India After Gandhi: The history of the world's largest democracy
Ramachandra Guha
Guha, Ramachandra;
India After Gandhi: The history of the world's largest democracy
Macmillan/Picador, 2007, 900 pages
ISBN 0330396102, 9780330396103
topics: | india | modern | history | nehru | indira | law | language
What it means to be an Indian
This is not a book one reads... one dips into its creamy intensity, scooping passionate bits from here and there, discovering historical episodes one didn't realize existed, gathering the gist of some arguments, taking notes for subsequent use of the material, and generally savouring it.
Part of my journey through this book was a search for "What it means to be an Indian?" Guha's answer is richly layered, starting with the tensions between divisive local forces and a unifying centralized pull; in the process, there is a tradeoff, as in all societies, between the individual good and that of the group. (see Subrahmanam review below).
Linguistic autonomy
I was particularly impressed by the chapter on the Linguistic reorganization of the states (1953), based on language lines. During British rule, the Congress had organized itself on linguistic lines (Andhra circle, Orissa PCC, etc.) but after independence, JN was worried about "disruptionist tendencies" coming to the fore. Thus, statehood was denied to linguistic groups like Andhra, Punjab, Maharashtra, Orissa, etc. It needed the fast unto death of Potti Sriramulu to bring the nation to its heel.
But this is perhaps one of those measures which in the long run, has given Indians space to determine one's identity, and allowed India to thrive as a heterogeneous union. Without it we could be mired in Sri Lanka like tensions; indeed much of the existing tension can also be related to the challenges of an identity. The imprisonment of Sheikh Abdullah through some critical years of Kashmiri opinion formation (his views on Pakistan: 'an unscrupulous and savage enemy'; he disparaged it as a theocratic state) By yielding a degree of autonomy, the group can cohere and survive, without it one only throws up ever-increasing protests and destabilization. If one looks at the currently troubled Naxal heartland running from Purulia through Orissa to Telengana in MP, it coincides very neatly with the tribal (largely Santhal) areas, which are severely disenfranchised in terms of their livelihood in the forests, cut off from benefits available to the educated middle class, and eventually facing a crisis of identity.
Excerpts
The disappearance of the British Raj in India is at present, and must for a long time be, simply inconceivable. That it should be replaced by a native Government or Governments is the wildest of wild dreams ... As soon as the last British soldier sailed from Bombay or Karachi, India would become the battlefield of antagonistic racial and religious forces ... [and] the peaceful and progressive civilisation, which Great Britain has slowly but surely brought into India, would shrivel up in a night. - J.E. WELLDON, former Bishop of Calcutta, 1915 Freedom came to India on 15 August 1947, but patriotic Indians had celebrated their first 'Independence Day' seventeen years before. In the first week of January 1930 the Indian National Congress passed a resolution fixing the last Sunday of the month for countrywide demonstrations in support of purna swaraj, or complete independence. [Purna Swaraj mass meetings organized across the country on January 26, 1930. The meetings were a resounding success. ] In his autobiography Nehru recalled how Independence Day came, January 26th, 1930, and it revealed to us, as in a flash, the earnest and enthusiastic mood of the country. There was something vastly impressive about the great gatherings everywhere, peacefully and solemnly taking the pledge of independence without any speeches or exhortation.'' In a press statement that he issued the day after, Nehru 'respectfully congratulate[ d] the nation on the success of the solemn and orderly demonstrations'. Towns and villages had 'vied with each other in showing their enthusiastic adherence to independence'. Mammoth gatherings were held in Calcutta and Bombay, but the meetings in smaller towns were well attended too. Every year after 1930, Congress-minded Indians celebrated 26 January as Independence Day. However, when the British finally left the subcontinent, they chose to hand over power on 15 August 1947. This date was selected by the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, as it was the second anniversary of the Japanese surrender to the Allied Forces in the Second World War. He, and the politicians waiting to take office, were unwilling to delay until the date some others would have preferred - 26 January 1948. So freedom finally came on a day that resonated with imperial pride rather than nationalist sentiment. Apparently, astrologers had decreed that 15 August was an inauspicious day. Thus it was decided to begin the celebrations on the 14th, with a special session of the Constituent Assembly, the body of representative Indians working towards a new constitution.
RSS and Riots
the [RSS] sarsanghchalak, or the head of the RSS was a lean, bearded,
science graduate named M. S. Golwalkar. p.19
Golwalkar was strongly opposed to the idea of a secular state that would
not discriminate on the basis of religion. in the india of his conception:
The non-hindu people of hindustan must either adopt hindu culture and
language, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the hindu
religion, must entertain no idea but of those of glorification of the
hindu race and culture... in a word they must cease to be foreigners,
or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the hindu nation,
claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential
treatment -- not even citizens’ rights. [ "We, or our nation defined",
1947, p.55-6; quoted p.19]
from ch. 27, Riots
p. 633-34
in october, 1952, the chief of the rashtriya swayamsevak sangh
m. s. golwalkar, wrote a rare, signed article in the english-language
press. "cut from its moorings, regeneration of a nation is not possible," he
insisted. it was therefore,
necessary to revive the fundamental values and ideas, and to wipe out all
signs that reminded us of our past slavery and humiliation. it is our
first necessity to see ourselves in pristine purity. our present and
future has to be well united with our glorious past. the broken chain has
to be re-linked. that alone will fire the youth of free india with a new
spirit of service and devotion to our people. there cannot be a higher
call of national unity than to be readily prepared to sacrifice our all
for the honour and glory of the motherland that is the highest form of
patriotism.
how could one give shape and meaning to this very general ideal? what
specific issue would charge the youth to sacrifice all? "such a point of
honour in our national life," golwalkar believed,
is none else but MOTHER COW, the living symbol of the Mother Earth --
that deserves to be the sole object of devotion and worship. to stop
forthwith any onslaught on this particular point of our national honour,
and to foster the spirit of devotion to the motherland, [a] ban on
cow-slaughter should find topmost priority in our programme of national
renaissance in swaraj.
in the opinion of guru golwalkar and his sangh, india was a 'hindu'
nation. but the hindus themselves were divided - by caste, sect, language and
region. from the time it was founded in 1925, the mission of the rss had been
to make the hindus a strong and cohesive fighting force. for its members, as
for the organization as a whole, religious sentiment went hand-in-hand with
political ambition. [the cow served as a convenient symbol to unite
hindus] p.634
2 The logic of partition: Gandhi and Nehru and Jinnah
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: It was India's historic destiny that many human
races and cultures should flow to her, finding a home in her hospitable
soil, and that many a caravan should find rest here... . Eleven hundred
years of common history [of Islam and Hinduism] have enriched India with
our common achievements. Our languages, our poetry, our literature, our
culture, our art, our dress, our manners and customs, the innumerable
happenings of our daily life, everything bears the stamp of our joint
endeavour... . These thousand years of our joint life [have] moulded us
into a common nationality... Whether we like it or not, we have now
become an Indian nation, united and indivisible. No fantasy or
artificial scheming to separate and divide can break this
unity. (Congress Presidential Address, 1940, quoted ch.2, p.25)
M.A. Jinnah: the problem in India is not of an intercommunal but manifestly
of an international character, and must be treated as such... . It is a
dream that Hindus and Muslims can evolve a common nationality, and this
misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits, and is
the cause of most of our troubles, and will lead India to destruction, if
we fail to revise our actions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to
two different religious philosophies, social customs, and
literature. They neither intermarry, nor interdine together, and indeed
they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on
conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on and of life are
different. (Muslim League Presidential Address, 1940) [quoted ch.2 p.25]
It is true that Nehru and Gandhi made major errors of judgment in their
dealings with the Muslim League. In the 1920s, Gandhi ignored Jinnah and
tried to make common cause with the mullahs. In the 1930s, Nehru arrogantly
and, as it turned out, falsely, claimed the Muslim masses would rather follow
his socialist credo than a party based on faith. Meanwhile, the Muslims
steadily moved over from teh Congress to the League. In the 1930s, when
Jinnah was willing to make a deal, he was ignored; in the 1940s, with the
Muslims solidly behind him, he had no reason to make a deal at all.
