The Problem of Freedom: Ethics, Autonomy and Rights in South Asia
Department of Anthropology
London School of Economics
Co-organisers: Laura Bear, Indira Arumugam and Mukulika Banerjee
4 July 2011
In 2002 Laidlaw argued that the anthropological study of ethics must include at its centre an
examination of idioms of freedom. Other theorists have argued that freedom is always a normative
concept that is central to the tactics of secular governance and a Protestant derived western
modernity (Asad 2003, Keane 2007). We seek to enter this field of debate by exploring how the
problem of freedom is posed, experienced and represented in South Asia. We also wish to examine
the relationships between the practices and idioms of self-realisation used within ethical, ritual and
political contexts. We recognize that concepts of liberty derived from European and Christian
models have been widely operationalised as part of normative practices central to colonial and
post-colonial governance (Van der Veer 2001, Viswanathan 1998). However we wish to suggest
that the problem of autonomy has not been and is not posed entirely within these frames of
reference, nor are the resources for its idioms limited to Christian derived models. Ultimately, we
aim to question the associations of freedom with Christianity, secularism and a European derived
modernity and to relocate this model as one among many current epistemologies of autonomy and
rights (Hirschkind 2003, Mahmood 2005, Marsden 2005). We also seek to recognize a diversity of
problems of and for freedom that are not addressed in the philosophy of ethics that is often drawn
upon in current anthropological discussions. In addition we think that the problem of freedom-how it is experienced, formulated and aspired for--gives us a new frame through which to analyse
the social movements, ritual practices and political life of the region.
Work on the history and anthropology of South Asia offers a rich tradition to draw upon in
addressing the problem of freedom. Scholars of South Asia have long explored the ethical
foundations for the self and the polity in South Asia (Parry 1994, Dirks 1993). The interpenetration
of these ethics with colonial projects of rule has also been widely addressed leading to an profound
questioning of both the assumed historical content of ‘modernity’ and of a singular derivative
model of it (Subramaniam 2009, Pandian 2009, Rao 2009, Bear 2007). Scholars who study more
recent changes in South Asia have analysed the explicit usages of ritual and religion in political
practice in the wake of religious nationalism, violence and caste-based democratic movements
(Hansen 1999, Kaur 2003, Michelutti 2008). Recently there have been calls to trace the history and
contemporary practice of ethics in South Asia as “moral dispositions at work in lived experience”
(Pandian and Ali 2010). In this workshop we are interested in drawing on these foundations to
explore how the problem of freedom is framed in a diversity of South Asian ritual forms and
theologies. We also wish to reflect on how this problem relates to practices of public life and
agitation around rights in ways that are not examined in influential theories of South Asian political
or civil society. These theories have often been built on a model of exclusion from liberalism
(Srinivas 2001). They have rarely explored popular resources for conceiving of political rights and
responsibilities that are not simply reactive to the welfare measures of the state or top-down
democratic or nationalist politics. Nor have they fully explored the concepts of the relationship
between the freedom of the individual and the freedom of the group that are operationalised in
South Asian rights claims (Kaviraj 2011).
We would also like to use this workshop as an opportunity to rethink the practice of popular
religion in South Asia, away from sites of pilgrimage, temples and exemplary individuals such as
sannyasins or pirs. We would like to examine popular religion in relation to the everyday dilemmas
of actor’s struggles with questions of how they ought to live (Desai 2010). What are the issues of
autonomy, authenticity and self-realisation created in relation to popular ritual practice and
exegesis? How do various agents locate reasoning and emotion, and what kinds of emotions and
reason do they identify as important to their autonomy? What do people argue their autonomy is
denied and secured by? How do these claims relate to ritual and theological idioms of realization
through or in spite of materiality and language (Fuller 2003)?
In addition we seek to explore what resources for concepts of rights and autonomy or a South
Asian liberalism might be. Ritual practices and exegesis may be important, but idioms of rights,
equality, reciprocity and dependency may also come from other sources. The ethics of kinship may
provide concepts of social debt that include idioms of political rights or may be extended to
understand wider obligations at work and in the city (Arumugam 2010, Bear n.d.). Acts of labour
either agricultural or industrial may also provide experiences of equality and cooperation that are
used to understand political life (Banerjee 2009).
Most importantly we wish to trace the forms of boundary making and crossing that have brought
the domains of ritual, ethics and politics into relation with each other in South Asia. What are the
epistemologies through which they have been separated and conjoined and how do these relate, if
at all, to the normative categories of state secularism or legal and constitutional forms? How have
these epistemologies been formed through the longue duree of politics and state-craft in the
region?
Overall we would like the workshop to be an interdisciplinary effort that combines history,
anthropology and political science to address how problems of freedom are posed, answered and
acted upon in South Asia. This will lead also to a questioning of some of the key assumptions about
the origins, content and forms of the liberal tradition both in the region and elsewhere.
Laura Bear 30/3/11
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