Political Concept : Rights and Citizenship

In the present unit, we shall study the idea(s) of rights and citizenship in terms of (a) their historical development and (b) as a terrain where various contesting views are presented regarding their form and substance. We shall also focus on criticisms of dominant understandings of rights and citizenship and the alternative understandings provided by such criticisms. As the structure of the unit laid out in the beginning shows, each section explains a specific theme and follows it with questions to facilitate understanding. Certain keywords are explained at the end of the unit.

Citizenship is commonly understood as referring to the relationship between the individual/collective and the state. This relationship is understood as being made up of reciprocal rights and responsibilities. The most commonly accepted definition of citizenship comes from the English sociologist T.H. Marshall who describes it as ‘full and equal membership in a political community’. Citizenship, according to this definition, denotes membership in a political community, which in our present context is the nation-state. Citizenship would, thus, signify a specific aspect of the relationship among people who live together in a nation. It emphasises political allegiances and civic loyalties within the community rather than any cultural/emotional identity.

Origin of the Idea of Citizenship

The origins of the idea of citizenship are generally traced to the ancient Greek and Roman republics. The word itself is derived from the Latin word ‘civis’ and its Greek equivalent ‘polities’, which means member of the polis or city. However, the manner in which citizenship is understood today as a system of equal rights as opposed to ascriptive privileges deriving from conditions of birth, took roots in the French Revolution (1789). With the development of capitalism and liberalism, the idea of the citizen as an individual bearing rights irrespective of her/his caste, class, race, gender, ethnicity, etc., became entrenched. Since the nineteen eighties however, globalisation and multiculturalism have provided the contexts within which this notion of citizenship has been challenged. Thus, the nation is no longer being seen as the sole unit of membership and the ideas of world citizenship and human rights are being earnestly talked about. Similarly, the individual has been displaced as the core of citizenship theory and rights of cultural communities and groups have started gaining ground. Thus, it may be said that the idea of citizenship has developed over several historical periods. Its form and substance have not remained the same, but changed according to specific historical contexts. The various forms which citizenship took historically have not, however, disappeared entirely. They have not only influenced the modern meanings of citizenship, they also exist as different strands within the bundle of meanings surrounding citizenship.

Development of the Ideas on Citizenship : Four Historical Periods

The development of the ideas which surround citizenship can be attributed to four broad historical periods: (a) classical Graeco-Roman periods (fourth century B.C. onwards), (b) late medieval and early modern periods including the period of the French and American Revolutions, (c) the developments in the nineteenth century corresponding to the growing influence of liberalism and capitalism and, (d) the contests over the form and substance of citizenship in the late twentieth century with increasing preoccupation with multiculturalism and community rights. Two dominant strands or traditions of rights and citizenship can be seen to have developed over these periods: (a) civic republicanism characterised by the ideas of common good, public spirit, political participation and civic virtue and, (b) liberal citizenship with an emphasis on individual rights and private interests. The Marxists and the Feminists have criticised both these traditions and have suggested radical ways of rethinking citizenship. The criticism of liberal/imperial citizenship by Gandhi and his vision of citizenship based on notions of duties rather than rights constitute another way of thinking about citizenship.

In the following sections, we will discuss the historical development of the ideas of rights and citizenship, the modifications which the changing contexts of the late twentieth century have necessitated, the divisions among theories on the nature and substance of citizenship and rights, and finally, the alternatives which have been offered to the dominant framework of rights and citizenship.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS: CITIZENSHIP FROM CLASSICAL TO MODERN TIMES

In this section, we shall see how the idea of citizenship has evolved at different historical stages.

