Civilizational State without Caste? Recasting the Past, Civility, and the Limits of Liberal Critique
On 27th December, 2025. Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s Achyut Yagnik Memorial Lecture at the Ahmedabad Management Association, delivered under the title of “ The Idea of Civilisation: Poison or Cure? ” was received with enthusiastic applause by a packed auditorium comprising journalists, professors, media professionals, activists, filmmakers, and cultural practitioners—what is often described as Ahmedabad’s (rather Gujarat’s) civil society. The lecture offered a familiar but influential critique of contemporary authoritarianism in India. Yet what it revealed, more sharply through its silences than its arguments, was a persistent crisis in Indian liberal discourse: the systematic erasure of caste from analyses of civilization, state power, and democracy. In his lecture, Mehta argued that the contemporary Indian state no longer presents itself primarily as a constitutional entity accountable to citizens, but as the political custodian of an ancient civilization. This civilizational fram...
