Top Quotes: “India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy” — Ramachandra Guha
Introduction
“In the early years of independence, many obituaries of the new nation were written, confident anticipations that the Indian Republic would descend into civil war, balkanize into many parts, experience mass famine, or become a military dictatorship. In subsequent decades they continued to be written, whenever two monsoons failed in succession, or a prime minister died, or a major riot took place, some (professedly) serious Western writer would conclude that the project of a united and democratic India had failed.
But it didn’t. That India survived despite the massive challenges it faced made me appreciate, even more than I had previously, the qualities of our first generation of political leaders — Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Rajagopalachari, and their ilk — and the courage with which they confronted these challenges and the sagacity with which they overcame them. Perhaps no nation was born into more adverse circumstances; perhaps no new nation had such a remarkable concatenation of leaders to see it through the difficulties it faced in its early years. Had they not been there, or had they not acted as they did, those predictions of doom would surely have come to pass.”
“Fully 26% of the country’s population, about 300 million individuals, are said to live below the official poverty line.”
“That India is still a single nation after sixty testing years of independence, and that it’s still largely democratic — these are facts that should compel our deeper attention. A recent statistical analysis of the relationship between democracy and development in 135 countries found that ‘the odds against democracy in India were extremely high’. Given its low levels of income and literacy, and its high levels of social conflict, India was ‘predicted as [a] dictatorship during the entire period’ of the study (1950–90). in fact, it was a democracy practically the entire period studied, there was only one way to characterize India, namely as a major outlier.”
Partition
“Gandhi was, and remains, greatly admired by some and cordially detested by others. Much the same could be said of the monumental edifice he opposed, the British Raj. The British finally left India in August 1947; Gandhi was assassinated by a fellow India a bare five and a half months later.”
“Freedom came to India on 15 August 1947, but patriotic Indians had celebrated their first ‘Independence Day’ 17 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 complete independence. This, it was felt, would both stoke nationalist aspirations and force the British seriously to consider giving up power. In an essay in his journal Young India, Gandhi set out how the day should be observed. ‘It would be good,’ said the leader, ‘If the declaration [of independence] is made by whole villages, whole cities even…It would be well if all the meetings were held at the identical minute in all the places.’
Gandhi suggested that the time of the meeting be advertised in the traditional way, by drum-beats. The celebrations would begin with the hoisting of the national flag. The rest of the day would be spent ‘in doing some constructive work, whether it is spinning or service of ‘untouchables,’ or reunion of Hindus and Mussalmans, or prohibition work, or even all these together, which is not impossible.’ Participants would take a pledge affirming that it was ‘the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil,’ and that ‘if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them, the people will have a further right to alter it or abolish it.’
The resolution to mark the last Sunday of January 1930 as Independence Day was passed in Lahore, where the Congress was holding its annual session. IT was here that Jawaharial Nehru was chosen President of the Congress, in confirmation of his rapidly rising status within the Indian national movement. Born in 1889, 20 years after Gandhi, Nehru was a product of Harrow and Cambridge who had become a close protege of the Mahatma. He was intelligent and articulate, knowledgeable about foreign affairs, and with a particular appeal to the young.
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 congratulated the nation on the success of the solmen 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, bu 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 WWII. 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.”
“Gandhi marked 15 August 1947 with a 24-hour fast. The freedom he had struggled so long for had come at an unacceptable price. Independence had also meant Partition. The last 12 months had seen almost continuous rioting between Hindus and Muslims. The violence had begun on 16 August 1946 in Calcutta and spread to the Bengal countryside. From there it moved on to Bihar, then on to the United Provinces and finally to the province of Punjab, where the scale of the violence and the extent of the killing exceeded even the horrors that had preceded it.
The violence of August-September 1946 was, in the first instance, instigated by the Muslim League, the party which fueled the movement for a separate state of Pakistan. The League was led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, an austere, aloof man, and yet a brilliant political tactician. Like Nehru and Gandhi, he was a lawyer trained in England. Like them, he had once been a member of the Congress, but he had left the party because he felt that it was led by and for Hindus. Despite its nationalist protestations, argued Jinnah, the Congress did not really represent the interests of India’s largest minority, the Muslims.
By starting a riot in Calcutta in August 1946, Jinnah and the League hoped to polarize the two communities further, and thus force the British to divide India when they finally quit. In this endeavor they richly succeeded. The Hindus retaliated savagely in Bihar, their actions supported by local Congress leaders. The British had already said that they would not transfer power to any government ‘whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements in the Indian national life.’ The bloodshed of 1946–7 seemed to suggest that the Muslims were just such an element, who would not live easily or readily under a Congress government dominated by Hindus. Now ‘each communal outbreak was cited as a further endorsement of the two-nation theory, and of the inevitability of the partition of the country.’”
“There were some notable similarities between Bengal and Punjab, the two provinces central to the events of 1946–7. Both had Muslim majorities, and thus were claimed for Pakistan. But both also contained many millions of Hindus. In the event, both provinces were divided, with the Muslim majority districts going over to East or West Pakistan, while the districts in which other religious groups dominated were allotted to India.
But there were some crucial differences between the two provinces as well. Bengal had a long history of often bloody conflict between Hindus and Muslims, dating back to (at least) the last decades of the 19th century. By contrast, in the Punjab the different communities had lived more or less in peace — there were no significant clashes on religious grounds before 1947. In Bengal large sections of the Hindu middle class actively sought Partition. They were quite happy to shuffle off the Muslim-dominated areas and make their home in or around the provincial capital. For several decades now, Hindu professionals had been making their way to the west, along with landlords who sold their holdings and invested the proceeds in property or businesses in Calcutta. By contrast, the large Hindu community in the Punjab was dominated by merchants and moneylenders, bound by close ties to the agrarian classes. They were unwilling to relocate, and hoped until the end that somehow Partition would be avoided.
The last difference, and the most telling, was the presence in the Punjab of the Sikhs. This third leg of the stool was absent in Bengal, where it was a straight fight between Hindus and Muslims. Like the Muslims, the Sikhs had one book, one formless God, and were a close-knit community of believers. Sociologically, however, the Sikhs were closer to the Hindus. With them they had a relationship of inter-dining and inter-marriage and a shared history of persecution at the hands of the Mughals.
Forced to choose, the Sikhs would come down on the side of the Hindus. But they were in no mood to choose at all. For there were substantial communities of Sikh farmers in both parts of the province. At the turn of the century, Sikhs from eastern Punjab had been asked by the British to settle areas in the west, newly served by irrigation. In a matter of a few decades they had built prosperous settlements in these ‘canal colonies.’ Why now should they leave them? Their holy city, Amritsar, lay in the east, but Nankana Saheb (the birthplace of the founder of their religion) lay in the west. Why should they not enjoy free access to both places?
Unlike the Hindus of Bengal, the Sikhs of Punjab were slow to comprehend the meaning and reality of Partition. At first they doggedly insisted that they would stay where they were. Then, as the possibility of division became more likely, they claimed a separate state for themselves, to be called ‘Khalistan.’ This demand no one took seriously, not the Hindus, not the Muslims, and least of all the British.
Historian Robin Jeffrey has pointed out that, at least until the months of August 1947, the Sikhs were ‘more sinned against than sinning.’ They had been ‘abandoned by the British, tolerated by the Congress, taunted by the Muslim League, and above all, frustrated by the failures of their own political leadership. It was the peculiar (not to say tragic) dilemma of the Sikhs that best explains why, when religious violence finally came to the Punjab, it was so accelerated and concentrated. From March to August, every month was hotter and bloodier than the last. Nature cynically lent its weigh to politics and history, for the monsoon was unconscionably late in coming in 1947.”
“Ten million refugees were on the move, on foot, by bullock carts, and by train, sometimes traveling under army escort, at other times trusting to fate, and their respective gods. Nehru flew over one refugee convoy which comprised 100,000 people and stretched for ten miles. It was traveling from Julundur to Lahore, and had to pass through Amritsar, where there were 70,000 refugees from West Punjab ‘in an excited state’. Nehru suggested bulldozing a road around the town, so that the two convoys would not meet.
This was without question the greatest mass migration in history. ‘Nowhere in known history had the transfer of so many millions taken place in so few days.’”
“Trouble flared up once more in Bengal. There were reports of fresh rioting in Noakhali. In Calcutta itself the peace was broken in Gandhi’s own adopted locality of Beliaghata. Here, on 31 August, a Hindu youth was attacked by Muslims. Retaliatory violence followed and spread. By dusk on 1 September more than 50 people lay dead. That night, Gandhi decided he would go on a fast. ‘But how can you fast against the hooligans?’ asked a friend. Gandhi’s answer, according to an eyewitness, ran as follows: ‘I know I shall be able to tackle the Punjab too if I can control Calcutta. But if I falter now, the conflagration may spread and soon. I can see clearly two or three [foreign] Powers will be upon us and thus end our short-lived dream of independence.’ ‘But if you die the conflagration will be worse,’ replied the friend. ‘At least I won’t be there to witness it,’ said Gandhi. ‘I shall have done my bit.’
Gandhi began his fast on 2 September. By the next day Hindu and Muslim hooligans were coming to him and laying down their arms. Mixed processions for communal harmony took place in different parts of the city. A deputation of prominent politicians representing the Congress, the Muslim League and the locally influential Hindu Mahasabha assured Gandhi that there would be no further rioting. The Mahatma now broke his fast, which had lasted three days.
The pace held, prompting Lord Mountbatten to remark famously that one unarmed man had been more effective than 50,000 troops in Punjab.”
“Gandhi had fought a lifelong battle for a free and united India; and yet, at the end, he could view its division with detachment and equanimity. Others were less forgiving. On 30 January he was shot dead by a young man at his daily prayer meeting. The assassin, who surrendered afterward, was a Brahmin from Poona. He was tried and later sentenced to death, but not before he made a remarkable speech justifying his act. He claimed that his main provocation was the Mahatma’s ‘constant and consistent pandering to the Muslims,’ ‘culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast [which] at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately.”
“Why could not the unity of Punjab, or of India, be saved? There have been three rather different answers on offer. The first blames the Congress leadership for underestimating Jinnah and the Muslims. The second blames Jinnah for pursuing his goal of a separate country regardless of human consequences. The third holds the British responsible, claiming that they promoted a divide between Hindus and Muslims to perpetuate their rule.
All three explanations carry an element of truth. It’s 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 that the Muslim masses would rather follow his socialist credo than a party based on faith. Meanwhile, the Muslims steadily moved over from the 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 cut a deal at all.
It’s also true that some of Jinnah’s political turns defy any explanation other than that of 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 his claims of faith. (He liked his whisky and, according to some accounts, his ham sandwiches too.) However, from the late 1930s he assiduously began to stoke religious passions. The process was to culminate in his calling for Direct Action Day, the day that set in train the bloody trail of violence and counterviolence that made Partition inevitable.”
“To make the protection of British lives the top priority was pretty much state policy. In February 1947 the governor of Bengal said that his ‘first action in the event of an announcement of a date for withdrawal of British power…would be to have the troops ‘standing to’ and prepare for a concentration of outlying Europeans at very short notice as soon as hostile reactions began to show themselves.’ In fact, in the summer of 1947 white men and women were the safest people in India. No one was interested in killing them. But their insecurity meant that many army units were placed near European settlements instead of being freed for riot control elsewhere.”
“Few men have been so concerned about how history would portray them as Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy and governor general of India. As a veteran journalist once remarked, Mountbatten appeared to act as ‘his own PR Officer.’ An aide of Mountbatten was more blunt, calling his boss ‘the vainest man alive.’ The viceroy always instructed photographers to shoot him from six inches above the eyeline because his friend, actor Cary Grant, had told him that this way the wrinkles didn’t show.”
The Princely States
“When the British departed the subcontinent they left behind more than 500 distinct pieces of territory. Two of these were the newly created nations of India and Pakistan; the others comprised the assorted chiefdoms and states that made up what was known as ‘princely India.’ The dissolution of these units is a story of extraordinary interest that has rarely been told.”
“The princely states were so many that there was even disagreement as to their number. One historian puts it at 521; another at 565. They were 500+, by any count, and they varied very widely in terms of size and status. At one end of the scale were the massive states of Kashmir and Hyderabad, each the size of a large European country; at the other end, tiny fiefdoms of a dozen or less villages.
The larger princely states were the product of the longue duree of Indian history as much as of British policy.”
“Whatever their past history, these states owed their mid-20th century shape and powers — or lack thereof — to the British. Starting as a firm of traders, the East India Company gradually moved toward a position of overlordship. They were helped here by the decline of the Mughals after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. Indian rulers were seen by the Company as strategic allies, useful in checking the ambitions of their common enemy, the French. The Company forced treaties on these states, which recognized it as the ‘paramount power.’ Thus, while legally the territories the various Nawabs and Maharajas ruled over were their own, the British retained to themselves the right to appoint ministers and control succession, and to extract a large subsidy for the provision of administrative and military support. In many cases the treaties also transferred valuable areas from the Indian states to the British. It was no accident that, except for the states comprising Kathiawar and two chiefdoms in the South, no Indian state had a coastline. The political dependence was made more acute by economic dependence, with the states relying on British India for raw materials, industrial goods, and employment opportunities.”
“Good or bad, profligate or caring, autocratic or part-democratic, by the 1940s all the princes now found themselves facing a common problem: their future in a free India. In the first part of 1946 British India had a definitive series of elections, but these left untouched the princely states. As a consequence there was a ‘growing antipathy toward princely governments.’ Their constitutional status, however, remained ambiguous. The Cabinet Mission of 1946 focused on the Hindu-Muslim or United India vs. Pakistan question; it barely spoke of the states at all. Likewise the statement of 20 February 1947, formally announcing that the Raj was to end, also finessed the question. On 3 June the British announced both the date of their final withdrawal and the creation of two dominions — but this statement also didn’t make clear the position of the states. Some rulers began now ‘to luxuriate in wild dreams of independent power in an India of many partitions.’
Now, just in time, came the wake-up calls.”
“In 1946–7 the president of the All-India States Peoples Conference was Nehru. His biographer notes that Nehru ‘held strong views on this subject of the States. He detested the feudal autocracy and total suppression of popular feeling, and the prospect of these puppet princes…setting themselves up as independent monarchs drove him into intense exasperation.’ The prospect was encouraged by the officials of the Political Department, who led the princes to believe that once the British had left they could, if they so wished, stake their claims to independence.
On their part, the princes disliked and even feared Nehru. Fortunately the Congress had assigned the problems of the states to the pragmatic administrator Vallabhbhai Patel. Through the spring of 1947 Patel threw a series of lunch parties, where he urged his princely guests to help the Congress in framing a new constitution for India. This they could do by sending delegates to the Constituent Assembly, whose deliberations had begun in Delhi in December 1946. At the same time Patel wrote to the more influential chief ministers, urging them to ask their rules to come to terms with the party which would now rule India.
One of the first princes to come over to Patel’s side was the Maharaja of Bikaner. His chief minister was K.M. Pannikar, a widely respected historian who, more clearly than other people, could see that the ‘Vasco de Gama epcoh of Asian history’ was swiftly coming to an end. The forces of nationalism were irresistible; if one did not compromise with them, one would be swept away. Accordingly, in the first week of April 1947 Bikaner issued a public appeal to his fellow princes to join the Constituent Assembly. Their entry into the Assembly, he said, would ‘make quite clear to everyone that the Indian Princes are not only working for the good of their States and for their mother country but are above all patriotic and worthy sons of India.’
The first chiefdom to join the Constituent Assembly, back in February, had in fact been the state of Baroda. After Bikaner’s appeal a dozen more states joined, many of them from Rajasthan. Pannikar and Bikaner had ‘led the Rajput princes in a fresh act of traditional obeisance to Delhi, where in place of Mogul or British, a Pandit now rules. They have made a compact with Congress, from their POV, rightly.’
Several states in Rajasthan, Bikaner included, would share a border with Pakistan; this, and ancient memories of battles with Muslim kings, predisposed them to an early compromise with Congress. But other states in the hinterland were less sure how far Delhi’s writ would run after the British left. Might not the situation revert to that of the 18th century, when the peninsula was divided up among dozens or more or less sovereign states?”
“Mountbatten began by telling the princes that the Indian Independence Act had released ‘the States from all their obligations to the Crown.’ They were now technically independent, or, put another way, rudderless, on their own. The old links were broken, but ‘if nothing can be put in its place, only chaos can result’ — a chaos that ‘will hit the States first.’ He advised them to forge relations with the new nation closest to them. As he brutally put it, ‘you cannot run away from the Dominion Government which is your neighbor any more than you can run away from the subjects for shoe welfare you are responsible.’
The Instrument of Accession the princes were being asked to sign would cede away defense — but in any case, said Mountbatten, the states would, by themselves, ‘be cut off from any source of supplies of up-to-date arms or weapons.’ It would cede away external affairs, but the princes could ‘hardly want to go to the expense of having ambassadors or ministers or consuls in all these foreign countries.’ And it would also cede away communications, but this was ‘really a means of maintaining the lifeblood of the whole subcontinent.’ The Congress offer, said the viceroy, left the rulers ‘with great internal authority’ while divesting them of matters they couldn’t deal with on their own.
Mountbatten’s talk to the Chamber of Princes was a tour de force. In my opinion it ranks as the most significant of all his acts in India. It finally persuaded the princes that the British would no longer protect or patronize them, and that independence for them was a mirage.
Mountbatten had prefaced his speech with personal letters to the more important princes. Afterwards he continued to press them to sign the Instrument of Accession. If they did so before 15 August, said the viceroy, he might be able to get them decent terms with the Congress. But if they didn’t listen, then they might face an ‘explosive situation’ after Independence, when the full might of nationalist wrath would turn against them.
By 15 August virtually all the states had signed the Instrument of Accession. Meanwhile, the British had departed, never to return. Now the Congress went back on the undertaking that if the princes signed up on the three specified subjects, ‘in other matters we would scrupulously respect their autonomous existence.’ The praja mandals grew active once more. In Mysore a movement was launched for ‘full democratic government’ in the state. 3,000 people courted arrest. In some states in Kathlawar and Orissa, protesters took possession of government offices, courts, and prisons.
Patel and the Congress Party cleverly used the threat of popular protest to make the princes fall in line. They had already acceded; now they were being asked to integrate, that is to dissolve their states as independent entities and merge with the Union of India. In exchange they would be allowed to retain their titles and offered an annual allowance in perpetuity. If they desisted from complying, they faced the threat of uncontrolled agitation by subjects whose suppressed emotions had been released by the advent of Independence.”
“In exchange for their land each ruler was offered a ‘privy purse,’ its size determined by the revenue earned by the state. The bigger, more strategically placed states had to be given better deals, but relevant too were such factors as the antiquity of the ruling dynasty, the religious halo which might surround it, and their martial traditions. Apart from an annual purse, the rulers were allowed to retain their palaces and other personal properties and, as significantly, their titles. The Maharaja of Chhota Hazri would still be the Maharaja of Chhota Hazri, and he could pass on the title to his son as well.
To reassure the princes, Patel sought to include a constitutional guarantee with regard to the privy purses. But, as VP Menon pointed out, the pay-off had been trifling compared to the gains. In addition to securing the political consolidation of India, the integration of the states was, in economic terms, a veritable steal. By Menon’s calculation, while the government would pay out some Rs150 million to the princes, in tens years’ time the revenue from their states would amount to at least ten times as much.”
“In a mere two years, 500+ autonomous and sometimes ancient chiefdoms had been dissolved into 14 new administrative units of India. This, by any reckoning, was a stupendous achievement. It had been brought about by wisdom, foresight, hard work, and not a little intrigue.”
“Travancore was the first state to question the right of the Congress to succeed the British as the paramount power. The state was strategically placed, at the extreme southern tip of the subcontinent. It had the most highly educated populace in India, a thriving maritime trade, and newly discovered reserves of monazite, from which is extracted thorium, used in the production of atomic energy and bombs. The chief minister of Travancore was Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Alyar, a brilliant and ambitious lawyer who had been in his post for 16 years. It was commonly believed that he was the real ruler of the state, whose maharaja and maharani were like putty in his hands.
As early as February 1946, Sir C.P. had made clear his belief that, when the British left, Travancore would become a ‘perfectly independent unit,’ as it had been before 1795, when it first signed a treaty with the East India Company. In summer 1947 he held a series of press conferences seeking the cooperation of the people of Travancore in his bid for independence. He reminded them of the antiquity of their ruling dynasty and of Travancore’s sinking of a Dutch fleet back in 1741 (this apparently the only naval defeat ever inflicted by an Asian state on a European power). This appeal to a past redolent in regional glory was meant to counter the pan-Indian nationalism of the present.”
“Sir C.P. returned to Travancore, his mind still apparently firm on independence. Then, while on his way to a music concert on 25 July, he was attacked by a man in military shorts, knifed in the face and body and taken off for emergency surgery. (The would-be assassin turned out to be a member of the Kerala Communist Party.) The consequences were immediate, and from the Indian POV, most gratifying. As the viceroy put it in his weekly report to London, ‘The States Peoples organization turned the heat on and Travancore immediately gave in.’ From his hospital bed Sir C.P. advised his maharaja to ‘follow the path of conciliation and compromise’ which he, ‘being autocratic and overdecisive,’ had not himself followed. On 30 July the maharaja wired the viceroy of his decision to accede to the Indian Union.”
“A case more curious still was that of Jodhpur, an old and large state with a Hindu king as well as a largely Hindu population. At a lunch hosted by Mountbatten in mid-July, the young Maharaja of Jodhpur had joined the other Rajput princes in indicating his willingness to accede to India. But soon afterwards someone — it’s not clear who — planted the idea in his head that since his state bordered Pakistan, he might get better terms from that dominion. Possibly at Bhopal’s initiative, a meeting was arranged between him and Jinnah. At this meeting the Muslim League leader offered Jodhpur full port facilities in Karachi, unrestricted import of arms and supply of grain from Sindh to his own famine-stricken districts. In one version, Jinnah is said to have handed the maharaja a blank sheet and said, ‘You can fill in all your conditions.’
