Democracy and Revolutionary Politics

<strong>CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE Jawaharlal Nehru University</strong> SEMINAR SERIES <strong>NEERA CHANDHOKE</strong> VISITING PROFESSORIAL FELLOW, CSLG, JNU on <strong>Democracy and Revolutionary Politics</strong> Political practices tend to be untidy, unruly and contradictory. Revolutionary politics is definitely untidier, certainly more unruly, and without doubt more contradictory than other forms of politics. These characteristics defy neat theorisation, systematic conceptualisation, and unambiguous conclusions. If political theorists try to fit complex and inconsistent practices into conceptual straightjackets, and then label these uncompromisingly as 'good' or 'bad', we simply miss out the paradox of revolutionary politics in democracies. The paradox is as follows. Even if we subscribe to the objectives of revolutionary violence, even if we understand and support the reasons for the eruption of violence in democratic contexts, we can still believe that revolutionary violence is politically unwise or imprudent. In order to demonstrate this contradiction, I make two distinct arguments in this essay. Revolutionary violence can be morally justified. Revolutionary politics in democratic contexts is politically imprudent. The argument proceeds by comparing revolutionary guerrilla war in colonial contexts with Maoist politics in contemporary India. <strong>06 November 2015</strong> <strong>ABOUT THE SPEAKER: </strong>Neera Chandhoke, formerly professor of political science, Delhi University is currently Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU. She is the author of Democracy and Revolutionary Politics (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015); Contested Secessions: Democracy, Rights, Self-Determination and Kashmir (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012); The Conceits of Civil Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003); Beyond Secularism: The Rights of Religious Minorities (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), and State and Civil Society: Explorations in Political Theory (Delhi: Sage, 1995). Her current research interests are historical injustice and radical cosmopolitanism.