Bourdieu's Theory of the Symbolic and the Shah Bano Case

SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN56 (1), January – April 2007, xxx-xxx

© Indian Sociological Society

Bourdieu’s Theory of the Symbolicand the Shah Bano Case

Sheena Jain

This article explores the power and scope of Pierre Bourdieu’stheory of the symbolic by viewing the Shah Bano case throughits conceptual lens. In the process, the heuristic value ofBourdieu’s concepts of doxa, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, of thestate, and of symbolic violence and misrecognition arerevealed. Some of the limitations of his theory also come tolight, and suggestions are made as to how these can beovercome.

[Keywords: symbolic; doxa; orthodoxy;heterodoxy; misrecognition; violence]

Introduction

Bourdieu’s theory of the symbolic, and the theoryof practice of which it forms a part, areproducts of a rigorous dialectic betweenconceptual traditions and innovations, on the onehand, and empirical observations of particular

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social realities, on the other. Theepistemological status conferred on them byBourdieu is that of universally valid frameworksof analysis, capable of yielding sociologicaltruths in diverse empirical contexts. Thisassertion is qualified by the understanding thatthe theories are not closed, but open endedconstructs, and thus subject to change andmodification when demanded by subsequentresearch. They are consti-tuted by conceptualtools that are heuristic devices to be used assuch.This quality of Bourdieu’s contributionprompts one to undertake the exercise ofexploring in a preliminary way the strengths andlimitations of his theory of the symbolic byviewing it in relation to the symbolic aspects ofa selected social reality distinct from the onesanalysed by Bourdieu himself.1 The reality I havechosen pertains to an event involving the rightsof women in India, namely, the Shah Bano case. Inwhat follows, I will explore how far Bourdieu’stheory of the symbolic goes towards illuminatingits reality, examining in particular thefruitfulness of the following conceptions: (i)the notion of differentiated societies ascharacterised by doxa, orthodoxy, and heterodoxy,(ii) the definition of the state as aninstitution having a monopoly over legitimatesymbolic violence, and (iii) the understandingthat subordinate social groups, including women,are subject to symbolic violence involving aprocess of misrecognition.

As a prologue to the exercise of viewing,through the lens of his conceptual framework, anevent located in particular time and space

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Bourdieu’s Theory of the Symbolic and the Shah Bano Case

dimensions, I would like to briefly outlineBourdieu’s concept of history. According toBourdieu, every historical action brings togethertwo states of history: objectified history, that is,the history which has accumulated over thepassage of time in things, machines, buildings,monuments, books, theories, customs, law, etc.;and embodied or internalised history, in the form ofhabitus. The concept of habitus refers, inBourdieu’s oeuvre, to systematic propensities toperceive, think, evaluate and act in certainways, embodied in individuals, but shared by allthose living in similar social and materialconditions. The habitus is the product of ahistorical acquisition, which makes it possibleto appropriate the legacy of history. This is soin the sense that

the institution or objectified, institutedhistory, becomes historical action, that is,enacted active history, only if it is taken incharge by agents whose own history predisposesthem to do so; who, by virtue of their previousinvestments, are inclined to take an interest inits functioning, and endowed with the appropriateattributes to make it function (Bourdieu 1981:305-06).

The structures of objectified historyconstitute part of what Bourdieu calls fields,and the relation between habitus and field isconceptualised as two modes of the existence ofhistory. The concept of fields refers torelatively autonomous structures of relationsbetween agents that emerge in specific socio-historical contexts. They are the site of

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struggles between agents, with their ownparticular stakes and rewards, and their ownlogic. Bourdieu clarifies that the notion offield implies transcending the conventionalopposition between structure and history;conservation and transformation, since fields aresites of struggle, and the relations of powerwhich form their structures provide theunderpinnings of both resistance to dominationand resistance to subversion.

Moreover, to see how struggles account for atransformation of structures, one needs to enterinto the details of particular historicalconjunctures and analyse the positions in thestructure. In fact, Bourdieu argues for a form ofstructural history, ‘which finds in eachsuccessive state of the structure underexamination both the product of previousstruggles to maintain or transform thisstructure, and the principle, via thecontradictions, the tensions, and the relationsof force which constitute it, of subsequenttransformations’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 89-91). Indeed history, or time, is at the centre ofBourdieu’s analysis, in that it is built into hisconceptualisation of social space. Thus, themodel of structure of social space put forth inhis study, Distinction, for example, is a threedimensional one: in addition to the volume andstructure of capital possessed by social agents,it takes into account the evolution over time ofthese two properties.

By viewing the relation between habitus andfield as two modes of existence of history,Bourdieu is able to found a theory of time that

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breaks with two opposed philosophies of time: onthe one hand, ‘the metaphysical vision whichtreats time as a reality in itself, independentof the agent (as in the metaphor of the river)and, on the other hand, a philosophy ofconsciousness’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 138).This is because ‘far from being a condition apriori and transcendent to historicity, time iswhat practical activity produces in the very actwhereby it produces itself’ (ibid.). At the sametime,

Practice need not – except by way of exception –explicitly constitute the future as such, as in aproject or a plan posited through a conscious anddeliberate act of will. Practical activity, in sofar as it makes sense, as it is sensee, reasonable,that is, engendered by a habitus adjusted to theimmanent tendencies of the field, is an act oftemporalisation through which the agent transcendsthe immediate present in a practical mobilisationof the past and practical anticipation of thefuture inscribed in the present in a state ofobjective potentiality’ (ibid.).

We may note here that Bourdieu, while excludingthe category of subject, which is central tophilosophies of consciousness, does not excludeagents. For, it is as active participants inhistorical action that agents either reproduce ortransform structures, even as they are productsof these structures. Thus, social agents are theproduct of history; of the history of the socialfield and of the accumulated experience of a pathwithin the specific subfield. But they also makehistory.

