topics: |  history | india-modern | political |

These essays were written nearly two decades back, but much of the material remains fresh. Here we have Yogendra Yadav analyzing the elections of the mid-1990s - the same man is today the election strategist for the Aam Aadmi party, which had a spectacular run in the Delhi elections of 2013. Other election specialists include Prannoy Roy, who has since become a media figure and owner, NDTV. Others are noted historians such as Sudipta Kaviraj but most are political scientists including Rajni Kothari, Myron Weiner, Atul Kohli etc.

I thought the article by lawyer and feminist Flavia Agnes, on what the state has been trying to do about violence against women, was particularly poignant. Some parts from the early part of this essay, focusing on sexual violence (rape) is excerpted below.

Excerpts

Theories of Indian Politics: from Intro by Partha Chatterjee

...early attempts to present a systematic account of Indian politics after
Independence were usually placed ·within a liberal modernization theory
and, more often than not, were celebratory in tone. Certain key
institutions of the modern state were shown to have been put in place in
the period of British rule; after Independence, it was believed that with
a liberal democratic constitutional system and universal suffrage, the
Indian political system would gradually develop its own processes of
democratic decision·making, rational administration and modern
citizenship.

Features such as patronage relations based on caste or religious
loyalties and solidarities based on ethnicity were regarded as vestiges
of underdevelopment that would go away with greater participation of the
people in democratic institutions. Later, more complex variants of the
modernization theory were produced, most notably by Rudolph and Rudolph
in The Modernity of Tradition (1967) and in the collection on _Caste in
Indian Politics_ (1970) edited by Rajni Kothari, in which it was argued
that even elements of 'tradition' such as caste or religion could
infiltrate a modern system of political institutions, adapt to it and, by
transforming themselves, find an enduring place within it as parts of
political modernity itself.

Congress System of Rajni Kothari

The most influential account of the Indian 'system' from this perspective
was produced by Rajni Kothari in his Politics in India (1970). His
theoretical tools were largely structural-functional. He identified the
'dynamic core' of the system of political institutions in India in the
Congress Party.

The whole system worked through the dominance of the Congress. It was a
differentiated system, functioning along the organizational structure of
the party but connecting at each level with the parallel structure of
government, allowing for the dominance of a political centre as well as
dissent from the peripheries, With opposition parties functioning as
continuations of dissident Congress groups, the emphasis being on
coalition-building and consensus-making at each level and on securing the
legitimacy of the system as a whole. Through an accommodative system such
as this, the political centre consisting of a modernizing elite was shown
to be using the powers of the state to transform society and promote
economic development.  Kothari gave it the simple name 'Congress system'.

Kothari's framework was criticized at the time from different perspectives
- for overvaluing the consensual character of the system, for
overestimating the autonomy of the elite, for taking far too gradualist a
view of social and political change, and so on: But its usefulness was
overtaken by the events of the 1970s.  The rise of militant oppositional
movements and the increasing use of the repressive apparatus of the state,
culminating in the Emergency, were clearly phenomena that went beyond the
consensual model of the Congress system. From the 1980s, Kothari himself
developed entirely different frameworks for presenting empirical as well
as normative accounts of Indian politics.

Marxist models

[Marxist accounts - often dominated by a sterile debate over what was called
the character of the state.]

More nuanced accounts that tried not only to describe enduring structures of
class power but also specific changes in political processes and
institutional practices began to emerge in the 1980s. The essay by Sudipta
Kaviraj reprinted in this section is one of the best examples of this genre of
Marxist writing on Indian politics.

The overall historical pattern is described, following Antonio Gramsci, as
the passive revolution of capital, making institutional changes
understandable in terms of a non-classical history of modernity, but with the
interesting variation that the success of the revolution is not assumed: the
apparent successes of Indian capitalism could themselves lead to an
institutional failure of the political system.

Modern theorizations of Indian politics

... attempts have been made in recent years to theorize Indian politics in terms
of certain systematic state-society relations.

* Rudolph and Rudolph in their later work,
  In Pursuit of Lakshmi - The Political Economy of the Indian State
  (1987), which takes organized interest groups as the principal actors in
  the system, have tried to periodize Indian politics in terms of the tussle
  between a 'demand polity' in which societal demands expressed as electoral
  pressure dominate over the state and a 'command polity' where state
  hegemony prevails over society.

* Rao and Frankel in their two-volume edited collection, Dominance and State
  Power in Modern India {1990), have made a distinction between public
  institutions such as the bureaucracy and organized industry and political
  institutions such as legislatures and political parties. The history of
  politics in independent India, they say, is one of the rising power of
  formerly low status groups such as the lower castes and the poorer classes
  in the political institutions and the attempt by upper caste and middle
  class groups to protect their privileges in the public institutions.

* Atul Kohli in Democracy and Discontent (1991) has described the recent
  history of the system as one in which, by surrendering to immediate
  electoral pressures exerted by various social groups, democratic state
  institutions have been allowed to decay, leading to an all-round crisis of
  governability.

* Rajni Kothari in his recent writings has attempted to develop a normative
  framework that serves less as an explanation and more as a critique of the
  present political system. He notes that unlike in the early decades after
  Independence, the national political elite has lost its autonomy and the
  state has ceased to be an agent of social change and has instead become
  more and more repressive.  His argument is that there is a need now to
  assert, through grassroots movements and non-party political formations,
  the autonomous force of civil society over a repressive and increasingly
  unrepresentative state.