It is also true that some of Jinnah's political turns defy any explanation
other than personal ambition. He was once known as an ‘ambassador of
Hindu-Muslim unity’ and a practitioner of constitutional politics. Even as he
remade himself as a defender of Islam and Muslims, in his personal life he
ignored the claims of faith... . However, from the late 1930s on he began to
stoke religious passions. The process was to culminate in his calling for
Direct Action Day, the day that set off the bloody violence and
counter-violence that finally made partition inevitable. (p.26-7)
ch. 6: Ideas of India
The Constituent Assembly
The Constituent Assembly had more than 300 members. In his magisterial history of the Indian Constitution, Granville Austin identifies twenty as being the most influential. Of these, as many as twelve had law degrees, including the Congress stalwarts Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad. p.105 The speeches of symbolic importance were naturally made by Nehru. Just as naturally, the bulk of the back-room work was done by Vallabhbhai Patel. A consummate committeeman, he played a key role in the drafting of the various reports. It was Patel, rather than the less patient Nehru, who worked at mediating between warring groups, taking recalcitrant members with him on his morning walks and making them see the larger point of view. It was also Patel who moved one of the more contentious resolutions: that pertaining to minority rights. The third Congress member of importance was the president of the Assembly, Rajendra Prasad. He was nominated to the office on the day after the Assembly was inaugurated and held it with dignity until the end of its term. His was an unenviable task, for Indians are better speakers than listeners, and Indian politicians especially so. Prasad had to keep the peace between quarrelsome members and (just as difficult) keep to the clock men who sometimes had little sense of what was trifling and what significant. Outside this Congress trinity the most crucial member of the Assembly was the brilliant low-caste lawyer B. R. Ambedkar. Ambedkar was law minister in the Union government; and also chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution. Serving with him were two other formidable minds: K. M. Munshi, a Gujarati polymath who was a novelist and lawyer as well as freedom fighter, and Alladi Krishnaswami Aiyar, a Tamil who for fifteen years had served as advocate general to the Madras presidency. To these six men one must add a seventh who was not a member of the Assembly at all. This was B. N. Rau, who served as constitutional adviser to the government of India. In along career in the Indian Civil Service Rau had a series of legal appointments. Using his learning and experience, and following a fresh study-tour of Western democracies, Rau prepared a series of notes for Ambedkar and his team to chew upon. Rau, in turn, was assisted by the chief draughtsman, S. N. Mukherjee, whose ‘ability to put the most intricate proposals in the simplest and clearest legal form can rarely be equalled’. Moral vision, political skill, legal acumen: these were all brought together in the framing of the Indian Constitution. This was a coming together of what Granville Austin has called the ‘national’ and ‘social’ revolutions respectively.
7 The biggest gamble in history
Patel vs Nehru
In late 1949, C Rajagopalachari, "an urbane scholar with whom the PM got along very well" - was the Governor General. Nehru wanted him to continue as India's first president. However, Rajendra Prasad had a stronger support among the Congress rank and file, and Patel pushed him through. RP took the 31 gun salute on 26 January 1950. August 1950: Purushottamdas Tandon, a bearded, orthodox caste Hindu from Allahabad, was Patel's candidate. He was a "personification of political and social anachronisms", an "anti-Muslim and pro-caste Hindu". He was elected handily, and Nehru wrote to CR "All my instincts tell me that I have completely exhausted my utility both in the Congress and the Govt. Patel reaches out for peace: In Oct 1950, while inaugurating a women's centre at Indore on Gandhi's bday, he said "Nehru is our leader.. Bapu appointed him as his successor and even proclimed him as such... I am not a disloyal soldier."
Secularism
[Nehru's and Prasad's] differences came to a head in the spring of 1951 when the president [Rajendra Prasad] was asked to inaugurate the newly restored Somnath temple in Gujarat... When the President of India chose to dignify the temple's consecration with his presence, Nehru was appalled. He wrote to Prasad asking him not to participate... Prasad disregarded the advice and went to Somnath... The prime minister [Nehru] thought that public officials should never publicly associate with faiths and shrines. The president [Prasad], on the other hand, believed that it should be equally and publicly respectful of all. Although he was a Hindu, said Prasad at Somnath, "I respect all religions and on occasion visit a church, a mosque, a dargah and a gurdwara." p.131-132.
Vallabhai Patel on China
In Oct 1950, a few months after the Indian ambassador to China, KM Pannikar had met Mao and been completely bowled over by his dreamy, philosophical appearance, China invaded and annexed Tibet. On Nov 7, Patel wrote Nehru: Recent and bitter history also tells us that communism is no shield against imperialism and that the Communists are as good or as bad imperialists as any other. Chinese amnbitions in this respect not only cover the Himalayan slopes on our side but also include important parts of Assam... Chinese irredentism and Communist imperialism are different from the expansionsism of the Western powers. The former has a cloak of ideology which makes it ten times more dangerous. In the guise of ideological expansion lies concealed racial, national or historical claims. 169 Patel, home minister at the time, then outlined a series of steps to strengthen security. In view of the rebuff over Tibet, he proposed that India oppose China's entrance to the UN. [The last lines are amazingly prescient.] Patel died in Dec 1950, leaving Nehru unchallenged in his authority.
First General Election, 1951
India's first general election was, among other things, an act of faith. A
newly independent country chose to move into universal adult suffrage,
rather than - as had been the case in the West - at first reserve the right
to vote to men of property, with the working class and women excluded from
the franchise until much later. India became free in August 1947, and two
years later set up an Election Commission. In March 1950 Sukumar Sen was
appointed chief election commissioner. The next month the Representation of
People Act was passed in Parliament, While proposing the Act, the prime
minister, Jawaharlal Nehru expressed the hope that elections would be held
as early as the Spring of 1951. 133
[CEC was Sukumar Sen, b. 1899, Presidency College, London U - gold medal in
mathematics. Joined ICS 1921, served as judge in several districts, and
then chief secy of WB. On deputation to EC.
176 mn voters, 85% illiterate, had to be registered, identified, and honest
election officials recruited.]
At stake were 4,500 seats, about 500 for Parliament, the rest for the
provincial assemblies. 224,000 polling booths were constructed, and
equipped with 2 million steel ballot boxes, to make which 8,200 tonnes of
steel were consumed; 16,500 clerks were appointed on a six-month
contracts to type and collate the electoral rolls by constituency; about
380,000 reams of paper were used for printing the rolls; 56,000 presiding
officers were chosen to supervise the voting, these aided by another
280,000 helpers; 224,000 policemen were put on duty to guard against
violence and intimidation. 134
A second problem was social rather than geographical: the diffidence of
many women in northern India to give their own names, instead of which they
wished to register themselves as A's mother or B's wife. Sukumar Sen was
outraged with this practice, a ‘curious senseless relic of the past.’, and
directed his officials to correct the rolls by inserting the names of the
women ‘in place of mere descriptions of such voters.’ Nonetheless, some 2.8
million women had to be struck of the list. The resulting furore over their
omission was considered by Sen to be a ‘good thing’, for it would help the
prejudice vanish before the next elections...
Where in Western democracies most voters could recognize the parties by name,
here pictorial symbols were used to make their task easier. Drawn from daily
life, these symbols were easily recognizable: a pair of bullocks for one
party, a hut for a second, an elephant for a third, and an earthenware lamp
for a fourth. A second innovation was the use of multiple ballot boxes. On a
single ballot, the (mostly illiterate) Indian elector might make a mistake;
thus each party had a ballot box with its symbol marked in each polling
station, so that voters could simply drop their paper in it. To avoid
impersonation, Indian scientists had developed a variety of indelible ink
which, applied on the voter's finger, stayed there for a week. A total of
389,816 phials of ink were used in the election. 134
An American woman photographer on assignment in Himachal Pradesh was
deeply impressed by the commitment shown by the election officials. One
official had walked for six days to attend the preparatory workshop
organized by the district magistrate; another had ridden four days on a
mule. They went back to their distant stations with sewn gunny sacks full
of ballot boxes, ballots, party symbols and electoral lists. On election
day, the photographer chose to watch proceedings at an obscure hill
village named Bhuti. Here the polling station was a school-house, which
had only one door. Since the rules prescribed a different entry and exit,
a window had been converted into a door, with improvised steps on either
side to allow the elderly and ailing to hop out after voting. 144
There were times when even Nehru had second thoughts about universal
franchise. On 20 December 1951 he took a brief leave of absence from the
campaign to address a UNESCO symposium in Delhi. In his speech Nehru accepted
that democracy was the best form of government, or self-government, but still
wondered whether
the quality of men who are selected by these modern democratic methods
of adult franchise gradually deteriorates beacuase of lack of thinking
and the noise of propaganda .. He [the voter] reacts to sound and to
the din, he reacts to repitition and he produces either a dictator or a
dumb politician who is insensitive. Such a politician can stand all the
din in the world and still remain standing on his two feet and,
therefore, he gets selected in the end because the others have
collapsed because of the din.