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Bearing in mind this conception of history,and the overall aim of this paper, which is toview the Shah Bano case in the light ofBourdieu’s theory of the symbolic, I will proceednext to an account of the case and then move onto its analysis.

The Shah Bano Case

The Shah Bano case refers to the events thatfollowed from a criminal appeal in the SupremeCourt of India by appellant Mohammed Ahmed Khanagainst respondents Shah Bano Begum and others in1985. The appeal was a response to an applicationfiled by Shah Bano, a divorced Muslim woman, formaintenance under Section 125 of the Code ofCriminal Procedure (CrPC).

Shah Bano was married to Mohammad Ahmed Khanin 1932, had borne him three sons and twodaughters, and was driven out of her matrimonialhome in 1975. In April 1978, she filed anapplication against her husband asking formaintenance and, in November 1978 she wasdivorced by him by an irrevocable talaq permittedunder the personal law of the Muslims. Hedefended himself against Shah Bano’s petition formaintenance by stating that she had ceased to behis wife after the divorce; that he had paid amaintenance allowance for two years and depositeda sum of Rs 3,000 by way of dower as per Muslimpersonal law during the period of iddat (whichnormally is three menstrual cycles or the passageof three lunar months for post-menopausal women).The Judicial Magistrate of the concerned HighCourt did, however, sanction a small sum to be

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paid as maintenance in terms of Section 125 ofthe CrPC, and following a revised petition, thesum was raised nominally. It was then that thehusband appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled that a Muslim womanunable to maintain herself was entitled to takerecourse to Section 125 of the CrPC that requireshusbands with sufficient means to pay maintenanceto wives or ex-wives who are unable to supportthemselves. The ruling was based on theunderstanding that Muslim personal law, whichlimits the husband’s liability to providemaintenance to a divorced woman for the period ofiddat does not deal with a situation ofdestitution, the prime concern of the provisionsof the CrPC.

The judgement provoked widespreadconsternation in the Muslim community in thecountry. The ulema (Muslim clerics) condemned thejudgement as an attempt to undermine the Shariat,the source of Islamic law. A large number ofMuslims took to the streets to register theirprotest, accusing the Supreme Court oftrespassing on their domain. What added to theiroutrage was the reference in the judgement to thedesirability of evolving a uniform civil code,which questioned the suitability of Muslimpersonal law, as indeed of all religious personallaw, as an agency capable of fostering nationalintegration. This was viewed as a positioncontrary to the principles of secularism on thebasis of which different communities were boundtogether in India, and as particularlythreatening to the Muslims, who as a minoritycommunity, had for long, sought through the

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preservation of personal law, a means ofprotecting their self identity.

The leadership of the movement came from theulema and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board(AIMPLB), an organisation estab-lished in 1974.They were joined by several other Muslimorganisations, and by Muslim politicians incentrist parties, such as the Congress and theJanata Dal. They mobilised Muslims in UttarPradesh, Bihar, Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh andKerala, and their campaign spread throughreligious institutions, mosques, newspapers, andlocal community leaders. While initially, when itfocused on the issue of maintenance rights forwomen, the movement failed to gain popularsupport, it gained momentum towards the end of1985, when it shifted to the much larger issue ofthe status of the Muslim minority and its rightto exist as a religious community in a secularsociety. Passions were aroused with protestsagainst interference with Muslim personal law andby the fuelling of fears of its substitution by acommon civil law, which, it was suggested, wouldspell the death warrant of Muslim identity inHindu India.

In April 1985, G.M. Banatwala, a Muslim Leaguemember from Kerala, introduced a private bill inParliament to ensure the continuance of theregime of personal law. In May, six Muslimorganisations issued a joint statement expressingfear of the extinction of personal law. TheSecretary of the AIMPLB explicitly demanded thatthe government should nullify the judgement byreiterating its commitment to uphold the Muslimpersonal law. The organisation warned the

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government that ‘it would be unwise and againstthe interests of national unity to arouse fearsand apprehensions and to create a sense ofreligious insecurity’ (Zoya Hasan 1989: 46).Numerous public meetings were held in the courseof the Shariah week launched in October 1985,culminating in the observation of the All IndiaShariah Day, marked by street-corner meet-ingsand demonstrations. Doctrinal differences betweenorganisations were underplayed to safeguardpersonal law, as were regional and classdivisions among Muslims. Towards the end of 1985,the fundamentalists persuaded Shah Bano to hold apress conference, where she put her thumbimpression on a statement demanding that theSupreme Court withdraw its verdict as it amountedto interference in the Muslim personal law(Engineer 1987:63)

However, even as this fundamentalist tidegrew, a large number of Muslims saw no conflictbetween the Supreme Court verdict and Islamicprinciples. Significantly, it has been noted thatmany Muslim women were unaffected by the tide andsupported the demand for maintenance rightsprovided under the CrPC. Women who were initiallyunaware of the maintenance issue became consciousof it as the campaign against the judgementgained momentum. Muslim women groups in Kerala,West Bengal, Mumbai and Delhi reaffirmed theright of maintenance and criticised the mullahsfor making religion an instrument of injustice.The formation of the committee for the Protectionof the Rights of Muslim Women in Kolkata,Thiruvananthapuram and Delhi gave organisedexpression to such sentiments. It organised

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public meetings and conven-tions in differentparts of the country to highlight the issue ofwomen’s rights, and submitted memoranda to thePrime Minister emphasising the need to protectall sections of the minorities, particularlywomen (Zoya Hasan 1989: 47). These stirrings ofprotest were strengthened by voices from withinthe Muslim intelligentsia. Important sections ofenlightened and liberal Muslim opinion, drawnfrom the educated and professional classes,signed a memorandum demanding the preservation ofthe right of a divorced Muslim woman to claimmaintenance from her former husband (ibid.). Inshort, the claims of some Muslim leaders that thecommunity was unanimously opposed to the SupremeCourt verdict in favour of maintenance werefalse.