* Another important theorist who has consistently articulated a moral
  critique of the Indian state system is Ashis Nandy, in whose view, derived
  as he says from a modified Gandhian position, the modernist state has
  repeatedly failed whenever it has tried to impose on Indian society a set
  of institutional practices adopted from the modern West that go against the
  firmly entrenched everyday practices of collective living in local
  communities. Social change, if it is to be both successful and just, must
  emerge out of those collective everyday practices.

15. Protecting women against violence? Legislation 1980-1989

						Flavia Agnes

If oppression could be tackled by passing laws, then the decade the 1980s
would be adjudged a golden period for Indian women, when protective laws were
offered on a platter. Almost every single campaign against violence on women
resulted in new legislation.  The successive enactments would seem to provide
a positive picture of achievement. The crime statistics reveal a different
story (Table 15.3). Each year the number of reported cases of women killed or
raped increased. The rate of convictions under these lofty and laudable laws
was dismal (fables 15.1 and 15.2). The deterrent value of the enactments was
apparently nil. Some of the enactments in effect remained only on paper. ·Why
were the laws ineffective in tackling the problem? To answer this question
requires a complete analysis of the process involved.

Firstly, the laws, callously framed, more as a token gesture than from any
genuine concern for changing the status quo with regard to women, were full
of loopholes. Also, in most cases there was a wide disparity between the
initial demands raised by the women's campaigns as well as the
recommendations by law commissions and the final enactment. Many positive
recommendations of expert committees did not find a place in the bills
presented to Parliament. The activists and experts who had initiated the
campaign could not participate in the process of drafting the bills.

The defective laws were welcomed by the movement as a first stepping stone
towards women's empowerment. The questions, who these laws were being passed
by and for whose benefit, were seldom raised. The campaigns with their main
thrust toward legislative changes could not keep up the pressure once a new
was enacted. There was a lull and a false sense of achievement resulting in
complacency which took the pressure off the state machinery.

Hence the implementation of these laws could seldom be monitored with the
same zeal. While one organ of the state - the legislature -was over eager to
portray a progressive pro-women front by passing laws for the asking, the
other organs, the executive and the judiciary did not reflect even this token
concern at the level of interpretation and implementation. On the whole their
functioning was totally contradictory to the spirit of the enactments.

The solutions were sought within the existing patriarchal framework and did
not arise from a new feminist analysis leading to empowerment of women. They
seldom questioned conservative notions of women's chastity, virginity,
servility and the concept of the 'good' and the 'bad' woman in society. For
instance the campaign against rape subscribed to the traditional notion of
rape being the 'ultimate violation' of a woman, reducing her to a state
'worse than death'. It did not transcend the conservative definition of
'forcible penis penetration of the vagina by a man who is not her husband'.

The campaigns and the ensuing legal reforms have certain commonalties. The
campaigns were highly visible and received wide media
publicity. In each case the government response was prompt.  In most cases
law commissions or expert committees were set up to solicit public
opinion. But most of those recommendations which would have had
far-reaching impact did not find a place in the final enactments. Each
enactment resulted in more stringent punishment rather than plugging
procedural loopholes, providing guidelines for strict implementation, setting
a time limit for deciding the case and extending compensation to the
victim. The apprehension of legal experts both within and outside the women's
movement that stricter punishment would lead to fewer convictions proved
correct.

So long as basic attitudes of the powers that be remain anti-poor,
anti-minority and anti-women, to what extent can these laws bring about social
justice? At best they can be an eye-wash and a way of evading more basic
issues of economic rights and at worst a weapon of state co-option and
manipulation.

The campaign against rape is a classic example of the impact of public
pressure on the judiciary. More f..wourable judgements were delivered before
the amendment, during the peak period of the campaign, than during the
post-amendment period when they have been consistently regressive. Perhaps
public pressure is a better safeguard to ensure justice than ineffective
enactments.

The worst among these is the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, which
was amended in 1986. This amendment did not even come in response to any
demand for change. The Act harms rather than helps women as it penalizes
prostitutes. Under this Act, any woman who is out at night can be picked up
by the police. The only aim of the amendment seems to be to make the
punishment more stringent. Ironically, three of the laws discussed here which
purport to protect women from violence actually penalize the woman. Instead
of empowering women, the laws serve to strengthen the state. And a powerful
state conversely means weaker citizens, which includes women. The weaker the
women, the more vulnerable they will be to male violence.

Campaign for Reforms in Rape Laws 1983

The amendment to rape laws enacted in 1983 was the predecessor of all the
later amendments which followed during the 1980s.  Sections 375 and 376 of
the Indian Penal Code which deal with rape had remained unchanged since
1860. The amendment was the result of a sustained campaign against these
antiquated laws following the infamous Supreme Court judgement in the Mathura
case.

	Mathura, a 16-year-old tribal girl, was raped by two policemen within
	a police compound. The sessions court acquitted the policemen on the
	ground that since Mathura had eloped with her boyfriend she was
	'habituated to sexual intercourse' and hence she could not be
	raped. Further, the court held that there is a world of difference
	between sexual intercourse and rape. The high court convicted the
	policemen and held that mere passive or helpless surrender induced by
	threats or fear cannot he equated with desire or will. The Supreme
	Court set aside the high court judgement and acquitted the policemen
	and held that since Mathura had not raised any alarm, her allegations
	of rape were untrue. Her 'consent' was not a consent which could be
	brushed aside as 'passive submission'.  [Tukaram and Another vs
	State of Maharashtra, 1979, AIR 185 SC.] 524

The judgement triggered off a campaign for changes in rape laws which
included public protests and wide media publicity.  The principal gain of
the campaign was that rape which was hitherto a taboo subject came to be
discussed openly.

