colonialism by forming 'associations' based on the enlightenment principles of rationality and progressivism. Those associations paved the way for independence movements, but were limited to the elites. The politics of liberation in civil society played an important part in India's independence, but the end of the colonial state cannot be understood just in terms of the extension of civil society's logic of universalism. We also need to take into account the emergence of modern bio-politics. In the modern development of bio-politics, life became the central object of state governance. In 19th-century India, the colonial government classified Indians according to caste and religion. In the later development of bio-politics, the state came to be expected not only to govern the people's lives, but also to guarantee the lives of all the subjects. Many religious and caste associations emerged in India from the late 19th century, based on groups formed as units of the colonial governmentality, in order to make demands of resources from the state. They came to constitute 'political society.' After independence, the majority of Indians formed political societies and took part in the 'politics of demand' over state resources. At the village level, that took the form of factions that became widespread under the populist politics of the 1970s and 1980s. Due to the spread of the system of democratic elections, the power basis extended from the urban elites to the rural population. The government started to redistribute resources directly to the rural population to gain support. Village people responded by forming factions in order to become political actors in the context of that penetration of state bio-power. That led to the downward spread of democracy in the sense that it turned people in village society (at least the dominant castes) into agents of political society. The development of factional politics in local society, however, led to majoritarian rule by the dominant castes, and excluded the lower castes from political processes. Thus, it contributed to the reproduction of the postcolonial

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