If Jodhpur had defected to Pakistan, this would have opened up the possibility that the states contiguous to it — such as Jaipur and Udaipur — would do likewise. However, K.M. Pannikar got wind of the plan and asked Patel to intervene. Patel contacted Jodhpur and promised him free imoprt of arms too, as well as adequate grain. Meanwhile, his own nobles and village headmen had told the maharaja that he could not really expect them to be at ease in a Muslim state. The ruler of an adjoining state, Jaisalmer, also asked him what would happen if he joined Pakistan and a riot broke out between Hindus and Muslims. Whose side would he then take?
And so the Maharaja of Jodhpur also came round, but not before a last-minute theatrical show of defiance. When presented with the Instrument of Accession in the anteroom of the viceroy’s office, Jodhpur took out a revolver and held it to the secretary’s head, saying, ‘I will not accept your dictation.’ But in a few minutes he cooled down and signed on the line.”
“Among the states that had not signed up by 15 August was Junagadh, which lay in the peninsula of Kathlawar in western India. This, like Bhopal, had a Muslim Nawab ruling over a chiefly Hindu population. On three sides Junagadh was surrounded by Hindu states or by India, but on the fourth it had a long coastline. Its main port, Veraval, was 325 nautical miles from the Pakistani port city (and capital) of Karachi. Junagadh’s ruler in 1947, Mohabat Khan, had one abiding passion: dogs. His menagerie included 2,000 pedigree canines, including 16 hounds specially deputed to guard the palace. When two of his favorite hounds mated, the Nawab announced a public holiday. On their ‘marriage’ he expended 300,000 rupees, or roughly a thousand times the average annual income of one of his subjects.
Within the borders of Junagadh lay the Hindu holy shrine of Somnath, as well as Girnar, a hilltop with magnificent marble temples built by, and for, the Jains. Both Somnath and Girnar attracted thousands of pilgrims from other parts of India. The forests of Junagadh were also the last refuge of the Asiatic lion. These had been protected by Mohabat Khan and his forebears, who discouraged even high British officials from hunting them.”
“The state of Hyderabad also had a Muslim ruler and a mostly Hindu population; but it was a prize greater by far than Bhopal or Junagadh. The state ran right across the Deccan plateau, in the center of the subcontinent. Its area was in excess of 80,000 sq. miles, and its population more than 16 million, these distributed among three linguistic zones: Telugu, Kannada, and Marathi. Hyderabad was surrounded by Central Provinces in the north, by Bombay in the west, and by Madras in the south and east. Although landlocked, it was self-sufficient in food, cotton, oilseed, coal, and cement. Petrol and salt, however, had to be imported from British India.
Hyderabad began life as a Mughal vassal state in 1713. Its ruler was conventionally known as the Nizam. 85% of its population was Hindu, but Muslims dominated the army, police, and civil service. The Nizam himself owned about 10% of the land of the state; much of the rest was controlled by large landowners. From his holdings the ruler earned 25 million rupees a year in rent, while another 5 million rupees were granted him from the state treasury. There were some very rich nobles, but the bulk of the Muslims, like the bulk of the Hindus, worked as factory hands, artisans, laborers, and peasants.”
“This Nizam was determined to hang on to more than his personal wealth. What he wanted for his state, when the British left, was independence, with relations forged directly between him and the Crown. To help him with his case he had employed Sir Walter Monckton, a King’s Counsel and one of the most highly regarded lawyers in England. For the Englishman’s services the Nizam was prepared to pay a packet: as much as 90,000 guineas a year, it was rumored. In a meeting with the viceroy, Monckton ‘emphasized that His Exalted Highness would have great difficulty in taking any course likely to compromise his independent sovereignty.’ When Mountbatten suggested that Hyderabad should join the Constituent Assembly, the Nizam’s lawyer answered that if India pressed too hard his client might ‘seriously consider the alternative of joining Pakistan.’
The Nizam’s ambitions, if realized, would virtually cut off the north of India from the south. And, as the constitutional expert Reginald Coupland pointed out, ‘India could live if its Moslem limbs in the northwest and northeast were amputated, but could it live without its midriff?’ Sardar Patel put it more directly saying that an independent Hyderabad constituted a ‘cancer in the belly of India.’
In the face-off between the Nizam and the government of India, each side had a proxy of its own. The Indians had the Hyderabad State Congress, formed in 1938, which pressed hard for representative government within the state. The Nizam had the Ittihad-ul-Muslimeen, which wished to safeguard the position of Muslims in administration and politics. Another important actor was the Communist Party of India, which had a strong presence in the Telengana region of the state.
In 1946–7 all three voices grew more strident. The State Congress demanded that Hyderabad fall into line with the rest of India. Its leaders organized street protests, and courted arrest. Simultaneously, the Ittihad was being radicalized by its new leader, Kasim Razvi, an Aligarh-trained lawyer and a passionate believer in the idea of ‘Muslim pride.’ Under Razvi the Ittihad had promoted a paramilitary body called the ‘Razakars,’ whose members marched up and down the roads of Hyderabad, carrying swords and guns.
In the countryside, meanwhile, there was a rural uprising led and directed by the communists. Across Telengana large estates were confiscated and redistributed to land-hungry peasants. The insurrectionists first seized all holdings in excess of 500 acres, bringing the limit down successively to 200 and then 100 acres. They also abolished the institution of forced labor. In the districts of Nalgonda, Warangal and Karimnagar the communists ran what amounted to a parallel government. More than 1,000 villages were ‘practically freed from the Nizam’s rule.’”
“On 13 September a contingent of Indian troops was sent into Hyderabad. In less than four days they had full control of the state. Those killed in the fighting included 42 Indian soldiers and 2,000-odd Razakars.
On the night of the 17th, the Nizam spoke on the radio. He announced a ban on the Razakars and advised his subjects to ‘live in peace and harmony with the rest of the people in India.’”
“In truth, both politicians and bureaucrats had as their indispensable allies the most faceless of all humans: the people. For some decades, the people of the princely states had been clamoring in numbers for the rights granted to the citizens of British India. Many states had vigorous and active praja mandals. The princes were deeply sensible of this; indeed, without the threat of popular protest from below, they would not have ceded power so easily to the Indian government.”
Kashmir
“The only thing that will change our mind is if one side or the other decides to use force against us. Two weeks after these words were spoken a force of several thousand armed men invaded the state from the north. On 22 October they crossed the border that separated the North-West Frontier Provinces from Kashmir and briskly made their way toward the capital, Srinagar.
Most of these raiders were Pathans from what was now a province of Pakistan. This much is undisputed; what is not so certain is why they came and who was helping them. These two questions lie at the heart of the Kashmir dispute; 60 years later, historians still cannot provide definitive answers to them. One reason for this was that the northern extremity of Kashmir was both obscure and inaccessible. No railways or roads penetrated these high mountains. No anthropologists had come here, nor any journalists. There are thus no independent eyewitness accounts of what came to be known as the ‘tribal invasion of Kashmir.’
There are, however, plenty of laded accounts, biased in one direction or the other. At the time, and later, Indians believed that the tribals were pushed across the border by Pakistan, who also supplied them with rifles and ammunition. The Pakistanis disclaimed any involvement in the invasion — they insisted that it was a ‘spontaneous’ rushing of Pathan Muslims to the aid of co-religionists persecuted by a Hindu king and administration.”
“It shouldn’t surprise us that the estimates of the number of invaders vary. Some said they were as few as 2,000, others that they were as many as 13,000. We do know that they had rifles and grenades, and that they traveled in lorries. Their incursion into Kashmir was openly encouraged by the prime minister of the North-West Frontier Provinces, Abdul Qayyum. The British governor turned a blind eye. So did the British officers who then served with the Pakistan army. As Jinnah’s American biographer observes, ‘trucks, petrol, and drivers were hardly standard tribal equipment, and British officers as well as Pakistani officers all along the northern Pakistan route they traversed knew and supported, even if they did not actually organize and instigate, the violent October operation by which Pakistan seems to have hoped to trigger the integration of Kashmir into the nation.’”
“Sheikh Abdullah and Mahajan urged that India immediately send troops to push back the invaders. Mountbatten suggested, however, that it would be best to secure Hari Singh’s accession to India before committing any forces to his defense.
Menon flew now to Jammu, where the Maharaja had taken refuge. On arrival at the palace he ‘found it in a state of utter turmoil, with valuable articles strewn all over the place.’ The maharaja was asleep, recovering from an all-night drive from Srinagar. He was woken, and agreed to accede at once. Menon took the signed Instrument of Accession back with him to Delhi.”
“Within Kashmir Abdullah gave top priority to the redistribution of land. Under the maharaja’s regime, a few Hindus and fewer Muslims had very large holdings, with the bulk of the rural population serving as laborers or as tenants-at-will. In his first year in power Abdullah transferred 40,000 acres of surplus land to the landless. He also outlawed absentee ownership, increased the tenant’s share from 25% to 75% of the crop and placed a moratorium on debt. His socialistic policies alarmed some elements in the government of India, especially as he did not pay compensation to the dispossessed landlords. But Abdullah saw this as crucial to progress in Kashmir. As he told a press conference in Delhi, if he was not allowed to implement agrarian reforms, he would not continue as prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir.”
“In April 1949 Abdullah won a major victory when Hari Singh was replaced as sadr-i-riyasat by his 18-year-old son, Karan Singh. The next month Abdullah and three other National Conference men were chosen to represent Kashmir in the Constituent Assembly in Delhi, in a further affirmation of the state’s integration with India. That summer the Valley opened itself once more for tourists. As a sympathetic journalist put it, ‘every tourist who goes to Kashmir this summer will be rendering as vital a service to Kashmir — and to India — as a soldier fighting at the front.’”
“One might say of the conflict of 1947–8 that it had only losers. The indecision — with neither nation succeeding in acquiring the whole of the state — hurt both sides then, and it hurts them now.”
The Great Migration
“The first place to resettle the refugees was on land vacated by Muslims in the eastern part of the Punjab. If the transfer of populations had been ‘the greatest mass migration’ in history, now commenced ‘the biggest land resettlement operation in the world.’ As against 2.7 million hectares abandoned by Hindus and Sikhs in West Punjab, there were only 1.9 million hectares left behind by Muslims in East Punjab. The shortfall was made more acute by the fact that the areas in the west of the province had richer soils, and were more abundantly irrigated. Indeed, back in the late 19th century, hundreds of Sikh villages had migrated en masse to the west to cultivate land in the newly created ‘canal colonies.’ There they had made the desert flourish but one fine day in 1947 they were told that their garden now lay in Pakistan. So, in a bare two generations, these dispossessed Sikhs found themselves back in their original home.
To begin with, each family of refugee farmers was given an allotment of four hectares, regardless of its holding in Pakistan. Loans were advanced to buy seed and equipment. While cultivation commenced on these temporary pots, applicants were invited for permanent allotments. Each family was asked to submit evidence of how much land it had left behind. Applications were received from 10 March 1948; within a month, more than half a million claims had been filed. These claims were then verified in open assemblies consisting of other migrants from the same village. As each claim was read out by a government official, the assembly approved, amended, or rejected it.
Expectedly, many refugees were at first prone to exaggeration. However, every false claim was punished, sometimes by a reduction in land allotted, in extreme cases by a brief spell of imprisonment. This acted as a deterrent; still, an officer closely associated with the process estimated that there was an overall inflation of about 25%. To collect, collate, verify, and act upon the claims a Rehabilitation Secretariat was set up in Jullundur. At its peak there were 7,000 officials working here; they came to constitute a kind of refugee city of their own. The bulk of these officials were accommodated in tents, the camp serviced by makeshift lights and latrines and with temporary shrines, temples for Hindus and gurdwaras for Sikhs.”
“A ‘standard acre’ was defined as that amount of land which could yield 10–11 maunds of rice. (A maund is about 40kg.) In the dry, unirrigated districts of the east, four physical acres comprised one ‘standard’ acre, whereas in the lush canal colonies, a real acre of land more or less equaled its standard counterpart.
The concept of the standard acre innovatively took care of the variations in soil and climate across the province. The idea of the ‘graded cut,’ meanwhile, helped overcome the massive discrepancy between the land left by the refugees and now the land now available to them — a gap that was close to a million acres. For the first ten acres of any claim, a cut of 25% was implemented — thus one got only 7.5 acres instead of ten. For higher claims the cuts were steeper: 30% for 10–30 acres, and on upwards, till those having in excess of 500 acres were ‘taxed’ at the rate of 95%. The biggest single loser was a lady who had inherited (and lost) her husband’s estate of 11,500 acres, spread across 35 villages of the Gujranwala and Sialkot districts. In compensation, she was allotted a mere 835 acres in a single village of Karnal.
By November 1949 Tarlok Singh and his men had made 250,000 allotments of land. These refugees were then distributed equitably across the districts of East Punjab. Neighbors and families were resettled together, although the recreation of entire village communities proved impossible. Refugees were invited to protest against their allotments; close to 100,000 families asked for a review. A third of these objections were acted upon; as a result, 80,000 hectares changed hands once again.
In exchange for their well-watered lands in the west, these refugees were given impoverished holdings in the east. With the implementation of graded cuts, they had less of it as well. But with characteristic ingenuity and enterprise, they set to work, digging new wells, building new houses, planting their crops. By 1950 a depopulated countryside was alive once again.
Yet a sense of loss prevailed. The economy could be rebuilt, but the cultural wrongs of Partition could never be undone — not in, or by, either side. The Sikhs once more had land to cultivate, but they would never get back much-loved places of worship. These included the gurdwara in Lahore where lay buried their great warrior-chieftan, Ranjit Singh, as well as Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of the founder of the faith, Guru Nanak.”
“Like their counterparts settled on the farms of East Punjab, the refugees in Delhi displayed much thrift and drive. In time they came to gain ‘a commanding influence in Delhi,’ dominating its trade and commerce. Indeed, a city that was once a Mughal city, then a British city, had by the 1950s emphatically become a Punjabi city.”
“Like Delhi, Bombay also had its culture and social geography transformed by Partition. By July 1948 there were half a million refugees in the city, these arriving from Sindh, Punjab, and the Frontier. The refugees further intensified what was already the most acute of Bombay’s problems: the housing shortage. Almost a million people were now sleeping on the pavements. Slums were growing apace. In crowded tenements, people lived 15 or 20 to a room.”
“Where some refugees took possession of empty houses, others colonized vacant land along roads and railway lines, as well as freshly cleared shrub jungle and recently drained marshes. The squatters ‘would stealthily enter these plots at night, and under cover of darkness rapidly put up makeshift shelters. They would then refuse to leave, while offering in many instances to pay a fair price for the land.
It was the government of West Bengal that willy-nilly forced the refugees to take the law into their own hands. For one thing, there had been no massive migration in the other direction — as there had been in the Punjab — leaving untended fields and farms for the refugees to be settled in. For another, the government liked to believe — or hope — that this influx was temporary, and that when things settled down the Hindus would return to their homes in the east. Buttressing this belief was the claim that the Benglais were somehow less ‘communal-minded’ than the Punjabis. Here, the Muslim spoke the same language and ate the same food as his Hindu neighbor; thus he might more readily continue to live cheek-by-jowl with him.
This latter argument was vigorously rejected by the refugees themselves. For them there was no going back to what they saw as an Islamic state.”
“In Bengal, it was the communists who most successfully mobilized the refugees. It was they who organized the processions to government offices, and it was they who orchestrated the forcible occupation of fallow land in Calcutta, land to which the refugees ‘had no sanction other than organized strength and dire necessity.’ Thus in different parts of the city grew numerous impromptu settlements, ‘clusters of huts with thatch, tile, or corrugated-iron roofs, bamboo-mat walls and mud floors, built in the East Bengal style.’
By early 1950 there were about 200,000 refugees in these squatter colonies. In the absence of state support, the refugees ‘formed communities of their own, framed rules for the administration of the colonies and organized themselves into a vast united body.’ A ‘South Calcutta Refugee Rehabilitation Committee’ claimed to represent 40,000 families who, in their respective colonies, had constructed a total of 500 miles of road, sunk 700 tube wells and started 45 high schools as well as 100 primary schools — all at their own expense and through their own initiative. The Committee demanded that the government make these colonies ‘legal.’”
“Unquestionably the main victims of Partition were women: Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim. As the respected Sindhi Congress politician Choitram Gidwani put it, ‘in no war have the women suffered so much.’ Women were killed, maimed, violated, and abandoned. After Independence the brothels of Delhi and Bombay came to be filled with refugee women, who had been thrown out by their families after what someone else had done to them — against their will.
In summer 1947, as the violence in the Punjab spread from village to village, Hindus and Sikhs in the east of the province abducted and kept Muslim women. On the other side the compliment — if it may be called that — was returned, with young Hindu and Sikh girls seized by Muslim men. However, after the dust had settled and the blood dried, the governments of India and Pakistan agreed that these captured women must be returned to their original families.”
“The abducted women were tracked down singly, case by case. When a person had been located, the police would enter the village at sunset, after the men had returned from the fields. An ‘informer’ would lead them to the home of the abductor. The offender would usually deny that the women in his possession had been seized. After his objections were overcome — sometimes by force — the woman would be taken away, at first to a government camp, and then across the border.
By May 1948 some 12,500 women had been found and restored to their families. Ironically, and tragically, many of the women did not want to be rescued at all. For after their seizure they had made some of kind with their new surroundings. Now, as they were being reclaimed, these women were deeply unsure about how their original families would receive them. They had been ‘defiled’ and, in a further complication, many were pregnant. These women knew that even if they were accepted, their children — born out of a union with the ‘enemy’ — would never be. Often, the police and the accomplices had to use force to take them away.”
“Their successes in Hyderabad had encouraged the communists to think of a countrywide peasant revolution. Telengana, they hoped, would be the beginning of a Red India. The party unveiled its new line at a secret conference held in Calcutta in February 1948. The mood was set by a speaker who said that the ‘heroic people of Telengana’ had shown the way ‘to freedom and real democracy’; they were the ‘real future of India and Pakistan.’ If only the communist cadres could ‘create this spirit of revolution among the masses, among the toiling people, we shall find reaction collapsing like a house of cards.”
“From his underground hideout [Ranadive] called for a general strike and peasant uprisings across the country. Communist circulars urged their cadres to ‘fraternize with the revolutionary laborers in the factories and the students in the ‘streets,’ and to ‘turn your guns and bayonets and fire upon the Congress fascists.’ The ultimate aim was to ‘destroy the murderous Congress government.’
Ranadive and his son took heart from the victory of the communists in China. In September 1949, shortly after Mao Zedong had come to power, Ranadive wrote him a letter of congratulation, saying that ‘the toiling masses of India feel jubilant over this great victory. They know it hastens their own liberation. They’re inspired by it to fight more determinedly and courageously their battle for ending the present regime [in India] and establishing the rule of the People’s Democracy. The Indian communists were also egged on by Russian theoreticians, who believed that ‘the political regime established in India is similar in many respects to the anti-popular, reactionary regime which existed in Kuomintang China.’ The Soviet embassy in Delhi itself had a large staff, such that (in the words of a senior civil servant) the Indian ‘communist movement [was] receiving first-class direction on the spot.’
The communists had declared war on the Indian state. The government responded with all the force at its command. As many as 50,000 party men and sympathizers were arrested and detained. In Hyderabad the police arrested important leaders of communist dalams, although Ravi Reddy, ‘the father of the Communist movement in Deccan, [was] still at large. The military governor, J.N. Chaudhuri, launched a propaganda war against the communists. Telugu pamphlets dropped on the villages announced the Nizam’s private Crown lands would be distributed by the peasantry. Theatrical companies touring the villages presented the government case through drama and pantomime. In one play, Chaudhuri was portrayed as a Hindu deity; the communists, as demons.
The propaganda and the repression had its effect. The membership of the party dropped from 89k in 1948 to mere 20k two years later. The government’s counter-offensive had exposed the ‘lack of popular empathy it experienced for its unbridled revolutionism.’ It appears the party had grossly underestimated the hold of the Congress over the Indian people.”
“The refugees who came into India after independence numbered close to 8 million. This was greater than the populations of small European countries such as Austria or Norway, and as many as lived in the colossal continent of Australia. These people were resettled with time, cash, effort, and, not least, idealism.
There was indeed much heroism and grandeur in the building of a new India. There were also errors and mistakes, loose ends that remained untied. There was pain and suffering in the extinguishing of the princely order, and there was pain and suffering in the resettlement of the refugees. Yet both tasks were, in the end, accomplished.
Notably, the actors in this complicated and tortuous process were all Indian. This, at least on the British side, was completely unanticipated.”
Language
“Hindu, written in the Devanagari script, drew heavily on Sanskrit. Urdu, written in a modified Arabic script, drew on Persian and Arabic. Hindustani, the lingua franca of much of northern India, was a unique amalgram of the two. From the 19th century, as Hindu-Muslim tension grew in northern India, the two languages began to move further and further apart. On the one side there arose a movement to root Hindi more firmly in Sanskrit; on the other, to root Urdu more firmly in the classical languages from which it grew. Especially in the literary world, a purified Hindi and a purified Urdu began to circulate.
Through all this, the language of popular exchange remained Hindustani. This was intelligible to Hindi and Urdu speakers, but also to the speakers of most of the major dialects of the Indo-Gangetic plain: Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Marwari, and so on. However, Hindustani, as well as Hindi and Urdu, were virtually unknown in eastern and southern India. The languages spoken here were Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu, each with a script and sophisticated literary tradition of its own.
Under British rule, English had emerged as the language of higher education and administration. Would it remain in this position after the British left? The politicians of the north thought that it should be replaced by Hindi. The politicians and people of the south preferred that English continue as the vehicle of inter-provincial communication.
Nehru himself was exercised early by the question. In a long 1937 essay he expressed his admiration for the major provincial languages. Without ‘infringing in the least on their domain,’ there must, he thought, still be an all-India language of communication. English was too far removed from the masses, so he opted instead for Hindustani, which he defined as a ‘golden mean’ between Hindi and Urdu. At this time, with Partition not even a possibility, Nehru thought that both scripts could be used. Hindustani had a simple grammar and was relatively easy to learn, but to make it easier still, linguists could evolve a Basic Hindustani after the fashion of Basic English, to be promoted by the state in southern India.
Like Nehru, Gandhi thought that Hindustani could unite north with south, and Hindu with Muslim. It, rather than English, should be made the national language. As he put it, ‘Urdu diction is used by Muslims in writing. Hindi diction is used by Sanskrit pundits. Hindustani is the sweet mingling of the two.’”