This was a rare confession, based no doubt on his recent experiences on the
road. 148
Nehru had an unusual capacity - unusual among politicians, at any rate -
to view both sides of the question. He could see the imperfections of the
process wven while being committed to it. 149
Western prognostications on Indian democracy
Ever since the 1952 elections were described as the "biggest gamble in
history", obituaries have been written for Indian democracy. It has been
said, time and again, that a poor, diverse and divided country cannot sustain
the practice of (reasonably) free and fair elections.
The Sikhs may try to set up a separate regime... and that will
be only a start of a general decentralisation and break-up of
the idea that India is a country, whereas it is a subcontinent
as varied as Europe. The Punjabi is as different from a
Madrassi as a Scot is from an Italian. The British tried to
consolidate it but achieved nothing permanent. No one can make
a nation out of a continent of many nations.
- General Claude Auchinleck, writing in 1948
When Nehru goes, the government will become a military
dictatorship - as in so many of the newly independent states, for
the army seems to be the only highly organised centre of power.
- Aldous Huxley, writing in 1961
The great experiment of developing India within a democratic
framework has failed. (Indians will soon vote) in the
fourth - and surely last - general election.
- The London Times, in 1967
In those first general elections, voter turnout was less than 46 per
cent. Over the years, this has steadily increased; from the late 1960s about
three out of five eligible Indians have voted on election day. In assembly
elections, the voting percentage has tended to be even higher. When these
numbers are disaggregated, they reveal a further deepening. In the first two
general elections, less than 40 per cent of eligible women voted; by 1998,
the figure was in excess of 60 per cent. Besides, as surveys showed, they
increasingly exercised their choice independently, that is, regardless of
their husband's or father's views on the matter. Also voting in ever higher
numbers were Dalits and tribals, the oppressed and marginalised sections of
society. In North India in particular, Dalits turned out in far greater
numbers than high castes. As the political analyst Yogendra Yadav points out,
"India is perhaps the only large democracy in the world today where the
turnout of the lower orders is well above that of the most privileged
groups."
ch.9 Redrawing the map: Linguistic Reorganization
Some want to revive the tradition of Shivaji and to hoist the Bhagwa Jhanda in Samyukta Maharashtra; others wish to extend the economic empire of the Monbay and Ahmedabad millionaires all over Maha-Gujarat. Provincial prejudices, rivalries and jealousies are being revived on all sides and everyone seems anxious to separate from, rather than unite with, the others. The Assamese want this bit of land cut off from Bengal, the Bengalis want a slice of Bihar, the Telugus are discontented in Orissa, the Tamilian minority wants to cut itself off from Travancore... - K.A. Abbas, left-wing author, Jan 1951 [ Khwaja Ahmad Abbas[w] (1914–1987), film director, screenwriter, and journalist. Perhaps most famous in journalism for writing "The Last Page," the longest-running political column in India's history (1941-86). Born in Panipat, graduated from Aligarh Muslim University 1933. Wrote for New Delhi newspaper, the Aligarh Opinion. Served as a film critic for the Bombay Chronicle 1935-1947. His directorial debut was the realist Dharti Ke Lal in 1945 for the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). He wrote the scripts for Awaara, Shri 420, Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani, Jagte Raho, Mera Naam Joker, Bobby and Henna. His autobiography titled - I am not an Island: An Experiment in Autobiography, was published in 1977. ]
Linguistic movements: Pre-independence
Rather than deny India's linguistic diversity, the Congress sought to give space to it. As early as 1917 the party had committed itself to the creation of linguistic provinces in a free India. 1917: Andhra circle formed 1918: Sindh circle 1920: Nagpur Congress: the linguistic principle extended and formalized in the creation of provincial Congress committees (PCCs) by linguistic zones: Karnataka Pradesh PCC, Orissa PCC, Maharashtra PCC, etc. Notably these did not follow the admin divisions of Brit India. p. 180 Linguistic reorganization was encouraged and supported by MG; on October 1947, he wrote: "I do believe that we should hurry up with the reorganization of linguistic provinces.... There may be an illusion of rht time being that different languages stand for different cultures, but there is also the possibility [that with the creation] of linguistic provinces it may disappear. ... I am not unaware that a class of people have been saying that linguistic provinces are wrong. In my opinion, this class delights in creating obstacles" 181 Although Nehru in 1937 wrote: Our great provincial languages are not dialects or vernaculars as the ignorant sometimes calls them. They are a rich inheritance, each spoken by many million persons each tied up inextricably with the life and culture and ideas of the masses as well as of the upper classes.... but by 1947 he was having second thoughts. The country had been divided on the basis of religion; would not dividing it further on the basis of lg merely encourage the breakup of the Union? Speech 3 months after indep: "disruptionist tendencies had come to the fore... [need to ensure] the security and stability of India." Perhaps he managed to persuade Gandhi as well, in Nov 1947, he is writing: "the reluctance to enforce linguistic redistribution is perhaps justifiable in the present depressing atmosphere. The exclusive spirit is ever uppermost. No one thinks of the whole of India." C. Rajagopalachari: "Further fissiparous forces [had to be checked forthwith]". 182-3 Patel: set up the Linguistic Provinces Commission: The first and last need of India in the present moment is that it should be made a nation... Everything which helps the growth of nationalism has to go forward and everything which throws obstacles in its way has to be rejected... judged by this test, in our opinion [linguistic provinces] cannot be supported." - paras 146-147 of Report, 1948 183 Many MPs were dismayed at this report. Second committee formed with Nehru, Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya (JVP committee, after their initials). Also reported similarly: "Language is not only a binding force but also a separating one.... Every separatist and disruptive tendency should be rigorously discouraged." 183
Sikh separatism
TARA SINGH: long time leader of the Akali Dal, both a religious body and a political party. Controlled the Sikh shrines, but also contested elections. Tara Singh was born a Hindu in June 1885. This fact should not surprise since the first generation convert is often the most effective - not to say fundamentalist - of religious leaders. ... Came to be known as "Patthar" the rock, for his steadfastness as a defender in college soccer. Before 1947, Tara Singh insisted that the Sikh panth was in danger from the Muslims and the Muslim League. After 1947 he said it was in danger from the Hindus and the Congress. His rhetoric became more robust in the run-up to the general election of 1951-2. He inveighed against Hindu domination, and proclaimed that "for the sake of religion, for the sake of culture, for the sake of the Panth, and to keep high the flag of the Guru, the Sikhs have girded their loins to achieve independence." Tara Singh's use of the term "independence" was deliberately ambiguous. The Jat peasants wanted a Sikh province within India, not a sovereign nation. They wanted to get rid of teh Hindu-dominated eastern Punjab, leaving a state where they would be in a comfortable majority. But by hinting at sessession Tara Singh put pressure on the govt and simultaneously convinced his flock of his own commmitment to the cause. Not all Sikhs were behind TS however. The low-caste Sikhs, who feared the Jats, were opposed to the Akali Dal. Some Jats had joined the Congress. And in a tendetious move, many Punjabi-speaking Hindus returned Hindi as their mother tongues in the 1951 census. But the biggest blow to TW was the general election itself. In the Punjab assembly, which has 126 seats, the Akalis won a mere 14. p. 185
Andhra: A state for Telugu - Potti Sriramulu's fast
On 19 October 1952, a man named Potti Sriramulu began a fast-unto-death in
Madras. He had the blessings of Swami Sitaram (a Congress politician turned
swami who had himself gone on a hunger strike in the monsoon of 1951).
Born in 1901, Sriramalu studied sanitary engg, worked with the railways.
