“The Global” in the Global History of Political Thought

• In Event: The “Global” in Political Theory

Abstract

The ascendance of the global question in political theory and across the humanities owes to a burgeoning interest in transregional connections and circulations of ideas. Though the study of connections and circulations of ideas has long been a key element of intellectual history, its translation into the global scale has powerfully invigorated attempts to expand the horizon of the history of political thought. However, the study of connections and circulations by itself does not quite get at the stake of the global question, and even runs the risk of unduly prioritizing the networks of circulation over the theoretical content of non-European political ideas.

In revisiting a founding text in the history of Indian political thought, this paper invites a different approach to the global question. Arguably the first systematic attempt at writing the history of modern Indian political thought, Biman Behari Majumdar’s History of Political Thought: From Rammohun to Dayananda (1934) valiantly undertook the project of reconstructing the trajectory of nineteenth-century Indian political thought. While not ostensibly a work of global political thought, the book nevertheless was preoccupied with a question germane to modern theorizations of the global: how exactly should one locate Indian (and broader non-European) political thought on the global map of political ideas? Majumdar’s inquiry into the problem showed the centrality of temporal framing in such considerations, as the question of global location is invariably a question of time as much as of space. In seeking to locate Indian political ideas, Majumdar vacillated between the two temporal poles: he ascribed precedence of key Indian political ideas over their European counterparts, while also identifying a necessary belatedness to Indian political thought as a whole. Behind this struggle, I argue, lay a profound concern with the normative content of global connections. At a still greater level of abstraction, Majumdar, one may say, was struggling with a picture of the globe that was at once hierarchical and unified.

Majumdar’s struggle, the paper observes, is also ours: the picture of the hierarchical-but-one picture of the globe remains at the heart of recent strivings to give a global dimension to political thought. Scholars tend to (indirectly) respond to this picture of the globe by turning to certain methodological strategies. The emphasis on global connections, for instance, often doubles as a rejection of the hierarchical ordering of ideas. The attempts to reverse the purported European precedence of political ideas, too, serve a similar purpose. Through a reconsideration of Majumdar’s text, the paper calls for taking the question of the global beyond these strategies: The very picture of the modern (hierarchical-but-one) globe, and its implicit role in shaping our approach to non-European political thought, demands equal reflection and scrutiny.

Author

• Nazmul S. Sultan, University of British Columbia