“Partition more or less killed the case for Hindustani. The move to further Sanskritize Hindi gathered pace. One saw this at work in the Constituent Assembly, where early references were to Hindustani, but later references all to Hindi. After the division of the country the promoters of Hindi became even more fanatical. As Granville Austin observes, ‘the Hindi-wallahs were ready to risk splitting the Assembly and the country in their unreasoning pursuit of uniformity.’ Their crusade provoked some of the most furious debates in the House. Hindustani was not acceptable to south Indians; Hindi even less so. Whenever a member spoke in Hindi, another member would ask for a translation into English.”
Democracy
“For no officer of state, certainly no Indian official, has ever had such a stupendous task placed in front of him. Consider, first of all, the size of the electorate: 176 million Indians aged 21+, of whom about 85% could not read of write. Each one had to be identified, named, and registered. The registration of voters was merely the first step. For how did one design party symbols, ballot papers, and ballot boxes for a mostly unlettered electorate? Then, sites for polling stations had to be identified, and honest and efficient polling officers recruited. Moreover, concurrent with the general election would be elections to the state assemblies. Working with Sukumar Sen in this regard were the election commissioners of the different provinces, also usually ICS men.
The polls were finally scheduled for the first months of 1952, although some outlying districts would vote earlier. An American observer justly wrote that the mechanics of the election ‘present a problem of colossal proportions.’ Some numbers will help us understand the scale of Sen’s enterprise. 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 tons of steel were consumed; 16,500 clerks were appointed on 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.
The election and the electorate were spread over an area of more than a million square miles. The terrain was huge, diverse, and — for the exercise at hand — sometimes horrendously difficult. In the case of remote hill villages, bridges had to be specially constructed across rivers; in the case of small islands in the Indian Ocean, naval vessels were used to take the rolls to the booths. 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. Sen was outraged by 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 the place of mere descriptions of such voters.’ Nonetheless, some 3 million women voters had finally to be struck from the list. The resulting furor over their omission was considered by Sen to be a ‘good thing,’ for it would help the prejudice vanish before the next elections, by which time the women could be reinstated under their own names.
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, 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 390,000 philas of this ink were used in the election.
Throughout 1951 the Election Commission used the media of film and radio to educate the public about this novel exercise in democracy. A documentary on the franchise and its functions, and the duties of the electorate, was shown in more than 3,000 cinemas. Many more Indians were reached via All-India Radio, which broadcast numerous programs on the constitution, the purpose of adult franchise, the preparation of electoral rolls, and the process of voting.”
“A novel method of advertising was on display in Calcutta, where stray cows had ‘Vote Congress’ written on their backs in Bengali.”
“Faced with wide-ranging opposition from outside, and with some dissidence within his own party, Nehru took to the road — and on occasion the plane and the train as well. From 1 October he commenced a tour; in the space of nine weeks, Nehru covered the country from end to end. He traveled 25,000 miles in all: 18,000 by air, 5,200 by car, 1,600 by train, and even 90 by boat.
Nehru kicked off his party’s campaign with a speech in the Punjab town of Ludhiana on 30 September. The choice of venue was significant: as was the thrust of his talk, which declared ‘an all-out war against communalism.’ He ‘condemned the communal bodies which in the name of Hindu and Sikh culture were spreading the virus of communalism as the Muslim League once did.’ These ‘sinister communal elements’ would if they came to power ‘bring ruin and death to the country.’”
“For the country as a whole, about 60% of registered voters exercised their franchise, this despite the high level of illiteracy. A scholar from London described how a young woman in Himachal walked several miles with her frail mother to vote: ‘for a day, at least, she knew she was important.’ A Bombay-based weekly marveled at the high turnout in the forest districts of Orissa, where tribals came to the booths with bows and arrows. One booth in the jungle reported more than 70% voting; but evidently Sen had got at least some things wrong, for the neighboring booth was visited only by an elephant and two panthers. The press highlighted the especially aged: a 110-year-old man in Madurai who came propped up on either side by a great-grandson, a 95-year-old woman in Ambala, deaf and hunchbacked, who still turned up to vote.”
“The Election Commission had recommended that liquor stalls be kept shut on the days of polling, so that ‘no alcoholic beverages might be available to the rowdy elements in the locality.’ But there was plenty of color nonetheless. A candidate in New Delhi insisted on filing his nomination in the name of ‘Lord Jesus Christ’; a voter in Madras refused to exercise his franchise in favor of any person other than ‘Shri Sukumar Sen, Election Commissioner.’ In Orissa a little person, only 2.5 feet tall, carried a stool with him to the polling booth. Everywhere ballot boxes were found to contain much else besides ballot papers: abusive notes addressed to candidates in one place, photographs of film actors in another. Some boxes were even found to have cash and change, which ‘of course, [was] credited to the Treasury.”
Linguistic States
“The creation of linguistic states was, among other things, a victory of the popular will. Nehru didn’t want it, but Potti Sriramulu did. Sriramulu’s fast lasted 58 days, during the first 55 of which the prime minister ignored it completely. In this time, according to one journalist, he criss-crossed India, delivering 132 speeches on all topics other than language. But once Nehru conceded Andhra, and set up the States Reorganization Commission, it was inevitable that the country as a whole would be reorganized on the basis of language.
The movements for linguistic states revealed an extraordinary depth of popular feeling. For Kannadigas and for Andhras, for Oriyas as for Maharashtrians, language proved a more powerful marker of identity than caste or religion. This was manifest in their struggles, and in their behavior when the struggle was won.
One sign of this was official patronage of the arts. Thus great effort, and cash, went into funding books, plays, and films written or performed in the official language of the state. Much rubbish was funded as a result, but also much work of worth. In particular, the regional literatures have flourished since lingustic reorganization.
Another manifestation was architecture. To build a new capital, or at least a new legislative assembly, became a sine qua non of the new states. In Orissa, for example, two architects were commissioned to design and plan a wide range of government buildings. These, the architects were told, had to ‘represent Orissan culture and workmanship.’ The final product made abundant use of indigenous motifs: columns, arches, and sculpted images of gods. The architecture of new Bhubaneshwar, writes its historian, ‘is an architecture which has risen from the native soil, sacred and pure.’
A more spectacular exhibition of provincial pride was the new assembly-cum-secretariat of the state of Mysore. This was built opposite the Bangalore High Court, a fine columned building in red which remains perhaps the city’s prettiest structure. However, the Mysore chief minister, Kengal Hanumanthaiya, saw the High Court as a colonial excrescence. He first sought permission to demolish it; when this was denied, he resolved that the new Vidhan Souda would dwarf and tame it. it had to convey an ‘idea of power and dignity, the style being Indian, particularly of Mysore and not purely Western.’”
“When it began, the movement for linguistic states generated deep apprehensions among the nationalist elite. They feared it would lead to the Balkanization of India, to the creation of many more Pakistans. ‘Any attempt at redrawing the map of India on a linguistic basis,’ wrote the Times of India in early 1952, ‘would only give the long awaited opportunity to the reactionary forces to come into the open and assert themselves. That will lay an axe at the very root of India’s integrity.’
In retrospect, however, linguistic reorganization seems rather to have consolidated the unity of India. True, the artefacts that have resulted, such as Bangalore’s Vidhan Souda, are not to everybody’s taste. And there have been some serious conflicts between states on the sharing of river waters. However, on the whole the creation of linguistic states has acted as a largely constructive channel for provincial pride. It’s proved quite feasible to be peaceably Kannadiga — or Tamil, or Oriya — as well as contentedly Indian.”
Agrarian Reform
“Rural India was pervaded by an air of timelessness. Peasants, shepherds, carpenters, weavers, all lived and worked as their forefathers had done. As a survey of the 1940s put it, ‘there’s the same plainness of life, the same wrestling with uncertainties of climate (except in favored areas), the same love of simple games, sport, and songs, the same neighborly helpfulness, and the same financial indebtedness.
To the Indian nationalist, however, continuity was merely a euphemism for stagnation. Agricultural productivity was low; hence also levels of nutrition and health. About the only thing that was rising was population. From the late 19th century, as medical services expanded, the death rate rapidly fell. Consequently, since the birth rate remained constant, there was a steady rise in population. Between 1881 and 1941 the population of British India rose fro 257 to 389 million. But (or hence) the per capita availability of food grains declined from an already low level of 200kg per person per year to a mere 150.”
“Almost from the time the Congress was founded in 1885, Indian nationalists had charged the British with exploitation of the peasantry. They resolved that when power came to them, agrarian reform would be at the top of their agenda. Three programs seemed critical. The first was the abolition of land revenue. The second was the massive expansion of irrigation, both to augment productivity and reduce dependence on the monsoon. The third was the reform of the system of land tenure. Particularly in north and east India, the British had encouraged a system of absentee landlordism. In many other districts too, those who tilled the land usually did not own it.
While tenants did not have security of tenure, agricultural laborers had no land to till in the first place. Inequalities in the agrarian economy could be very sharp indeed. The forms of exploitation were manifold and highly innovative. Thus, apart from land tax, landowners in the United Provinces levied an array of additional cesses on their peasants such as motorana (to pay for the landowner’s new car) and hathiana (to pay for his elephants). The landlore was prone to treat his animals and vehicles far better than he did his laborers. Two weeks before Independence a progressive weekly from Madras ran a story about distress in rural Malabar. This profiled a large landlord who owned seven elephants, for which he needed some 25,000kg of paddy. His own tenants, meanwhile, were given three days’ ration for the whole week.
The socialist elements in the Indian National Congress pushed the org to commit itself to thoroughgoing land reform, as in the abolition of large holdings, the promotion of the security of tenants and the redistribution of surplus land. They also advocated an expansion in the provision of credit to overcome the widespread problem of rural indebtedness.
But, as the nationalists also recognized, agrarian reform had to be accompanied by a spurt in industrial growth. The nation needed more factories to absorb the surplus of underemployed laborers in the countryside. It also needed factories to prove to itself that it was modern. To enter the comity of nations, India had to be educated, united, outward looking, and, above all, industrialized.”
“Notably, the private sector concurred. In 1944 a group of leading industrialists issued what they called A Plan of Economic Development for India (aka the Bombay Plan). This conceded that ‘the existing economic org, based on private enterprise and ownership, has failed to bring about a satisfactory distribution of the national income.’ Only the state could help ‘diminish inequalities of income.’ But the state was necessary for augmenting production too. Energy, infrastructure, and transport were sectors where the Indian capitalists themselves felt the need for a government monopoly. In the early stages of industrialization, they argued, it was necessary that ‘the State should exercise in the interests of the community a considerable measure of intervention and control.’ Indeed ‘an enlargement of the positive as well as preventative functions of the State is essential to any large-scale economic planning.’”
“As the second plan argued, underdevelopment was ‘essentially a consequence of insufficient technological progress.’ Self-reliance, from this perspective, became the index of development and progress. From soap to steel, cashew to cars, Indians would meet their material requirements by using Indian land, Indian labor, Indian materials and, above all, Indian tech.”
“Changes in local economies fostered changes in lifestyle as well. Before the canals arrived, the residents of Wangala wore scruffy clothes and rarely ventured outside the village. But ‘Wangala men now wear shirts and a number also wear dhotis; their wives wear colorful saris bought with money and they all spend lavishly on weddings. Wangala men pay frequent visits to Mandya [town], where they visit coffee shops and toddy shops; rice has replaced ragi as their staple diet.’
These and other changes were made possibly only by the extension of irrigation. As Epstein found, the coming of canal water was the turning point in the history of the village. Events of note, such as weddings, deaths and murders, were dated by whether they happened before or after irrigation.”
“Assured irrigation and chemical fertilizers increased agricultural productivity. But they could not solve what was a fundamental problem of rural India: inequality in access to land. Therefore, landless peasants were encouraged to settle in areas not previously under the plow. In the first decade of independence, close to half a million hectares of land were colonized, principally from malarial forests in the northern Terai, the central Indian hills, and the Western Ghats. Previously these areas had been inhabited only by tribes genetically resistant to malaria. When the intervention of DDT it became possible for the state to clear the forests. These lands were naturally fertile, rich in calcium and potassium and organic matter (if poor in phosphates). In any case, there was no shortage of peasants who wanted them.”
“A third way of ending landlessness was to use the arm of the state. Land reform legislation had long been on the agenda of Congress. After Independence, the different states passed legislation abolishing the landowner system which, under the British, had bestowed effective rights of ownership to absentee landlords. The abolition of landowners freed up large areas of land for redistribution, while also freeing tenants from cesses and rents previously exacted from them.
After the end of the landowner system, the state vested rights of ownership in their tenants. These, typically, came from the intermediate castes. Left unaffected were those at the bottom of the heap, such as low-caste laborers and sharecroppers. Their well-being would have required a second stage of land reform, where ceilings would be placed on holdings, and excess land handed over to the landless. This was a task that the government was unable or unwilling to undertake.”
The Hindu Code
“Among the notable features of the proposed Hindu Code legislation were:
- The awarding, to the widow and the daughter, of the same share as the son(s) in the property of a man dying intestate (which in the past had passed only to his male heirs). Likewise, a Hindu woman’s estate, previously limited, was now made absolute, to be disposed of as she wished.
- The granting of maintenance to the wife who chose to live separately from the husband if he had a ‘loathsome disease,’ was cruel to her, took a concubine, etc.
- Abolition of the rules of caste and sub-caste in sanctifying a marriage. All marriages between Hindus would have the same sacramental as well as legal status, regardless of the castes to which the spouses belonged. An inter-caste marriage could now be solemnized in accordance with the customs and rites of either party.
- Allowing either partner to file for and obtain divorce on certain grounds, such as cruelty, infidelity, incurable disease, etc.
- Making monogamy mandatory
- Allowing for the adoption of children belonging to a different caste.”
“After a bruising battle extending over nearly ten years, B.R. Ambedkar’s Hindu Code Bill was passed into law; not, as he had hoped, in one fell swoop, but in several installments: the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 and the Hindu Succession, Minority, and Guardianship, and Adoptions and Maintenance Acts of 1956.”
Kashmir and Nagaland
“Once, Abdullah had been Nehru’s man in Kashmir. By the summer of 1952, however, it was more that Nehru was Abdullah’s man in India. The Sheikh had made it known that, in his view, only the prime minister stood between India and the ultimate victory of Hindu communalism.
Meanwhile, discussions continued about the precise status of Kashmir vis-a-vis the Indian Union. In July the Sheikh met Nehru in Delhi and also had a round of meetings with other ministers. They hammered out a compromise known as the Delhi Agreement, whereby Kashmiris would become full citizens of India in exchange for an autonomy far greater than enjoyed by other states of the Union. Thus the new state flag would ‘for historical and other reasons’ be flown alongside the national flag. Delhi couldn’t send in forces to quell ‘internal disturbances’ without the consent of Srinagar. Where with regard to other states residuary powers rested with the center, in the case of Kashmir, these would remain with the state. Critically, those from outside the state were prohibited from buying land or property within it. This measure was aimed at forestalling attempts to change the demographic profile of the Valley through large-scale immigration.”
“By the middle of 1956 a full-scale war was on in the Naga hills. In a statement to Parliament in the last week of July, the home minister, Govind Pant, admitted that the Indian army had lost 68 men while killing 370 ‘hostiles.’ Pant accused Phizo of murdering Sakhrie — whom he called ‘the leader of the sensible and patriotic group’ — and of ‘leading [the Nagas] to disaster.’ The talk of Naga independence he dismissed as ‘mere moonshine.’ Pant expressed the hope ‘that good sense will prevail on the Nagas and they will realize that we all belong to India.’
The Indian (and international) press wasn’t covering the conflict, but we can get a sense of its scale from letters written by a Naga doctor to the last British deputy commissioner of the Naga hills, Charles Pawsey. A letter of June 1956 describes a tour in the interior where ‘every night we looked up and saw villages burning in the hills — set alight by either the rebels or the army, no one knows.’”
The 1957 Election and Kerala
“As in 1952, the 1957 election was in essence a referendum on the prime minister and his ruling party. Nehru was, again, the chief ideologue, propagandist, and vote-catcher for the Congress. Helping him behind the scenes was his only child, Indira Gandhi. Estranged from her husband, she and her two sons stayed with her widowed father in his spacious official residence, Teen Murti House. Mrs. Gandhi was often the last person the prime minister saw in the evening and the first he saw in the morning. Serving as his official hostess, she met and mixed with the high of this land and of many others. Her health, previously frail, had noticeably improved. Contemporary photos show her once sickly frame to have filled out; the improvement obvious not just in her appearance, but in her manner as well. A recent biographer has linked this improvement to new antibiotics then entering the market, which cured the tuberculosis she was thought to suffer from.
What we know of Mrs. Gandhi’s medical condition is based on intelligent speculation. However, there’s also hard evidence that between the first and second elections she became more of a personality in her own right. In March 1955 she was appointed to the Congress Working Committee to ‘represent the interests of women.’ Following this appointment she began touring the country speaking to women about their rights and responsibilities. Her interests weren’t restricted to her own gender; she presided over meetings held in Bombay to hasten the liberation of Goa from Portuguese rule.”
“It was, however, in the southernmost sate of the Union that Congress’ claim to represent all of India was most gravely undermined. The state was Kerala, where a resurgent Communist Party of India had emerged as a strong popular alternative to the ruling party. In the parliamentary election the CPI won 9 seats out of the 18 fought for (the Congress won only 6). In the assembly polls, which were held at the same time, the communists won 60 seats out of 126, the support of five independents assuring it a slim majority.
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.’ A town in Italy had recently elected a Red mayor, but here was something qualitatively new; a first chance for communists to govern a full-fledged province of a very large country. 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 Delhi now faced was a different matter altogether: a state ruled by a party which was underground til 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.”
“Located on the southwestern tip of India, Kerala is a very beautiful state, with a long coastline and high mountains. The monsoon is both early and abundant, the vegetation gorgeously diverse; no part of India is greener. And no part is as culturally diverse. Hindus constitute about 60% of the population; Muslims and Christians, the remaining 40%. Crucially, these minority communities have a very long history indeed. The ‘Syrian’ Christians of Kerala claim to have been converted by St. Thomas in the first century CE. Protestant and Christian missionaries had also enjoyed conspicuous success. The first Muslims were a product of trade with the Arabs, and go back to at least the 8th century. These are the oldest communities of Christians and Muslims in the subcontinent. Like the Hindus of Kerala they spoke the local tongue, Malayalam. However, their relative abundance in the population lent the state a certain distinctiveness.”
“One cannot say how an American president would’ve behaved in a similar situation — would he have sent in the Marines? — but in India the prime minister of the day was inclined to wait and watch. For the land reforms proposed by EMS’ government were merely those promised by Congress governments. And the personal integrity of the Kerala ministers wasn’t absent in the best of the Congress Party, such as Nehru.
More controversial by far were the educational initiatives of the Kerala government. In summer 1957 it introduced an Educational Bill aimed at correcting the abuses in privately-owned schools and colleges. These were the norm in Kerala, with schools managed by the Church, the Nair Service Society, and the SNDP. The bill sought to enhance the status of teachers by checking the powers of the management to hire and fire at will, by setting norms for recruitment, and by prescribing salaries and humane working conditions. It also gave the state the powers to take over schools that didn’t abide by the bill’s provisions.
The opposition to the bill was led by the Church, whose own powers — moral as well as material — depended crucially on its control of educational institutions. The clergy was deeply anti-communist, a sentiment it managed successfully to instill in its flock. In the 1957 election, for example, the CPI had won only 3 out of 18 seats in Kottayam District, the Syrian Christian heartland.
As it happened, the minister of education, Joseph Mundaserry, had spent decades teaching in a Catholic college in Trichur. He knew the corruption of the system, and his bill was in some respects a brave attempt to correct them. However, his government sought to go further than modernize the management; it wanted also to introduce changes in the curriculum. New textbooks were prepared which sought subtly — and not so subtly — to present history through communist lenses.”
“Indira Gandhi was elected president of the Indian National Congress. She was the first woman to hold the post since Nellie Sen Gupta in 1933. Asked whether her domestic duties would suffer, she answered with asperity: ‘My household work takes ten minutes only.’”
“Nehru finally succumbed, writing to Namboodiripad on 30 July that an order of dismissal was on the way, since ‘it’s no longer possible to allow matters to deteriorate, leading to continuing conflicts and human suffering. We have felt that, even from the POV of your government, it’s better for Central intervention to take place now.’
Kerala went to the polls again. The Congress, allied with the Socialist Party and the Muslim League, asked the voter to choose between ‘democracy and communism.’ Nehru led a band of stalwarts in a campaign which featured posters of Flory Mata, the pregnant fisherwoman shot by the police during the ‘liberation struggle.’ A record 84% of the adult population turned out to vote. In a House of 127 the communists won only 26 seats. The Congress won 60; their allies a further 31. The results appeared to vindicate the dismissla of Namboodiripad’s government. But that decision had ‘tarnished Nehru’s reputation for ethical behavior in politics and, from a long-term view, weakened his position.’”
Goa
“On the morning of 18 December Indian troops entered Goa from three directions: the north, south, and east. Meanwhile, airplanes dropped leaflets exhorting the Goans to ‘be calm and brave’ and to ‘rejoice in your freedom and strengthen it.’ By the evening of the 18th , the capital, Panjim, had been encircled. The troops were helped by the locals, who pointed out where the Portuguese had laid mines. The colonists fired a few shots before withdrawing. In the smaller enclaves of Daman and Diu the resistance was somewhat stiffer. In all, some 15 Indian soldiers lost their lives, and perhaps twice as many Portuguese. 36 hours after the invasion began, the Portuguese governor general signed a document of unconditional surrender.
The Western press had a field day with this display of ‘Indian hypocrisy.’ Exposed for so long to lectures by Nehru and Krishna Menon, they now hit back by attacking the use of force by a nation that professed ‘non-violence.’ The action was also represented as a breach of international law and, more absurdly, as a threat to Christians and Christianity in Goa. In fact, 61% of Goa was Hindi, while prominent Goan Christians, such as journalist Frank Moraes and the Archbishop Cardinal Gracias, had an honored place in Indian public life. There had long been an indigenous freedom movement within Goa and many, perhaps most, Goans welcomed the Indian action. In any case, the Goans were now at liberty to choose their own leaders, something always denied them by the Portuguese.