In 1928 his wife died along with newly born child. Two years he resigned
and joined the salt satyagraha, and spent some times at Gandhi's Sabarmati
ashram. ... On 1946-11-25 he started a fast-unto-deathto deman the opening
of all temples in Madras province to Untouchables, but Gandhi persuaded him
to desist, in view of other issues related to the impending independence.
At the time Gandhi comented on him: "a solid worker, though a little
eccentric."
1952
03 Dec: Nehru wrote to Rajagopalachari, Chief Minister of Madras
province: "Some kind of fast is going on and I get frantic telegrams. I
am totally unmoved by this... " By this time, Sriramulu had not eaten for
six weeks, and was gathering popular support.
12 Dec: Nehru to Rajaji, suggesting that they accept the Andhra demand,
"Otherwise complete frustration will grow among the Andhras, and we will
not be able to catch up with it.
(in the first 55 days of the fast, N crisscrossed the country and
made 112 speeches, not one of them on language. p.198)
14 Dec: Rajaji to N: "We might prevent more mischief if you summon Swami
Sitaram to Delhi for a talk. "
15 Dec: fifty-eight days into his fast, Potti Sriramulu died.
In the ensuing protests, damage on state property ran into millions. Several
protesters died in police firings.
17 Dec: Nehru made a statement saying that the state of Andhra would come
into being.
1 Oct 1953: New state of Andhra Pradesh inaugurated at Kurnool
p. 187-9
Nehru feared the creation of Andhra would lead to other linguistic demands:
"We have distrubed the hornet's nest and I believe most of us are likely
to be badly stung"
Demands from Maharashtra / Punjab
[ p. 190] State Reorganization Commission: Dec 1953. S. Fazl Ali, jurist K. M. Pannikar, historian and civil servant H.N. Kunzru, social worker Commissioned travelled extensively collecting data, throughout 1954-55. Bombay Citizens Committee, with industrialist backing incl JRD Tata, wanted to keep Bombay outside the state of Maharashtra. Nehru was somewhat sympathetic. Opposed by the Samyukta Maharashtra Parishad, headed by veteran Congress leader Shankarrao Deo. Oct 1955: SRC submits report. 19 chapters, presenting arguments for and against various possibilities. S. India: four states; N. India - no separate Sikh state. Bombay state to remain as it was, united with Gujarat. A separate Marathi speaking regiou could be formed with the interior areas of Vidarbha, but no Bombay. Similarly demands for Andhra Pradesh to include Madras were rejected. Long drawn protests in Maharashtra and Bombay. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_Reorganisation_Act: On November 1, 1956, India was divided into the following states and union territories: States * Andhra Pradesh: Andhra was renamed Andhra Pradesh, and enlarged by the addition of the Telangana region of erstwhile Hyderabad State. * Assam * Bihar * Bombay State: The state was enlarged by the addition of Saurashtra and Kutch, the Marathi-speaking districts of Nagpur Division of Madhya Pradesh, and the Marathwada region of Hyderabad. The southernmost districts of Bombay were transferred to Mysore State. (In 1960, the state was split into the modern states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.) * Jammu and Kashmir * Kerala: formed by the merger of Travancore-Cochin state with the Malabar District of Madras State. * Madhya Pradesh: Madhya Bharat, Vindhya Pradesh, and Bhopal were merged into Madhya Pradesh, and the Marathi-speaking districts of Nagpur Division were transferred to Bombay State. * Madras State: the state was reduced to its present boundaries by the transfer of Malabar District to the new state of Kerala. (The state was renamed Tamil Nadu in 1969.) * Mysore State: Enlarged by the addition of Coorg state and the Kannada speaking districts from southern Bombay state and western Hyderabad state. (The state was renamed Karnataka in 1973.) * Orissa * Punjab: the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU) was merged into Punjab. * Rajasthan: Rajputana was renamed Rajasthan, and enlarged by the addition of Ajmer-Merwara state. * Uttar Pradesh * West Bengal Union territories * Andaman and Nicobar Islands * Delhi * Himachal Pradesh * Lakshadweep * Pondicherry * Tripura * Manipur
14 Southern Challenge / ch 19 Leftward Turns
Kerala: World's first democratic victory for communists (1957)
The communist victory in the Kerala assembly election was a spectacular affirmation of the possibilities of a path once dismissed by Lenin as 'parliamentary cretinism.' ... With the Cold War threatening to turn hot, what happened in Kerala was of worldwide interest. But it also posed sharp questions for the future of Indian federalism. There had, in the past, been a handful of provincial ministries led by opposition parties or Congress dissidents. What New Delhi now faces was a different matter altogether; a state ruled by a party which was underground till the day before yesterday, which still professed a theoretical allegiance to armed revolution, and whose leaders and cadres were known to have sometimes taken their orders from Moscow. 285 In the winter of 1957/8 the Hungarian writer George Mikes travelled through India. As a refugee from communism - by then settled comfortably in London - he found 'the Kerala affair' most intriguing. 'What is a democratic Central Government to do with a Communist state?' he asked. 'What would the American administration do if California or Wisconsin suddenly - and I admit, somewhat unexpectedly - turned Communist? And again, how is a Communist government itself to behave with democratic overlords sitting on its neck?' 291 [EMS Namboodripad becomes CM, author of a respected history of Kerala; initially admin shows exemplary efficiency and honesty. VR Krishna Iyer is irrigation minister.] But the CPI faces considerable challenge in trying to re-do the education system (mostly private, run by the Church, the Nairs, etc.), give teachers dignity, prevent hire and fire, etc. but also attempts to change the history books to a more communist view. (versions of old and new text on p. 292). MANNATH PADMANABHAN: A saintly octogenarian Nair doyen, spoke only Malayalam. In terms of the political theorist WH Morris-Jones, he represented the third of three idioms of Indian politics - the modern (constitution, courts, press, etc), - the traditional (religion, caste etc), and the third was the "saintly" - that which was deployed by Gandhi, and to some extent by Vinoba Bhabe. Mannath's unimpeachable personal integrity, lent his opposition to the education bill a saintly aura. 294 Eventually there was vigorous opposition to this move, uniting hindu religious groups with christians. lathi charges, firing, 20 dead. 150K jailed, a fourth of these being women. Group of 50K to converge on Trivandrum on Aug 9 1959; groups started gathering 26 Jul. Govt was dismissed by Nehru (Cong president was Indira) after state governor pleaded w centre to intervene. In subseq state elections, Congress won outright. 296 [But in 1967, CPM was to come back. 421] MUNDHRA AFFAIR: LIC invested (and lost) money in a Kanpur firm owned by Haridas Mundhra. Two commissions - headed by Chagla and Vivien Bose - both found the Govt prevaricating in its justifications. Deep dent in image of congress ministry. 299 [Tarun Mukhopadhyay: Feroze Gandhi biography, Allied 1992]
Kashmir- Abdullah and Nehru
Whether or not Abdullah was India's man, he certainly was not Pakistan's. In April 1948 he described that country as 'an unscrupulous and savage enemy.' He dismissed Pakistan as a theocratic state and the Muslim League as 'pro-prince' rather than 'pro-people.' In his view, 'Indian and not Pakistani leaders. . . had all along stood for the rights of the States' people.' When a diplomat in Delhi asked Abdullah what he thought of the option of independence, he answered that it would never work, as Kashmir was too small and too poor. (91-92) On 29 April [1964] Abdullah flew into Palam airport with his principal associates. The party drove on to Teen Murti House, where the prime minister was waiting to receive Abdullah. It was the first time the two men had seen one another since Nehru's government had locked up the Sheikh in August 1953. Now, as one eyewitness wrote, 'the two embraced each other warmly. They were meeting after 11 years, but the way they greeted each other reflected no traces of embarrassment, let aside bitterness over what happened in the intervening period. The duo posed for the battery of press photographers before going inside. This was the reconciliation between the leader of a nation and a man till recently regarded as a traitor to it. It anticipated, by some thirty years, the similarly portentous reconciliation between the South African president and his most notorious political prisoner. But even F. W. De Klerk did not go so far as to ask Nelson Mandela to stay with him. (see detailed history of kashmir at http://runaissance.blogspot.com/)
15. The Experience of Defeat: The death of Nehru
The year [after the death of Nehru], 1961, the writer Aldous Huxley visited India after a gap of thirty-five years. He was overwhelmed by what he found, namely, 'the prospect of overpopulation, underemployment, growing unrest'. 'India is almost infinitely depressing', he wrote to a friend, 'for there seems to be no solution to its problems in any way that any of us [in the West] regard as acceptable.' Writing to his brother Julian, Aldous Huxley in 1961 expressed the view that 'when Nehru goes, the government will become a military dictatorship - as in so many of the newly independent states, for the army seems to be the only highly organized centre of power'. Visiting India shortly after Huxley, a reporter for the London Daily Mail thought that 'until now Nehru alone has been the unifYing, cohesive force behind India's Government and foreign policy'. But after he was gone, 'the powers of caste and religion, of Rightism and Leftism ... could eventually split this country from top to bottom and plunge it back 100 years'. p.325
17 Minding the minorities
On the afternoon of 27 May 1964, as the news of Jawaharlal Nehru's death spread through New Delhi, one of the people it reached was an American graduate student named Granville Austin. Austin was writing a thesis on the making of the Indian Constitution, and thus had a more than ordinary interest in what Nehru stood for. He made his way to Teen Murti House, there to join an already large crowd of Indian mourners. As Austin wrote in his diary the next day, 'all wanted to go in, but they were prepared to wait'. The crowd stood, 'orderly and not noisy', as diplomats and ministers were ushered in by the prime minister's staff. Among the VIPs was Dr Syed Mahmud, a veteran freedom fighter who had been with Nehru at Cambridge and in jail. Like the others, he had to disembark from his car and walk up the steeply sloping lawn that fronted the prime minister's residence. Austin saw a weeping Mahmud given a helping hand by Jagjivan Ram, a senior Congress politician and Cabinet minister of low-caste origin. This was truly 'a scene symbolic of Nehru's India: a Muslim aided by an Untouchable coming to the home of a caste Hindu'.