Redefining 'consent' in a rape trial was one of the major thrusts of the
campaign. The Mathura judgement had highlighted the fact that in a rape trial
it is extremely difficult for a woman to prove that she did not consent
'beyond all reasonable doubt,' as was required under the criminal law.

The Supreme Court judgement had interpreted that absence of injuries and
passive submission implied consent. The major demand was that the onus of
proving consent should shift from the prosecution to the accused. This meant
that once sexual intercourse was proved, if the woman states that it was
without her consent, then the court should presume that she did not
consent. The burden of proving that she had consented should be on the
accused. p.523

[Agnes suggests that this judgment may have ignored a precedent from an
earlier case.  From p. 527, Rao Harnarain Singh vs State of Punjab, 1958,
where the courts had held]:

	A mere act of helpless resignation in the face of inevitable
	compulsion, quiescence, and non-resistance when volitional faculty is
	either crowded by fear or vitiated by duress cannot be deemed to be
	'consent'. Consent on the part of the woman as a defence to an
	allegation of rape requires voluntary participation, after having
	fully exercised the choice between resistance and
	assent. Submission of her body under the influence of terror is not
	consent. There is a difference between consent and submission. Every
	consent involves submission but the converse docs not always
	follow.
		[Rao Harnarain Singh vs State of Punjab	1958]

This had been the settled legal position and was relied upon by many later
judgements... Here are some positive interpretations of consent during the
anti-rape campaign, i.e. 1980-3.

In 1980, the Supreme Court held: 'The Court must bear in
mind human psychology and behavioural probability when assessing
the credibility of the victim's version.'  p.527

The judgement also cautioned against stricter laws:

	Reflecting on this case, we feel convinced that a socially sensitized
	judge is a better statutory armour against gender outrage than long
	clauses or a complex section with all the protections built into it.


The major demand [of the campaign]  was that the onus of proving
consent should shift from the prosecution to the accused.
The second major demand was that in a rape trial a woman's past sexual
history and general character should not be used as evidence.

The response of the government to the campaign was prompt.  A law commission
was set up to study the demands. The law commission's recommendations
included both the demands raised by the anti-rape campaign, i.e. regarding
onus of proof and the irrelevance of the woman's past sexual history. The
commission also recommended certain pre-trial procedures- women should not be
arrested at night, a policeman should not touch n woman when he is arresting
her and statements of women should be recorded in the presence of a relative
friend or a representative of women's organizations. It also recommended that
a police officer's refusal to register a complaint of rape should be treated
as an offence.

However, the bill which was presented to the Parliament in August 1980 did
not include any of these positive recommendations regulating police
power. The demand that a woman's past sexual history and general conduct
should not be used as evidence in a rape trial was excluded from the
bill. The demand that onus of proof regarding consent should be shifted to
the accused was accepted partially, only in case of custodial rape, i.e. rape
by policemen, public servants, managers of public hospitals and remand homes
and ward em. of jails.

The bill had certain regressive elements which were not recommended by the
law commission. It sought to make publishing anything relating to a rape
trial a non-bailable offence. This meant a virtual censorship of press
reports of rape trials. This was ironical because public pressure during the
campaign was built up mainly through media publicity and public protests.
[after protests] The regressive provisions were not scrapped but were made
slightly milder. For instance publication of rape trials was made a bailable
offence.

[most important provision:] For the first time a minimum punishment for rape
was laid down - ten years in cases of custodial rape, gang rapes, rape of
pregnant women and girls under twelve years of age and seven years in all
other cases. [ was not a major demand]   526

the Suman Rani case

the prosecutrix was taken into the· police station along with her lover, kept
into a separate room and thereafter raped by the two policemen. Both these
policemen were held guilty by the Sessions Judge and the High Court and
sentenced to ten years rigorous imprisonment which now is the minimum
sentence for such an offence. The counsel for the convicted persons submitted
before the [Supreme] court that medical evidence established that. the girl
was used to sexual intercourse and parturition and was therefore a woman of
easy virtue and of questionable character.

The Supreme Court does not seem to be impressed by this argument and
therefore confirmed the conviction. The court however reduced the minimum
sentence of ten years R.I. to 5 years R.I. in view of "peculiar facts and
circumstances of the case coupled with the conduct of the victim girl." The
words 'conduct of the victim girl' seem to suggest that the Supreme Court
accepted, though somewhat hesitatingly, the submission of the appellants'
advocate that Suman Rani was the woman of easy virtue and held that this was
sufficient to award 'sub-minimum' sentence.
			- http://indiankanoon.org/doc/1941643/

A close scrutiny of judgements of the decade revealed that the Suman Rani
judgement was not an exception. It was merely adhering to the norm of
judgements routinely meting out less than the minimum sentence in rape trials
during the post-amendment period.

[cites many judgments from pre-1983 legislation vs later, to show that later
laws were less progressive.]

More regressive judgements after amendment

What is most relevant is the fact that even before the amendment, the law
could have been interpreted progressively if the judiciary so wished. There
was no uniformity and the pendulum could swing from one extreme to the other
as in the case of Mathura.

The first year after the amendment, 1984, started off with an extremely
negative view of women's sexuality. A school teacher had seduced a young
girl, but when she conceived he refused to marry her. The girl filed a
complaint that the consent was given under a false promise of marriage and
hence it was not a valid consent and the act amounted to rape. The Calcutta
High Court held:

	Failure to keep the promise at a future uncertain date does not
	amount to misconception of fact. If a fully grown girl consents to
	sexual intercourse on the promise of marriage and continues to
	indulge in such activity until she becomes pregnant, it is an act of
	promiscuity.

