Political theories are important. They help people to comprehend, conceptualize, and operationalize political processes systematically, which in turn make their living better. In our case, most of the political theories we use have Western origins, which is the case with other parts of the world as well. There has been a clamour for indigenizing the political theory, a sub-discipline of political science concerning theories. This is something of a wrong persuasion.
India has a long tradition of political theorisation, but after getting independence, it relied heavily on Western theories and institutions to situate itself in the comity of nations. In fact, the global order itself was a Western architecture and shaped the rest of the world as per the design.
What about Indianising political theory? In fact, quite a good number of Indians have theorised quite distinctly and made their mark globally. Their theories indeed contain a lot of Indianness.
Notwithstanding all these seminal interventions in the field of political theory, the Indians feel their presence is not mainstream and if some of them are in the mainstream, they hardly represent India but the same orientalism they started by decrying. Hence the clamour for indigenisation.
In fact, the geographical origins of ideas are irrelevant if we take into consideration how does an idea serve humanity. The Westerners theorised the processes intensely and coherently and the resultant theories and institutions rule the world. It is not as if they brewed ideas with racial flavour or geographical spicing. They were only rigorous in accounting for their experiences.
In fact, what we need is not indigenising theory but to theorise well and by doing so we will not theorise only for ourselves but for the world as a whole. It is only a matter of quality. The richness and complexities of our experiences occasion greater scope for greater ideas. For that, we need something very banal - rooted educational institutions.
NIraj Kumar Jha