Upper class dominance with Indian autonomy?
In the winter of 1925-26, the writer Aldous Huxley went on a long trip through British India. He attended the Kanpur session of the Indian National Congress and heard declamatory speeches asking for freedom. Huxley had some sympathy with these aspirations, yet worried that they represented only the upper-caste Hindu interest. As he wrote in the book of his travels, That the lower-caste masses would suffer, at the beginning, in any case, from a return to Indian autonomy seems almost indubitable. Where the superiority of the upper castes to the lower is a matter of religious dogma, you can hardly expect the governing few to be particularly careful about the rights of the many. It is even something of a heresy [for them] to have rights. Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a journey (London: Chatto and Windus, 1927), pp. 116-17. Two decades later India became independent, and the constitution bestowed rights of equality on ail citizens, regardless of caste, creed, age or gender. The lower castes were in fact granted special rights, special access to schools and jobs, in compensation for the discrimination they had suffered down the centuries. But, as a Scheduled Caste member of the Constituent Assembly pointed out, state law was one thing, social practice quite another. For the prejudices of caste had been opposed by reformers down the centuries, from Gautama Buddha to Mahatma Gandhi, yet they had all 'found it very difficult to get rid of this ghost of untouchability'. Laws had been enacted removing strictures against Untouchables, with regard to temple entry for example. 'What is the effect of these laws?' asked the member, before supplying this answer: Not an inch of untouchability has been removed by these laws ... If at all the ghost of untouchability or the stigma of untouchability from India should go the minds of these crores and crores of Hindu folks should be changed and unless their hearts are changed, I do not hope, Sir, that untouchability will be removed. It is now up to the Hindu society not to observe untouchability in any shape or form. p.382
19. Leftward Turns : Big Brother CPM in West Bengal
1967: Ajoy Mukherjee's Bangla Congress forms govt with support from CPM; deputy CM: Jyoti Basu. 1963: CPI/CPM divide - one of the ideological differences was CPI, following Russian masters, forswore armed revolution, CPM was open to it, against the bourgeois-landlord alliance] Back in West Bengal, the coalition government had fallen apart in less than a year. President's rule was imposed before fresh elections in early 1969 saw the CPM substantially increase its tally. It won 80 seats; making it by far the biggest partner in a fresh alliance with the Bangla Congress and others. Ajoy Mukherjee once more became chief minister, the CPM preferring to keep the key Home portfolio and generally play Big Brother. ... Where Ajoy Mukherjee and his Bangla Congress tried weakly to keep the machinery of state in place, the CPM was not above stoking street protest and even violence to further its aims. In factories in and around Calcutta, workers took to the practice of gherao - the mobbing of their managers to demand better wages and working conditions. ... 424 Apart from capitalists worried about their profits, the prevailing lawlessness also disturbed the chief minister of West Bengal. He saw it as the handiwork of the CPM, whose ministerial portfolios included Land and Labour - where the trouble raged - and Home - where it could be controlled but wasn't. So in protest against the protests that old Gandhian Ajoy Mukherjee
22: Autumn of the Matriarch: Indira Gandhi - Emergency
Indira: Democracy 'not only throws up the mediocre person but gives strength to the most vocal howsoever they may lack knowledge or understanding'. (letter) 499 The congress has become moribund. Sometimes I feel that even the parliamentary system has become moribund. ... the 'inertia of our civil service is incredible... we have a system of dead wood replacing dead wood.... Sometimes I wish we had had a real revolution - like France or Russia - at the time of independence. (to journalist) The impatience with democratic procedure had manifested early, e.g. with the packing of the civil service, judiciary, and Congress Party with individuals committed to the PM. With the emergency, with opposition MPs locked away, the 38th amendment (22 Jul 75) barred judicial review of the emergency. The 39th amendment, introduced two weeks later, stated that the election of the PM could not be challenged by the Supreme Court, but only by a body constituted by Parliament. This came just before the Court was to try her election review petition, and the Court held there was now "no case to try". Some months later, the Supreme Court did the PM a greater favour still. Lawyers jailed under MISA argued for habeas corpus, but the SC ruled that detentions without trial was legal under the new dispensation; of the 5-member bench, only Justice H.R. Khanna dissented: "detention without trial is an anathema to all those who love personal liberty". p.499-500 (from history of Habeas Corpus case at http://www.pucl.org/reports/National/2001/habeascorpus.htm) Justice Khanna, conscious of his aloneness, ended his judgment with a quote: "A dissent in a Court ... is an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day, when a later decision may possible correct the error into which the dissenting Judge believes the court to have been betrayed." Justice Khanna paid the price for his dissent. He was next in line to become Chief Justice of India. He resigned when his junior, Justice M.H. Beg, superseded him. That was justice -- Indira Gandhi style. ) [after the Habeas Corpus case, the NYT in an editorial wrote about HR Khanna : If India ever finds its way back to freedom and democracy, that proud hallmark of its first 18 years, someone will surely erect a monument to justice H.R. Khanna of the Supreme Court. - http://webstore.ebc-india.com/product_info.php?products_id=450
Sikh museum: Ennobling Indira Gandhi's killers
It was only when I entered the Museum of Sikh History, located above the
main entrance to the temple, that I was reminded that this was, within living
memory, a place where much blood had been shed. The several rooms of the museum
ran chronologically, the paintings depicting the sacrifices of the Sikhs
through the ages. Plenty of martyrs are commemorated on its walls, the last of
these being Shaheeds Satwant, Beant and Kehar Singh. Below them lies a picture
of the Akal Takht in tatters, with the explanation that this was the result of
a 'calculated move' of Indira Gandhi. The text notes the deaths of innocent
pilgrims in the army action, and then adds: 'However, the Sikhs soon had their
revenge'. What form this took is not spelt out in words, but in pictures: those
of Satwant, Beant and Kehar. ...