[In some of these cases, Agnes fails to note other aspects that may have
affected the judgment.  In perusing the actual judgement, we find that the
court also observed that the sexual relations had continued for a long time
and that even her parents do not know about it.  The girl was mature and
aware of the consequences.  Hence it was seen as promiscuity on the part of
the girl.

Even given all these aspects, the fact that the rapist was her teacher, and
that the girl was barely past being a minor, it was clearly a reprehensible
act. At the same time, one feels that perhaps the hammer of rape is too
severe; given the
crime of a false promise of marriage, the courts are perhaps reluctant to
rule it as a rape.  This may have led to the acquittal.  ]

This judgement was relied upon in several later cases where girls were duped
into sex under a false promise of marriage in order to acquit the accused.
		[Jayanti Rani Panda vs State of West Bengal, Criminal Law
			Journal 1984, p.1535 (Judgment B.C. Chakrabarti)]

[cites several more disturbing judgments, including the acquittal of a
21-year old who had raped a 7-yo girl near a bus-stop, with two eyewitnesses.

The girl had bite marks and her hymen was ruptured.
The sessions court convicted the accused to life imprisonment and
a fine of Rs.500. The Delhi High Court set aside the conviction on
the grounds that there was injury to the accused only on the body
and not on the penis; and that in rape of a minor by a fully developed
male, injury to the penis is essential.

[Agnes fails to note what the judgement states about the lady doctor who
examined her within 4 hours of the incident:

	The doctor has not recorded that Aruna Kumari was bleeding from the
	vagina, nor did she find any bruises, nor any swelling, redness or
	inflammation.

The judgement also notes that the doctor was not cross-examined though an
opportunity was provided, and the report was taken as is.

this together with:
	that if the rape had been committed on 19th August 1980 as alleged,
	the lady doctor would have certainly found at least some swelling,
	redness or inflammation on the female organ

resulted in the judgement. ]

The eyewitness reports are poignant:

	The eye witnesses in the present case are Shri Krishan Avtar Handa
	(P.W.2) and Sardar Richpal Singh (P.W.3). Shri Handa stated that on
	19th August 1980 he was standing at the bus stop at Ramesh Park for
	going to Connaught Place. At about 1.00 or 2.00 p.m. one Sardarji,
	who was standing at the bus stop, told him that be had beard some
	noise. Shri Handa (P.W. 2) also heard some cries Thereafter, to quote
	him :

	"BOTH of us ran towards the place from where the cries were
	coming. The place was near the pusta adjacent to Narain Nagar. There
	was one room also and that was probably uninhabited at a short
	distance. I saw the accused present in court, lying on the
	prosecutrix present in court. The prosecutrix was naked and her
	underwear was lying on one side. By naked I mean, that she was
	without underwear. The accused had his open underwear and the pant
	below the knees. Both of us saved the prosecutrix and caught the
	accused, who had tried to run away, from the spot I had noticed teeth
	bite on the left leg of the prosecutrix. On raising alarm by both of
	us, so many persons had collected there. In the meantime, Police also
	arrived there and we handed over the accused to the police."

the girl stated that she had gone to answer the call of nature when she was
grabbed.
	On my raising alarm, he slapped me at my face, gagged my mouth and
	bitten on my left leg above the knee.  After this she was forcibly
	raped. [is ke bAd usne mere saath bura kam kiya].

It is amazing that despite being caught with his pants down, the conviction
was set aside.  Perhaps the court felt that despite blood on her underwear
and the hymen rupture, the lack of swelling and the lack of injury to penis
together suggested absence of rape.
		[Mohammed Habib vs State, Criminal Law J., 1989, p. 137
		Delhi High Court, Bench: C Talwar, M Chawla
		- http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/1107630/ ]

In another case, a tribal woman was raped by a police constable
who entered her house at night on the pretext of conducting a
search. Her husband, who was a night watchman, was away at
work. The Bombay High Court upheld the Dhulia sessions court
acquittal on the following ground: 'Probability of the prosecutrix
who was alone in her hut, her husband being out, having consented
to sexual intercourse cannot be ruled out. Benefit of doubt must
go to the accused and acquittal could not be interfered with.
			[Ravindra Dinkar vs State of Maharashtra]

A 7-year-old Harijan girl was raped by a hoy of 18. She was
severely injured and left unconscious. The sessions court sentenced
the accused to five years' rigorous imprisonment. In an
appeal by the state to enhance the sentence, the Rajasthan High
Court dismissed the appeal and held: 'Although the rape warrants
a more severe sentence, considering that the accused was only 18
years of age, it would not be in the interest of justice to enhance
the sentence of five years imposed by the trial court.'
				[Bhai Singh vs Haryana 1984]

Where an 11-year-old girl was raped by a youth while another
kept her pinned down to the floor and gagged her with her own
sari, the sessions court convicted the accused with five years'
imprisonment. The Madhya Pradesh High Court went to the
extent of stating: 'Increasing cases of personal violence and crime
rate cannot justify a severe sentence on youth offenders.'
		Vinod Kumar and	another vs Madhya Pradesh, 1987]

In all criminal offences, injury and hurt caused by using weapons is more
grievous than the one caused by the use of limbs but in the case of rape, the
injury caused by the use of iron rods, bottles and sticks does not even
amount to rape. 533

As a result of the amendment, legal experts both within the movement and
outside, had expressed their fears that more stringent punishment would
result in fewer convictions.  This has turned out true [provides table of
data from Bombay H.C. showing more acquittals since 1984]


[the rest of the article focuses on other forms of violence against women -
dowry deaths, domestic violence, etc.]