As regards the government, the ruling CongressParty initially welcomed the Supreme Courtverdict, and the Prime Minister was openlysupportive of the Union Home Minister ArifMohammed Khan, who denounced the Banatwala Billin Parliament. However, the defeat of theCongress Party in the by-elections in December1985 ‘led the govern-ment to execute a volte-face’ (ibid.). Fearful of further electoralreverses, the government initiated several movesto assuage Muslim feelings. Thus, members of theAIMPLB were summoned to Delhi for consul-tation;Ali Mian, the alim of the Lucknow Seminary,Nadvatal-ulma, was assiduously cultivated; andthe Prime Minister found time to attend the AllMomin Conference where he assured his audiencethat the Muslim personal law will not be modifiedor altered. In May 1986, the Muslim Women

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(Protection of Rights on Divorce) Bill, 1985, wasintroduced in Parliament (ibid.).

The Bill denied Muslim women the option toavail of Section 125 of the CrPC. It legitimisedthe arguments of the AIMPLB and the Muslim Leaguethat a woman’s natal family should maintain herafter her divorce and not the husband as she hasceased to be his wife. It provided that theinheritors of her property would be responsiblefor her maintenance in accordance with theproperty to be inherited, without fixing theamount of property to be inherited by thedivorced woman. Where a divorced woman has norelatives or any one of them does not have enoughmeans to pay the maintenance, it was decreed thatthe State Wakf Board would pay.

In passing the Bill, the government hadclearly surrendered to fundamentalist pressures.The Bill was widely criticised, and women’sorganisations mobilised public opinion,highlighting gender identity and the need tosafeguard the rights of women. They pointed outhow women’s identity often gets subsumed in thelarger issue of community identity. Theirintervention restored the focus on women, andexposed the subordinate and unequal position ofwomen within the family, that is, with referenceto personal laws, and in the public realm, where,for example, women could not avail of Section 125of the CrPC because that would supposedlythreaten community identity (ibid.: 48). Streetcorner meetings, protest marches and signaturecampaigns were organised, but the governmentrefused to recognise the strength of Muslimopposition to the Bill.

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It has been pointed out that the mostimportant factor which made the government takesuch a stance was the need to stem the anger overthe Shah Bano verdict, which was losing theCongress its Muslim votes. Moreover, the Bill wasa sequel to the communal pressures mounted byHindu organisations agitating for the reopeningof the Babri Masjid Ram Janam Bhoomi temple inAyodhya. The temple was opened in February 1986to appease and conciliate the Vishwa HinduParishad and Ram Janam Bhoomi Mukti Samiti, andat this point, Muslim communal leaders threatenedto boycott the Congress if the Babri Masjid wasnot restored to Muslims. The Muslim Women Billwas an effort to pacify ruffled Muslim sentimentsover the reopening of the disputed Babri Masjidand the conservative objections to the SupremeCourt verdict. As Zoya Hasan comments ‘In thisway the Indian State performed a balancing act ofaccommodating and according protection to allreligions and religious sentiments under theumbrella of multi-theocratic pluralism and anideology of secularism that encourages andprotects all religions’ (ibid.: 48). Furthermore,she notes that the most pernicious aspect of thecontroversy was the attempt by the government todefend the AIMPLB sponsored Bill (which wouldclearly debilitate and deprive the Muslimcommunity) and lament the absence of reformisttendencies among Muslims at the same time (ibid.).But, while the responsibility of the MuslimWomen’s Bill was transferred to the Muslimfundamentalists, in effect, it was an attempt tomollify them.

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Analysis

To see what light Bourdieu’s theory of thesymbolic sheds on this case, we need to note thatthe realm of the symbolic refers, in his work, tomental structures, including schemes andcategories of perception, thought, evaluation,and action, both conscious and unconscious, aswell as to activities, institutions, and objectspertaining to the same (Bourdieu 1998: 40, 46,53, 54, 56, and 121). We can begin the exerciseby asking whether the concepts of doxa,orthodoxy, and heterodoxy provide useful toolsfor analysing how the events related to the caseunfolded. This means considering the availableempirical evidence regarding the mental make-upof the litigants involved; of the judges in thecontext of the judgement proclaimed; and of thedramatis personae who participated in theresponse to the judgement. It may be noted thatdoxa refers to the ensemble of common opinions,established beliefs, and received ideas, whichremain undiscussed. Orthodoxy may be defined as asystem of euphemisms, of acceptable ways ofthinking and speaking the natural and socialworld, which rejects heretical remarks asblasphemies. Heterodoxy refers to the existenceof competing possibilities in the field ofopinion.

To look at Shah Bano’s actions first: theyhave to be viewed against the backdrop of herbiographical trajectory in a milieu characterisedby a subordinate position for women which wentinto the constitution of her habitus. Illiterateand aging, abandoned by her husband, and living

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with one of her three grown-up sons, it isunlikely that her legal application formaintenance was based on a conscious decision tofight for her rights. It was more likely theproduct of an acceptance in the doxic mode ofwhat the significant males in her immediatemilieu dictated she do. Regarding their motivesin prompting her to do so, it may realisticallybe doubted if she would have had much controleven over the meagre sum which she would havebeen given as maintenance, had she not retractedher claim. This is likely even as her sons werewell off enough to be able to support her.Indeed, as journalist Saeed Naqvi has noted, themaintenance claim by Shah Bano followed a seriesof disputes on the ownership of certainproperties, largely inspired by the sons (seeEngineer 1987: 68). Thus what was important inShah Bano’s case of adopting her earlier stance,and of later retracting from it, was not aconsciousness of the legal or perhaps evenreligious correctness or incorrectness of theparticular positions taken, but the fact thatthey were authorised by significant persons – allmales – who she was subordinate to. The doxa thatgoverned her actions made her consistent evenwhen apparently inconsistent.

