The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c4.s9.4

c4.s9.4

Here, however, a third "tradition" has intervened, the "tradition of modernity," exemplified by the modern state. Its distinctive feature is the principled denial of the gap between the two orders and the total identification of the mundane with the transcendent order. As the sovereignty ascribed to it makes clear, the modern state cannot be transcended. It is itself transcendent and so is its universalist order. Hence the similarity of the brahmanical and the modern tradition. However, the difference is equally obvious. There is no more room for a countervailing order. Modernity, then, means the integration of the mundane and the transcendent orders into one explosive reality.