Ancient Greece

Greek republics like Athens and Sparta were closely knit, self-governing political communities characterised by small populations, minimum social differentiation and simple political organisations, based on notions of familiarity and trust. The idea of citizenship in Greek republics or city- states was based on the principle of active political participation. The political and public aspects of a person’s life were seen as more important than the private and familial. Citizenship, therefore, required active participation in political and public affairs. It may be pointed out, however, that not everybody could participate in the process of governance and not everybody, therefore, was a citizen. Aristotle described the Greek citizens as ‘all who share in the civic life of ruling and being ruled in turn’. This sharing was confined only to those having the capacity to participate in the process of governance, i.e. only the ‘free native-born men’. Thus, women, children, slaves, and resident aliens were excluded from citizenship. In the ultimate analysis, therefore, the citizens constituted only a small part of the population.

Ancient Rome

In the Roman tradition, the Greek idea of citizenship as active participation was modified by the needs of holding together the Roman Empire. The need to incorporate the conquered peoples into the empire led to the idea of citizenship as a legal status. Thus, a larger and more heterogeneous population was integrated into the Roman Empire by subjecting them to the protection of a uniform set of laws. Women and the lowest classes (chiefly rural) were, however, denied the status of citizens. Thus, citizenship could now be imagined not primarily as participation in the making and implementing of laws (as was the case in the Greek tradition), but as a legal status involving certain rights and equal protection of the law. It may, however, be pointed out that these new elements of citizenship while making possible a degree of inclusiveness (i.e., including non-Romans within the Roman citizenship), added also a hierarchy of status by introducing the second-class category of ‘civitas sine suffragio’ (citizenship without franchise, i.e. legal but not political rights).

The increase in the scale of administration (city-state as different from the empire) also meant that it was not possible for all who had the status of citizens to participate in the affairs of governance. The characteristics of a citizen, however, continued to be marked in a way so that citizenship denoted activity. The citizens were required, thus, to develop qualities of ‘civic virtue’, a term derived from the Latin word ‘virtus’ which meant ‘manliness’ in the sense of performing military duty, patriotism, and devotion to duty and the law.

The Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods

The sixteenth century absolutist states were also concerned with imposing their authority over heterogeneous populations. In this context, a citizen came to be defined by Jean Bodin as ‘one who enjoys the common liberty and protection of authority’. The citizen in this view was unlike the Greek citizen, not himself an authority, but following the Roman tradition, someone who was under the protection of the state. Unlike the Greek and Roman traditions, however, citizenship was a passive idea. Citizenship in this period did not stand for common (shared) public responsibilities and civic virtues. Instead, the notion of ‘common (shared) liberty’ became the primary concern of citizenship. This concern embodied a ‘passive’ or ‘negative’ notion of citizenship. It indicated claims for ‘security’ or protection, which was to be provided by the authorities. What needed to be protected was one’s physical life (as in Hobbes), the family and home (as in Bodin and Montesquieu) or conscience and property (as in Locke). This principle of a ‘common shared liberty’, thus, established the primacy of the individual and his private/ familial world. The protection of authority was needed primarily to preserve this private world/domain. Citizens were, thus, not political people, the political community was not the predominant core of their lives but rather the other framework, in which each citizen enjoyed the liberty of private pleasures and pursuit of happiness and, as mentioned earlier, the protection and security of the private/familial domain in which these pleasures were realised.

Thus, the principle of imperial inclusiveness can be seen to have brought about in this period a passive notion of citizenship as a legal status. Alongside, however, there remained nostalgia or a longing for the classical notion of citizenship as activity, with an emphasis on civil virtue and public duty.

The French Revolution (1789) can be seen as a revolt against the passive citizenship of the late medieval and early modern times. The revolution attempted to resurrect the ideals of active participation against the claims of the monarchical/ imperial state. Apart from attempting to change the apolitical/ passive lives of citizens, the French revolutionary tradition introduced an important element to citizenship, which changed the way in which rights were incorporated into the notion of citizenship. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens which followed in the wake of the revolution, brought in the notion of the citizen as a ‘free and autonomous individual’ who enjoyed rights equally with others and participated in making decisions which all had agreed to obey. The manner in which citizenship is understood today as a system of horizontal (equal) rights as against the hierarchical (unequal) privileges which accrued to a person by reason of higher birth, has its roots in the doctrines of the French Revolution. The Declaration was influenced by the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) who in his famous work ‘The Social Contract’ (1762) wrote not only about the ‘free and autonomous’ citizen and the right of the citizen to participate equally with others in decision making, but also established the primacy of the common good over private interests. Thus, the conception of the citizen established by the French Revolution, combined strands of modern liberal individualism with the classical connotation of citizenship as civic participation.