We can also discern the element ofmisrecognition involved, when we consider herstatement to the effect that she was followingthe dictates of a religious consciousness inchanging her stance. For, this was in conformitywith the orthodox discourse of Muslim clericswhich was put up in response to the heterodoxy ofthe legal verdict and of certain currents of

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public opinion. While Shah Bano’s interests as awoman were thus thwarted, it was precisely hergendered subjectivity that made her complicit inwhat happened.

Incidentally, the fact that the concept ofhabitus, which takes into account individualvariations in skills and experience has greaterexpla-natory power than the Durkheimian conceptof ‘collective consciousness’ becomes apparent ifwe compare Shah Bano’s actions to those ofanother divorced Muslim woman, Shehnaz Sheikh,subject to the pressures of a similar milieu.Unlike Shah Bano, the young and educated ShehnazSheikh, did not succumb to these pressures, butinstead took up the cause of Muslim women, andformed an organisation for the same. This wasafter she petitioned the Supreme Court,challenging the discrimination against womeninherent in Muslim personal law on issues ofpolygamy, divorce, maintenance, custody ofchildren and inheritance (Menon 1994).

As for the actions of Shah Bano’s husband,Mohammad Ahmad Khan, it must be borne in mindthat he was a lawyer with substantial earnings,for whom the payment of maintenance would nothave caused great financial hardship. What seemsmore pertinent is the reference to thelimitations of Muslim personal law in the SupremeCourt judgement, which ignited the whole issue ofthe infallibility or otherwise of the Shariat andof certain interpretations of it, and itsimplications for the status of the Muslimcommunity in India. As a Muslim lawyer, MohammadAhmad Khan was perhaps only too conscious, inappealing under Muslim personal law, of these

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implications, including the role they had playedin legal discourse in India so far, and evenmore, of the socio-political support fromsections of the Muslim Community that such anappeal carried. His actions stemmed from acalculated bet on the strength of the orthodoxycharacterising certain sections of the Muslimcommu-nity which had figured in legal debates inmodern India, and which was very likely a part ofhis habitus anyway. The calculation involved inhis actions was not strictly speaking rationalcalculation, but the activation of a practicalsense. Thus, it is significant that, as has beennoted, since he had appealed under Muslimpersonal law and lost, he became an instant heroamong the more conservative maulvi elements(Engineer 1987: 68).

As regards the Supreme Court judgement on thecase, a notable feature is the fact that in thecourse of upholding the High Court decision onthe provision of maintenance to Shah Bano, italso commented upon several other issues, and wewill consider its various components here. Withreference to strictly legal aspects, thejudgement drew upon colonial legislation, citingthe speech of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, whohad piloted the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1872as Legal Member of the Viceroy’s Council. Itclarified the purport of the relevant sections ofthe Code within which Section 125 occurred,which, significantly, is not concerned withindividual rights, but with ‘prevention ofvagrancy’ as a threat to public order. As VeenaDas comments, ‘The creation of a legal categoryof vagrants, as well as the criminalisation of

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“close relatives” who could be held responsiblefor supporting indigent relatives, reflected thebasic opposition of colonial rulers to themaintenance of unproductive populations’ (1995:97). Within the framework of modern law, which isa product of heterodox discourse, the judgementthus conformed to colonial orthodoxy on strictlylegal issues.

In supporting itself against an appeal basedon Muslim personal law, however, the judgementwent on to the terrain of heterodox beliefs andopinions. It questioned the role of religion asprotector of the interests of women; it contestedthe interpretation of the sacred legal textsoffered; and it spoke of the desirability of acommon civil code ‘to help the cause of nationalintegration by removing disparate loyalties tolaw which have conflicting ideologies’ (Engineer1987: 33). This heterogeneity, Das (1995: 95)observes, allowed the judgement to become asignifier of issues which touch upon severaldimensions, including the nature of secularism,the rights of minorities, and the use of law asan instrument of securing justice for theoppressed. It is reasonable to suppose that thejudges concerned had certain convictions withregard to all these issues, and that theseconvictions formed part of the existing heterodoxdis-course associated with certain individualsand groups in modern India. Its constituentelements can be analysed briefly as follows.

The unjust treatment of women in religion wasillustrated in the opening paragraph of thejudgement by quoting from Manu, followed by astatement by Sir William Lane made in 1840, to

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the effect that the fatal point in Islam is itsdegradation of women (Engineer 1987: 23). Dasvery perceptively identifies the semioticfunction of this manner of framing things, whichwas ‘to establish the secular and learnedcredentials of the judges, for, by a timehonoured tradition in our political culture,secular credentials are signalled by handing outin an even manner criticisms of the majoritycommunity and minority community’ (1995: 98).

As regards the exercise undertaken in thejudgement, of examining Islam’s position on theissue of maintenance, it is significant that thiswas not strictly relevant to the legal judgementpronounced. For, stating that Section 125 waspart of the Code of Criminal Procedures, and notof Civil Law, the judges asserted that they werenot concerned with the broad and general questionof whether a Muslim husband was liable tomaintain his wife, including a divorced wife,under all conditions. The correct subject matterof Section 125 related to a wife who was unableto maintain herself, and their ruling was limitedto such a case. Clearly, given the fact thatthere is a uniform criminal code to which allIndian citizens are subject, the court could nottake into account the religion of the personsinvolved (ibid.: 97).