To see the killers of Indira Gandhi so ennobled was unnerving. However, down
below, in the temple proper, there were plenty of contrary indications, to
the effect that the Sikhs were not thoroughly at ease with the government of
India. A marble slab was paid for by a Hindu colonel, in grateful memory of
the protection granted him and his men while serving in the holy city of
Amritsar. Another slab was more meaningful still; this had been endowed by a
Sikh colonel, on 'successful completion ' of two years of service in the
Kashmir Valley. [from a visit to the Golden Temple in Feb 05, p.631-32]
Babri Masjid
In 1994 the VHP leader Ashok Singhal remarked that the destruction of the
Babri Masjid was 'a catalyst for the ideological polarization which is nearly
complete.' Two years later the Bharatiya Janata Party reaed the rewards in the
eleventh general election. ... the big story of the decade [1990s] was in fact
the rise of Hindu communalism, as manifested most significantly in the number
of seats wone by the BJP in successive general elections. ... 643
... while there have been hundreds of inter-religious riots in the history
of independent India, there have been only two pogroms: that directed at the
Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 and that directed at the Muslims in south Gujarat in
2002. ... In both cases, the pogroms were made possible by the willed breakdown
of the rule of law. The prime minister in Delhi in 1984, and the chief minister
in Gujarat in 2002, issued graceless statements that in effect justified the
killings. .. The final similarity is the most telling, as well as perhaps the
most depressing. Both parties, and leaders, reaped electoral rewards from the
violence they had legitimized and overseen. 657
Sixty years after Independence, India remains a democracy. But the events
of the last two decades call for a new qualifying adjective. India is no longer
a constitutional democracy but a populist one. 691
ch22: Autumn of the Matriarch: Indira Gandhi - Emergency
Indira: Democracy 'not only throws up the mediocre person but gives strength to the most vocal howsoever they may lack knowledge or understanding'. (letter) 499 The congress has become moribund. Sometimes I feel that even the parliamentary system has become moribund. ... the 'inertia of our civil service is incredible... we have a system of dead wood replacing dead wood.... Sometimes I wish we had had a real revolution - like France or Russia - at the time of independence. (to journalist) The impatience with democratic procedure had manifested early, e.g. with the packing of the civil service, judiciary, and Congress Party with individuals commmitted to the PM. With the emergency, with opposition MPs locked away, the 38th amendment (22 Jul 75) barred judicial review of the emergency. The 39th amendment, introduced two weeks later, stated that the election of the PM could not be challenged by the Supreme Court, but only by a body constituted by Parliament. This came just before the Court was to try her election review petition, and the Court held there was now "no case to try". Some months later, the Supreme Court did the PM a greater favour still. Lawyers jailed under MISA argued for habeas corpus, but the SC ruled that detentions without trial was legal under the new dispensation; of the 5-member bench, only Justice H.R. Khanna dissented: "detention without trial is an anathema to all those who love personal liberty". p.499-500
23 Life without the Congress
Looking back on the three years of the Janata regime, one analyst remembered it as 'a chronicle of confused and complex party squabbles, intra-party rivalries, shiftiog alliances, defections, charges and countercharges of iocompetence and the corruption and humiliation of persons who had come to power after the defeat of Mrs Gandhi'." Most Indians who lived through those years would make the same assessment, if more succioctly; the Janata Party, they would say, were merely a bunch of jokers. It takes a distinguished foreign observer to remind us that, beyond the fighting and squabbliog, the Janata government made a notable contribution to Indian democracy. This, in the words of Granville Austin, was its 'remarkable success io repairing the Constitution from the Emergency's depredations, io reviving open parliamentary practice through its consultative style when repairiog the Constitution, and in restating the judiciary's Independence' 543
30 A People's Entertainments: Soccer in India
The form of entertainment most typical of urban-industrial society is, of course, spectator sport. ... The capital city of Indian soccer is Calcutta. Here sporting rivalry has gone hand-in-hand with political compettion. Mohun Bagan (Bengali bhadralok or upper classes), East Bengal (more plebeian classes from the other side of the province). From the 1930s to the early 1980s soccer was probably the most passionately discussed topic in Calcutta, even more so than politics or religion. The leading clubs each had thousands of followers, whose emotional investment in their team fully equalled that of European football fans. However after the 1982 World Cup popular interest in the sport began to wane. This was the first WC telecast live in India; alerted to the gap between their own local heroes and the great international stars, men in Calcutta began to turn away f4rom their clubs. The slide has continued; twenty years later, soccer ranks a poor second to cricket amontg the sporting passions of Bengal. p. 736
Epilogue: Why India Survives
The Sikhs may try to set up a separate regime... and that will be only a
start of a general decentralisation and break-up of the idea that India
is a country, whereas it is a subcontinent as varied as Europe. The
Punjabi is as different from a Madrassi as a Scot is from an
Italian. The British tried to consolidate it but achieved nothing
permanent. No one can make a nation out of a continent of many nations.
— General Claude Auchinleck, writing in 1948
When Nehru goes, the government will become a military dictatorship—as
in so many of the newly independent states, for the army seems to be the
only highly organised centre of power.
— Aldous Huxley, writing in 1961
The great experiment of developing India within a democratic framework
has failed. (Indians will soon vote) in the fourth --— and surely
last —- general election.
—The London Times, in 1967
In May 2004, the Republic of India held its 14th general elections. Four
hundred million voters exercised their franchise. The ruling alliance, led by
the Bharatiya Janata Party, was widely expected to win by a comfortable
margin, prompting fears of a renewal of the margin, prompting fears of a
renewal of the 'Hindutva' agenda. As it happened, the Congress-led United
Progressive Alliance defied the pollsters and came to power. The outcome was
variously interpreted as a victory for secularism, a revolt of the 'aam admi'
against the rich, and an affirmation of the continuing hold of the
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty over the popular imagination. In the larger context of
world history, however, what is important is not why the voters voted as they
did, but the fact that they voted at all. Ever since the 1952 elections were
described as the "biggest gamble in history", obituaries have been written
for Indian democracy. It has been said, time and again, that a poor, diverse
and divided country cannot sustain the practice of (reasonably) free and fair
elections.
Yet it has. In those first general elections, voter turnout was less than 46
per cent. Over the years, this has steadily increased; from the late 1960s
about three out of five eligible Indians have voted on election day. In
assembly elections, the voting percentage has tended to be even higher. When
these numbers are disaggregated, they reveal a further deepening. In the
first two general elections, less than 40 per cent of eligible women voted;
by 1998, the figure was in excess of 60 per cent. Besides, as surveys showed,
they increasingly exercised their choice independently, that is, regardless
of their husband's or father's views on the matter. Also voting in ever
higher numbers were Dalits and tribals, the oppressed and marginalised
sections of society. In North India in particular, Dalits turned out in far
greater numbers than high castes. As the political analyst Yogendra Yadav
points out, "India is perhaps the only large democracy in the world today
where the turnout of the lower orders is well above that of the most
privileged groups."
The Indian love of voting is well illustrated by the case of a cluster of
villages on the Andhra/Maharashtra border. Issued voting cards by the
administrations of both states, the villagers seized the opportunity to
exercise their franchise twice over. It is also illustrated by the peasants
in Bihar who go to the polls despite threats by Maoist
revolutionaries. Likewise, in parts of the Northeast where the writ of the
Indian state runs erratically or not at all, insurgents are unable to stop
villagers from voting. As the Chief Election Commissioner wryly put it, "The
Election Commission's small contribution to the integrity of the country is
to make these areas part of the country for just one day, election day".
That elections have been successfully indigenised in India is demonstrated by
the depth and breadth of their reach—across and into all sections of Indian
society, by the passions they evoke, and by the humour that surrounds
them. There is a very rich archive of electoral cartoons, poking fun at
promises made by prospective politicians, their desperation to get a party
ticket, and much else. At other times, the humour can be gentle rather than
mocking. Consider the career of a cloth merchant from Bhopal named Mohan Lal,
who contested elections against five different prime ministers. Wearing a
wooden crown and a garland gifted by himself, he would walk the streets of
his constituency, ringing a bell. He unfailingly lost his deposit, thereby
justifying his own, self-inflicted sobriquet of 'Dhartipakad', or he who
lies, humbled, on the ground. His idea in contesting elections, said Mohan
Lal, was "to make everyone realise that democracy was meant for one and all".
India is the only democracy where the lower orders vote
more enthusiastically than privileged groups
Considering the size of the electorate, it is overwhelmingly likely that more
people have voted in Indian elections than voters in any other
democracy. India's success in this regard is especially striking when
compared to the record of its great Asian neighbour, China. That country is
larger, but far less divided on ethnic or religious lines, and far less poor
as well. Yet there has never been a single election held there. In other ways
too China is much less free than India. The flow of information is highly
restricted—when the search engine Google set up shop in China in February
2006, it had to agree to submit to state censorship. The movement of people
is regulated as well—the permission of the state is usually required to
change one's place of residence. In India, on the other hand, the press can
print more or less what they like, and citizens can say exactly what they
feel, live where they wish to and travel to any part of the country.