Modern Notions of Citizenship : The Nineteenth and the Twentieth Century Developments

The growing influence of liberalism in the nineteenth century and the development of capitalist market relations, however, saw the classical republican understanding of citizenship slip to the background. The liberal notion of citizens as individuals bearing/ enjoying certain rights in order to protect and promote private interests gained precedence. Citizenship as a legal status, which gave the citizen certain rights assuring protection from state interference, was integral to the liberal understanding of state and politics.

It would be appropriate to discuss here T.H. Marshall’s account of the development of citizenship in Britain as outlined in his influential work ‘Citizenship and Social Class’, published in 1950. In this work, Marshall studies the growth of citizenship alongside capitalism and the peculiar relationship of conflict and collusion which citizenship shares with it. He describes the development of citizenship over a period of 250 years as a process of expanding equality against the inequality of social class, which is an aspect of capitalist society. Marshall distinguishes three strands or bundles of rights, which constitute citizenship: civil, political and social. Each of these three strands has, according to Marshall, a distinct history and the history of each strand is confined to a particular century. Civil rights which developed in the eighteenth century have been defined by Marshall as ‘rights necessary for individual freedom’. These were ‘negative’ rights in the sense that they limited or checked the exercise of government power and included freedoms of speech, movement, conscience, the right to equality before the law and the right to own property. Political rights viz., the right to vote, the right to stand for elections and the right to hold public office, developed by and large in the nineteenth century and provided the individual with the opportunity to participate in the political life of the community. Social rights, which were largely a twentieth century development, guaranteed the individual a minimum economic/social status and provided the basis for the exercise of both civil and political rights. Social rights, says Marshall are ‘positive’ rights ‘to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in society’. These standards of life and the social heritage of society are released through active intervention by the state in the form of social services (the welfare state) and educational system.

Marshall’s scheme of historical development of rights in England since the eighteenth century cannot, however, be held true for other societies. Civil rights for example, were not fully established in most European countries until the early nineteenth century. Even where they were generally achieved, some groups were omitted. Thus, although the constitution granted such rights to Americans well before most European states had them, the Blacks were excluded. Even after the Civil War, when the Blacks were formally given these rights, they were not able to exercise them. Rights were also denied to the colonised peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia. Women did not have the right to vote in most countries, including England, till the first quarter of the twentieth century.

The modern notion of citizenship as pointed out earlier, seeks to constitute free and equal citizens. This freedom and equality, which underlies modern citizenship, is sought to be achieved by eliminating ascriptive inequalities and differences (of culture, caste, gender, race etc.). Thus, citizens are conceived as bearing rights and exercising their rights equally with other citizens. Conditions of equality i.e., conditions in which citizens are able to exercise their rights equally are ensured by making circumstances of inequality i.e. race, ethnicity, gender, caste etc., irrelevant for the exercise of the rights of citizenship. The citizen, thus, is the right bearing individual whose caste, race, gender, ethnicity etc. are seen as unrelated to the status of citizenship. Seen in this manner, citizenship constitutes an overarching identity concealing all other identities to produce what are called masked/unmarked (and therefore) ‘equal’ citizens of the nation. In much of liberal theory till most of the twentieth century, the bias in favour of the individual rights bearing citizen pursuing private interests, persisted. The idea of citizenship as outlined in this (liberal) framework, has a distinctive significance as well as some obvious limitations.