Yet, the judgement did examine the question ofwhether there was any conflict between theprovisions of Section 125 and those of the Muslimpersonal law on the liability of the Muslimhusband to provide for the maintenance of hisdivorced wife. For this, it drew upon legal textsand the Quran, and came to the conclusion that

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there was no conflict. The process by which thejudges arrived at this conclusion involvedopening up to scrutiny the legal orthodoxy thatexisted in text-books on Muslim law. That thisexercise provoked such strong reactions fromsections of the Muslim community, not all ofwhom, if may be realistically supposed, wereacquainted with these texts, testifies to theextent to which this orthodoxy had become thedoxa – unquestioned and taken for granted – forpart of the community. Even more powerful was thetypical stance of all orthodoxy thatcharacterised the response, which was to notcountenance any questioning whatsoever of itscontents – and to term any exercise of scrutinyan interference or even blasphemy (Bourdieu 1986:167-68).

Moreover, it would be naïve to restrict ouranalysis of this phenomenon to the realm ofdiscourse alone. For as Bourdieu points out,where there is a correspondence between mentalstructures and social structures, systems ofclassification are political instruments whichcontribute to the reproduction of the socialworld (ibid.:164). Indeed, this conceptualisationof the political efficacy of the link betweensymbolic structures and social structures gives acritical edge to Bourdieu’s analysis of thesymbolic.Thus, the disadvantageous position ofwomen in legal orthodoxy, only served toreinforce and to contribute to the reproductionof their subordinate position in the community.Nevertheless, as the differentiated reaction tothe judgement, even within the Muslim communityshows, the orthodox response was not an attempt

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to legitimise doxa in a vacuum, but was aresponse to the constitution of a field ofopinion, which included heterodoxy. The judgementpartook of this heterodox discourse, whose voicecould be heard in several other responses to thejudgement as well.

As regards its perspective on the need toevolve a common civil code, the judgementarticulated a stance conforming to one of themajor strands in heterodox discourse on the issueof secularism in modern India. Insofar as itposited a contradiction between the existence ofa plurality of personal laws based on religionand the interests of the oppressed and ofnational integration, it represented what may betermed a position of militant secularism.However, it is significant that while positingthis, ‘there is no attempt in the judgement toexplain why different ideologies in the sphere ofpersonal life are seen as intrinsicallythreatening to national integration’ (Das 1995:99). Also, the question of the rights of women is‘raised but then totally eclipsed by theallegiance to abstractions like public order andnational integration’ (ibid.: 100).

Questioning the version of secularismassociated with the proposal for a uniform civilcode further, Zoya Hasan (1998: 116) points outthat the notion of national integration on whichit is based, and whose development can be tracedback to the debates in the Constituent Assemblyon the same, is not that of the principle ofcitizenship or the equitable distribution ofresources. As this suggests, there is, incontrast both to the position of the militant

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secularists and the orthodoxy of those in favourof unreformed personal laws, an alternativeposition in the field of opinion. This is that ofsecularism in favour of a legal pluralism basedon a reform of personal laws in the light of theprinciples of justice and equality, includinggender justice.

That the demand for a uniform civil code wasappropriated by Hindu communalists, so that‘women’s right is subordinated to imperatives ofunity defined by majoritarianism and pluralismdefined in terms of minority rights’ reflects theextreme vulnerability of the position of women inprocesses of the constitution and exercise oflaw; a vulnerability whose specificity theoverall text of the judgement does not take intoaccount, despite its ruling in favour of Muslimwomen (ibid.: 117). The occlusion of women fromthe terms of the competing discourses was almosttotal. It also draws attention to an absence inBourdieu’s theory of conceptual tools foranalysing the phenomenon of conflicting andcompeting orthodoxies in society as are found inthe case of communal ideologies in India. Itwould not do to subsume them under the categoryof heterodox discourse, for they arecharacterised by a defensiveness, rigidity andresistance to dialogue, which are typical oforthodoxy. Neither would it do to see them asultimately the same, or as subspecies of ageneral orthodoxy, since they are manifestlyhostile to each other, with this hostilityaffecting social processes significantly, even asthey play a similarly regressive role in society.

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It may be argued, however, that while in hisschematic presentation of the concept in hisOutline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu presentsorthodoxy as a singular phenomenon opposed toheterodoxy; its rendering is far more complex inhis various subsequent analyses of the culturalfield (see Bourdieu 1986: 268; 1993). In them,there appear struggles between producers withtheir products to attain to the position oforthodoxy, that is, in Max Weber’s terms, claimsto the legitimate and monopolised use of acertain class of symbolic goods (Bourdieu 1993:116). This suggests a preliminary frameworkwithin which communal discourses and practicescould possibly be analysed. However, thespecificities of the phenomenon of communalism inIndia would shape the concept, as much as itsanalysis would be aided by its use.

To return to the Shah Bano case: to understandthe orthodox response to the judgement better, itis necessary to see how it was shaped by theexistence of a relatively autonomous politicalfield. For, the construction of a discourse anddoxa that regards Muslim identity as being basedon adherence to infallible Islamic personal lawsis a historical construction produced in thecontext of actors and organisations participatingin political processes characterising modernIndian history. This becomes clear when weobserve that the common sense among certainsections of the Muslim community that Muslimidentity is equal to Muslim personal law, papersover the heterogeneity, which is the truecondition of the Muslims in India – heterogeneityof region, class, caste and culture. In this

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sense, orthodoxy is a creation which does notpreserve an initial doxa but which creates a newdoxa. In the process, misrecognition occurs: thediversion of people from their real interests, tothe defence of a symbolic entity which furthersthe interests of clerics and politicians, beingthereby an instance of the exercise of symbolicviolence by them.

