Jayant Bhandari

I am in Bhopal, visiting India after almost three years. I arrived very early in the morning of 27 January 2007. I took the train from Delhi to Bhopal. At Delhi train station, I stood at the front of...

What if a culture is intractably attached to institutions and practices that are contrary to human rights and dignity? Can the state assist in creating the conditions that support a modernized understanding of freedom? Jayant Bhandari argues that it cannot. It cannot stop people from starving themselves or throwing themselves on funeral pyres. It can’t stop dowries. It can only get out of the way and permit cultural evolution to take place.

The Indian state has embarked on a campaign to eliminate the caste system by coercing people into associations that they might not otherwise choose. Jayant Bhandari writes that this way will lead to more hatred, social division, and unpredictable disasters. There is only one kind of equality that should be celebrated in a free society, that is, equality before the law, or what Roderick Long calls more broadly “equality of authority.” That kind of equality is exercised through free association.