Significance and Limitation of the Liberal Framework

The generalisation of modern citizenship across the social structure means that all persons are equal before the law and no group is legally privileged. Understood in this manner, citizenship is an inclusive category. It regards all differences (of race, class, caste, gender, religion etc.) as irrelevant in order to create free and equal citizens.

Limitation

The provision of citizenship across social structures without regard to differences may in effect, mean overlooking actually existing inequalities. Thus, whereas formal legal equality may be assured by the liberal framework, this equality is unlikely to translate itself into substantive equality, unless the practical ability to exercise rights or legal capacities imparted by citizenship, are actually available to all. In other words, the liberal framework disregards the fact that those disadvantaged by the existing structures of inequality viz., class, caste, race, gender etc., are unable to participate in the community of citizens, on an equal basis, despite the fact that as citizens they are (equal) legal members of the community.

New Contexts and Changing Concerns : Multiculturalism

Till most of the twentieth century, the dominant understanding of citizenship continued to place the individual at its core, and citizenship was seen as a legal status indicating the possession of rights which an individual held equally with others. This dominant liberal model of citizenship has, as seen above, some practical limitations. Contemporary debates on citizenship and rights have, therefore, questioned the idea that the (individual) citizen can enjoy rights independent of the contexts/circumstances to which s/he belongs i.e., class, race, ethnicity, gender etc. Since the nineteen eighties multiculturalism, plurality, diversity and difference have become significant terms of reference in thinking about citizenship. Given that modern societies are increasingly being recognised as multicultural, the dominant liberal understanding of the idea of citizenship has been opened up for debate. The specific contexts, cultural, religious, ethnic, linguistic etc. of citizens are now seen as determining citizenship in significant ways. This ongoing contest aims to make visible those differences which liberal theory saw as irrelevant for understanding citizenship. In most western societies ethnic, religious and racial communities have pressed for rights which would look at their special cultural contexts and substantiate the formal equality of citizenship. A notion of differentiated citizenship has, therefore, gained currency within citizenship theory to accommodate the needs of specific cultural groups. The term ‘Differentiated Citizenship’ was first used by Iris Marion Young in 1989. It advocates the incorporation of members of certain (cultural) groups not only as individuals, but also as members of groups, their rights depending in part on this group membership catering to their special needs. (Iris Marion Young, ‘Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship’, Ethics, 99, 1989.)

CITIZENSHIP THEORY TODAY: DIVIDING LINES

Since the nineteen eighties, as we saw in the previous section, attempts have been made to dislodge the rights-bearing individual from the core of citizenship theory. The notion of individual rights has been counterbalanced by the claims of cultural communities to special rights catering to their distinctive needs. The centrality of rights in citizenship theory has also been questioned in some quarters and there appears to be a revival of interest in the republican tradition of citizenship with its emphasis on the primacy of common good and civic duties over individual/private interests. We shall take up these two contests over the nature of citizenship in this section.

Civic Republicanism and the Liberal Tradition

Before that, however, let us recollect here what we learnt in the earlier sections about the two main strands in the theory of citizenship as they emerged in its historical evolution viz., the classical tradition or civic republicanism, and the modern liberal tradition. The dividing lines in citizenship theory today, in effect, emerge from these two traditions of citizenship, each of which signifies two different understandings of what it means to be a citizen.



The first i.e. the republican tradition, describes citizenship as an office, a responsibility, a burden proudly assumed; the second i.e. the liberal tradition, describes it as a status and entitlement, a set of rights passively enjoyed. The first makes citizenship the core of human life, the second makes it its outer frame. The first assumes a closely knit body of citizens, its members committed to one another: the second assumes a diverse and loosely connected body, its members (mostly) committed elsewhere. According to the first, the citizen is the primary political actor, for the second, law-making and administration is someone else’s business, the citizen’s business is private. In the remainder of this section, we shall see that contests among citizenship theorists today emanate from these two basic differences in the conceptualisation of the form and substance of citizenship. (See Michael Walzer, ‘Citizenship’ in Terence Ball, James Farr and Russell L.Hanson ed., Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989).