Thus, apart form the hold of orientalistclichés that projected Islam as providing acomplete identity, explanation and oral code forMuslims, and colonial stereotypes of an Islamiccommunity organised on a pan Indian ortransnational basis, as well as mythicalportrayals of Muslim unity in nationalistdiscourse, what is of particular relevance to usis the existence of practitioners of modern daypolitics ‘who purported to represent the“millat”, or the “community” as a whole, but wereactually exploiting Islam and communitariansolidarity as a shield to cover their politicaldesigns’ (Mushirul Hasan 1997: 51). That theIndian state was responsive to pressures fromsuch politicians is, of course, a significantfact, which we will discuss when we examine thenotion of the state as an agency with a monopolyover legitimate symbolic violence. What isimportant from the point of view of understandingthe orthodox response to the case is the presenceof organisations with a leadership that hadsought to carve out a place for itself in Indianpolitics through mobilisations on the issue ofIslamic law.

Among the organisations which condemned thejudgement as interference in Muslim personal law

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were the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, theJamait-ul-Ulema-Hind, the Jamait-e-Islami, theMuslim League, and the Muslim Majlis Mushawarat.While the first is an apex body of several Muslimorganisations committed to upholding the sanctityof Muslim personal law, the other organisationsare marked by the existence of doctrinaldifferences between them. Thus, to compare theJamait-ul-Ulema-Hind and the Jamait-e-Islami forinstance: the Jamait-ul-Ulema-Hind, which tookthe lead in demanding restoration of the Islamiclaws, was founded in 1919 by a group ofinfluential ulama from Deoband. It had workedclosely with the Congress in the anti-colonialstruggle and in the post-independence period, itheld that both in theory and in practice,democracy and secularism adequately safeguardedand guaranteed the religio-political interests ofMuslims. Its leadership, at least up to the1970s, was secure in the belief that an enduringCongress-Muslim alliance was the way out of post-Partition conflicts. In the 1970s, the breakdownof the secular consensus and the spurt in Hindu-Muslim violence across large tracts of thecountry ‘led the jamiyat to invoke specificallyMuslim themes of “solidarity”, “unity” and“identity”, and to organise Muslims in pursuit ofreligio-political goals’ (ibid.: 213-14).

As for the Jamait-e-Islami, it was establishedin 1941 and has as its goal in India andelsewhere in South Asia, the one of seizing thecommanding heights of the state and Islamisingstate and society. Mushirul Hasan describes it asa retrograde force, ‘steeped in religiousconservatism and opposed to the ‘modernising’

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processes in education, social reforms and theemancipation of women’. Furthermore, he notesthat ‘its world view militates against liberal,progressive and enlightened ideas because of aninflexible interpretation of Islamic doctrinesand stout resistance to the eclectic Sufi andsyncretic trends in Indian Islam. The fewcosmetic changes have not changed the Jamaat intoa reformist or modernist movement.’ Also, ‘as amilitant expression of orthodox Sunni Islam, itsideology promotes sectarian consciousness, widensthe Shia-Sunni rift and creates barriers betweencommunities’. Indeed, ‘at the heart of theJamaat’s campaign is the long cherished ideal ofcreating a pan-Indian Islamic/Muslim identity’(ibid.: 209-10).

Cutting across differences, the issue ofupholding Muslim personal law formed the basisfor mobilising Muslims on a fairly large scale,even as an organisation like Majlis-i-Mushawwarathad failed to form a united Muslim front in thecountry. Yet, in the normal course of things,

for most Muslims, far removed from and indifferentto the quibbling in the Jamiyat-al-Ulama, Jamaat-I-Islami or the Majlis-I-Mushawwarat, the criticalissue was not the fate of the Shariat, which wasin any case accepted by the state as sacrosanct,or the validity of the Islamic state idea; it wasto establish, for their own survival, andprogress, enduring relationships with fellowcitizens and with established political parties(ibid.: 215).

Thus, the nature of Muslim politics in thepolitical field was one major strand in the

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unfolding of events. This prompts us to consideralso the role of the state in the whole affair,for it has been pointed out that ‘what started asan expression of Muslim feelings and misgivingsacquired the shape of significant sentiments onlyas a result of the intervention of specificpolitical processes and developments in thepolitical arena’ (Zoya Hasan 1989: 47).

Bourdieu defines the state as the ensemble offields that are the site of struggles in whichwhat is at stake is the monopoly of legitimatesymbolic violence, that is, the power toconstitute and to impose as universal anduniversally applicable within a given ‘nation’,that is, within the boundaries of a giventerritory, a common set of coercive norms(Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 111-12). Since thestate is an ensemble of fields in which differentspecies of capital circulate (for example,economic, military, cultural, juridical, and,more generally, symbolic), the emergence of aspecific capital, a properly statist capital, isthe result of the process of the rise andconsolidation of these fields and theconcentration of their different species ofcapital. This statist capital allows the state towield a power over the different fields anddefines the specific power of the state. Itfollows, according to Bourdieu, that theconstruction of the state goes hand in hand withthe constitution of the field of power understoodas the space of play in which holders of variousforms of capital struggle in particular for powerover the state, that is, over the statist capital

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that grants power over the different species ofcapital and over their reproduction (ibid.).