That Goa was legitimately part of India was not in dispute. That India had waited long enough before acting was also evident.”
Chinese Border Disputes
“From 1959, in both Ladakh and NEFA, the Chinese and Indians had played cat-and-mouse, sending troops to fill up no-man’s-land, clashing here and there, while their leaders exchanged letters and occasionally even met. Now things escalated to unprecedented levels. The Indian siting of Dhola was answered by the Chinese coming to Thag La, directly above it; this in turn provoked an attempt by the Indians to shift them. When this failed, Nehru, back in Delhi, told the press that the army had been given instructions to once more try and push out the ‘enemy.’
In the event it was the enemy who acted first. A phony war, which had lasted all of three years, was made very real on the night of October 19, when the Chinese simultaneously launched an invasion in both the eastern and western sectors. The blitzkrieg across the Himalaya had come, as ‘Pragmatist’ had predicted it would. And, as he’d feared, the Indians were unprepared. That night, wrote the New York Times, a ‘smoldering situation burst into flame,’ as ‘heavy battles broke out in both of the disputed areas. Masses of Chinese troops under the cover of thunderous mortar fire drove the Indians back on each front.’ Both sides had built up forces on the border, but ‘independent observers laid the onslaught to the Chinese.’ The Chinese attacked in waves, armed with medium machine guns backed by heavy mortars. Two Chinese divisions were involved in the invasion, these using five times as many troops as had the Indians.
The Indians were ‘taken by surprise’ as the Chinese quickly overran many positions, crossed the Namkha Chu valley and made for the monastery in Tawang. Another detachment made for the eastern part of NEFA. Chinese troops moved deeper and deeper into Indian territory. 8 posts were reported to have fallen in Ladakh; almost 20 in NEFA. Tawang itself had come under the control of the Chinese.
The ease with which the Chinese took Indian positions shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Their troops had been on the Tibetan plateau in strength from the mid-1950s, fighting or preparing to fight Khampa rebels. Unlike the Indians, they were well used to battle in the high mountains. Besides, access was much easier from the Tibetan side, the relatively flat terrain conducive to road building and troop movement. The geographical advantage was all to the Chinese. From Assam up to the McMahon line the climb was very steep, the hills covered with thick vegetation and the climate often damp and wet. The Indian forward posts were hopelessly ill-equipped; with no proper roads, they ‘lived from air-drop to air-drop,’ dependent on supplies and for survival on sorties by helicopters.”
“Soon Britain and America were sending transport planes with arms and ammunition. France and Canada had also agreed to supply weapons.
On 8 November the prime minister moved a resolution in Parliament deploring the fact that China had ‘betrayed’ the spirit of Panchsheel and India’s ‘uniform gestures of goodwill and friendship’ by initiating ‘a massive invasion.’ The hurt was palpable; that ‘we in India, who have…sought the friendship of China…and pleaded their cause in the councils of the world should now ourselves be victims of new imperialism and expansionism by a country which says that it’s against all imperialism.’ China may call itself ‘communist,’ said Nehru, but it had revealed itself as ‘an expansionist, imperious-minded country deliberately invading’ another.”
“Poised to enter the plains of Assam, the Chinese instead announced a unilateral ceasefire on 22 November. In NEFA they pulled back to north of the McMahon Line. In the Ladakh sector they likewise retreated to positions they had held before the present hostilities began.
Why did the Chinese pack up and go home? Some thought they were deterred from coming further by the rallying of all parties, including the communists, around the government. The Western powers had pledged support, and were already flying in arms and ammunition. As important as these considerations of politics were the facts of nature. For winter was settling in, and soon the Himalaya would be snowbound. And by pressing deep into India, the Chinese would make their supply lines longer and more difficult to maintain.”
Muslims
“After 1947 there were large populations of Muslims scattered all over peninsular India — as they had been before that date. Several million Muslims migrated across the borders to East and West Pakistan, but many more than this elected to stay behind in India. The creation of Pakistan had made their position deeply vulnerable.”
“The Muslims of the Punjab had migrated en masse across the border. From Bombay and the South, many intellectuals had voluntarily migrated to Pakistan, but the working-class Muslims had stayed behind. Pakistan was too far and too alien for them to consider making a new life in a new place. However, the UP Mussalman spoke Urdu — the official language of Pakistan — and also lived close enough to be able to jump aboard a train and go there. Many went; many others stayed where they were.
Almost every Muslim family in the UP was divided, and the employees of the ASI were no exception. The superintendent of the Agra circle, however, had no sympathy for employees with kin in what he considered ‘enemy’ territory. Bring them back, he told his subordinates, or face the consequences.”
“Another problem, also linked to Pakistan, was the lack of a credible middle class. At or shortly after Partition, large numbers of Muslim civil servants, lawyers, scholars, doctors, and entrepreneurs migrated to the new Islamic state, there to carve out careers unimpeded by Hindu competition. The Muslims who remained were the laboring poor, the peasants, laborers, and artisans who were now seriously in want of an enlightened and liberal leadership. As one perceptive British official wrote, it was ‘one of the curses of Pakistan’ in Bengal that the Muslim officers had all opted for Pakistan, so that ‘the Muslim minorities in West Bengal will be without representation in the services or anywhere else where they could look for help or protection.’”
“By this time Partition was almost two decades in the past, yet its residues remained. For, as a Muslim leader, in Madras bitterly remarked, the violence of 1963–4 only reinforced the ‘fear that anything happening in Pakistan will have its repercussions on Muslims in India, particularly when exaggerated reports appear in the Indian press, and people and parties inimical to Muslims are ready to seize the opportunity.”
Untouchables
“Like the Muslims, the Untouchables were spread all across India. Like them, they were also poor, stigmatized, and often on the receiving end of upper-class violence. They worked in the villages, in the lowliest professions, as farm servants, agricultural laborers, cobblers, and scavengers. By the canons of Hindu orthodoxy their touch would defile the upper castes, and in some regions their very sight too. They were denied access to land and to water sources; even their homes were set apart from the main village.
Under British rule, opportunities had arisen for some Untouchables to escape the tyranny of the village. These gained employment in the army, or worked in factories and urban settlements. Here too they were usually assigned the most menial and degrading jobs.
Gandhi had redesignated the Untouchables as ‘Harijans,’ or children of God. The Constitution of India abolished untouchability and listed the erstwhile Untouchable communities in a separate schedule — hence their new, collective name, ‘Scheduled Castes.’ However, village ethnographies of the 1950s confirmed that the practice of untouchability continued as before. The Scheduled Castes still owned little or no land, and were still subject to social and in some cases sexual abuse. But these ethnographies also revealed that at the bottom things were changing, albeit slowly. In some parts the low castes were refusing to perform tasks that they considered demeaning. No longer would they carry loads for free, or submissively allow upper-caste males to violate their women. More daringly, they were beginning to ask for higher wages and for land to cultivate, sometimes under the aegis of communist activists.”
“The burgeoning genre of Untouchable autobiographies also shows the 1950s to be a time of flux. Caste prejudice and caste discrimination were rampant, but no longer were they accepted so passively. There was an incipient stirring which became manifest in social protest and was aided by the new avenues of social mobility.
The first such avenue was education. After Independence there was a great expansion in school and college education. By law, a certain portion of seats were reserved for the Scheduled Castes. By policy, different state governments endowed scholarships for children from disadvantaged homes. Where they could they took advantage, spawning an entire generation of first-generation learners. According to one estimate, while the school population doubled in the first decade of Independence, the number of ex-Untouchables in schools swelled eight- or ten-fold. There were also many more Scheduled Caste students at university than ever before.
A second avenue was government employment. By law, 15% of all jobs in state and state-sided institutions were reserved for the Scheduled Castes. Again, there was a massive expansion after 1947, with new positions available in the Secretariat and in government-run schools, hospitals, factories, and infrastructure projects. Although exact figures are hard to obtain, it’s likely that several million jobs were created for Scheduled Castes in the state sector in the first two decades after Independence. These were permanent positions, to be retained until retirement, and with pension and health benefits. In theory, such reservation existed at all levels of government; in practice, it was the reserved posts at the lower levels that tended to be filled first and fastest. As late as 1966, while only 2% of senior administrative posts were occupied by Indians of low-caste origin, 9% of clerical jobs were, and as many as 18% of posts of peons and attendants.
There was also reservation in the Parliament and state assemblies, where 15% of all seats were filled by Scheduled Caste candidates. Besides, universal franchise meant that they could influence the outcome of elections in the ‘unreserved’ category as well. In many parts, Scheduled Castes were quick to seize the opportunities the vote presented them. As one low-caste politician in Agra observed, his constituents ‘may not understand the intricacies of politics,’ but they did ‘understand the power of the vote and want to use it.’ And they understood it in all contexts — national, provincial, local. Already in the early 1950s, cases were reported of Scheduled Castes forging alliances to prevent upper-caste landlords from winning elections to village councils. The vote was quickly perceived as a bargaining tool; for instance, in a UP village, the shoemakers told an upper-caste candidate they would support him if he agreed to shift the yard for the disposal of dead animals from their compound to a site outside the village.
For a fair number of Scheduled Castes, affirmative action did bring genuine benefits. Now, children of farm laborers could (and did!) become members of Parliament. Those who joined the government as lowly ‘Class IV’ employees could see their children become members of the elite Indian Administrative Service. But affirmative action also brought with it a new kind of stigma. Intended to end caste discrimination, it fixed the beneficiaries ever more firmly in their own, original caste. There was suspicion and resentment among the upper castes, and sometimes a tendency among the beneficiaries to look down upon, or even forget, their fellows.
A final avenue of mobility was economic development in general. Industrialization and urbanization meant new opportunities away from the village, even if — as in the state sector — the Scheduled Castes came to occupy only the less skilled and lucrative positions. Living away from home helped expand the mind, as in the case of a farm laborer from UP who became a Bombay factory worker and learned to love the city’s museums. And sometimes there were economic gains to be made. Consider the Jatevs of Agra, a caste of cobblers and shoemakers whose world changed with the growth of a market for their products in the Middle East and the Soviet Union. The Jatevs became an ‘urban yeomanry,’ now able to build and buy their own houses. While many continued as self-employed shoemakers, some were able to open factories of their own, where the wages paid to their workers were considerably in excess of what they themselves had once hoped to earn. In 1960 a master craftsman took home about 250 rupees a month, a factory worker about 100 rupees — even the lesser figure was many times what an unskilled laborer earned. Although the distribution of gains was by no means even, the market had helped enhance their economic as well as social status. The present state of affairs was ‘a far cry from the pre-1900 days, when most Jatevs were little more than laborers and city servants.’”
“Writing in 1959 — a decade and more after Independence — an Indian editor who was bitterly opposed to Nehru was constrained to recognize his two greatest achievements — the creation of a secular state and the granting of equal rights to Untouchables. Recalling the ‘reactionary forces which came into play after partition,’ the editor remarked that ‘had Nehru shown the slightest weakness, these forces would have turned this country into a Hindu state in which the minorities…couldn’t have lived with any measure of safety or security.’ It was also to Nehru’s ‘everlasting credit’ that he insisted that Untouchables be granted full rights, such that ‘in public life and in all government action, the equality of man would be scrupulously maintained in the secular state of India.’
To be sure, there remained a slippage between public policy and popular practice. The laws prompting secularism and social equality were on the statute books, but most Muslims, and most Scheduled Castes, remained poor and marginalized. The threat of violence was never far away. Still, given the bloody birth of the nation, and the continuing provocation from Pakistan, it was no small matter that the Indian government refused to merge faith with state. And given the resilience of social institutions in general, and the ancient and sanctified history of this one in particular, it was remarkable that the caste system changed as much as it did. The progress made in abolishing untouchability or in assuring equal rights to all citizens was uneven, and — by the standards of understandably impatient reformers — very slow. Yet more progress had probably been made in the first 17 years of Indian independence than in the previous 1,700.”
English vs. Hindi
“In 1965, Republic Day was to be more than a symbolic show of national pride — it would also signal a substantial affirmation of national unity. Back in 1949 the Constituent Assembly had chosen Hindi as the official language of the Union of India. The constitution which ratified this came into operation in 1950. However, there would be a 15-year ‘grace period,’ when English was to be used along with Hindi in communication between the center and the states. Now this period was ending; henceforth, Hindi would prevail.
Southern politicians had long been worried about the change. In 1956 the Assembly of Tamil Culture passed a resolution urging that ‘English should continue to be the official language of the Union and the language of communication between the Union and the State Governments and between one State Government and and another.’ The organization of the campaign was chiefly the work of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which organized many protest meetings against the imposition of Hindi.
In the wake of the China war the DMK had dropped its secessionist plank. It no longer wanted a separate country; but it did want to protect the culture and language of the Tamil people. The DMK’s leader was C.N. Annadurai. Known universally as ‘Anna’ (elder brother), he was a gifted orator who’d done much to build his party into a credible force in the state. In Anna’s opinion Hindi was merely a regional language like any other. It had no ‘special merit’; in fact, it was less developed than other Indian tongues, less suited to a time of rapid advances in science and tech. To the argument that more Indians spoke Hindi than any other language, Anna sarcastically answered: ‘If we had to accept the principle of numerical superiority while selecting our national bird, the choice would have fallen not on the peacock but on the common crow.’
Nehru had been sensitive to the sentiments of the south; sentiments shared by the east and northeast as well. In 1963 he piloted the passing of an Official Languages Act, which provided that from 1965 English ‘may’ still be used along with Hindi in official communication. That caveat proved problematic; for while Nehru clarified that ‘may’ meant ‘shall,’ other Congress politicians actually thought it meant ‘may not.’
As 26 January 1965 approached, the opponents of Hindi geared up for action. 10 days before Republic Day, Anna wrote to Shastri saying that his party would observe the day of the changeover as a ‘day of mourning.’ But he added an interesting rider in the form of a request to postpone the day of imposition by a week. Then the DMK could enthusiastically join the rest of the nation in celebrating Republic Day.
Shastri and his government stood by the decision to make Hindi official on 26 January. In response, the DMK launched a statewide campaign of protest. In numerous villages bonfires were made to burn effigies of the Hindi demoness. Hindi books and the relevant pages of the constitution were also burnt. In railway stations and post offices, Hindi signs were removed or blackened over. In towns across the state there were fierce and sometimes deadly battles between the police and angry students.”
“On 11 February the resignation of two Union ministers from Madras forced his band. The same evening the prime minister went on All-India Radio to convey his ‘deep sense of distress and shock’ at the ‘tragic events.’ To remove any ‘misapprehension’ and ‘misunderstanding,’ he said he would fully honor Nehru’s assurance that English would be used as long as the people wanted. Then he made four assurances of his own.
First, every state would have complete and unfettered freedom to continue to transact its own business in the language of its choice, which may be the regional language or English.
Secondly, communications from one state to another would be either in English or accompanied by an English translation.
Thirdly, the non-Hindi states would be free to correspond with the central government in English and no change would be made in this arrangement without the consent of the non-Hindi states.
Fourthly, in the transaction of business at the central level English would continue to be used.
Later, Shastri added a crucial fifth assurance — that the All-India Civil Services Exam would continue to be conducted in English rather than (as the Hindiwallahs wanted) in Hindi alone.”
Intercommunal Violence
“There was a very serious riot in Ranchi, in Bihar, in summer 1967; a very bad one in Jaigaon, in Maharashtra, three years later. In between, numerous other towns in north and west India had witnessed intercommunal violence. The writer Khsuhwant Singh bitterly noted that the Indian adolescent was now learning the geography of his country through the history of murder. Aligarh and Ranchi and Ahmedabad were no longer centers of learning or culture or industry, but places where Indians butchered one another in the name of religion. As Singh pointed out, in these riots ‘9 out of 10 ten killed are Muslims. 9 out of 10 homes and business establishments destroyed are Muslim homes or enterprises.’ Besides, the majority of those rendered homeless, and of those apprehended by the police, were also Muslim. ‘Is it any great wonder,’ asked the writer, ‘that an Indian Muslim no longer feels secure in secular India? He feels discriminated against. He feels a second-class citizen.
In 1967–8, when the communal temperature began to rise, India had a Muslim president as well as a Muslim Supreme Court Chief Justice. However, as a Delhi journal pointed out, this was by no means representative of ‘the position of Muslims in the totality of Indian life.’ They were seriously underrepresented in professions such as engineering and medicine, and in industry, trade, and the armed forces. This was in part because of the flight of the Muslim upper class to Pakistan, yet subtle social prejudice also contributed. The Muslims had long stood solidly behind the Congress, but in the elections of 1967 they voted in large numbers for other parties as a way of showing their disillusionment. The Muslim predicament was a product of bigotry and communal politics on the Hindu side, and of an obscurantist leadership on their own.”
Indira Gandhi
“Mrs. Gandhi was the second woman to be elected to lead a free nation (Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon having been the first).”
“There was a strong moral core to the socialism of P.N. Haksar and his colleagues. For the prime minister, however, the appeal was pragmatic, a means of distinguishing herself from the Congress old guard. In May 1967 she presented a ten-point program of reform to the party, which included the ‘social control’ of banking, the abolition of the privy purses of princes and guaranteed minimum wages for rural and industrial labor. The Syndicate was unenthusiastic, but the program appealed to the younger generation, who saw the party’s recent reverses as a consequence of the promises unfulfilled over the years.
Speeches made by Mrs. Gandhi after her reelection show her identifying explicitly with the poor and vulnerable. She stressed the problems of landless labor, expressed her ‘concern for all the minorities of India’ and defended the public sector from criticisms that it was not making profit (her answer was that it didn’t need to, since it was building a base for economic development). She asked for a ‘new deal for the downtrodden, in particular, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, pledging her ‘unceasing attention and effort to this cause.’ A few days later, in her Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort, she singled out ‘industrialists and businessmen’ who had the nerve to talk of worker indiscipline while continuing to make big profits and draw fat salaries.”
“After relieving Desai of the Finance Ministry, Mrs. Gandhi issued an ordinance announcing that the state had taken over 14 privately-owned banks. Explaining the action over All-India Radio, she said that India was ‘an ancient country but a young democracy, which has to remain ever vigilant to prevent the domination of the few over the social, economic, or political systems. This mandated that ‘major banks should be not only socially controlled but publicly owned,’ so that they could give credit not just to big business but to ‘millions of farmers, artisans, and other self-employed persons.’
In a statement to the press, the prime minister claimed that there was ‘a great feeling in the country’ regarding the nationalization: 95% of the people supported it, with only big newspapers representing commercial interests opposing it. However, a small weekly, independently owned, suggested that this might be an individual quest masquerading as an ideological battle. Mrs. Gandhi had ‘chosen to adopt a radical stance suddenly as a tactic in the personal strife for dominance within the Congress party,’ said Thought; she now wished to ‘project herself as a national figure who needs the Congress less than it needs her.’
The nationalization of banks was challenged in the Supreme Court; the challenge was upheld, but the judgment was immediately nullified by a fresh ordinance brought in by government, signed this time by the president. In the first six months of state control there was a massive expansion in the banking sector — with as many as 1,100 new branches opened, a large proportion of them in remote rural areas that had never before been serviced by formal credit.”
“With the banks nationalized, Mrs. Gandhi now turned to the abolition of the privileges of the princes. When their states merged with the Union, the princes were given a constitutional guarantee that they could retain their titles, jewels, and palaces, be paid an annual privy purse in proportion to the size of their states and be exempt from central taxes and import duties. With so many Indians so poor, it was felt that these privileges were ‘out of place and out of time.’
As early as July 1967 the AICC passed a resolution asking for an end to titles and privy purses. The Home Ministry prepared a detailed note, recommending action via legislation rather than execution action. The home minister, Y.B. Chavan, was asked to commence negotiations with the prine, represented in these talks by the Maharaja of Dhrangadhara. It was hoped the princes would be amenable to the change; if not, a constitutional amendment would have to be brought.”
“The Lok Sabha adopted the bill by the necessary two-thirds margin. However, in the Rajya Sabha the motion failed to be carried by a single vote. The prime minister had apparently anticipated this adverse vote in the Upper House, for soon afterwards a presidential order was issued derecognizing the princes.”
“C. Subramaniam’s strategy had been to identify those districts most likely to take to the new seeds, and the heavy doses of fertilizers that went with them. The results were sensational. Between 1963 and 1967, before the new methods had been tried, the annual production of wheat in India was between 9 and 11 mt. Between 1967 and 1970 it ranged from 16–20 mt. The corresponding figures for rice were 30–37 mt for the earlier period and 37–42 for the latter.
These figures masked enormous variations by region. There remained large areas where agriculture was still rain-fed, and where only one crop could be grown per year. Still, there was a feeling that endemic scarcity was a thing of the past. Modern science was laying the ghost of Malthus. In August 1969 a British journalist who was an old India hand wrote that ‘for the first time in all the years I’ve been visiting the country, there’s a coherence in the economic picture.’”
“A year later the prime minister called an election, 14 months ahead of schedule. Her party — Congress (R) — wanted a popular mandate to implement the progressive reforms it had initiated, now held up by the ‘reactionary’ forces in Parliament. Its manifesto offered a ‘genuine radical program of economic development.’”
“A copywriter came up with the slogan ‘Indira Hatao’ (Remove Indira). This prompted the telling rejoinder, offered from the lips of the prime minister herself: Wo kehte hain Indira Hatao, hum kehte hain Garibi Hatao (They ask for the Removal of Indira, whereas we want an End to Poverty itself).
Whether the work of the prime minister or one of her now forgotten minions, ‘Garibi Hatao’ was an inspired coinage. It allowed Congress (R) to take the moral high ground, representing itself as the party of progress, against an alliance of reaction. Personalizing the election was to backfire badly against the opposition, whose agenda was portrayed as negative in contrast to the forward-looking program of the ruling party.
Mrs. Gandhi worked tirelessly to garner votes for her party. Between the dissolution of Parliament, in the last week of December 1970, and the elections, held ten weeks later, she traveled 36,000 miles in all. She addressed 300 meetings and was heard or seen by an estimated 20 million people. These figures were recounted, with relish, in a letter written by Mrs. Gandhi to an American friend. She clearly enoyed the experience, as she remarked, ‘It was wonderful to see the light in [the people’s] eyes.’