Dividing Lines : Individual Vs the Community

One set of division among citizenship theorists today can be seen along the lines of the question, who or what forms the core of citizenship- the individual or the wider context of which s/he is a part i.e., the cultural (ethnic, religious etc.) community. We have seen that the liberal (individualist) notion of citizenship emerged as a strand in the French revolutionary tradition and strengthened with the growth of capitalism. The citizen in liberal theory is the free floating individual and citizenship is a legal status which enables citizens to enjoy rights equally with other citizens each of whom, however, pursues distinct personal interests. In this view, the conditions for an equal enjoyment of rights is laid out by making irrelevant the particular contexts of individuals i.e., their special circumstances defined by factors of birth viz., race, caste, culture, ethnicity, gender etc.

This view is counterpoised by the Communitarians who, in the civic republican tradition, assert the importance of the contexts of individuals in determining the extent to which rights can be enjoyed equally with others. These theorists emphasise that instead of masking these differences in the allocation of rights, effort must be made to take account of the specificity of the different circumstances of citizens. An increasing number of theorists referred to as ‘Cultural Pluralists’ argue that a large number of ethnic, religious and linguistic groups feel excluded from the ‘common’ rights to citizenship. These groups can be accommodated into common citizenship only by adopting what Iris Marion Young calls ‘differentiated citizenship’ which means that members of certain groups should be accommodated not only as individuals, but also through the group and their rights would depend in part upon their group membership. Young, among the most influential theorists of cultural pluralism, asserts that the attempt to create a universal conception of citizenship which transcends group differences is fundamentally unjust to historically oppressed groups: ‘In a society where some groups are privileged while others are oppressed, insisting that as citizens persons should leave behind their particular affiliations and experiences and adopt a general point of view serves only to reinforce the privileged for the perspective and interests of the privileged will tend to dominate this unified public, marginalising or silencing those of other groups’. (Young, 1989, p. 257)

Dividing Lines : Duties Vs Rights

The second set of divisions follows the same lines as the first. The contest here is in terms of what are the defining premises of citizenship viz., the primacy of the public/political and civic life or the primacy of individual interests and differences. The concept of ‘civic virtue’ and ‘good’ citizenship which emerged in the classical Graeco-Roman world forming part of the republican tradition and revived later in Renaissance Italy and eighteenth century America and France, forms an integral part of the notion of the citizenship which affords primacy to civic and public life. Those who subscribe to these ideas give importance to the notion of active citizenship. Citizenship in such a formulation becomes constitutive of civic duties, civic activity, public spiritedness and active political participation. Where civic republicanism stresses a stern adherence to the citizens’ duties towards civic life, the liberal notion gives priority to individual interests and differences and stresses the citizens’ entitlement to justice and rights. For them, the richness of private life is of primary importance and citizenship is constitutive primarily of some fundamental rights. Rights are primary in this formulation and their purpose is to protect the inner personal world and to provide the freedom for private pursuits and individual creativity without encroachment from conflicting interests. It may be noted here that in the civic republican tradition, rights would be regarded as conditions which follow the exercise of a citizen’s duty to participate in the political process rather than being the prior condition. Since the nineteen eighties, this issue has been taken up in the growing debate between liberalism and communitarianism. Communitarian theorists such as Alisdair MacIntyre (1981) and Michael Sandel (1982) for example, dismiss the idea of the ‘unencumbered self’ or the de-contextualised individual of liberal theory. They argue that the ‘politics of rights’ should be replaced by the ‘politics of common good’ by an ‘embedded self’. In this view liberal individualism, by focussing on individual rights and entitlements, weakens the bonds that give cohesion to society.