India/China comparisons have long been a staple of scholarly analysis. Now,
in a world that becomes more connected by the day, they have become
ubiquitous in popular discourse as well. In this comparison China might win
on economic grounds but will lose on political ones. Indians like to harp on
their neighbour's democracy deficit, sometimes directly and at other times by
euphemistic allusion. When asked to put on a special show at the World
Economic Forum of 2006, the Indian delegation never failed to describe their
land, whether in speech or in print or in posters, as the 'World's Fastest
Growing Democracy'.
If one looks at what one might call the 'hardware' of democracy, then the
self-congratulation is certainly merited. Indians enjoy freedom of expression
and of movement, and they have the vote. However, if one examines the
'software' of democracy, then the picture is less cheering. Most political
parties have become family firms. Most politicians are corrupt, and many come
from a criminal background. The percentage of truly independent-minded civil
servants has steadily declined over the years, as has the percentage of
completely fair-minded judges.
Is India a proper democracy or a sham one? When asked this question, I
usually turn for recourse to an immortal line of the great Hindi comic actor
Johnny Walker. In a film where he plays the hero's sidekick, Walker answers
every query with the remark: "Boss, phipty/phipty." When asked what prospect
he has of marrying the girl he so deeply loves, or of getting the job he so
dearly desires, the sidekick tells the boss that the chances are roughly
even, 50 per cent of success, or 50 per cent of failure.
Is India a democracy, then? The answer is well, phipty-phipty. It mostly is,
when it comes to holding elections and permitting freedom of movement and
expression. It mostly is not, when it comes to the functioning of politicians
and political institutions. However, that India is even a 50 per cent
democracy flies in the face of tradition, history, and the conventional
wisdom. Indeed, by its own experience, it is rewriting that history and that
wisdom. Thus, Sunil Khilnani remarked of the 2004 polls that they represented
"the largest exercise of democratic election, ever and anywhere, in human
history. Clearly, the idea of democracy, brought into being on an Athenian
hillside some 2,500 years ago, has travelled far—and today describes a
disparate array of political projects and experiences. The peripatetic life
of the democratic idea has ensured that the history of Western political
ideas can no longer be written coherently from within the terms of the West's
own historical experience".
The history of independent India has amended and modified theories of
democracy based on the experience of the West. However, it has even more
frontally challenged ideas of nationalism emanating from the Western
experience.
Behind every successful nationalist movement in the Western world has been a
certain unifying factor, a glue holding the members of the nation together,
this provided by a shared language, a shared religious faith, a shared
territory, a common enemy—and sometimes all of the above. Thus, the British
nation brought together those who huddled together on a cold island, who were
mostly Protestant, and who detested France. In the case of France, it was
language which powerfully combined with religion. For the Americans, a shared
language and mostly shared faith worked in tandem with animosity towards the
colonists. As for the smaller East European nations—the Poles, the Czechs,
the Lithuanians, etc—their populations have been united by a common language,
a mostly common faith, and a shared and very bitter history of domination by
German and Russian oppressors.
By contrast with these (and other examples), the Indian nation does not
privilege a single language or religious faith. Although the majority of its
citizens are Hindus, India is not a 'Hindu' nation. Its Constitution does not
discriminate between people on the basis of faith; nor, more crucially, did
the nationalist movement that lay behind it. Gandhi's political programme was
built upon harmony and cooperation between India's two major religious
communities, Hindus and Muslims. Although, in the end, his work and example
were unsuccessful in stopping the division of India, the failure made his
successors even more determined to construct independent India as a secular
republic. For Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues, if India was anything at
all, it was not a 'Hindu Pakistan'.
Like Indian democracy, Indian secularism is also a story that combines
success with failure. Membership of a minority religion is no bar to
advancement in business or the professions. The richest industrialist in
India is a Muslim. Some of the most popular film stars are Muslim. Three
Presidents and two Chief Justices have been Muslim. At the time of writing,
the President of India is a Muslim, the Prime Minister a Sikh, and the leader
of the ruling party a Catholic born in Italy. Many of the country's most
prominent lawyers and doctors have been Christians and Parsis.
On the other hand, there have been periodic episodes of religious rioting, in
the worst of which (as in Delhi in 1984 and Gujarat in 2002) the minorities
have suffered grievous losses of life and property. Still, for the most part,
the minorities appear to retain faith in the democratic and secular
ideal. Very few Indian Muslims have joined terrorist or fundamentalist
organisations. Even more than their compatriots, Indian Muslims feel that
their opinion and vote matters. One recent survey found that while 69 per
cent of all Indians approve and endorse the ideal of democracy, 72 per cent
of Muslims did so. And the turnout of Muslims at elections is higher than
ever before.
Building democracy in a poor society was always going to be hard
work. Nurturing secularism in a land recently divided was going to be even
harder. The creation of an Islamic state on India's borders was a provocation
to those Hindus who themselves wished to merge faith with state. My own
view—speaking as historian rather than citizen—is that as long as Pakistan
exists there will be Hindu fundamentalists in India. In times of stability,
or when the political leadership is firm, they will be marginal or on the
defensive. In times of change, or when the political leadership is
irresolute, they will be influential and assertive.
The pluralism of religion was one cornerstone of the foundation of the Indian
republic. A second was the pluralism of language. Here again, the intention
and the effort well predated Independence. In the 1920s, Gandhi reconstituted
the provincial committees of the Congress on linguistic lines. The party had
promised to form linguistic provinces as soon as the country was free. The
promise was not redeemed immediately after 1947, because the creation of
Pakistan had promoted fears of further balkanisation. However, in the face of
popular protest, the government yielded to the demand.
Linguistic states have been in existence for 50 years now. In that time, they
have deepened and consolidated Indian unity. Within each state, a common
language has provided the basis of administrative unity and efficiency. It
has also led to an efflorescence of cultural creativity, as expressed in
film, theatre, fiction and poetry. However, pride in one's language has
rarely been in conflict with a broader identification with the nation as a
whole. The three major secessionist movements in independent India—in
Nagaland in the 1950s, in Punjab in the 1980s and in Kashmir in the
1990s—have affirmed religious and territorial distinctiveness, not a
linguistic one. For the rest, it has proved perfectly possible—indeed,
desirable—to be Kannadiga and Indian, Malayali and Indian, Andhra and Indian,
Tamil and Indian, Bengali and Indian, Oriya and Indian, Maharashtrian and
Indian, Gujarati and Indian and, of course, Hindi-speaking and Indian.
That unity and pluralism are inseparable in India is graphically expressed in
the country's currency notes. On one side is printed a portrait of the
'father of the nation', Mahatma Gandhi; on the other side, a picture of the
Houses of Parliament. The note's denomination—5, 10, 50, 100, etc—is printed
in words in Hindi and English (the two official languages), but also, in
smaller type, in all the other languages of the Union. In this manner, as
many as 17 different scripts are represented. With each language, and each
script, comes a distinct culture and regional ethos, here nesting
more-or-less comfortably with the idea of India as a whole.
Some Western observers—usually Americans—believed that this profusion of
tongues would be the undoing of India. Based on their own country's
experience, where English had been the glue binding the different waves of
immigrants, they thought that a single language—be it Hindi or English—had to
be spoken by all Indians. Linguistic states they regarded as a grievous
error. In 1970, Bernard Nossiter of the Washington Post wrote despairingly
that this was "a land of Babel with no common voice". From its birth the
Indian nation had been "plagued by particularist, separatist tendencies",
wrote Nossiter, and "the continuing confusion of tongues...can only further
these tendencies and puts in question the future unity of the Indian state".
In fact, exactly the reverse has happened—that is, the sustenance of
linguistic pluralism has worked to tame and domesticate secessionist
tendencies. A comparison with neighbouring countries might be
helpful. Pakistan was created on the basis of religion, but divided on the
basis of language. And for more than two decades now, a bloody civil war has
raged in Sri Lanka, the disputants divided somewhat by territory and faith
but most of all by language. The lesson from these cases might well be: 'One
language, two nations'. Had Hindi been imposed on the whole of India, the
lesson might well have been: 'One language, 22 nations'.