The prime minister’s speeches harped on the contrast, perceived and real, between the party she’d left behind and the party she’d founded. The ‘old’ Congress was in thrall to ‘conservative elements’ and ‘vested interests,’ whereas the ‘new’ Congress was committed to the poor. Did not the nationalization of banks and the abolition of the privy purses show as much? The message struck a resonant chord, as one somewhat cynical journalist wrote:
The man lying in a gutter prizes nothing more than the notion pumped into him that he’s superior to the sanitary inspector. That the rich had been humbled looked like the assurance that the poor would be honored. The instant ‘poverty-removal’ slogan was an economic absurdity. Psychologically and politically, for that reason, it was however a decisive asset in a community at war with reason and rationality.
Her travels within India had made the prime minister far better known than she’d been in 1967. In asking for votes, she exploited her ‘charming personality,’ her ‘father’s historical role’ and, above all, that stirring slogan ‘Garibi Hatao.’ The landless and low castes voted en masse for The Congress ( R), as did the Muslims, who’d been lukewarm the last time round. The new party’s organizational weakness was remedied by its young volunteers, who went around the countryside amplifying their leader’s words. The massive turnout on election day suggested that ‘the people had been fired with a new hope of redemption.’
Back in 1952 it had been said that even a lamppost could win if it ran on the Congress symbol. It turned out that Mrs. Gandhi’s victory was even more spectacular than her father’s. Congress (R) won 352 of 518 seats, the next highest tally was that of the CPM, which won a mere 25. Both victor and vanquished agreed that this was chiefly the work of one person. Writer Khushwant Singh commented, ‘Indira Gandhi has successfully magnified her figure as the one and only leader of national dimension.’”
“Her success at the polls emboldened Mrs. Gandhi to act decisively against the princes. Throughout 1971, the two sides tried and failed to find a settlement. The princes were willing to forego their privy purse, but hoped at least to save their titles. But with her massive majority in Parliament, the prime minister had no need to compromise. On 2 December she introduced a bill seeking to amend the constitution and abolish all princely privileges. It was passed in the Lok Sabha by 381 votes to 6, and in the Rajya Sabha by 167 votes to 7. In her own speech, the prime minister invited ‘the princes to join the elite of the modern age, the elite which earns respect by its talent, energy, and contribution to human progress, all of which can only be done when we work together as equals without regarding anybody as of special status.”
“The stats of the fifth general election were printed in loving detail in the CEC report. The size of the electorate was 275 million, a 100 million up from the first edition in 1952. Yet no Indian had to walk more than two kilometers to exercise their franchise. There were now 343,000 polling stations, up 100,000 from 162; each station was supplied with 43 different items ranging from ballot papers and boxes to indelible ink and sealing wax; 282 million ballot papers were printed, 7 million more than the number of eligible voters (to allow for accidents and errors); 1,800,000 Indians were on polling duty — for the most part, these were officials of the state and central governments.”
The Formation of Bangladesh
“The fear of the West Pakistani elite was that, if Mujib’s Awami League came to form the government, ‘the constitution to be adopted by them will have Hindu iron hand in it.’
On the other side, the East Pakistani Muslims looked upon their West Pakistani counterparts as ‘the ruling classes, as foreign ruling classes and so predatory foreign ruling classes.’ They resented the rulers’ dismissal of their language, Bengali; they complained that their agricultural wealth was being drained away to feed the western sector; and they noted that Bengalis were very poorly represented in the upper echelons of the Pakistani bureaucracy, judiciary, and, not least, army. The feeling of being discriminated against had been growing over the years. By the time of the 1970 elections, ‘the politically minded’ East Bengali had become ‘allergic to a central authority located a thousand miles away.’
In January 1971 Yahya Khan and Bhutto traveled separately to the East Pakistani capital, Dacca. They held talks with Mujib, but found him firm on the question of a federal constitution. The president then postponed the convening of the National Assembly. The Awami League answered by calling an indefinite general strike. Throughout East Pakistan shops and offices put down their shutters; even railways and airports closed down. Clashes between police and demonstrators became a daily occurrence.
The military decided to quell these protests by force. Troop reinforcements were flown in or sent by ship to the principal eastern port, Chittagong. On the night of 25 March, the army launched a major attack on the university, whose students were among the Awami League’s strongest supporters. A parade of tanks rolled into the campus, firing on the dorms. Its students were rounded up, shot and pushed into graves hastily dug and bulldozed over by tanks. There were troop detachments at work in other parts of the city, targeting Bengali newspaper offices and homes of local politicians. That same night Mujibur Rahman was arrested at his home and flown off to a secret location in West Pakistan.
The Pakistan army fanned out into the countryside, seeking to stamp out any sign of rebellion. East Bengali troops mutinied in several places, including Chittagong, where one major captured a radio station and announced the establishment of the Independent People’s Republic of Bangladesh. To combat the guerrillas the army raised bands of local loyalists, called Razakars, who put the claims of religion — and hence of a unified Pakistan — above those of language. Villages and small towns, even the old airport, fell into rebel hands, then were recaptured. The reprisals grew progressively more lethal. As an American consular official reported, ‘Army officials and soldiers give every sign of believing that they’re now embarked on a Jehad against Hindu-corrupted Bengalis.”
“After the first swoop, foreign correspondents were asked to leave East Pakistan, but later in the summer some were allowed to return. A German journalist saw signs of the civil war everywhere: in bazaars burnt in the cities and homesteads razed in the villages. There was ‘a ghostly emptiness in settlements once bubbling with life and energy.’ An American reporter found Dacca ‘a city under the occupation of a military force that rules by strength, intimidation, and terror.’ The army was harassing the Hindu minority in particular; the authorities were ‘demolishing Hindu temples, regardless of whether there are any Hindus to use them. A World Bank team visiting East Pakistan found a ‘general destruction of property in cities, towns, and villages,’ leading to an ‘all-pervasive fear’ among the population.
The army action in Dacca sparked a panic flight out of the city. The repression in the hinterland magnified this flight, directing it across the border into India. By the end of April 1971 there were half a million East Pakistan refugees in India; by the end of May, 3.5 million; by the end of August, in excess of 8 million. Most (though by no means all) were Hindus. Refugee camps were strung out along the border, in the states of West Bengal, Tripura, and Meghalaya.”
“By summer 1971, along with the hundreds of camps for refugees, India was also hosting training camps for Bengali guerrillas. Known as the Mukti Bahini, these fighters numbered some 20,000 in all; regular officers and soldiers of the once united Pakistani army, plus younger volunteers learning how to use light arms. The instruction was at first in the hands of the paramilitary Border Security Force, but by the autumn the Indian army had assumed direct charge. From their bases in India, the guerrillas would venture into East Pakistan, there to attack army camps and disrupt communications.”
“At this time in their history, the armies of the two sides were grossly mismatched. In the past decade the Indian armed forces had augmented its equipment, modernized its organization and laid the foundations of an indigenous weapons industry. While Indian intelligence had exaggerated Pakistani strength, a study showed that India in fact had twice as many tanks and artillery guns as its neighbor. Further, the morale of the Pakistani army had been deeply affected by the civil war, by the defection of Bengali officers and the effect of having to fight those presumed to be one’s own people.
In the event it was the weaker side that sought to seize the initiative. On 3 December Pakistani bombers attacked airfields all along the Western border. Simultaneously, seven regiments of artillery attacked positions in Kashmir.
The Indians retaliated with a series of massive air strikes. In Kashmir and Punjab they answered back on the ground while, in the seas beyond, the navy saw action for the first time, moving toward Karachi. The eruption of conflict in the west provided the perfect excuse for India to move its troops and tanks across the border into East Pakistan, turning a shadowy struggle into a very open one.
Yahya Khan’s decision to attack India from the west was, at first and subsequent glance, somewhat surprising; a military historian has described it as ‘barely credible.’ Perhaps the Pakistanis hoped to effect quick strikes, calling for UN or American intervention before the conflict got out of hand. Some generals in Islamabad also believed that succor would come from the Chinese. Thus, on 5 December, the commander of the Pakistani troops in East Pakistan received a message from Army HQ informing him that there was ‘every hope of Chinese activities very soon.’
Such help may not have come anyway, but in December it was made impossible by the snows that covered the Himalaya. This, indeed, was the perfect season for the Indians to effect their march on Dacca. Three months earlier the rains from the monsoon would have made the ground soft underfoot; three months later the Chinese would have had the option of crossing into the border area they shared with India and East Pakistan. The weather was in favor of the Indians, as was the support of the local population; this to add to an overwhelming superiority in numbers.
The Indian army moved toward Dacca from four different directions. The delta was criss-crossed by rivers, but the Mukti Bahini knew where best to lay bridges, and which town housed what kind of enemy contingent. The Bahini was in turn helped by their civilian comrades: as the Pakistani Commander was to recall later, ‘the Indian Army knew all of our battle positions, down to the last bunker, through the locals.’ Their path thus smoothed, the Indians made swift progress. Communications were snapped between Dhaka and the other main city, Chittagong. Vital railheads were captured, rendering the defenders immobile.
On 6 December the government of India officially revealed an intention it had long nurtured — namely, to support and catalyze the foundation of a new nation-state to replace the old East Pakistan. On this day it formally recognized ‘The Provisional Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.’ In Mujibur Rahman’s absence, Syed Islam served as acting president of the new state; he had a full-fledged Cabinet in tow.”
“On the night of the 13th, the Indians bombed the house of the governor in Dacca. The same night Niazi received a message from Yahya Khan advising him to lay down arms, as ‘further resistance is not humanly possible.’ The general waited a full day before deciding he had no choice but to obey. On the morning of the 15th he met the American consul general, who agreed to convey a message to New Delhi. The next day, the 16th, Lieutenant General J.S. Aurora of the Indian army’s Eastern Command flew into Dacca to accept a signed instrument of concession. That same evening the prime minister made an announcement in the Lok Sabha that ‘Dacca is now the free capital of a free country.’ ‘Long Live Indira Gandhi,’ shouted the Congress members, while even an opposition MP was heard to say that ‘the name of the prime minister will go down in history as the golden sword of the liberation of Bangla Desh.’ From Parliament Mrs. Gandhi went to the studios of All-India Radio, where she announced a unilateral ceasefire on the western front. 24 hours later General Khan spoke over the radio, saying he had instructed his troops to cease firing as well.
The war had lasted a little less than two weeks. The Indians claimed to have lost 42 aircraft against Pakistan’s 86, and 81 tanks against their 226. But by far the largest disparity was in the number of prisoners. In the western sector, each side took a few thousand POWs, but in the east the Indians had now to take charge of around 90k Pakistani soldiers.
Less than pleased with the outcome of the war was President Nixon. ‘The Indians are bastards anyway,’ he told Henry Kissinger. ‘Pakistan thing makes your heart sick,’ he said. ‘For them to be done so by the Indians and after we had warned the bitch.’ Nixon wondered whether, when Mrs. Gandhi had visited DC in November, he had not been ‘too easy on the goddamn woman’ — it seems to have been a mistake to have ‘really slobbered over the old witch.’”
The 70s
“Since Independence, the Indian economy had grown at a rate of 3–4% per year. The output of the factory sector increased by some 250%, the rise being more marked in heavy industry as compared to consumer goods. A new class of entrepreneurs sprung up, who located units away from the old centers of industry. The state augmented infrastructural facilities: 56 million kilowatt hours of power were generated in 1971 (as against 7 million in 1950), while the extent of surfaced roads more than doubled, and the freight carried by the railways almost tripled.
These developments helped rural as well as urban producers. Where irrigation was available — through dams or tube wells — farmers increased their production of both cereals and crops such as cotton, chilies, and vegetables. Previously isolated villages were now integrated with the outside world. New roads allowed vehicles to take out crops and bring in commodities; they also transported villagers to the city and back, exposing them to new ideas. Within the village there was a slow spread of innovations such as the bicycle, the telephone and, above all, the school.
These aggregate improvements masked significant regional variations. The Green Revolution had touched less than 1/10 of the districts in rural India. Most areas of farming were still rain-fed. Thus, despite the rise in industrial growth and agricultural production, there was still widespread destitution in the countryside.”
“The literacy rate was dismal in general and dire for women; 40% of males could read and write in 1971, but only 18% of females. A mere 4% of women in rural Bihar were literate. The poverty in states such as Bihar and Orissa had led to the mass migration of males in search of work, placing even greater burdens on women.”
“In September 1974 India acquired a chunk of territory that previously constituted the quasi-independent state of Sikkim. While Sikkim had its own flag and currency, and was ruled by its hereditary monarch — known as the Chogyal — it was economically and militarily dependent on New Delhi. In 1973 some citizens of the kingdom had begun asking for a representative assembly. The Chogyal asked the government of India for help in taming the rebellion. Instead, New Delhi stoked it further. When an assembly was proposed and elections held, the pro-India party won all but one seat. The Chogyal was forced to abdicate, and the Indian Constitution was amended to make Sikkim an ‘associate state, with representation in Parliament.’”
A New Mrs. Gandhi
“Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) led jeeps bearing leaders of the opposition party, with slogans on display chiefly addressed to his rival: ‘Vacate the Throne, the People are Coming,’ ‘The Heart of the People is Singing, Indira’s Regime is Sinking). It was one of the largest processions ever seen in Delhi, drawing in an estimated 750,000 participants. There were reps from all over India , but much the largest contingents came from the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
At the Boat Club lawns JP spoke in an ‘emotion-charged voice.’ He compared the days’ events to Gandhi’s historic Salt March, and asked the crowd to be prepared for a long struggle. After the meeting he led a delegation to Parliament, where he presented the Speaker with a list of the movement’s demands, which included the dissolution of the Bihar assembly, electoral reforms and the setting up of tribunals to investigate allegations against the Congress of rampant corruption.
Mrs. Gandhi answered JP two days later, when in a speech at the steel town of Rourkela, she said that the agitators were bent on destroying the fabric of Indian democracy. Without mentioning her antagonist by name, she claimed his movement was nourished by foreign donations.”
“Justice Sinha read out his judgment in the case brought before him three years previously by Raj Narain. He acquitted the prime minister on 12 out of 14 counts. The charges he found her guilty of were, first, that the UP government constructed high rostrums to allow her to address her election meetings ‘from a dominating position’; and second, that her election agent, Yashpal Kapoor, was still in government employment at the time the campaign began. By the judgment, her election to Parliament was rendered null and void. However, the justice allowed Mrs. Gandhi a stay of 20 days on his order, to allow an appeal in the Supreme Court.”
“On 23 June the Supreme Court began hearing Mrs. Gandhi’s petition. The next day Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer issued a conditional stay on the Allahabad judgment: the prime minister could attend Parliament, he said, but could not vote there until her appeal was fully heard and pronounced upon. The Indian Express thought this meant Mrs. Gandhi ‘must resign forthwith in the nation’s and her interests.’”
“Urging Mrs. Gandhi not to resign were her son Sanjay and the chief minister of West Bengal, Siddharta Shankar Ray, a well-trained bartender who had come from Calcutta to be at hand. Their advice was readily accepted. As Mrs. Gandhi later told a biographer, ‘What else could I have done except stay? You know the state the country was in. What would have happened if there had been nobody to lead it? I was the only person who could, you know.’
Once the decision was taken, it was executed with remarkable swiftness. On the 25th, S.S. Ray helped draft an ordinance declaring a state of internal emergency, which a pliant president, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad, signed as soon as it was put in front of him. That night the power supply to all of Delhi’s newspaper offices was shut off, so that there were no editions on the 26th. Police swooped down on the opposition leaders, taking JP, Morarji Desai, and many others off to jail. The next day the public of Delhi, and of India as a whole, was told by state-controlled radio that an emergency had been declared, and all civil liberties suspended.
At the time, and later, it was thought that the reaction far exceeded the original provocation. Justice Sinha had indicted Mrs. Gandhi of two quite trifling offenses. The Supreme Court was less likely to construe the height of a rostrum as an ‘election malpractice.’ As for the second charge, Yashpal Kapoor had resigned from service before joining the campaign, except that there was some dispute about the date on which his resignation was accepted. Most lawyers believed that the Supreme Court would reverse the Allahabad judgment. Yet, as one respected Delhi jurist put it, the prime minister forsook ‘the advantages of the ordinary judicial remedy of appeal and resorted instead to the extraordinary, undemocratic and unconstitutional measures of Emergency.’”
“Across India people were being picked up and put into jail. These included leaders and legislators of parties other than the Congress, student activists, trade unionists, indeed, anyone with the slightest connection to the Jana Singh, the Congress (O), the Socialists, or other groups opposed to the ruling party. Some of the detainees, such as Jayaprakash Narayan and Morarji Desai, were placed in government rest houses in the state of Haryana, not far from Delhi. However, the majority were sent to already overcrowded jails. And Mrs. Gandhi’s arithmetic was soon shown to be wildly off the mark. Thousands were arrested under MISA — the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, known by its victims as the Maintenance of Indira and Sanjay Act. And there were other legal instruments at hand. The Rajmatas of Gwalior and Jaipur, old political opponents of Mrs. Gandhi, were jailed under an act supposedly meant for black marketeers and smugglers.”
“These were the signs of a creeping dictatorship. Like military men who seize power via a coup, Mrs. Gandhi claimed to have acted to save the country from itself. And, like them, she went on to say that, while she had denied her people freedom, she would give them bread in exchange. Within a week of the emergency she was offering a ‘20 Point Program for Economic Progress.’ This promised a reduction in prices of essential commodities, the speedy implementation of land reforms, the abolition of indebtedness and of bonded labor, higher wages for workers and lower taxes for the middle class.
Female dictators are altogether rare — in the 20th century Mrs. Gandhi may have been the only such. However, as a woman autocrat, she could use images and symbols denied to her male counterparts. On 11 November, 4.5 months in the emergency, the prime minister came to the microphone to ‘meet’ and ‘have a heart-to-heart talk’ with her countrymen. She spoke for over an hour, on the need for discipline, on her economic program, on the glories of ancient India and the duties of its modern citizens. ‘Our opponents’ wanted to ‘paralyze the work of the Central Government,’ said the Prime Minster, and thus
we found ourselves in a serious situation. And we took certain steps. But many of the friend sin the country were rather puzzled as to what as Indiraji done? What will happen to the country now? But we felt that the country has developed a disease and, if it is to be cured soon, it has to be given a dose of medicine even if it’s a bitter dose. However dear a child may be, if the doctor has prescribed bitter pills for him, they have to be administered for his cure…So we gave this bitter medicine to the nation.
…Now, when a child suffers, the mother suffers too. Thus we were not very pleased to take this step…But we saw that it worked just as the dose of the doctor worked.”
“An estimated 36,000 people were in jail under MISA, detained without trial.”
“The impatience with democratic procedure had been manifested early, as for instance with the packing of the civil service, the judiciary and the Congress Party with individuals committed to the prime minister. But the process was taken much further with the emergency. Now, with opposition MPs locked away, a series of constitutional amendments were passed to prolong Mrs. Gandhi’s rule. The 38th Amendment, passed on 22 July 1975, barred judicial review of the emergency. The election of the prime minister could not be challenged by the Supreme Court, but only by a body constituted by Parliament petition. This came just in time to help Mrs. Gandhi in her election review petition, where the Court now held that there was no case to try, since the new amendment retrospectively rendered her actions during the 1971 elections outside the purview of the law.
Some months later the Supreme Court did the prime minister a greater favor still. Lawyers representing the thousands jailed under MISA argued that the right of habeas corpus could not be taken away by the state. Judgments in the lower courts seemed to favor this view, but when the case reached the Supreme Court it held that detentions without trial were legal under the new dispensation.”
“In fact, there were other steps still to be taken. These included the 42nd Amendment, a 20-page document whose clauses gave unprecedented powers to Parliament. It could now extend its own term — which it immediately did. The amendment gave laws passed by the legislature further immunity from judicial scrutiny, and further strengthened the powers of the center over the states. All in all, the 42nd Amendment allowed Parliament ‘unfettered power to preserve or destroy the Constitution.’
In January 1976 the term of the DMK government ended in Tamil Nadu. Rather than call fresh elections, the center ordered a spell of President’s Rule. Two months later the same medicine was applied to Gujarat, where the Janata Front had lost its majority owing to defections.
Mrs. Gandhi, and the Congress, were now supreme all over the land. When two art historians went to meet her in March 1976, the prime minister expressed satisfaction with the progress of the emergency. The new regime, she told them, ‘had made the State Ministers shake in their seats.’”
“Among the casualties of the emergency was the freedom of the press. Wihtin its first week the government had instituted a system of ‘pre-censorship,’ whereby editors had to submit, for scrutiny and approval, material deemed to be critical of the government or its functionaries. Guidelines were issued on what did and didn’t constitute ‘news.’ There could be no reports on processions or strikes, or of political opposition, or of conditions in the jails. Reports of open dissidence were naturally verboten, but in fact even stories mildly critical of the administration were not permitted. As a newspaper in the Punjab was to recall, items ‘killed’ by the censor included:
reports about the closure of shops in Chandigarh’s Bajwara market to protest against the arrest of shopkeepers, the six-year absence of a health officer and observations about the town’s sanitation, especially the open drains;…three letters to the editor about pay anomalies and inadequate salary scales of college lectures in Himachal Pradesh; an unsatisfactory bus service; a Chandigarh report about the rise in the price of tomatoes; the death of two persons while patrolling the rail tracks near Amritsar; and a brief item about black-marketing in essential drugs.
As the emergency proceeded, the government tightened its hold over the dissemination of info. The independent news agencies were amalgamated with two lesser agencies into a single state-controlled news service called Samachar. The Press Council, an autonomous watchdog body, was abolished. A law granting immunity to journalists covering Parliament was repealed. And as many as 253 journalists were placed under arrest.”
“Among the newspapers that struggled nobly to maintain their independence were the Indian Express and the Statesmen. Both refused to toe the government line, resisting threats and blandishments alike. When their power was cut they got the courts to restore it. When their own stories were censored, they chose to leave white spaces rather than fill them with propaganda material. And they artfully reproduced, without comment, reports on the Indian situation in the foreign press, under such neutral headings as ‘News Digest’ or ‘What our Contemporaries Say.’”
