Modernization and Postmodernization: Whither India?

Abstract

We hear much talk these days about the emergence of a new order, an order (presumably) ushering in an era of peace and prosperity, terminating the arms race among superpowers and the nuclear balance of terror. Seen as an antidote to anarchy, this vision of order surely has an appealing ring: feuds among states are to give way to a unified structure of humankind, narrow national self-interest to shared concern for our global village.1 Unfortunately, on closer inspection, the brightness of the vision quickly begins to dim especially when attention is drawn to the motivating forces behind unity. In large measure, unification seems to be propelled by the dictates of the market or world economy, a market that is governed, in turn, by the interests of leading industrial or postindustrial nations. On a more general (and more theoretical) plane, one may ask in which language or idiom the vision tends to be articulated. Unsurprisingly, this language is typically of Western origin, reflecting specifically the aspirations of Western modernity with its bent toward rational universalism.2 From its inception, modern Western thought carried a teleological imprint marked by a dialectical twist: the opposition between advancement and regression, between development and nonor underdevelopment. Confronted with the Western model, non-Western countries or cultures were expected to catch up sooner or later with the postulated telos or else to suffer defeat and obsolescence. In this developmental schema, material and ideal factors were inextricably linked: disparities of material or economic progress were matched with asymmetries of culture, language, and human worth. In this essay, I shall explore the issue of development and modernization in a particular context although, I believe, broader