9. From breakdown to order: West Bengal : Atul Kohli

Whereas many states have experienced political instability over the past two
decades, West Bengal has been relatively well governed since 1977. That
stability has been remarkable because it has not been the result of low levels
of political mobilization; West Bengal was probably India's most politically
mobilized and chaotic stare in the late 1960s.

[West Bengal's political stability] is due to the fact that a well a
well-organized reformist party has remained in power. The Communist Party of
India, Marxist (CPI[M)), has repeatedly been elected to office in West Bengal
since 1977.

The party is communist in name only and is essentially social-democratic in
its ideology, social programme, and policies.  The party's disciplined,
effective organization has minimized the debilitating elite factionalism and
the related elite-led mobilization and counter-mobilization so common in some
other states. The CPI(M) has also consolidated a coalition of the middle and
lower strata by implementing some modest redistributive programmes.  That
systematic incorporation of the poor has reduced the attractiveness of
populism and its emphasis on deinstitutionalization. And finally, the CPI(M)
has adopted a non-threatening approach toward property-owning groups, whose
roles in production and economic growth remain essential for the long-term
welfare of the state.

In spite of its many problems, West Bengal under the CPI(M) is probably
India's best-governed state: the coalition that supports the CPI(M) is
relatively stable; the gap between the government's commitments and its
capacities is modest; and political violence along caste, class, or religions
lines has been minimal. An understanding of how the CPI(M) has achieved such
effective government tends to reinforce my earlier emphasis on the political
causes of the governability crisis in India. 337

The agrarian structure has undergone some important changes since the
zamindari abolition.  Towards the bottom of the landownership hierarchy, nearly
half the population owns no land or has access to less than one acre of land.
These are the rural poor. In the recent past, a substantial rural minority
used to be tenant farmers. That, however, has changed over the past decade.
Legislative and political changes introduced by the CPI(M) government have
modified the old forms of tenancy; new arrangements have emerged under which
tenants enjoy almost permanent leases on land.

Certain peculiarities of the caste and community make up of West Bengal are
also important. Nearly half the population of the state is not 'mainstream'
Hindu. It comprises rather scheduled castes and tribes (27.5 per cent) and
Muslims (20 per cent). Among the Hindus, moreover, the caste divisions do not
follow the 'normal' fourfold division.  There are no indigenous Kshatriyas or
Vaishyas in Bengal. The numbers of the twice-born castes are also relatively
small (about 7 per cent), certainly in comparison with the neighbouring
state of Bihar. The line of demarcation between Brahmans and such 'clean
Sudras' as Vaidyas and Kayasthas is not sharp. The Brahmans ·will 'take
water' from these clean Sudras, though intermarriage remains rare.

Disciplined organization in the communist parties

Another important factor in the success of the left in West Bengal has been
an effective, centralized political party. I have argued elsewhere that the
origins of that can be traced to the terrorist backgrounds of many communist
leaders.  Thus a significant minority of Bengali political activists already
understood the significance of disciplined organizations before they were
introduced to communism.  Such recent communist leaders as Pramode Das Gupta,
Hare Krishna Konar and Binoy Chowdhury were all former terrorist
revolutionaries who later converted to communism.

[FN. For an excellent historical study that traces how that pattern of
control over land evolved, see Ratnalekha Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian
Society 1760-1850 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1979).]

Discipline, hierarchy, and party before all else were the values integral to
the political terrorist subculture.  In all probability, those
political-cultural traditions have facilitated the growth of relatively
cohesive parties in contemporary West Bengal.  Of course, this is not to
ignore the legendary factionalism and sectarianism of the Indian left.8
Nevertheless, the CPI(M) in West Bengal stands out today as a cohesive
political force in India, and the long tradition of disciplined organization
is at least partly responsible for this political characteristic.


		Number of riots per million population (WB, 1955-85)

1967 elections

Rioting and violence continued to increase throughout 1965
and 1966,leading up to the crucial elections in 1967. It was at those
elections that the [paternalistic Congress, increasingly factionalized aftet
the death of B.C. Roy in 1962], was finally defeated.

Congress remained the largest single party in West Bengal; it won 127 of the
280 assembly seats.  A number of other parties, including the two main
communist parties (the CPI had split into the CPI(M) and CPI in 1964) and
the Bangla Congress, succeeded in forming a United Front (UF) coalition
government.

The formation of the UF government in 1967 led to a decade of chaos.  The
first UF government lasted less than a year. It was replaced, for two months,
by a Congress-led coalition.  When that also came apart, presidential rule
was imposed, A second UF government was formed in 1969; it was also replaced
by presidential rule in 1970.

A coalition government with the Congress as the leading force again came to
power in 1971; that also did not last· long. After the Bangladesh war in
1971, Congress finally swept to power with a huge majority, but under a
considerable cloud of suspicion of electoral fraud. The democratic process in
West Bengal was resumed only after the 1977 elections.

There was a sharp increase in political violence [Figure above] that
accompanied governmental instability between 1967 and 1971.  The data
indicating that increase were collected by the police and did not include
figures on the state terror unleashed against various political groups during
1972-7. Amnesty International has documented the extent of the violence. A
descriptive conclusion is inescapable: the decade of 1967-77 in West Bengal
politics was characterized by a severe governability crisis.

Indira Gandhi used the cloak of the Bangladesh war to impose
presidential rule and eliminate many of her armed political enemies.