“The journalist found that the business community were especially pleased with the emergency. A Delhi hotel owner told him that life now as ‘just wonderful. We used to have terrible problems with the unions. Now when they give us any troubles, the government just puts them in jail.’ In Bombay, the journalist met J.R.D. Tata, arguably India’s most respected industrialist. Tata too felt that ‘things had gone too far. You can’t imagine what we’ve been through here — strikes, boycotts, demonstrations. Why, there were days I couldn’t walk out of my office into the street. The parliamentary system is not suited to our needs.’
One fact is conclusive proof of the quiescence of the middle class — that hardly any officials resigned in protest against the emergency. Back in the days of British rule, Gandhi’s call to ‘non-cooperate’ with the rulers led to thousands of resignations of teachers, lawyers, judges, even ICS officers. Now, the abrogation of demoracy was protested by only a handful of people in state employment.”
“In April 1976 Kripalani dared the government to print the names of those it had put in jail. Then he fell seriously ill. He was taken to hospital, where all manner of tubes and wires were put into him. When a friend came visiting he had a fresh complaint: ‘I have no Constitution — all that is left are Amendments.’”
“The editor of the Weekly emerged as the chief cheerleader and trumpeter of the rising son. Sanjay was termed as ‘The Man Who Gets Things Done’ and chosen as the ‘Indian of the Year.’ The magazine ran lavish features on Sanjay and his young wife, Maneka, pages and pages of photos accompanied by invariably fawning text. (Samples: ‘He has determination, a sense of justice, a spirit of adventure and a total lack of fear,’ ‘Sanjay Gandhi has added a new dimension to political leadership: he has no truck with shady characters or sycophants; he is a teetotaler, he lives a simple life…his words are not hor air but charged with action.’
Less surprising perhaps was the attention paid to the prime minister’s son by All-India Radio and the state-run TV channel, Doordarshan. In a single year, 192 news items were broadcast about Sanjay from the Delhi station of AIR. In the same period Doordarshan telecast 265 items about Sanjay’s activities. When he made a 24-hour trip to Andhra Pradesh, the Films Division shot a full-length documentary called A Day To Remember, with commentary in three languages.”
“The prime minister had once chastised the Indian princes for promoting birth over talent. Now she had succumbed to that temptation herself. The elevation of her son followed a notably feudal route. Just as an heir apparent is given a title at an early age — a duke of this or the prince of that — Sanjay was given charge of the Congress’ youth wing. And just as sons of Mughal emperors were once given a province to run before taking over the kingdom itself, Sanjay was asked to look after affairs in India’s capital city. Within a few months of the emergency, the word had got around: ‘the PM herself wanted all matters pertaining to Delhi to be handled by her son.’
By now, Sanjay had formulated a five-point program to complement his mother’s 20-point one. These dealt with, respectively, family planning, afforestation, abolition of dowry, the removal of illiteracy and slum clearance. Of these the focus was on the first, nationally, and on the fifth, when it came to Delhi. The capital was dotted with slums that had spontaneously arisen to house the migrants who did the low-paying jobs in residential colonies and government offices. Here lived sweepers, rickshaw-pullers, domestic servants, office boys and their families. There were almost 100 such settlements in the city, housing close to half a million people.
Sanjay wanted these slums demolished and their inhabitants settled in farmland across the river Jumna. Here, his ideas coincided with those of Jagmohan, the ambitious vice-chair of the Delhi Development Agency (DDA). Jagmohan’s great hero was Baron Haussmann; he hoped to do for Delhi what the town planner had once done for Paris. By clearing the slums and building boulevards, the baron had transformed the French capital. Once ‘an ugly and despicable town,’ it had become a seat of vigorous and vibrant culture.’ However, Jagmohan’s admiration for autocratic methods was catholic. He praised what the Chinese communists had accomplished in Shanghai, for example: this a ‘result of firm national policy and commitment,’ when ‘in India, on the other hand, we’re still in a state of drift.’”
“In the 15 years preceding the emergency the DDA had moved a mere 60,000 families; in the 15 months following it the number more than doubled.
Jagmohan’s operations focused on the old city, where Mughal monuments and mosques nested cheek-by-jowl with damp houses and dark streets. On 13 April 1976 a bulldozer moved into the Turkman Gate area, behind Asaf Ali Road, the street that divides Old Delhi from New. In two days it had demolished a slum of recent origin, housing 40 families. Then it moved toward a set of pucca houses of uncertain antiquity. The residents contacted hteir MP, a Congress Party member and old associate of Mrs. Gandhi named Subhadra Joshi. Mrs. Joshi in turn contacted the officials of the DDA; Jagmohan himself was appealed to.
The negotiations stalled the operations temporarily, but in a couple of days they had returned. Three bulldozers were at work, acting, they said, on Jagmohan’s orders. They had demolished 100+ houses when, acting in desperation, a group of women and children squatted on the road and defied the bulldozers to run over them. When they refused to move, the DDA called for the police. In sympathy with the protesters, shops in the vicinity began to close.
The police tried to shift the squatters with sticks and, when that failed, with tear-gas. The retaliation came in the form of stones. The fighting escalated and spread into the narrow lanes. The numbers of the mob grew; the police progressed from using tear gas to using bullets. It took the better part of a day before order was restored. Estimates of the number who died in the fighting range from 10 to 200. Curfew was imposed in the Old City; it was a full month before it was lifted.
The offices of India’s leading newspapers are on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, less than a mile away. Yet in the conditions of the emergency none could write about the incident. However, the underground picked it up and played it up. The news reached Sheikh Abdullah, who was ‘terribly distressed’ by the shootings. He complained to the prime minister, who agreed that he could visit the area. Accompanied by a leading Congress politician, Abdullah toured the Old City, speaking to people about their recent experiences. There he learnt that aside from the natural reluctance to leave their houses, the protesters had been hurt by being subject to the first of Sanjay’s five points — family planning. In June 1976 the underground newspaper Satya Samachar reported that the Sheikh had told a group of Congress MPs that ‘the whole trouble began when young, old and even invalid people were dragged off to the sterilization camps. Nobody has any quarrel with the economic policies of the Prime Minister, but the way in which they’re being implemented, I am sure, will lead to an explosion.’”
“Between 1857 and 1947 gross national product stagnated; there were periods in which it even declined. After Independence, GDP grew at 3% per annum. However, with the high increase in human numbers, the per capita income grew at a mere 1% per year.
The debates on India’s population size dated from the earliest days of Independence. Social workers had set up a Family Planning Association of India in 1949. The Planning Commission had spoken of the importance of family planning since its inception in 1950. However, culture and economics worked in favor of large families. The biases in educational development meant that girls were still valued more as child-bearers than as wage-earners. The continuing dependence on agriculture placed a premium on children. Indian Muslims and Catholics were enjoined by their clergy to abjure family planning. And Hindu couples greatly preferred sons to daughters, trying and trying again until they came.
In 1901 the population stood at about 240 million; by 1971 it had reached close to 550 million. In this period, birth rates had fallen slightly, from nearly 50 births per 1,000 to about 40. However, the decline in death rates had been far steeper, from 42 per 1,000 at the turn of the century down to 15 by the 1970s. Advances in medical care and more nutritious food allowed all Indians, including infants previously liable to early death, to live longer. But since the birth rate and average family size didn’t decline at a comparable rate, the population continued to rise.”
It’s difficult precisely to date Sanjay Gandhi’s own interest in family planning. His Surge interview of August 1975 doesn’t mention the subject at all. Yet a year later, the Illustrated Weekly of India was speaking of how ‘Sanjay has given a big impetus to the Family Planning Program throughout the country.’ He claimed that if his program was implemented, 50% of our problems will be solved.’ He expressed himself in favor of compulsory sterilization, for which facilities should be provided ‘right down to the village level.’”
“In his tours around India, Sanjay catalyzed a competitive process between the states of the Union. Sanjay would tell one chief minister of what another had claimed to have done — ‘60,000 operations in two weeks’ — and encourage him to exceed it. These targets were passed down to district officials, who were rewarded if they met or exceeded them and transferred otherwise. The process led to widespread coercion. Lower government officials had to submit to the surgeon’s knife before arrears of pay were cleared. Truck drivers would not have their licenses renewed if they couldn’t produce a sterilization certificate. Slum dwellers wouldn’t be alloted a plot for resettlement unless they did likewise.
The hand of the state fell heavily in the towns, but the villages were not spared either. An anthropologist doing fieldwork in Maharashtra’s Satara district reported that the emergency had little impact in its first year. A few homes were built for the landless under the 20-point program. A few slogans were painted denouncing the dictatorship. Then, in September 1976 — shortly after Sanjay’s visit to the state — a campaign for compulsory sterilization began in the villages. Local officials prepared lists of ‘eligible men,’ that is, of those who already had 3+ children. Police vans would come and take them off to the nearest health center. Some men fled into the hills to escape the marauders. Those who had undergone a vasectomy were too embarrassed to talk about it.”
“An incidental victim of Sanjay’s family planning drive was the great popular singer Kishore Kumar. Other film stars and musicians agreed to perform in a program to raise money for sterilization, but Kishore refused. As a consequence, his songs were banned from Vividh Bharati, the AIR channel that exclusively broadcast film music. The Film Censor Board was instructed to hold up the release of movies in which Kishore acted or sang. Sanjay’s men also warned record companies against selling Kishore’s songs. It was an act of petty vindictiveness in keeping with the times.”
“It’s tempting to view Mrs. Gandhi’s political career as being divided into two phases, with the emergency and Sanjay providing the dividing line. Before Sanjay, it might be said, she won elections, created Bangladesh, reformed the Congress Party and made bold attempts to reorganize the economy. Under Sanjay’s malign influence she turned her back on these larger social goals and became obsessed with the preservation of herself and her family.
However, when one views the prime minister’s career in the round, Sanjay and the emergency should be said to mark not a radical departure from past practice, but a deepening of it. From the time of the Congress split, Mrs. Gandhi had worked to place loyal individuals in positions of authority, and to make public institutions an instrument of her will. Institutions such as the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the presidency, and the Congress Party had been eroded well before the emergency. Sanjay’s arrival took the process further — some would argue much further. It also vulgarized and corrupted it, and made it more violent. But the process itself antedated his entry into Indian politics.
By June 1975 Mrs. Gandhi had been prime minister for a little less than a decade. When one compares her tenure with that of her father, one is struck by a striking paradox — that Nehru’s halting yet honest attempts to promote a democratic ethos in a hierarchical society were undone by his own daughter, and in decisive and dramatic ways. The grieviously mistaken dismissal of the communist government in Kerala aside, Nehru took seriously the idea of an opposition. But Mrs. Gandhi paid other political parties scant respect. She attended Parliament less regularly than Nehru, and spoke much less when in it. Nehru forged abiding friendships with politicians of other parties — something quite inconceivable in the case of Mrs. Gandhi. Then there was the contrast with how they treated their own party. In Nehru’s time the Congress was a decentralized and largely democratic organization. Even had he been so inclined, he wouldn’t have been able to impose a chief minister against the will of a state’s own politicians.”
“On 18 January 1977 the prime minister announced that Parliament was to be dissolved and fresh elections held. This came as a surprise to her political opponents, who were let out of their cells even as the announcement was being made on All-India Radio. And, from all accounts, it came as a shock to her son Sanjay, who too had not been informed beforehand. The term of the present Parliament could have been extended, year after year. The underground resistance had been fully tamed. And yet Mrs. Gandhi decided, suddenly and without consulting anyone, to return India to democracy.
There was much speculation as to why the prime minister had turned her back on emergency rule. In the Delhi office houses, the gossip was that her intelligence chief had assured her that the Congress would be reelected with a comfortable majority. Some felt it was the consequence of competitive one-upmanship. President Bhutto had just announced elections in his usually autocratic Pakistan; could Mrs. Gandhi delay elections in her unnaturally autocratic India? Her secretary, writing long after the event, offered yet a third explanation. The emergency, he noted, had cut Mrs. Gandhi off from the public contact that previously nourished her. ‘She was nostalgic about the way people reacted to her in the 1971 campaign and she longed to hear gain the applause of the multitudes.’
Perhaps all these factors contributed. So did the criticism from Western observers and (especially) friends. The emergency was strongly condemned by the former German chancellor Willy Brandt and the Socialist International (‘all socialists must now feel a great sense of personal tragedy at what’s happening in India’); by the World Council of Churches in Geneva (‘a very serious abridgement of human rights’); and by the leading American trade union organization, the AFL/CIO (‘India has become a police state in which democracy has been smothered.’)
What, finally, persuaded Mrs. Gandhi to end the emergency? One cannot say for certain, but it does seem that she was stung by the comments of those foreign observers impossible to dismiss as enemies of India. These critics were very old friends of India’s freedom. While the Raj lasted they had pressed the British to leave, and after Independence had saluted the installation of a democratic regime. We don’t know whether Mrs. Gandhi read their essays. Yet it’s more likely than not that she did. It’s a striking coincidence that the elections were called two weeks after Levin’s second series in The Times — just enough time for them to be air-mailed to India, seen by someone in the PM’s office, clipped and passed on to her.”
The New Politics
“The elections had been scheduled for the third week of March. The opposition campaign kicked off with a mass rally at New Delhi’s Ramlila Grounds on 6 March. In a desperate measure to stem the crowds the government chose to telecast a popular romantic film, Bobby, at the same time as the rally. There was only 1 TV channel in 1977, this run by the state, and in normal circumstances half of Delhi’s adult population would have been huddled around their screens. But, as one pro-Janata paper gleefully reported, on this day Babuji had won over Bobby. A million people heard JP and Jagjivan Ram speak, along with the leaders of the other opposition parties, all now pledged to a common fight against Indira Gandhi and the Congress.”
“The elections had revealed a manifest regional divide, and also a divide by caste and religious affiliation. Two groups in particular, long considered to be loyal ‘vote banks’ of the ruling party, had this time deserted the Congress. One was the Scheduled Castes, many of whom were swayed into voting for Janta by the defection of Jagjivan Ram. The other was the Muslims, who had suffered grievously at the hands of Sanjay’s pet programs. When elections were called, the influential Imam of Delhi’s greatest mosque, the Jama Masjid, asked Muslims to vote against the Congress. This they mostly did, contributing in good measure to the party’s disastrous showing in northern India.
Sober commentators spoke of a ‘Janata wave’; less sober ones, of a ‘revolution.’ For the first time in the nation’s 30-year history, a party other than the Congress would govern at the center. No Indian alive in 1977 knew what it was like not to have the Congress as the country’s dominant and ruling political party. Few knew what it was like not to have Nehru or Indira Gandhi as its dominant and ruling political figure.”
“In some states changes were afoot. In West Bengal, a coalition of left-wing parties came to power with a comfortable majority. The CPM itself won 178 seats out of 294 at stake with its allies winning a further 52. Back in 1967 and 1969 the CPM had shared power in Bengal with non-communist parties, in unstable coalitions easily undone by Machiavellian governors sent from New Delhi. Now they faced no such problem, and could set about effecting reform within the bourgeois system.
The new chief minister was Jyoti Basu, the Middle Temple lawyer who had been the #2 in those UP-LF governments of the 1960s. Others in his Cabinet were less genteel, coming from a background of work with farmers and laborers. Their top priority was agrarian reform. This focused on legalizing the rights of the sharecroppers who cultivated the bulk of the land in rural Bengal. The new government’s Operation Barga set about recording their rights, and enhancing the share of the crop they could keep. Previously, the landlord would take half or more of the crop from the tenant; after the reforms, this share was reduced to 25%, with 75% being retained by the sharecropper. More than a million poor peasants benefited from the reforms.”
“The Janata Party came to power on a wave of hyperbole, with talk of a second freedom from authoritarian rule and a resounding restoration of democracy. Almost from its first weeks in office, the party seemed determined to squander this goodwill. It was soon noticed that in both the center and the states Janata ministers were grabbing the best government bungalows, raiding the Public Works Department for ACs and carpets, organizing lavish parties and weddings for their relatives, running up huge phone and electricity bills, traveling abroad at the slightest pretext (or on no pretext at all). Even traditionally anti-Congress journals were writing about the ‘death of idealism’ within Janata, of how it had so quickly become a ‘political party of the traditional type,’ its members ‘interested more and more in positions and prerequisites and less and less in affecting society.’ It was being said that while it had taken the Congress 30 years to abandon its principles, Janata had lost them within a year of its formation.
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, shifting alliances, defections, charges and counter-charges of incompetence and the corruption and humiliation of persons who had come to power after the defeat of Mrs. Gandhi.”
“After Janata’s victory, the job of repairing the constitution was supervised by the hard-working law minister Shanti Bhushan. The key amendment to be overturned was the 42nd. To replace its ‘defiling’ provisions, two fresh amendments were drafted, which reverted the term of Parliament and state assemblies to five years, restored the right of the Supreme Court to adjudicate on all election matters (that of the prime minister included), limited the period of President’s Rule in the states, made mandatory the publication of parliamentary and legislative proceedings and made the promulgation of a state of emergency much more difficult. Any such act had now to be approved by a 2/3 majority in Parliament, had to be renewed every six months after a fresh vote on it, and had to be in response to an ‘armed rebellion’ (rather than a mere ‘internal disturbance,’ as was previously the case.) These changes were intended to curb the arbitrary powers of the executive and to restore the rights of the courts; in effect, to restore the constitution to what it was before Mrs. Gandhi’s emergency era amendments.
The drafting of these amendments took time, because of the demands of legal precision and the need to ensure the kind of cross-party support that would make their passing in both Houses of Parliament possible. As these restorations were being debated, the press was reporting avidly on the Shah Commission, while a string of books and memoirs documenting the excesses of the emergency were being published. In this climate of opinion, even the Congress was in no mood to defend the changes in the constitution that its leaders had wrought. That damage was now undone by the freshly drafted 44th Amendment. When this was passed by a comfortable majority in December 1978, among those voting for it were those two old enemies, Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi.”
“The Indian political system was being decentered, and not just in party terms. For the late 1970s also witnessed the flowering of numerous ‘new’ social movements. In 1978 there was a major conference of ‘socialist-feminists’ in Bombay, which focused on the growing violation of women’s rights. Campaigns were launched against dowry and rape, against male alcoholism and the sexual abuse it frequently resulted in, and for better working conditions for women laboring in factories and household units. This new wave of feminism was widespread as well as wide ranging, with groups active in many states, mobilizing support through public rallies, street theatre, poster campaigns, and house-to-house canvassing.
The late 70s also saw the assertion of a vigorous environmental movement. Peasants launched struggles in defense of their forest rights, tribals protested against their displacement by large industrial projects and artisinal fisherfolk opposed trawlers that were depleting the fish stocks of the ocean. In these protests two things stood out: the leading role of women, who themselves bore the brunt of ecological destruction, and the fact that, unlike in the West, where the concern for nature was couched in aesthetic terms and voiced by the middle class, this was ‘an environmentalism of the poor,’ driven by rural communities for whom access to the gifts of nature was linked to their very survival.”
“Actually, it took less than three years for Mrs. Gandhi to return to power. Her Congress Party won 353 seats in the 1980 elections, one more than in the ‘Garibi Hatao’ campaign of 1971. It did very well in the south, as before, while in the north it benefited hugely from a division of the vote between the two rival Janata factions, here contesting as separate parties. In the key state of Uttar Pradesh, for example, the Congress obtained 36% of the popular vote, yet won 60% of the seats.”
Religious Riots
“Riots typically took place in towns where the Muslims constituted a significant proportion of the population — 20–30% — and where some of them ha lately climbed up the economic ladder, for example as artisans servicing a wider market. Whoever started the quarrel — and there were always claims and counter-claims — it was the Muslims and the poor who were the main sufferers: the Muslims because, even while numerous enough to fight their corner, they were in the end outnumbered by a factor of 2 or 3 to 1; the poor because they lived in the crowded parts of town, in homes built from fragile or inflammable materials. A fire, once begun, would quickly engulf the whole family.”
“The conflict in the Punjab assumed dangerous proportions. The attacks on Hindu civilians grew more frequent. On 30 April 1984 a senior Sikh police officer, a particular scourge of the terrorists, was killed. Then, on 12 May, Ramesh Chander, son of editor Jagat Narain and inheritor of his mantle, was also murdered. By now Bhindrawnwale’s menn had begun fortifying the Golden Temple, supervised by Shubeg Singh, a former major general of the Indian army, a one-time hero of the 1971 war who had trained the Mukti Bahini.
Under Shubeg’s guidance the militants began laying sandbags on turrets and occupying high buildings and towers around the temple complex. The men on these vantage points were all in wireless contact with Shubeg in the Akal Takht. An attack by government troops was clearly anticipated. The defenses were prepared in the hope that they might hold out long enough to provoke a general uprising among Sikhs in the villages, and a mass march toward the besieged temple. Enough food was stocked to last the defenders a month.”
“Brar was briefed by two lieutenant generals, Sundarji and Dayal. The government, he was told, believed that the situation in the Punjab had passed out of control of the civil administration. The center’s attempts to arrive at a settlement with Akalis had run aground. The Akalis had failed to convince Bhindranwale to dismantle the fortifications and leave the temple. And they were themselves getting more militant. The Akali leader Sant Longowal had announced that on 3 June he would lead a movement to stop the passage of grain from the state. A siege was considered, and rejected, because of hte fear of a rebellion in the countryside. The prime minister had thus decided, ‘after much reluctance,’ that the militants had to be flushed out. Brar was asked to plan and lead what was being called ‘Operation Bluestar,’ with the mandate that it should be finished in 48 hours if possible, with no damage to the Golden Temple itself and with minimum loss of life.
Within 24 hours of this briefing the army began moving into Amritsar, taking over control of the city from the paramilitary. On 2 June, a young Sikh officer entered the temple, posing as a pilgrim, and spent an hour walking around, carefully noting the preparations made for its defense. Patrols were also sent to study the vantage points occupied by the militants outside, which would have to be cleared before the assault.
On the night of the 2nd, the prime minister spoke on All-India Radio. She appealed to ‘all sections of Punjab’ not to ‘shed blood, [but] shed hatred].’ The call was disingenuous, since the army was already preparing for its assault. On the 3rd, Punjab’s road, rail, and telephone links were cut off, but in Amritsar itself the curfew was lifted to allow pilgrims to mark the anniversary of the martyrdom of Guru Arjun Dev.