CRITIQUES AND ALTERNATIVES : MARXIST, FEMINIST AND GANDHIAN

While discussing the modern liberal notion of citizenship in an earlier section (17.2), we also talked of its limitation. We mentioned primarily that the ability to exercise rights or legal capacities, which constitute citizenship, are not available equally to all. In other words, even when all individuals are formally invested with equal rights by virtue of being citizens, these rights cannot in effect be enjoyed equally by all. The specific contexts of individuals, their class, gender, their religious, ethnic and racial identities, influence the extent to which rights are actually available. It is this inability of liberal citizenship to take into account the contexts, which condition the exercise of rights, which has been the focus of Marxist and Feminist critiques of citizenship. In the following paragraphs, we shall see the flaws which Marxists and Feminists see in the basic premises of citizenship. These flaws, according to them, make citizenship a system, which mitigates some inequalities while perpetuating others.

Redefining Citizenship : Marxist Critique of Liberal Citizenship

Citizenship was clearly outlined in the 1840s by Karl Marx in his study of the Constitutions of the American and French Revolutions, from which modern citizenship emerged. Marx’s objection to modern democratic or bourgeois citizenship can be seen in his words, which follow:

‘The state in its own way abolishes distinctions based on birth, rank, education and occupation when it declares birth, rank, education and occupation to be non-political distinctions, when it proclaims that every number of people is an equal participant in popular sovereignty regardless of these distinctions, when it treats all those elements which make up the actual life of the people from the point of view of the state. Nevertheless, the state allows private property, education and occupation to act and assert their particular nature in their own way, i.e., as private property, education and occupation. Far from abolishing these factual distinctions, the state presupposes them in order to exist’. (‘On the Jewish Question’ in his Early Writings, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1975, p.219)

Marxist criticism of bourgeois citizenship has focussed, thus, on its failure to address itself to inequalities in modern capitalist societies. In an inherently unequal system, which thrives on producing and perpetuating class inequalities, rights, asserts the Marxist critique, can only be ‘superficial trappings’ of equality. Civil and political rights were the products of bourgeois revolutions, and developed, as shown by Marshall in his historical study, alongside capitalism. While these rights alleviated some ill-effects of capitalism, they did not intend to, and could not therefore, dismantle the structures of inequality, which constitute capitalist societies.

Attacks in recent decades by a strand of liberal opinion on social rights, citizenship rights which Marshall shows to have developed in the twentieth century catering to the claims of marginalised sections of the population to welfare benefits from the state, prompted some writers on the left to defend rights. Scholars like Amy Bartholomew have put forward a case to show that the notion of ‘rich individuality’ and ‘self development’ in Marx’s notion of ‘human emancipation’, shows Marx’s commitment to rights. Bartholomew argues that Marx’s criticism of rights is basically directed towards the understanding of rights which identifies it with the ‘right of man’- the so-called natural rights- which act as ‘boundary markers’ separating man from man and the larger community of which he is a part. Rights for Marx contribute to ‘rich individuality’ i.e., to the making of the creative individual whose potential is realised most fully within and in harmony with the community.

Feminists redefine Citizenship

Feminists of all strands have criticised the gender neutrality and gender blindness of citizenship theory i.e., its failure to take into account, (a) the patriarchal character of modern societies and, (b) the manner in which gender determines access to citizenship rights.

Feminists have pointed out that most historical conceptualisations of citizenship have been inimical to women, either excluding them from citizenship altogether as in the classical tradition, or integrating them, as in the French Revolutionary tradition, indirectly and unequally as citizen consorts or companions of citizens (i.e., men). Carole Pateman suggests that modern liberal citizenship while not entirely excluding women, incorporates them on the basis of their socially useful/biologically determined (determined that is, by their biological constitution and corresponding roles viz., child bearing and rearing). (See Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract, The Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988; Carole Pateman, ‘Equality, Difference, Subordination: The Politics of Motherhood and Women’s Citizenship’ in Gisela Book and Susan James ed., Beyond Equality and Difference, Routledge, London, 1992) Incorporation in this manner slots women into dependent roles as mothers and wives, placing them outside the sphere of politics, and distancing them from resources like education, property, job opportunities etc., which, equip individuals for political participation.