[From 1969, when CPI(M) was the major force in the coalition government, it]
adhered to a more revolutionary line.  It defined its main task in government
as 'expanding and strengthening worker and peasant alliance'. In practice,
that led to a two-pronged political strategy: neutralizing the tendency of
the state to be an agent of 'class repression' from above, and using its
party organization to mobilize the lower classes from below.

The crisis subsided only after the electoral victory of the relatively
cohesive CPI(M) party in the 1977 elections.


The CPI(M) repeatedly sought and eventually gained control over the
ministries of labour, land and land revenue, and home (which controlled the
police).  An important aspect of the CPI(M)'s ruling strategy - an aspect
that would eventually contribute heavily to the fall of the UF government -
was to order the police not to interfere in 'class struggles'.  The CPI(M)
thus neutralized the regional state apparatus as an agent of political order.
Whatever the merits of such a strategy for fomenting revolution in nation
states in general, as a regional strategy its effectiveness was highly
doubtful. The CPI(M) had only neutralized the 'near state' and thus invited
the wrath of the more 'distant state' (i.e. invited federal intervention). It
took the CPI(M) some time to internalize one of the hard lessons of
realpolitik: its powers were limited. Meanwhile, the neutralization of the
police provided encouragement for many of the subsequent conflicts within
West Bengal.

Causes of the Naxalbari rebellion

The best-known peasant rebellion of the period clearly was
the conflict in Naxalbari in the north of West Bengal.

General explanations in terms of 'exploitation' of the peasantry, though
clearly part of the overall equation, will not suffice, because peasant
exploitation in India is widespread, but rebellions arc not. The Naxalbari
rebellion, moreover, was not really a peasant rebellion; its protagonists
were mainly semi-nomadic tribals, the Santhals. Not being socialized in the
rigid and hierarchical Hindu caste structure, the Santhals of the area had
often rebelled in the past. The border location of Naxalbari facilitated
revolutionary organization. In addition, tea plantations dominated the local
agriculture in Naxalbari, and · they provided better conditions for political
organization than would the atomistic family-owned small farms common in many
other areas. .

[FN See, for example,
   * Shankar Ghosh, The Naxalite Movement (K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1974),
	especially pp. 24-35;
   * Biplab Dasgupta, The Naxalite Movement (Bombay: Allied Publishers,
	1975), especially pp.1-14;
   * Franda, Radical Politics in West Bengal, chapter 6.]

Thus the causes of the rebellion were political.

Events at Naxalbari 1967

The focal Santhals had been organized by a militant subgroup of the
CPI(M). After the CPI(M) came to power in 1967, the local party officers
decided to take advantage of their new power. They undertook a militant land
grab movement. Local tribals, armed with primitive bows and arrows and
spears, provided the main force for the movement.  The tribals claimed
'above-ceiling' land to be legally theirs. (There was legislation on the
books stipulating a ceillng on the amount of land that one could own.) They
forcibly occupied such land, and, if necessary, they killed the landlords,
thus establishing 'liberated' areas.

That land grab movement spread to some sixty villages and lasted nearly two
months. It is clear in retrospect that the movement would not have gained
strength but for the fact that the UF government, especially the CPI(M),
decided to keep the police out of the conflict.

The dilemma within CPI(M)

The CPI(M) in government was responsible for protecting basic constitutional
rights, including the rights to private property and life, but it was
reluctant to usc state repression against its own revolutionary cadres.

The CPI(M) sought to resolve that dilemma by pursuing a two-pronged strategy
- keeping the police out of the conflict, and simultaneously trying to impose
the party line on its own cadres. The strategy failed.

Local cadres continued to undertake militant mobilization, including the
killing of landowners in the name of 'revolutionary justice'. Becausc the
scope of the 'revolution' was limited to one corner of one region in a
giant-size nation state, the results were predictable.

Eventually the CPI(M) had to dismiss the leaders of Naxalbari from the party,
and  the UF  government ordered  the police  back into  Naxalbari to  restore
order.  The 'revolutionary  movement'  collapsed within  weeks.  Most of  the
leaders were imprisoned. The ease with  which the entire movement was crushed
strongly supports the  argument that the temporary withdrawal  of state power
had been the most important factor in the short-term success of the Nzxalbari
uprising. To the extent that such deliberate abstention from the usc of state
power is a  somewhat unusual occurrence in functioning  states, the Naxalbari
uprising can be  viewed as an aberration. More, generally,  a broader insight
of   comparative  politics   also   gains  support   from  that   experience:
disintegration  of state  power may  well  be an  important precondition  for
transformation of latent socio-economic hostilities into overt conflict.

CPI (ML) and "Armed struggle"

the temporary success of the Naxalbari uprising and the subsequent state
repression had significant political consequences.  The uprising led to the
creation of a third communist party, a Marxist-Leninist party that did not
believe in parliamentary democracy, but instead was committed to fomenting a
revolution by following a 'Maoist' strategy of 'armed struggle'. The
temporary success of the uprising created an overinflated sense of efficacy
among the Naxalites; they began acting as if a Chinese-style peasant
revolution was possible in India. The participation of the CPI(M) in the
government that repressed the Naxalbari uprising alienated the more militant
Bengalis from the CPI(M)'s 'reformism'.  Thus the stage was set for battle:
an alienated militant minority whose members had recently renewed their sense
of political efficacy versus a fragmented state that, in spite of its strong
leftist orientation~ stood delegitimized in the eyes of the militants.