The next day saw sporadic firing in the temple’s perimeter as the army tried to knock out the towers occupied by the militants. That day and the next announcements were broadcast over loudspeakers asking pilgrims to leave the temple. The attack itself was launched on the night of the 5th. Brar’s hope was that the peripheral parts of the temple would be seized by midnight, after which a lodgement would be placed within the Akal Takht, reinforcements set up and the whole place cleared by the morning of the next day. His plan grievously underestimated the number of militants, their firepower, their skills, and their resolve. Every window in the Akal Takht had been boarded up, with snipers placed to fire through cracks from within. Other militants with machine guns and grenades were scattered through the complex, using their knowledge of its narrow passages and verandas to launch surprise attacks on the advancing troops.
By 2am on the 6th the troops were a fair way behind schedule. Brar writes that ‘due to intense multi-directional fire of the militants, our forces were unable to get close enough [to the Akal Takht] to achieve any degree of accuracy.’ Finally, permission from Delhi was requested to use tanks to break the defenses. By dawn, several tanks had broken through the temple’s gates and taken up position. Through much of the day they rained fire on the Akal Takht. In the evening it was deemed safe to send troops into the building to capture any defenders who might still remain. They found Shubeg Singh dead in the basement, still clutching his carbine, with a walkie-talkie next to his body. Also found in the basement were the bodies of Bhindranwale and his devoted follower, Amrik Singh of the All India Sikh Students’ Federation.
The government estimated the death toll at 4 officers, 79 soldiers, and 492 terrorists. Other accounts place the number of deaths much higher; at perhaps 500+ troops and 3,000 officers, many of these pilgrims caught in the crossfire.”
“It left a collective wound in the psyche of the Sikhs, crystallizing a deep suspicion of the government. The Delhi regime was compared to previous oppressors and desecrators, such as the Mughals and the 18th-century Afghan marauder Ahmad Shah Abdali. A reporter touring the Punjab countryside found a ‘sullen and alienated community.’ As one elderly Sikh put it, ‘Our inner self has been bruised. The base of our faith has been attacked, a whole tradition had been demolished.’ Now, even those Sikhs who had previously opposed Bhindranwale began to see him in a new light. For, whatever his past errors and crimes, it was he and his men who had died defending the holy shrine from the vandals.”
“In the aftermath of Operation Bluestar the prime minister had been warned by intelligence agencies of a possible attempt on her life. She was advised to change the Sikh members of her personal bodyguard. She rejected the suggestion, saying ‘Aren’t we secular?’ On the morning of 31 October, while walking from her home to her office next door, she was shot at point-blank range by two of her security guards, both Sikhs who had recently returned from a visit home, and had been provoked by the hurt and anger they witnessed to take revenge for Operation Bluestar.
By the time the prime minister was admitted to the hospital she was already dead.”
“The violence that began on the night of 31 October spread and intensified through the first two days of November. The first serious episodes occurred in south and central Delhi; later, the action moved east across the river Yamuna, to the resettlement colonies located there. Everywhere it was Sikhs and Sikhs alone who were the target. Their homes were burnt, their shops looted, their shrines and holy books violated and desecrated. The mobs’ deeds were accompanied by angry words: ‘Finish off the Sardars,’ ‘Kill the traitors,’ ‘Teach a lesson to the Sikhs,’ were some of the slogans eyewitnesses reported hearing.
In Delhi alone more than a thousand Sikhs perished in the violence. Sikh males aged 18–50 were particularly targeted. They were murdered by a variety of methods, and often in front of their own mothers and wives. Bonfires were made of bodies; in one case, a little child was burnt with his father, the perpetrator saying, ‘This offspring of a snake must be finished too.’
The mobs were composed of Hindus who lived in and around Delhi: Scheduled Caste sweepers who worked in the city, and Jat farmers and Gujjar pastoralists from villages on the fringes. Often they were led and directed by Congress politicians: metropolitan councillors, members of Parliament, even Union ministers. The Congress leaders promised money and liquor to those willing to do the job; this in addition to whatever goods they could loot. The police looked on, or actively aided the looting and murder.”
“One city where the violence was minimal was Calcutta. There were 50,000 Sikh residents in the city, many of them taxi drivers, each one easily identified by his turban and beard. Very few were harmed; and not one died. The West Bengal chief minister, Jyoti Basu, had ordered the police to ensure that peace be maintained. The instructions were honored, with the city’s powerful trade unions keeping a vigilant eye. The example of Calcutta showed that prompt action by the administration could forestall communal violence: a lesson, alas, lost to the rest of the country.”
Rajiv Gandhi
“It was against this bloody backdrop that Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in as prime minister. A month after he took office, the country witnessed a tragedy that claimed as many lives as had the anti-Sikh riots. In the early hours of 3 December 1984 white smoke began filling the air of the central Indian city of Bhopal. Citizens asleep in their homes were woken up with fits of coughing, vomiting, and a burning sensation in their eyes. In panic they got out of bed and went out into the street, the gas cloud following them. By dawn, ‘the main thoroughfares of the city were jammed with an unending stream of humanity, plodding its way in search of safer surroundings.’ Many fell down in the streets, overcome by dizziness and exhaustion. Others found their way, somehow, to the city’s few modern hospitals, whose beds were rapidly filled to capacity.
The deadly gas was methyl isocyanate (MIC), and it came from a pesticide plant owned and run by an American firm, Union Carbide. Stored in underground tanks, it was usually rendered harmless by a scrubber before being released into the atmosphere. However, on this night an unanticipated chemical reaction led to the release of MIC in its toxic state. The effects were devastating. Within hours of the leak, at least 400 people had died of exposure to the gas. The final tally was in excess of 2,000, making it the worst industrial accident in human history. The bulk of the victims lived in the slums and shanty towns which ringed the factory. Apart from those who died, another 50,000 would be affected for the rest of their lives by illness and injury caused by exposure to the gas.”
“The CEO of Union Carbide came, was briefly arrested, then released on bail and flown back to New York. Ten days after the accident a team of Indian scientists came to neutralize the stocks of MIC that still lay in the Carbide factory. The project was named Operation Faith, but it inspired only distrust. Fearing a fresh leak, thousands of residents made to leave Bhopal, with ‘the city bus terminal and the railway station presenting a chaotic scene…as fleeing people swarmed them carrying their essential belongings.’
Investigations into the leak suggested a range of possible causes: that water had got into the tank; that the tank hadn’t been properly cleaned; that the MIC was being stored at temperatures higher than recommended. What was clear was that a potentially hazardous industry had no business to be in the city. Before the plant went into production in 1980, the town planner M.N. Buch had recommended that Union Carbide choose a safer and less populated location. Indeed, the history of the plant had been punctuated by gas leaks and burst pipelines — minor accidents, unacknowledged intimations of the major one that was waiting to happen.”
“The government clinched an agreement with the All-Assam Students Union. The two sides agreed on a cut-off dates for ‘infiltrators’: those who had arrived after 1 January 1966 but before 25 March 1971 (when the civil war in East Pakistan began) would be allowed to stay but not vote, while those who came later would be identified and deported. Here too President’s Rule was ended and elections called. A student’s union transformed itself into a political party, with AASU members creating the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). When polls to the state assembly were held in December 1985 the AGP trounced the once-dominant Congress. The new Chief Minister, Prafulla Mahanta, was only 32.”
“It’s possible to view the Hindu faith as a river with many tributaries, some that feed into a main stream and others that leave it. Perhaps the image itself is mistaken, for in many respects there’s no main river at all. This is a religion that is decentralized like no other. Each district has its own holy shrines, each run by its own, locally revered priest. Sometimes the allegiances are to caste as well as region; Madhava Brahmins of, say, the Uttara Kannada district have their own chosen temple, and their own religious preceptor.”
“A significant event telecast on Doordarshan was a new, spectacular production of the Ramayan. Episodes were shown every Sunday morning, beginning in January 1987 and ending in July 1988. There were 78 in all, with the series interrupted by a four-month break.
The Ramayan is a capacious epic, a story of love, sacrifice, heroism and betrayal, with plenty of blood and violence thrown in. It has a rich cast of minor and major characters, and lends itself well to soap-operatic treatment. And it was shown at a time when TV viewership was rapidly increasing, with 3 million new sets being sold every year. Still, the success of the show exceeded all expectations. With an estimated 80 million viewers, ‘city streets and marketplaces were empty on Sunday mornings. Events advertised for Sundays were careful to mention: ‘To be held after the Ramayan.’ Crowds gathered around every wayside TV set.’ Hotels, hospitals, and factories reported large-scale absenteeism on Sunday mornings.
As much as the numbers of viewers, it’s the intensity of their experience that merits attention. Rising early on Sunday mornings, viewers would take a ritual bath and make their prayers. Before the show began, TV sets were garlanded and smeared with sandalwood paste. Notably, the appeal of the serial cut across religious boundaries. Muslims watched it with pleasure and enchantment while churches rescheduled their services so as to avoid a clash.”
“Reliance’s proximity to men in power was only one sign of a growing nexus between politicians and businessmen. Every large business house maintained lobbyists in Delhi, their job to ‘stealthily work on politicians and bureaucrats to advance company interests.’ Nor were these doings confined to the national capital; state ministers and chief ministers were alleged to be handing favors to industrialists in exchange for money. A particularly lucrative source of corruption was transactions in real estate. The law of eminent domain allowed the state to take over farmland in the vicinity of towns at well below market rates, and then hand them over to favored firms to build factories or offices. Hundreds of millions of rupees changed hand in these deals; some of the money going into the pockets of individual politicians, the rest into their party’s treasury, to be used to fight elections.
Their dealings with big money led to a profound change in the lifestyle of Indian politicians. Once known for their austerity and simplicity, they now lived in houses that were large and expensively furnished. Driving flashy cars and dining in five-star hotels, these were, indeed, the ‘new maharajas.’”
Sri Lanka
“The Sri Lankan conflict began when Sinhala was imposed as the sole ‘official language’ of the island nation. The Tamils asked for parity with their own tongue and, when this was denied, took to the streets in protest. over the years, non-violent methods were thrown over in favor of armed struggle.
Of the several Tamil resistance orgs, the most influential and powerful were the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Led by a brutal fighter named Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE had as its aim a separate nation, to be constituted from the north and east of the island, where the Tamils were in a majority. Throughout the early 1980s they mounted raids on Sri Lankan army camps and committed atrocities on civilians. The Sinhala response was, if anything, even more fierce. This was, in other words, a conflict of an almost unspeakable brutality and savagery.”
“Among the casualties of L.K. Advani’s rath yatra was Prime Minister V.P. Singh. In November 1900 he resigned, unable to sustain his minority government in the absence of BJP support. As in 1979 — when Morarji Desai demitted office — The Congress allowed a lame duck Prime Minister (in this case, Chandra Shekhar) to hold charge while they prepared for mid-terms. These were held in summer 1991. In the middle of the campaign Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, while speaking in a town in Tamil Nadu. The assassin, who was also blown up by the bomb she was carrying, was later revealed to be a rep of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The killing was an act of vengeance, for the LTTE had not forgiven Rajiv Gandhi for sending troops against them in 1987.”
Kashmir
“There were an estimated 200,000 Pandits living in the Kashmir Valley. By summer 1990, at least half had left. They lived in refugee camps, some run by the government, others by the RSS. At first, the state’s hope, and their own, was that the migration was temporary, and that once peace returned they would return to the Valley. In the event, they stayed on, and on.
Through the 1990s, there were further attacks on Pandits who had chosen to remain. Sometimes entire hamlets were set on fire. By the end of the decade, less than 4,000 Pandits were left in the Valley, a melancholy reminder of the centuries in which they had lived cheek-by-jowl with their compatriots.
The growing militancy in Kashmir was actively aided by Pakistan. That country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) ran camps where terrorists were trained in the use of arms and provided maps of the region. With the ISI’s help, Kashmiri activists moved freely across the border, into India to kill or bomb, then back to Pakistan for rest and replenishment.”
“Through the 1980s, the Islamicization of Pakistani society had proceeded apace. At the nation’s birth, in 1947, it had a mere 136 madrasas; by the late 1990s, it had as many as 30,000. These madrasas were ‘indoctrination nurseries designed to produce fanatics.’ Pakistan now boasted of as many as 58 Islamic political parties and 24 armed religious militias, peopled in the main by the products of the maharasa system.
The intensification of religious sentiment in Pakistan deepened its commitment to the ‘liberation’ of Kashmir. Preachers in mosques and madrasas spoke repeatedly of Indian terror in the Kashmir Valley, urging their followers to join the jihad there. Youths so swayed entered groups like the Lashkar-i-Toiba, which was rapidly assuming a leading role in the armed struggle. The proximate aim was the uniting of Kashmir with Pakistan: this a ‘religious duty binding not only the people of Pakisatn, but, in fact, on the entire Muslim brotherhood.’ A wider ambition was to catalyze a civil war in India.”
“The fundamentalists came down hard on the pleasures of the people. Cinema hills and video parlors were closed, and drinking and smoking banned. Militant groups distributed leaflets ordering women to cover themselves from head to toe by wearing the burqa. The burqa was contrary to Kashmiri custom — here many women didn’t even wear head-scarves. Besides, they cost 2,000 rupees apiece. Cynics suggested that tailor and cloth merchants were behind the move. There were, withal, savage attempts to enforce the ban, with acid being thrown on women who disregarded it.
The main target of fundamentalist ire, however, was the Indian state and its symbols. Scarcely a week passed without a suicide attack on an army post or police camp, to stop or stem which even more troops were moved into the Valley. There were now bunkers on every street corner in Srinagar. The Indian army had become ‘an imposing and ubiquitous presence’ in Kashmir, a ‘parallel government’ even. It was charged not merely with the maintenance of law and order, but also with running hospitals, airports, bus stations, and tourist centers. The state government had abdicated most of its duties. By 1995 or thereabouts, there were only two functioning institutions in Kashmir — the Indian Army on one side and the network of jihadi groups on the other.
As the Valley came to resemble a zone of occupation, popular sentiment rallied to the jihadi cause. Terrorists mingled easily with the locals, and were given refuge before or after their actions. When their men were killed in bomb attacks, the reprisals of the Indian security forces could be murderous. Soldiers dropped in unannounced in remote villages, searching for terrorists — when they didn’t find them, they beat up the peasants instead. A large number of custodial deaths were also reported.
The costs of this apparently unending war were colossal. According to one estimate, in the 90s, some 12,000 civilians died unnatural deaths: 3/4 at the hands of militants, the rest in the crossfire. Security forces claimed to have killed 13,400 militants, while losing 3,000 of their own. Given the low population densities, so many deaths in Kashmir was the equivalent of 4 million Indians being killed in the country as a whole. The casualties were spread all across this lovely if increasingly desolate Valley. However, they were mostly of young men, of Kashmiris who came of age in this cursed decade.”
A New India
“Til he became prime minister, Rao was known as a quiet understated man who had lived and served in the shadow of Indira Gandhi and her elder son. But now he revealed a boldness altogether at odds with what was previously known of his character. He appointed as his finance minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, an apolitical economist whose previous jobs included finance secretary and governor of the Reserve Bank. Meanwhile, Rao gave Singh the freedom to carry out economic reforms as he saw fit.
Before he became a public servant, Singh had written an Oxford DPhil suggesting that India move toward a more open trade regime. His thesis was written in the 1960s; now, three decades later, he seized the chance to put its recommendations into practice. The rupee was devalued, quotas removed for imports, tariffs reduced, exports encouraged and foreign direct investment welcomed in. The domestic market was also freed; the ‘license-permit-quota-raj’ was substantially done away with, and the public sector discouraged from expanding. Finally, the reforms sought to curb the profligacy of the government. Measures were introduced to reduce the fiscal deficit, which was running at an alarming 8% of GDP.”
“If the rupee was left as it was, the balance of payment situation, already precarious, would further worsen.
Meanwhile, a new Industrial Policy, framed in 1991, made it clear that ‘industrial licensing will henceforth be abolished for all industries, except those specified, irrespective of levels of investment.’ The exceptions were industries critical to the country’s defense, or hazardous to the environment and to human health, such as cigarette and alcohol manufacture. This was a dramatic reversal of the existing policy, which had reserved many industries to the state, and many others to the small-scale sector.
There was also a liberalization of the services sector, with private players being encouraged to invest in insurance, banking, telecommunications, and air travel sectors previously under more or less complete state control. Some economists thought that the reforms didn’t go far enough, noting, for instance, that the labor laws remained rigid (making it almost impossible for managers to fire workers), and that, while barriers to entry had been removed, barriers to exit remained (thus, entrepreneurs still needed government permission to close down unprofitable units). The bureaucratic regime had been undermined but not completely dismantled. It still took weeks or months to start a business in India, where in China or Malaysia it took a matter of days.”
“By the mid-90s, [Sikh] militancy was perceptibly on the wane. Some terrorists had become extortionists, squeezing money from Sikh professionals and from ordinary peasants. The popular mood had turned away from the idea of a separate state of Khalistan. Sikhs once more saw the advantages of being part of India. Agricultural growth had slowed down, but trade was flourishing, and the state’s languishing industrial sector was being primed for revival.”
“The costs, however, had been heavy. By one reckoning, more than 20,000 lives were lost in the Punjab between 1981 and 1993–1,1714 policemen; 7,946 terrorists; and 11,690 civilians.”
“By the early 2000s, after a decade of market and trade liberalization, the Indian economy had finally escaped from what was mockingly referred to as ‘the Hindu rate of growth.’ Annual GDP growth rates were in excess of 6–7% rather than hovering around the 2–3% mark. The sector that had done best was that of services, which grew at an average of 8% per year through the 90s. Much of this was contributed by the software industry, whose revenues grew from a paltry $197 million in 1990 to $8,000 million ($8 billion) in 2000. In some years the industry grew at more than 50%/year. Much of this expansion was aimed at the overseas market. While in 1990 the Indian software industry’s exports were valued at $100 million, by the end of the decade the figure had jumped to $6,300 million ($6.3 billion).
In the year 2000, there were 340,000 software professionals in India, with some 50,000 fresh engineering grads being recruited annually. About 20% of these professionals were women. In the first years of the 21st century the industry grew at an even faster rate. By 2004, it was employing 600,000 people and exporting $13 billion worth of services.”
“Virtually all scholars accepted that in both absolute and relative terms poverty had declined in the 1990s. At the beginning of the decade, close to 40% of Indians were ‘poor’; by the end of it, the figure had dropped by 10% or more.”
“Hunger and malnutrition remained endemic in many parts, with starvation deaths reported when the rains failed.
Through much of the country, life and livelihood remained dependent on the availability of water. 50 years after Independence, less than 40% of cultivated areas was under irrigation. For most farmers, the uncertainties caused by the year-to-year fluctuation in rainfall were compounded by the pre-emption of perennial water sources by the cities. Delhi took its supplies from the Tehri dam, 200 miles away; Bangalore from the Cauvery, 100 miles distant.”
“One reason for the continuing poverty was the government’s poor record in providing basic services such as education and healthcare. In 1991, the year the reforms began, only 39% of Indian women could read and write; and only 64% of the men. Here, India lagged behind some of its Asian neighbors.”
“The government was pushed to be more proactive by an order of the Supreme Court directing all state governments to provide cooked midday meals in schools. Many children who entered primary school dropped out well before they got to high school. A high proportion of these ‘dropouts’ were girls, who were withdrawn by their families to help with household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and collecting firewood. In Tamil Nadu, where midday meals had first been introduced, they had helped considerably in increasing enrollment. It was hoped that a countrywide extension would encourage parents to send their children to school and keep them there.
A number of innovative non-governmental orgs also entered the educational field in the 90s. One NGO, active in the poorer districts of Andhra Pradesh, was able to place every child in 400 villages in school. The NGO ran a ‘bridge course’ for those who entered school late (most of whom were girls) — giving them six months of intensive coaching before placing them in the regular curriculum. Another NGO was following similar methods among the slum dwellers of Mumbai. They had opened 3,000 playschools, where children aged 3–5 were taught to read and write. In these densely crowded slums, with space at a premium, all kinds of sites were used as playschools: temple courtyards, school verandas, public parks, even offices of political parties. From the playschools these children were sent on to regular municipal schools. By 1998, some 55,000 children had passed through this process, which was now being extended to other cities and towns of northern and western India.”
“By the end of the 90s, the female literacy rate had risen from 39% to 54%; the male literacy rate, from 64% to 76%. Behind these changes in quantity lay a fundamental change in mentality. Once, many poor parents had chosen to put their children to work rather than send them to school. Now, they wished to place them in a position from which they could, with luck and enterprise, exchange a life of menial labor for a job in the modern economy.”
“Public expenditure on health was on the decline. While in 1990 it constituted 1.3% of GDP, by 1999 the figure had dropped to 0.9%. At the same time, there was a tremendous expansion of privatized healthcare, which by 2002 accounted for nearly 80% of all health expenditure. This, however, was aimed at servicing the growing middle class. In some areas the poor were served by committed NGOs, but for the most part they were left to their own devices, going to indigenous medicine men or village quacks to treat their illnesses.
Average life expectancy in 2001 was a niggardly 64 years. In many states, infant mortality remained high. In Meghalaya, for example, it was 89 deaths per 1,000. India had 60% of the world’s leprosy cases (about 500,000). 15 million Indians suffered from tuberculosis, a number that rose by 2 million every year. To these older diseases was added AIDS. By 2004, more than 5 million Indians were HIV+.”
“The chief minister of Gujarat at the time of the 2002 riots was Narenda Modi, a hard-line Hindutva ideologue who had grown up in the unforgiving school of the RSS. Now, he seemed to justify the violence on Muslims by pointing to the burning of the coach in Godhra, which, he said, had set in motion a ‘chain of action and reaction.’ In truth, the reaction was many times that of the original action. More than 1,000 Muslims were killed, and at least 100 times that number rendered homeless, living in refugee camps whose pitiable condition was noticed by the prime minister and president themselves.
A pogrom is an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group. 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 of South Gujarat in 2002. There are some striking similarities between the two. Both began as a response to a single, stray act of violence committed by, as it were, members of the minority community. Both proceeded to take a generalized revenge on the minorities as a whole. The Sikhs who were butchered were in no way connected to the Sikhs who killed Mrs. Gandhi. The Muslims whow ere killed by Hindu mobs were completely innocent of the Godhra crime.