In the case of the government’s response tothe Supreme Court judgement in the Shah Banocase, statist capital was used to modify thebalance of forces within the juridical field in away that confirmed the supremacy of statistcapital over other species of capital. That this,in turn, was the result of the play of forces andstruggles within the field of power, for controlover statist capital, is borne out by the factthat those who opposed the judgement appealed tothe state to modify it, and the government thatreversed it, was prompted to do so byconsiderations of retaining its power. Even whenfaced with resistance, as it was by the heterodoxresponse to the judgement, and activedemonstrations of protest, the balance of forcesin the field of power was tilted in favour of anoutcome that was in keeping with a process thathad been shaping Indian politics for sometimenow; a process described as the communal-isationof the state.

To consider this process briefly: it has beennoted that, since the 1980s, a significant factorabetting communalism in India has been the roleof the ruling party in supporting religiousfundamentalist forces, especially Hindufundamentalists. Thus, writing in 1989, AmritaChhachhi observes that

In sharp contrast to the positions in the late1960s and 70s, the ruling Congress Party has nowshifted from its earlier public condemnation ofcommunalisms and of Hindu organisations and

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Sheena Jainsupport to the victims of minority communities (inparticular the Muslims) to a more generalisedcondemnation of communalism and the foreign handin public pronounce-ments along with a series ofconcessions to communal demands, a refusal toindict individuals identified as being responsiblefor the violence, and a stifling of secularopinion, both, within and outside the ruling party(1989: 569).

She goes on to say that

This shift in the stand of the ruling party oncommunalism was partly due to an electoralstrategy to cash in on the ‘Hindu vote’,especially in north India. When this strategy didnot result in large scale support in the 1986 by-elections, there was a shift back to and asuccumbing to Muslim fundamentalist demands bypushing through the Muslim Women’s Bill. Theruling party played one communalism off another inthe electoral numbers game (ibid.).

However, Chhachhi points out that it would bea mistake to see the consolidation of communalismtoday only as the backlash of a short-sightedelectoral strategy. Among the deeper factors atwork is the increasing crisis of the ideologicallegitimacy of the Indian state and its need for anew hegemonising ideology. For, while post-independent India did have in the early period ananti-colonial nationalism to bind together andgive legitimacy to the newly created ‘nation-state’, now forty years later, given the resultsof development policies, the state can no longerclaim legitimacy from past struggles. Thecentralising tendency of the state, moreover,

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requires some ideology of unity, and theemergence of fundamentalism amongst sections ofcivil society could provide a basis for suchstate ideology.

In the attempt to explain this phenomenonfurther, Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of thestate as an ensemble of fields, rather than as anautonomous apparatus is useful, as it allows usto see the continuity between the state and civilsociety (see Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 111-15).But drawing as he does, mainly upon theexperience of West European societies, Bourdieuemphasises the homogenising thrust of the state.To understand the playing up of differences bythe state, as indeed, the creation of newdifferences by it, as in the case of acommunalised state, requires a development of hisconcept in a different direction. For thispurpose, the work by Katherine Verdery (1994) onethnicity, nationalism, and state making isparticularly suggestive. Drawing on theanthropologist Brackette Williams’ work, Verderypoints out that a homogenising policy creates the‘nation’, as consisting of all those the stateshould administer, because they all ostensibly‘have something in common’. ‘State subjects’, shewrites, ‘are most frequently encouraged to have‘in common’ (besides their government) sharedculture and/or ‘ethnic’ origin’ (ibid.: 45).Significantly, though, she adds that ‘toinstitutionalise a notion of “commonality”however, is to render visible all those who failto hold that something in common’. This meansthat ‘the relentless press toward homogeneitythat underlies the totalising process of making

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modern nation-states is ‘simultaneously a presstoward exclusion’. The state is ‘the frame forproducing visibility through differences whosesignificance it creates’ (ibid.). Thus,

By instituting homogeneity or commonality asnormative, state building gives socio-politicalsignificance to the fact of difference – that is,it creates as significant pre-existing ‘differences’that hitherto had not been organised as such. Itgroups them as differences of ethnicity, gender,locality, class, sexuality and race, each of thesedefined as particular kinds of difference withrespect to the state’s homogenising project (ibid.:46).

Adapting Bourdieu’s language, she suggests thatwe may see state making

As a process that raises ‘difference’ from therealm of notice, where disputes can occur betweenthe orthodox and the heterodox, the normal and thestrange – that is, between the values associatedwith what are now recognised as significantlydifferent options but were not previously seen tobe so (ibid.).

Attention to this dimension of the role of thestate marks a significant development ofBourdieu’s notion of the state as an institutionwith a monopoly over symbolic violence. Verderygoes on to note that states vary in the intensityof their homogenising efforts for numerousreasons, such as the degree and nature of thepower exercised by political elites and theresistance they encounter. From this it may be

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argued that the homogenising policy of the statein India has been subverted by socio-politicalprocesses into a policy that includes thehomogenising of religious communities intodifferent groups, and playing them off againsteach other, as a manoeuvre to manage the state’scrisis of legitimacy. The contest is now betweenthe emerging orthodox bases of makingdifferences, and other heterodox forces that mayprove stronger. That, in the process of suchstate making, identities are created, is a factwhich needs to be taken into account to see thelink between subjective day to day experiencesand macro processes. For conceptualising this,Bourdieu’s analytical framework of a dialecticbetween habitus and fields is powerful. Withreference to the Shah Bano case, this means thatthe symbolic violence wielded by politicianssubscribing to orthodox notions of Muslimidentity, was compounded by that wielded by thestate.

However, as regards the crisis of legitimationof the state, Bourdieu does not have much tooffer. He refers to it just in passing, notingthat ‘what is problematic is the fact that theestablished order is not problematic; and thatthe question of the legitimacy of the state, andof the order it institutes, does not arise exceptin crisis situations’ (1998: 56). This,incidentally, is in striking contrast to the workof Jürgen Habermas (1975), who has been centrallyconcerned with the legitimation crisis of thestate, although with reference to advancedcapitalist societies. This is so even asBourdieu’s involvement with the phenomenon

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‘neoliberalism’ in his later work did lead him toengage with the changing role of the state inEuropean societies.