Land redistribution

That same theme of the role of an ineffective state, or, more precisely, a
state deliberately made ineffective, ran through the other major agrarian
conflict of the period, namely the land grab movements initiated by the
CPI(M). p.348

Hare Krishna Konar was the CPI(M)'s radical land minister.  He sought to
identify and to redistribute all benami lands (above ceiling lands
registered under false names) and to ensure the occupancy rights of
sharecroppers. Because the CPI(M) was not fully in control of the government,
it could not use the state machinery to attain those goals. Instead, its
strategy was again, to keep the state - especially the police, but also local
administrators and, if possible, the courts - out of land conflicts and to
use party-led mobilization to implement land reforms.  Because of the short
durations of the two UF governments, major redistribution did not occur.  The
important aspect of that experiment, therefore, was not any concrete
realization of the redistribution programme but rather the political dynamics
set in motion.

The CPI(M) sought to limit the reach of the state from above and to mobilize
from below. Two important consequences followed.  First, even limited gains
by the CPI(M) were politically threatening to the other partners in the
coalition government.  Every redistributive success meant new and more loyal
supporters for the CPI(M). The membership of the CPI(M)-affiliated Kisan
Sabha (the peasant organization) rose during that period from approximately a
quarter of a million to more than half a million.  The other coalition
partners did not want to be left out of the game of political
competition. They sought to enter the fray, attempting their own versions of
land redistribution, sometimes even competing with the CPI(M) over the same
piece of land. As [Franda RPWB] pointed out,

	there were innumerable physical clashes between the major political
	parties in the United Front between 1969-70 in which two or more
	parties attempted to seize the same plot of land'. p.182-90

Clearly, political competition within the ruling coalition became a source of
socio-economic conflict and violence.

Excesses by the cadres

A second consequence was that the CPI(M) leadership often failed to control
its own 'enthusiastic' local cadres, which led to 'excesses' in land grabbing
and to numerous physical clashes.  During my fieldwork in the early 1980s,
for example, a number of local observers reported that the party line on the
land question under Hare Krishna Konar was quite confusing. Konar, on the one
hand, would trumpet revolutionary rhetoric, suggesting that militant
confiscation of land was integral to the party's programme.

On the other hand, the real party line was to act with restraint on the
issue, that is to use the land programme differentially according to local
.circumstances and mainly to enhance the party's electoral and organizational
position. The need to make adjustments for local variations necessitated a
decentralized strategy.  Not all local cadres, however, were totally clear on
how far and how fast the land programme should move. The more militant cadres
chose to take Konar's highly rhetorical speeches as representative of the
party line, and they moved fairly rapidly and decisively during 1969-70. That
was certainly true, for example, in parts of Midnapore and 24 Parganas where
I did fieldwork. The results were increasing numbers of physical clashes
between landowners and CPI(M) cadres and a simultaneous rush of newspaper
stories proclaiming the breakdown of law and order in West Bengal.

The UF experiments in West Bengal created peculiar conditions under which
those who were in power [at least partially], came to have a vested interest
in fomenting radical mobilization. Political fragmentation within the state
and deliberate, elite-led mobilization in the civil society thus combined to
generate considerable violence in the agrarian sector.

The nature of the violence in West Bengal changed midway through the 1967-77
decade of chaos.  The second five years of the chaotic decade, especially the
periods 1971-2 and 1975-7, were characterized by increasing state
repression. Because the violence in that period was unleashed by the
government, official statistics do not reflect it well. The exact numbers of
'revolutionaries' and other political enemies who were killed or imprisoned
will never be known.  Scattered evidence provides a picture of wide·ranging,
brutal repression by the Congress government.

After each of the two UF governments was dismissed, New Delhi established
direct control over West Bengal.  Two important 'administrative' changes
created a framework in which governmental repression would be relatively free
of constitutional constraints.  First, it was decided that a police shooting
would not require a 'compulsory executive inquiry'.  That protection gave the
police a free hand in their dealings with 'extremists', especially
Naxalitcs. The second crucial change was that 'Naxalite problems' came to be
assigned to the same detective department that was responsible for common
criminals. Having thus abolished the distinction between political extremists
and criminals, and having freed the police from virtually all political
oversight, the government had set the stage for state-sponsored terrorism.

Anti-Naxalite violence during Presidential rule and Congress

Two scholars, Sajal Basu, who is now an observer for Amnesty
International in Calcutta, and Shankar Ghosh, who was a correspondent
at that time for the Times of India, independently
recorded what they witnessed first-hand during the early 1970s.
.
   * Sajal Basu, West Bengal. The violent years (Calcutta: Prachi
	Publications, 1979),
   * Shankar Ghosh, The Naxalite Movement (K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1974), p. 155.
   * Basu, West Bengal, pp. 80-3.

Sajal Basu reported that Congress's electoral victory in 1972 was accompanied
by 'widespread rigging and fraud'. During the period leading up to the
election and immediately thereafter, the police and the mastans (hired
hoodlums) unleashed what was known as 'white terror'. He described the
aftermath of the UF experiment in the following terms: 'Pseudo-revolutionary
violence of the later sixties has been replaced by the counter-terrorism of
the establishment that culminated in the violent election of 1972.

Shankar Ghosh reported that after the Birbhum Naxalite rebellion fizzled out,
the consequences of 'police action' were 'not that there [were] no more
killings; in fuct the daily average was three to four, which was higher than
the average during the peak period of the Naxalite movement'.