That Indians spoke many languages and followed many faiths made their nation
unnatural in the eyes of some Western observers, both lay and academic. In
truth, many Indians thought so too. A popular slogan of the original Jana
Sangh was 'Hindi, Hindu, Hindustani'. The attempt was to make Indian
nationalism more natural, by making—or persuading—all Indians to speak the
same language and worship the same gods. In time, the bid to impose a uniform
language was dropped. But the desire to impose the will of the majority
religion persisted. This has led to much conflict, violence, rioting and
deaths. Particularly after the Gujarat riots of 2002, which were condoned and
to some extent even approved by the Central government, fears were expressed
about the survival of a secular and democratic India. Thus, in a lecture
delivered in the university town of Aligarh, the writer Arundhati Roy went so
far as to characterise the BJP regime as 'fascist'. In fact, she used the
term 'fascism' 11 times in a single paragraph while describing the actions of
the government in New Delhi.
Contents
Prologue: Unnatural Nation xi
Part One - Picking up the pieces
1. Freedom and Parricide 3 2. The Logic of Division 25 3. Apples in the Basket 35 4. A Valley Bloody and Beautiful 59 5. Refugees and the Republic 84 6. Ideas of India 103
Part Two - Nehru's India
7. The Biggest Gamble in History 127 8. Home and the World 151 9. Redtawing the Map 180 10. The Conquest of Nature 201 11. The Law and the Prophets 226 I2. Securing Kashmir 242 13. Tribal Trouble 261
Part Three- Shaking the centre
14. The Southern Challenge 281 15. The Experience of Defeat 301 16. Peace in Our Time 338 17. Minding the Minorities 362
Part Four- The rise of populism
18. War and Succession 387 19. Leftward Turns 41 20. The Elixir of Victory 445 21. The Rivals 467 22. Autumn of the Matriarch 493 23. Life Without the Congress 522 24. Democracy in Disarray 546 25. This Son also Rises 575
Part Five- A history of events
26. Rights 605 27. Riots 633 28. Rulers 66o 29. Riches 692 30. A People's Entertainments 720 Epilogue: Why India Survives 744
Review by Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Subrahmanyam analyzes the text at a theoretical level, as one that attempts to provide a master-narrative of what it is to be Indian. Here he discusses the work of Eugen Weber, who is best known for his account of the building of the modern French nation in the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries" . It is an account that involves roads and railways, schoolrooms and stern instituteurs, and the production of homogeneous ‘Frenchness’ (as both reality and myth) from the diverse terroirs that still existed in 1870. ... Its long shadow falls even on Benedict Anderson's account of the way print capitalism helped create the ‘imagined communities’ that are today's nation-states. The following are extended quotations from Subrahamanyam's review in the London Review of Books. [The process of constructing India is similar to the process of constructing France in the 19th c. But unlike Weber's work, no master account has yet been written on the construction of the modern Indian nation-state:] Sumit Sarkar's sweeping but dense account, Modern India, stopped at 1947; the collective volume entitled India after Independence by Bipan Chandra, Aditya Mukherjee and Mridula Mukherjee was a stodgy piece of nationalist-Marxist writing... Though an admirer of many of V.S. Naipaul's novels, [one cannot subject the reader to his] bile-infused travelogue, An Area of Darkness, or his later apologia for right-wing Hindu nationalism A Million Mutinies Now... Sunil Khilnani's The Idea of India, an urbane, readable and sometimes personal account by a historically-minded political scientist, [may be acceptable...] [Subrahmanyam goes on to suggest that Ramachandra Guha's work is one that begins to fill "this massive historiographical gap". His ] is the story of the building of a rather improbable nation-state from a fragmented political landscape, and as such it is first of all a political account. Like Weber's work, it is also primarily a narrative account, expertly and fluently written; it has apparently found its way to the top of the non-fiction bestseller list in India (a list that is itself a form of fiction). It also avoids jargon and too much use of the social sciences and their apparatus. [Guha's account focuses] on why India has remained a democracy against the odds, using the ‘techniques of the narrative historian’ rather than those of the social scientist. The basic argument is straightforward enough: there are forces that divide India, and others that keep it together. [The divisive forces are well delineated], all large and impersonal: caste, language, religion and class. The forces that keep India together, and which are still somehow winning out, are vaguer and less evident. [...] The good philosopher-king (Nehru), succeeded by the scheming, corrupt and spoilt princess-in-waiting, and then by the well-intentioned but weak, pouting and feckless young prince. This sounds rather like the dynastic history ... That isn’t entirely Guha's fault. The raw material of modern high politics in India is, after all, largely dynastic, as it is to some extent in Pakistan and Bangladesh. But Guha makes choices which exaggerate [the dynastic] aspect. The most significant is his decision to ‘humanise’ his history by consistently highlighting the place and role of individuals, Nehru and Indira Gandhi most prominently. ... [Subrahmanyam laments that little space is given to culture, even to sport – a surprise, given Guha's enthusiasm for it. but how many historians touch upon sport in their analysis of a modern nation? The fact that Guha has a section devoted to soccer and cricket is itself quite impressive. I notice also Subrahmanyam's contempt, common among expatriate Indian scholars, for "the rank and file of plodders at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University." Having made the decision to emigrate, the choice they had earlier seems less worthy than it was then.
Deft biographic portrayals
the book abounds in deft portrayals of political figures, from Communists such as Namboodiripad in Kerala, to separatists in the north-east and Kashmir. There is even the Polonius-like Iyengar Brahmin from Tamil Nadu, C. Rajagopalachari, who wags his finger and advises all and sundry to neither a borrower nor a lender be. But for all his skill with portraiture, it is a relief when the social scientist periodically re-emerges to tell us of the planning process and its pitfalls, or of the abiding problems of poverty and caste in a ‘globalised’ India, or even when he invokes Durkheim to discuss the issue of farmers’ suicides. [Finally, Subrahmanyam concludes on why India, which provides] so little opportunity for economic and social mobility, has nevertheless experienced comparatively little social violence. This is not to understate the violence that takes place in both towns and countryside, whether the bloody eruptions or the quiet violence of everyday oppression. But it is remarkable how different the situation in India is from that in Latin America or much of Africa. The violence of a city such as Mumbai, dramatised in recent years by, for example, Suketu Mehta in Maximum City, does not really compare with São Paulo, Mexico City or Lagos.
author bio
Ramachandra Guha was born in Dehradun (1958) where his father was director of the Forest Reseach Institute. After a BA in economics from St. Stephen's College (1977), and a masters from the DSE, he did his PhD in management from IIM Calcutta. His thesis was on the social impact of forestry laws, and he has also written several books on ecology. He has taught at various universities including the U. California at Berkeley and the Indian Insitute of Science. He can be contacted at ramachandraguha@yahoo.in. [from Sanjay Subrahmanyam]: Guha has had an unorthodox career. Initially trained as an economist, he then moved into historical sociology (tempered with anthropology): his first book-length work was on the history of an environmental movement in the Himalayas. Over the past two decades, he has continued off and on to work on the environment, in the form of general histories, comparative reflections and tracts with a more contemporary message. A second interest has been the history of anthropology, largely through his engagement with the life of the missionary-turned-anthropologist Verrier Elwin. He has also written on the history of sport in colonial and post-colonial India, and above all cricket, about which he also writes in a more popular style. He has refused a secure position in the academy, and makes a living from writing and lectures, including regular columns in two Indian newspapers, the Telegraph and the Hindu. He is probably the best-known public historian in India today, and the one whose books and collections of essays – as against those of Partha Chatterjee or Romila Thapar – the visitor is most likely to find in a middle-class drawing-room. If he has a rival in the public domain, it is the Delhi-based Scotsman William Dalrymple, with whom he does not quite see eye to eye for reasons having to do with their respective positions on British imperialism and Indian nationalism.
bookexcerptise is maintained by a small group of editors. get in touch with us! bookexcerptise [at] gmail [dot] .com. This review by Amit Mukerjee was last updated on : 2015 Mar 30