Conclusion

The analysis presented above is a tentative one,to explore the potential of Bourdieu’s theory ofthe symbolic in relation to the Shah Bano case ina preliminary way. What emerges from it is theheuristic value of several concepts, beginningwith the concepts of doxa, orthodoxy and hetero-doxy. They are found to be useful in mapping theterrain of the symbolic field in which the caseis located, as well as in delineating the habitusof the actors involved. In terms of Bourdieu’sconcept of history, the ‘ontological complicity’between habitus and field, that characteriseshistorical action, leading to socialreproduction, is to be found in the case of theevents composing the case (Bourdieu 1981: 306).

However, as fields are also sites of struggle,we find, not surprisingly, elements of bothconservation and subversion, as well as relationsof domination and subordination, involvingprocesses of symbolic violence andmisrecognition. Thus, we have referred to thesymbolic violence to which Muslim women aresubject, ranging from that perpetrated by men inShah Bano’s family, to that wielded by religiousclerics, affecting both men and women, but womenparticularly. We have also referred to theviolence of law, which brings into dispute therights of women as equal citizens, and theviolence of political groups and leaders that

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create the myth of the homogeneity of the Muslimcommunity regardless of existentialheterogeneity. Above all is the symbolic violencemonopolised by the state, which in the case ofthe communalisation of the state as in India,creates differences between religious groups,reinforcing the violence of clerics andpoliticians.

However, we did find certain limitations ofBourdieu’s theory of the symbolic in relation toanalysing the case. For one, the positing of asingle orthodoxy, as Bourdieu seems to do in hisearly work, makes an understanding of competingorthodoxies problematic. However, since in hislater studies of the cultural field, Bourdieudoes talk of competition for the status oforthodoxy, we seem to have a preliminary basis inhis theory for analysing communal ideologies andpractices. This, though, would constitute only astarting point, with the specifics of the Indiansituation lending their own dimensions to hisconcepts.

Secondly, in so far as his analysis of thestate focuses on the homogenising role of thestate, the phenomenon of a communalised statewould seem to be beyond his purview. However, wehave suggested that it is possible to develop hisconcept of the state in a different direction,drawing on the work of Verdery, so that the roleof the state in creating differences ishighlighted.

Finally, there is an absence of a concern withthe crisis of legitimation of the state inBourdieu’s work, which, it seems, is needed tofully appreciate the political dimension of a

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case such as the Shah Bano case in India. It maybe argued, however, that this is somethingBourdieu would have taken into account, in hisfuture work, given his concern with the globalstate of affairs in his later years. Sadly, withhis passing away in January 2002, this workremained incomplete.

Notes

While I have drawn upon several works by Bourdieu in thispaper, the seminal sources for some of his conceptions areas follows: for his concepts of habitus and field, Bourdieu(1985); for his theory of the symbolic, Bourdieu (1979); andfor his theory of practice, Bourdieu (1986, 1990).

References

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. ‘Symbolic Power’, in Critique ofanthropology, 13/14 (summer): 77-85.

––––. 1981. ‘Men and machines’, in K. Knorr Cetina and A.V.Cicourel (eds.): Advances in social theory and methodology (304-17). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

––––. 1985. ‘The genesis of the concepts of “habitus” and“field”’, in Sociocriticism, 2 (2): 11-24.

––––. 1986. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

––––. 1990. The logic of practice. Cambridge, Polity Press.––––. 1993. The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature.

Cambridge: Polity Press.––––. 1998. Practical reason: On the theory of action. Cambridge,

Polity Press.Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic J. Wacquant. 1992. An invitation to

reflexive sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Bourdieu’s Theory of the Symbolic and the Shah Bano CaseChhachhi, Amrita. 1989. ‘The state, religious fundamentalism

and women: trends in South Asia’, Economic and politicalweekly, 24 (11): 567-78.

Das, Veena. 1995. Critical events: An anthropological perspective oncontemporary India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Engineer, Asghar Ali. 1987. The Shah Bano controversy. Hyderabad:Sangam Books.

Habermas, Jürgen. 1975. Legitimation crisis. Boston: Beacon Press.Hasan, Mushirul. 1997. Legacy of a divided nation: India’s Muslims since

independence. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Hasan, Zoya. 1989. ‘Minority identity, Muslim women bill

campaign and the political process’, Economic and politicalweekly, 24 (1): 44-50.

––––. 1998. ‘Uniformity vs. equality: Gender minorityidentity and debates on a uniform civil code’, in ReichaTanwar (ed.): Women: Human rights, religion and violence (109-18). Kurukshetra: Nirmal Book Agency.

Menon, Ritu. 1994. ‘The personal and the political: Aninterview-discussion’, in Kamla Bhasin, Ritu Menon andNighat Said Khan (eds.): Against all odds (174-89). NewDelhi: Isis International and Kali for Women.

Verdery, Katherine. 1994. ‘Ethnicity, nationalism, andstatemaking - ethnic groups and boundaries: Past andfuture’, in Hans Vermuelen and Cora Govers (eds.): Theanthropology of ethnicity: Beyond ‘ethnic groups and boundaries’ (33-58). Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.

Sheena Jain, Reader, Department of Sociology, Jamia MilliaIslamia, Jamia Nagar, New Delhi – 110 025Email: <[email protected]

[The final revised version of this paper was received on 7April 2006 – Managing Editor]

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Bourdieu's Theory of the Symbolic and the Shah Bano Case

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