The gender blindness of citizenship theory has been so pervasive, feminists argue, that any account of the evolution of citizenship, can retain is coherence only by moving women to the margins as aberrations in the general trend. Ursula Vogel illustrates this with reference to Marshall’s study of citizenship. Marshall’s ‘main story’ of the unfolding of citizenship as the gradual generalisation or universalisation of rights, Vogel points out, can remain intact only by ‘including’ women as historical anomalies i.e., as individuals whose position was ‘ peculiar’ and not relevant to the main story. (See Ursula Vogel, ‘Is Citizenship Gender Specific’ in Ursula Vogel and Michael Moran eds., The Frontiers of Citizenship, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1991, pp.58-85).

Feminists have not only criticised the gendered conceptualization of citizenship, they have also appealed for a broadening of the concept so as to include activities which are seen as belonging to the private sphere. The idea is not only to focus on the power relations which permeate the domain of private (marriage, family, sexuality), but also to question the devaluation of the activities of the private realm. Maternalists like Sara Ruddick and Jean Elshtain would, thus, like to see citizenship based on male personalities and characteristics dismantled. They advocate the development in its place of a new moral and ethical notion of citizenship based on ‘feminist ethics of care’ i.e., feminine characteristics of love and compassion, dissolving in the process, the distinction between male (public) and female (private) facets of life.

A Gandhian Notion of Citizenship

A Gandhian notion of citizenship can be seen as consisting of elements of civic republicanism, identified as a commitment to the ‘common good’, civic duty and active citizenship. The commitment in Gandhi to a community of interests is interspersed, however, with an equally strong faith in individual autonomy and distrust of the oppressive potential of state power. Distrust of the oppressive structures of the modern state, much of which emanated from Gandhi’s experiences with the colonial state in South Africa and India, shaped his commitment to a moral right of the individual to rebel. Resisting an unjust government was an important element of Gandhi’s ‘duties of citizenship’. This is brought out clearly in his enunciation of the rules of ‘civil disobedience’ which obliged the civil resister to follow certain codes of conduct while voluntarily breaking law and when imprisoned.

The rational (individual) citizen is at the core of Gandhi’s notion of active citizenship. This citizen is, however, constrained by the commitment to ‘common good’. The main elements of Gandhi’s notion of the ‘common good’ are: (a) societal interests are above individual interests; (b) spiritualism is above materialism; (c) duties towards society are prior to individual rights against the state or individual interests against other members of society; (d) trusteeship of common possession of production; (e) sarvodaya or the uplift of all abolishing distinctions of class, caste, religion, gender etc., (f) faith in ‘shram’ or bread labour so that no one is dependent on another for the fulfillment of their basic needs; and (g) a moral duty to create a just society catering to human dignity.

LET US SUM UP

Citizenship, in its modern understanding, refers to full and equal membership in the political community, which refers in the present global context to the nation-state. Citizenship, however, also provides a terrain where a number of views contest each other over its form and substance. Historically, civic republicanism formed the most influential understanding of citizenship. The dominant understanding of citizenship today comes from the liberal tradition, which sees it as constituting a set of individual rights. Cultural pluralists and communitarians, however, regard these rights as meaningless, unless they also take into account the specific contexts of the rights bearing individuals. The Marxists and Feminists would rather like to see citizenship emerge from structures, which dismantle repressive social, economic and political relationships of class and gender respectively. Another strand of thinking, following the civic republican tradition, would like to see citizenship as a measure of activity, as a manifestation of civic virtue and duties, which in turn would create an egalitarian society/community. These diverse understandings of citizenship make it an important concept and significant for understanding modern democratic societies.