Kashipur-Baranagar: 151 youths murdered by the police in 1971

The most brutal of the police massacres of Naxalites clearly was the
Cossipore-Baranagar incident in the summer of 1971, six weeks after the
establishment of presidential role in June. More than 150 young men
suspected of Naxalite sympathies were murdered within days. Ghosh, 
who covered the story for the Hindusthan Standard, reported that 'dead
bodies were everywhere- bodies with heads cut off, limbs lost, eyes gouged
out, entails ripped open. They were there in de Streets in broad
daylight. Later they were carried in rickshaws and handcarts and thrown
into the Hooghly [the Ganges]'.  Ghosh also captured well the general mood
within West Bengal as Indira Gandhi turned the police loose to do the
'dirty work':

	Panic and terror among the people at that time was so high that no
	one could stay at home at night, no young man could think of not
	being implicated in cases of arson and murder to be instituted by
	the police, no middle-aged man could avoid severe beating up in
	course of interrogation in a police lock-up. [SG, 155-6]

	Even in the absence of published figures it may be safely assumed
	that the number of Naxals killed exceeds the number of those killed
	by Naxals. There should be no doubt that the Naxalite movement in
	India [the largest concentration of which was in West Bcngal] has
	taken a toll of several thousand livcs. [SG p. 178-9] p.352

One prong of the government's strategy was to kill Naxalites and anyone
suspected of being associated with them.  The other was simply to imprison
anyone suspected of being a threat to 'law, and order'. Again, firm
evidence on the extent of such imprisonments is not available.

The imprisonments went on during the first half of me 1970s and increased
considerably during 1975-7, the period of the national Emergency, when even
the minimum constitutional niceties could be set aside. Amnesty International
estimated that nearly 25,000 people, mostly members of the CPI(M) and
Naxalites, were imprisoned for political reasons.

The socio-economic situation of the state also suffered adverse
consequences. Much of the significant decline in industrial production in
West Bengal was due to capital flight during the first half of the crisis,
that is during the two UF experiments, when labour militancy rose sharply.

The second half of the chaotic decade brought many reverses in the land
redistribution programmes. Whatever modest gains the CPI(M) and other
leftists had made in securing tenancy rights came undone, as did their
progress in the redistribution of disputed lands. Again, exact figures will
never be known.  It was clear during my fieldwork in 1979, however, that
eviction of tenants during 1971-7 had been a crucial factor behind the CPI(M)
government's decision in 1977 to give the highest priority to policies that
would ensure the rights of sharecroppers.

It is clear from the discussion in this chapter that West Bengal indeed
experienced a severe crisis of governability during 1967-77: it proved nearly
impossible to form a ruling coalition; much of the government's energy was
devoted not to dealing with issues of socio-economic development but rather
to managing political conflicts, and violence became the norm for settling
political disputes.

Although many factors contributed to the increase in political violence, two
related political variables must be emphasized in this analysis of the
origins of the crisis: a fragmented and ineffective state apparatus, and an
elite-led, deliberate mobilization for short-term political gains.

The Decade of CPI(M): A Government that Works

The CPI(M) emerged as Bengal's ruling party in 1977 and won all subsequent
elections [over more than two decades].  The past decade in West Bengal has
been relatively free of political violence.

Party vote percentages in West Bengal Elections 1967-82

-------------------------------------------------------------
                        1967   1969   1971   1972   1977   1982
Congress-I      41.1   40.4   29.8   49.1   23.4   35.7
CPI(M)          18.1   19.6   33.8   27.5   35.8   38.5
Other Left
Front parties   7.5    10.7    8.5   6.6    10.5    9.9
Janata          -      -       -     -      20.5    0.8
CPI             6.5     6.8    8.6    8.4    1.7    1.8
Others          26.8   22.5   19.3    8.4    7.1   13.3
-------------------------------------------------------------
              [from reports of the Election Commission] p.354

Contents

Introduction: A Political History of Independent India   		1
	Partha Chatterjee

I. The System

1. Critique of the passive revolution   				45
	Sudipta Kaviraj

IT. The institutions

2. Parties and the party system   					92
	James Manor
3. India decides: Elections 1952-1995   				125
	David Butler, Ashok Lahiri and Prannoy Roy
4. Reconfiguration in Indian politics: State Assembly
   Elections 1993-1995   						177
	Yogendra Yadav
5. Evolving trends in the bureaucracy    				208
	B.P.R. Vithal
6. Impact of centre-state relations on Indian politics:
   An interpretative reckoning 1947-1987	 			232
	T.V. Sathyamurthy
7. Development planning and the Indian state 				271
	Partha Chatterjee

TIT. The Political process: Dominance

8. National power and local politics in India:
   A twenty-year perspective 						303
	Paul Brass
9. From breakdown to order: West Bengal 				336
	Atul Kohli
10. Culture and subaltern consciousness: An Aspect
    of the MGR Phenomenon 						367
	M.S.S. Pandian
11. When local riots are not merely local: Bringing
    the State Back in, Bijnor 1988-1992 				390
	Amrita Basu

IV. The Political Process: -Resistance

12. Rise of the dalits and the renewed debate on caste   		439
	Rajni Kothari
13. India's minorities: Who are they? What do they want? 		459
	Myron Weiner
14. Politics of subnationalism: Society versus State in Assam   	496
	Sanjib Baruah
15. Protecting women against violence? : Review of
    a Decade of Legislation, 1980-1989    				521
	Flavia Agnes

Figures

   3.1 Voter Turn-out, All-India 127
   3.2 Voter Turn-out, Men and Women 127
   3.3 Average Turn-out in Lok Sabha Elections 132
   3.4 Unequal Size of Constituencies in 1991 139
   3.5 The Impact of Drawing Boundaries on the Results 142
   3.6 Splits in the Congress Party since 1952 150
   3.7 The Janata Party and the BJP since 1977 151
   5.1 Lines of Authority, Lines of Influence 222
   9.1 Political Violence in West Bengal, 1955-1985 343

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