The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c4.s7.3

c4.s7.3

Like previous regimes, the Mughal Empire was fully and at all levels involved in conflict, even to the point of submergence, referring at the same time to a universal transcendent order. However, this was to change fundamentally with the introduction of the modern concept of the state by the British regime at the end of the eighteenth century. The essential difference was not its alien origin. The Mughals had also been aliens; nor did the British regime lack Indian allies. The difference was rather that the modern state denies internal conflict and does not know an inner frontier. Instead it is based on the notion of an unbroken and universalist internal order. There are no more cosharers in the realm whose shifting networks of conflict and alliance make up the substance of the state, but only monadic subjects, equal before the law and interchangeable. The modern state, in other words, wants to bring the ideal of universal order from its ultramundane haven down to earth. The inner conflict then becomes explosively schismatic, as eventually became clear in the drama of the Partition.