Socialism and the Indian Republic

In the first essay of this series on the swadharma or inner life of the Indian Republic, we reflected on sarva dharma sambhava or secularism. We now turn to the second strand of said swadharma— samata (equality) and the idea of socialism.

Equality as a social ideal is a modern concept, but the idea that all human beings are equal is not new. The proposition that because human beings are equal, they are entitled to equal resources and equal dignity is new. And the idea that society itself must be reorganised around this principle is very modern. There is no denying that the vision of building a new social order with equality as its organising axis came to India via Europe in the nineteenth century and the Bolshevik Revolution in the twentieth. So, it is often assumed that the idea of equality is alien to the Indian mind, that it’s an imported doctrine grafted onto a reluctant civilisation.

A serious interrogation of India’s swadharma must test this assumption. In one sense, the history of the world is a history of inequality and injustice. Yet India’s civilisation stands apart in one crucial respect—the caste system, which does not merely reflect inequality, it institutionalises and embeds it in social structure. Hindu religious texts clothe this hierarchy in theological legitimacy.

But it would be hasty to conclude that inequality is India’s swadharma. The existence of a system does not prove that it was society’s highest ideal. India’s civilisational ethos has never been hostage to scriptures or emperors. Its clearest articulations have emerged through movements—Buddhist thought, the Sufi Bhakti tradition and the national movement, each in its own register rejecting caste hierarchy. The spread of socialist thought in India and the Indian understanding of egalitarianism cannot simply be taken as a foreign import. It may not have been set down as a doctrine here but it registered its presence through dialogue—and conflict—with earlier traditions. It was through this churn that the egalitarian ideal found its place in the Indian imagination.

At the base of this trajectory lies the idea of karuna (compassion), the tremor we feel in the heart when we encounter another’s suffering. In its earliest articulation, this appears as daya—mercy. The Anushasana Parva of the Mahabharata names compassion as the root of dharma.

But in Buddhist philosophy, this idea undergoes a transformation. Compassion is not merely pity. It is the deep and active desire to alleviate suffering. Buddhism links this ethical impulse to action, and such action to prajna, wisdom. In this form, compassion contains within it the seed of what later came to be called socialism.

If compassion is genuine, it cannot limit itself to individuals; it will confront the structural causes of suffering in society. It will demand institutional transformation. By linking compassion with insight and ‘right action’, Buddhist philosophy anticipates—and arguably surpasses— modern doctrines of equality.

The Sufi and Bhakti movements gave equality a new resonance. In the Sufi idiom, compassion takes the form of reham— mercy. The invocation Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim echoes the Islamic belief that creation itself is an expression of divine mercy. Indian Sufi traditions drew from this theological core a social ethic: if the world arises from divine compassion, then humans must embody mercy towards all creation. Mercy mustn’t remain a divine attribute, it must also become a human quality. In social terms, this translates into service (khidmat) and love for all. Justice (adl) is rooted in mercy.

Bhakti saints, sometimes in dialogue with Sufis, deepened this egalitarian sensibility. Many did not directly confront social or economic inequality, but they struck at its philosophical and spiritual foundations. Figures such as Kabir, Ravidas, Tukaram and Basavanna openly challenged caste hierarchy. Others, even when less confrontational, cultivated an ethical imagination in which all souls were equal.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, two parallel efforts sought to redefine this strand of swadharma. One drew inspiration from Western socialist thought and the Bolshevik Revolution, aiming to establish economic equality.

The other utilised the openings created by colonial modernity and education to challenge caste hierarchy and patriarchy, striving for social equality. These were not ruptures with India’s swadharma but expansions of the idea, with three additional dimensions:

• First, equality moved from being a spiritual principle to becoming a principle of social philosophy. The focus shifted from equality before God to equality in the material world.

• Second, equality ceased to be one virtue among many. It became central to the imagination of an ideal society—a value that could not be dismissed without moral cost.

• Third, it was no longer a matter of individual virtue but a mandate for the State to build an egalitarian society.

The Constitution of India internalised these ideals of equality. As with ‘secularism’, debates over when and why the word ‘socialism’ entered the Preamble miss the larger point that in its architecture, spirit and normative commitments, the Constitution is saturated with the idea of equality. In a distinctively Indian idiom, samata helps define the swadharma of the Republic.

Edited and translated excerpts (part 2) from the author’s forthcoming book, Ganrajya ka Swadharm, Setu Prakashan