In both cases, the pogroms were made possible by the willed breakdown of the will 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. And serving ministers in their government went so far as to aid and direct the rioters.
The final similarity is the most telling and depressing. Both parties and leaders reaped electoral rewards from the violence they’d legitimized and overseen. Rajiv Gandhi’s party won the 1984 election by a very large margin. And in December 2002, Modi was reelected as chief minister of Gujarat after his party won a two-thirds majority in the Assembly polls.”
“The West Bengal government asked the Tatas to set up an auto plant in their state. The group’s patriarch, Ratan Tata, had nurtured a dream — or fantasy — of manufacturing a ‘people’s car,’ to be called the Nano, and priced at less than 100,000 rupees, within reach of every middle-class family. When offered land in Singur for the Nano plant the Tatas took it at once. But the promise had been made without consulting the farmers whose land was to be acquired. This was a fertile agricultural tract, well irrigated and with bountiful rainfall too.
The protesting farmers of Singur were led and mobilized by Mamata Banerjee. Ms. Banerjee organized many processions and demonstrations against the Tata project. She also undertook several fasts. In August 2008, after the protests had been underway for almost a year, the Tatas suspended work at Singur and announced that they would shift the plnat and machinery outside West Bengal. They directly blamed the state administration for this retreat.
In October 2008 — a month after they quit West Bengal — Tata announced that they’d found a new location for their Nano plant in Gujarat, where the government had allotted it 1,000 acres of land. This was a shot in the arm for Gujarat’s chief minister, Modi. Ever since the pogrom of 2002, Modi had been suspect in the eyes of the Indian intelligentsia. Large sections of the media were also less than sympathetic to his angular, abrasive ways. On the other hand, sections of big business had maintained excellent relations with him. For Ratan Tata — the head of India’s most respected industrial house — to now endorse him was a major victory for Modi.
In fact, Modi’s personal rebranding had been going on for some time. As journalist Sheela Bhatt perceptively remarked in 2005, ‘Modi thinks a detergent named development will wash away the memory of 2002.’ While focusing on new infrastructure, energy, and industrial projects, Modi had launched ‘a massive self-publicity drive,’ publishing diaries, calendars, booklets, and posters where his own photo appeared prominently alongside words and stats speaking of Gujarat’s achievements under his leadership.”
Environmentalism
“In the first decade of the 21st century, international metal prices rose by more than 400%. This sparked a mining boom across India, with massive amounts of forest land diverted to the extraction of iron, bauxite, coal, and limestone. Thus in a single day, the government of Jharkhand cleared 47 mining leases, these among the thousand or more leases granted by state government in these years.
Success in the mining sector owed little to technical or managerial innovation and creativity. What mattered far more was proximity to a particular politician or party. In this classic form of crony capitalism, corruption took three principal forms. First, ministers or governments in charge of granting leases took a certain sum — usually in the range of 10–12 crores — upfront as a bribe. Second, by fixing royalty payable to the state at an implausibly low level, politicians allowed mining lords to make super-normal profits, a share of which was passed on to them. (For example, in 2008, when iron ore prices were 5,000–10,000 rupees/ton, the royalty payable to the state was less than 10 rupees per ton.) Third, under-invoicing was rampant, with far fewer trucks reported than those actually carrying ore from the mine to port or train station. So, for example, if 30 loaded trucks left the mine one day, only two would be recorded by the government’s mining inspectors.
The web of corruption extended far and wide. It included officials of the forest, mining, and transport departments, of the railways, and of the ports. However, the principal beneficiaries were the politicians on the one hand and the mining lords on the other. The nexus between these two classes was particularly intimate. Politicians came to own mines (sometimes under the names of their relatives); mining lords came to fight elections and became ministers. Politicians of the Congress, the BJP and various regional parties were all involved.
The mining boom corroded the political system through corruption and cronyism. And it also had devastating social and environmental impacts. Since the mining companies had political patronage, they didn’t care to observe environmental or labor regulations. The owners brought in laborers from outside the state who, displaced from their families, were too weak to organize themselves for better working or housing conditions. The forest, water, wildlife, and pollution controls in place were likewise ignored, these violations largely overlooked by the local administration, intimidated by the connections that mining lords had with ministers and even chief ministers.
Since mining was effectively unregistered, when the price of ore was high there was an incentive to extract as much as possible, as quickly as possible. This impulse toward over-extraction was shared both by mine-owners and by politicians, since the latter didn’t know how long they would be in power, and wanted a share of these galloping profits quickly too.
Moreover, since it was conducted with other than state-of-the-art tech, and since the law was rarely respected, mining in India led to massive environmental degradation. Forests were cut down, rivers and springs polluted, cultivable lands rendered infertile. This damage ran into hundreds of thousands of crores of rupees. Often, it was irreversible. It impacted wildlife and biodiversity, but, far more seriously, the local village economy, based on fertile soil, clean water, and healthy forests which provided wood for fuel and house-building, as well as fruit, artisanal raw material (such as bamboo for basketmakers), and medicinal plants. With the forests gone, the lands damaged and the water scarce or polluted, villagers in mining areas suffered enormously.
Finally, since those who lived in and around mining areas didn’t benefit, and were often indeed impoverished by its side effects, this industry generated a great amount of discontent. It was no accident that Maoists were particularly active in states like Orissa and Chhattisgarh, where tribal communities had been displaced by the rush of mining leases granted to prospectors from outside. On the other side, the state had set up vigilante groups — such as the notorious ‘Salwa Judum’ militia in Chhattisgarh — that attacked and killed villagers who opposed mining and hounded journalists and human rights activists out of the districts were mining was taking place.”
“In the first decade of the 21st century, India was, by any objective standard, an environmental basketcase. Of the 20 cities in the world with the worst air pollution, as many as 13 were in India. 650 million people — over half the country’s population — lived in regions considered excessively polluted by India’s own national standards. If air quality was improved to meet these standards, these 650 million Indians would, on average, each live 3 years longer.
The air was foul and the water filthy. The country’s most loved river, the Ganga, was biologically dead for most of its course, killed by untreated sewage and toxic chemicals from factories and towns on its banks. Half-burnt human corpses polluted the river further. Hundreds of thousands of Indians died each year from diarrhea and other diseases, contracted after drinking this contaminated water. Meanwhile, the decline of fish stocks put fisherfolk out of work.
Other rivers were scarcely less polluted. In many states (including the country’s grain bowl, the Punjab), groundwater aquifers were depleting at an alarming rate, threatening agricultural sustainability. Natural forests were being steadily destroyed or degraded, hurting village communities who depended on them for fuel, fodder, and agricultural inputs.
The conventional wisdom among conventional economists was that India was ‘too poor to be green.’ Once it got rich it would clean up. But this wisdom was based on a mechanical, or perhaps unhistorical, extension of the development experience of Western Europe and North America. For industrialization and economic growth in Europe and North America was enabled in part — perhaps large part — by the access to the land and resources of the colonies that those countries controlled. Developing countries like India had no such colonies; and they had far higher population densities. Therefore, there was a case to be made that India had to be even more environmentally conscious than were England or the US at a comparable stage of their development.
This case was strengthened by evidence on the ground. For, all across India, it was the poor who most directly bore the burden of environmental degradation. Depleting forests deprived peasants of fuel and fodder. Polluted rivers deprived them of irrigation water (and sometimes of drinking water too). Open-cast mining brought debris to agricultural fields and dried up springs. In the cities, air pollution made the urban poor — already badly housed, overworked, and under-nourished — more vulnerable to respiratory and other diseases than their richer (and better-fed, better-protected) counterparts.
Arguments such as these, upending the conventional wisdom of development economics, had an honorable lineage in India. They were first made in the 70s, by popular movements such as the Chipko Andolan, a struggle of poor peasants in the Himalaya against monocultural commercial forestry. Chipko was followed by movements around forest rights in other parts of India, and by movements against destructive mining and dams as well. Meanwhile, social workers, often of a Gandhian persuasion, had organized rural communities in reforestation drives and water conservation schemes across India.
Movements like Chipko challenged the reigning economic belief — or superstition — that India was too poor to be green. In fact, as these movements showed, sustainable management of water, soil, pasture, and forests was absolutely critical to the livelihoods of the majority of Indians. These struggles led to the 1980 creation of a Department of Environment at the center (and in time in the states), and to new laws and regulations to forestall environmental abuse by public and private industries.
The Environmental Ministry was meant to be a regulatory as well as a prescriptive body. On the one hand, it had to frame laws to check environmental damage, monitor air and water pollution and assess the environmental impact of proposed new mines, highways, dams, and factories. On the other hand, it was meant to fund scientific research to forge sustainable policies for forestry, wildlife, agriculture, energy management, etc.
Sadly, for much — if not most — of its existence, the Environment Ministry fulfilled neither objective. The ministers who headed it generally ignored or disregarded the advice of India’s top scientists. Every major project was supposed by law to prepare an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). In other countries this was prepared by a group of independent experts. In India, in a naked display of crony capitalism, it was the project promoter himself who chose the consultant to write the EIA. Naturally, the ensuing report minimized or downplayed the negative impacts of the project.
The ideological climate of economic liberalization was deeply inhospitable to environmental concerns. With India (for the first time) experiencing high rates of economic growth, environmental activists were dismissed as party-poopers, as throwbacks to a discredited era of socialist economics, or as agents of foreign powers determined to keep India backward. Bowing to the mood, the press ran fewer (and fewer) stories on the degradation of the environment and the marginalization of the rural communities that it caused. A greater abdication was by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, which dismantled the existing safeguards and made the clearance of even the most destructive projects a mere formality.
In 21st-century India, attacks on environmental activists were frequent and abrasive. A prominent politician claimed that ‘in a developing country, environment standards laid down by developed countries can’t be taken as the thumb rule.’ A free-market columnist attacked what he saw as ‘the fundamentalist and irrationalist nature of the ecology movement,’ claiming that it had ‘turned investors against India.’
In truth, environmental responsibility was absolutely necessary for sustaining economic growth in the long term. A group of ecological economists working at the World Bank compared the costs to Indian society — in the form of ill health, lost income, and increased economic vulnerability — of specific forms of environmental abuse: among them air pollution, forest and pasture loss, degradation of crop lands, and poor sanitation and water supply. The study estimated that in 2009, the cost of environmental degradation in India was about 3.75 trillion rupees, equivalent to 6% of GDP. In other words, if the air hadn’t been so polluted, if the soil hadn’t become so toxic or saline due to overuse of chemicals, if water sources had remained uncontaminated — in that case, India would’ve added more than 5% to its annual growth rate.”
Terror
“On 26 November 2008, India witnessed its most daring terror attack yet. That evening, a group of militants from Pakistan came by boat right up to the waterfront in south Mumbai. They’d previously undergone weeks of training in camps run by Islamist group Lashkar-e-Toiba, overseen by serving and retiring officers of the Pakistan army.
After landing in Mumbai, these ten terrorists went on a rampage through the city, attacking guests in the Taj Mahal Hotel, commuters in the city’s main railway terminal, and any others who came in the way. The militants also attacked a Jewish center, another target deliberately chosen, in view of India’s growing closeness to Israel, and of the general demonization of Jews among Islamic radicals around the world.
News of the attack spread through Mumbai and India, provoking horror and amazement in equal measure. TV crews and cameras parked themselves outside the Taj, where the terrorists were setting off grenades as they went from room to room. Mumbai had a large police force, but commandos trained to meet such attacks weren’t assigned to the city. These were instead concentrated in Delhi, to protect government installations and powerful politicians. By the time special forces were dispatched the terrorists had been on the rampage for 12+ hours. it took four days in all for nine of the attackers to be killed, and a tenth, the sole survivor, to be captured. The captive confessed to having come from Pakistan, and to having been trained by the Lashkar-e-Toiba.
200+ people were killed by the terrorists in Mumbai, about 20 of whom were foreigners. The attack had left a deep emotional scar on the citizens of Mumbai and India. These parts of the city were well loved and well visited. The shock was deepened by the ease with which these famous places were attacked — by a group of marauders coming in from the open sea in a small boat they’d hijacked.
The attack swiftly acquired the label 26/11, to match 9/11. Looking back at the tragedy 8 years on, three responses to the attack at the time it occurred strike one as especially significant. The first came from Modi, who flew to Mumbai and based himself outside a target hotel of the terrorists where he told eager reporters of how he’d like the government to tackle attacks such as this one. Mumbai wasn’t in his state, and he thus had no business to be speaking in public about such matters. This was an opportunistic bid to project himself as a leader with national ambitions.”
“The city had a long history of Hindu-Muslim violence. Most recently in 1992–3, there had been savage attacks on Muslims by Hindu mobs celebrating the demolition of the Babri Masjid, followed by bomb attacks on Muslim extremists on the Stock Exchange and other buildings. Although one cannot be absolutely certain, it’s overwhelmingly likely that one of the aims of the terrorists of 26/11 was to spark a fresh cycle of religious violence. Had Hindus been provoked into attacking Muslims within Mumbai, perhaps this would have spread to other cities, justifying the Islamist claim (or hope) that India was as much a ‘Hindu’ state as Pakistan was a ‘Muslim’ one. But this didn’t happen. The city mourned its own dead, peacefully and with dignity. The Hindus didn’t target innocent Muslims; on their part, the Muslim clerics of Mumbai declined to bury the bodies of their co-religionists from across the border since their acts were so plainly immoral.”
Feminism
“The Constitution makers had hoped that in time, women would become increasingly visible as workers, managers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and entrepreneurs. There was some progress in this direction in the first decades of Independence; however, from the 80s onward there was a patriarchal backlash. India’s major religions placed men in a superior position to women in both scripture and in social practice. Their prejudices clashed or competed with the ideals of the Indian Constitution, with unhappy results. In villages, caste panchayats placed all kinds of restrictions on what women could wear or do — in some places, even mobile phones were banned. Honor killings of girls who chose their own husbands became distressingly common. Meanwhile, in many Muslim families, girls were withdrawn from high school, not allowed to work outside the home and often compelled to wear the veil.
Indeed, despite rising education levels among women, the percentage of females in the workforce was declining in India. It fell from 34% to 27% in the first decade of the 21st-century, at a time of tremendous economic growth. And working women faced a great deal of discrimination in the workplace. Even in professedly forward-looking professions such as the media and the law, there were few women in leadership roles.
A study of the six largest Asian economies judged India the worst in terms of biases against women. The age at marriage was the lowest in India. Even when they had well-paid jobs in the organized sector, Indian women were expected to bear the brunt of housework and child rearing, and set aside their own aspirations to please or satisfy their parents and parents-in-law.
If the status of women was bad in the cities, in the countryside it was even worse. Over the previous century the sex ratio had been steadily falling — from 972 females to 1,000 males in 1901, it had dropped to 947 in 1951 and 933 in 2001. It rose to 940 in 2011, yet it remained adverse, revealing the fact that child mortality was highly variable by gender. In most Indian homes, boys were treated better than girls — provided more nutritious food, better access to healthcare and sent to school, while their sisters labored in field and forest. From the 1980s, advances in medical tech had worked to make more lethal an already deadly prejudice. Thus, the new sex determination tests allowed parents to abort female fetuses. Although banned by law, these tests were widely available in clinics throughout India.”
“Following the tabling of the Varma Committee report, Parliament passed the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2013, which provided for more stringent punishment for crimes against women. Those who committed crimes such as rape could be sentenced to life imprisonment, while repeat offenders could even get the death penalty. The bill also defined stalking and voyeurism as non-bailable offenses, and prescribed a ten-year jail term for those who threw acid on women (a not uncommon crime in some parts of India). The law was in place; the more arduous task of transforming popular attitudes and undermining patriarchy in everyday life remained.”
Modi’s Rise
“Early in 2013 — with national elections still more than a year away — Modi began to project himself aggressively on the national stage. Recognizing the power (and numbers) of first-time voters, he spoke to student bodies in several cities. Here he spoke of the successes, real and imaginary, of what he’s called the ‘Gujarat model.’ He told his audiences of how he’d nurtured industrial and agricultural growth in his state, of how he had cut down corruption and bureaucratic red tape, and generated hope among the young.
In March, Modi was appointed to BJP’s Central Parliamentary Board. In June, he was appointed head of the election campaign committee. Finally, in September, he was officially nominated the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. His election was opposed by some party seniors who were nervous of his abrasive personality and controversial past.”
“Mindful of his sectarian past, Modi didn’t foreground his party’s Hindutva ideology in his speeches. Rather, he emphasized the importance of rapid economic development, and, in particular job creation. In the two decades since the Indian economy had been freed from stifling state controls, it had made impressive strides, as witnessed by the rapid decline in poverty and a corresponding growth of the middle class. However, the sectors that had fueled this growth, such as IT and pharma, did not generate much employment. Noting this, Modi promised to pay more attention to manufacturing, to better satisfy the aspirations of the millions of young men entering the workforce every year.
The crowds that flocked to hear Modi everywhere were evidence of the excitement and hope he generated. Despite Rahul Gandhi being much younger than him, first-time voters were far more impressed by Modi, who exuded authority and decisiveness whereas his rival seemed weak, lazy, and confused.”
“Money was raised from large corporations and from Indians living abroad. By one estimate, the money spent by the BJP on advertising alone was equivalnet to $700,000,000. A comparable amount would have been spent on busing people to rallies and on the leader’s travel expenses.
Modi was advised by, among other people, young Indian professionals who had worked in the U.S. They brought with them the latest techniques of campaigning, including the adroit use of social media. On the other hand, the Congress eschewed such methods, choosing to rely on old-fashioned appeals to the name and fame of their First Family.”
“In 2012, while campaigning in the Gujarat state elections, Modi used the phrase ‘neo middle class’ to describe the tens of millions of Indians who wished to climb out of poverty and enjoy the fruits of a middle-class life. This class helped him win re-election in Gujarat, and he now hoped it would propel him to national power too.
Mahatma Gandhi famously said that India lives in its villages. By the time the 21st century arrived, it had begun increasingly to live in its cities and towns too. In 1951, only five Indian cities had a population greater than 1 million. By 2011, as many as 53 cities did. The urban population now constituted some 31% of the total population. Back in 1951, it was a mere 13%. Close to 4 million Indians now lived in urban centers.
There had always been a great deal of migration in India, between villages and from village to city. This movement of people across the country became even more common after economic liberalization. One study estimated that interstate migration increased by 54% between 1991 and 2001. This was a consequence of uneven development, with some states and regions prospering more than others. Eastern India in particular was economically depressed, so it saw a large outflow of migrants going to work in the cities of the West and the South, and in the farms of Punjab and coffee estates of Kodagu as well. In 2001, 3 in 5 families in rural Bihar had migrants working outside the village. Their contribution to household income was substantial, especially among the lower castes.
In the cities, the new migrants worked chiefly in the informal sector. With factories closing or laying off workers as they adopted labor-saving tech, these villagers-turned-townsfolk took jobs as hawkers, vendors, construction workers, plumbers, and security guards. An overwhelming majority of these migrants were male. Attracted by the vigor of the city, they made the urban economy more vigorous by their own labor. Thus the contribution of cities to India’s GDP had increased from 29% in 1950–1 to 2% in 2007.
Urbanization bred new desires and aspirations, with migrants to cities seeking to leave their old lives in the country behind. They wanted a pucca house, running water, access to entertainment and to such consumer goods as they could hope to buy. And they wanted to make their own way in life, rather than be patronized by welfare handouts by the state.
Meanwhile, as the cities grew, the villages changed: socially, economically, and politically. Once, upper castes had dominated the countryside. Now, they had lost or sold their land, and were challenged on the ideological front as well. Integration with the outside world had once been a preserve of the upper castes, but now many middle- and lower-caste men (less often women) were also going out of the village to study, or more often to work.
Increased mechanization had led to a decrease in the demand for rural labor; but there had been a decline in supply too, as Dalits no longer wanted work in the fields. They preferred employment outside the village because it paid them better and also freed them from the stranglehold of their locally dominant caste. The work they did now — for example, in construction, or the loading and unloading of trucks and railway carriages — was often physically demanding as well as hazardous to health. But it was much less demeaning.
Another, and perhaps even more fundamental, change was with regard to education. In one fairly representative village in northern India, the percentage of literate upper-caste Thakurs had increased from 39% in 1958 to 82% in 2008. In the same period, the percentage of educated lower-caste Untouchables had increased from 3% to 43%. In 198, less than 1 in 10 Thakur women were literate; in 2008, more than 4 in 10. In 1958, no Untouchable women in the village could read or write; in 2008, 1 in 5 could.
There was a strong interest, across castes, in educating one’s children. Rajputs didn’t want their children to be farmers; Dalits didn’t want their children to be condemned to a life of agrestic serfdom. With young men across castes seeking jobs and fulfillment outside the village, a growing proportion of those who actually cultivated land were in their 50s or 60s, for whom it was too late to contemplate a change of profession or location.
Village life was changing profoundly across India. Yet in some spheres there was a marked continuity between past and present. Castes were still segregated in residential terms; and, at least within the village, in social terms too. An overwhelming majority of marriages (probably closer to 100% than 95%) in rural India were contracted within the same endogamous group, and were arranged by parents or relatives.”
“Through April and May 2014, some 554 million Indians voted in the country’s 16th general election. This was, as in every previous Indian general election, the largest exercise of the popular will in human history. The election was conducted over nine phases. Some 800,000 soldiers and policemen were placed on election duty, with 500 trains and even 50 helicopters commandeered to convey them from place to place.
When the votes were counted, on 16 May, the Bharatiya Janata Party had got an impressive 282 seats, a clear majority. Its main rival, Congress, had been comprehensively ousted. Congress had won a meager 44 seats, more than 150 less than in 2009.”
“In July, Modi’s close associate Amit Singh was elected president of the BJP. Shah was the one man the prime minister trusted completely. In Gujarat, he at one time held nine portfolios in Modi’s cabinet. However, Shah had a controversial past; he had even been externed by the Supreme Court from his home state for fear he might tamper with the evidence in cases of extrajudicial killings. Now, as president of the ruling party, he was the second most powerful man in India.”
“In his first months in office, Modi announced a whole array of new schemes and programs. There was the ‘Swach Bharat’ mission, which promised to eliminate open defecation by 2 October 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Gandhi. The prime minister himself took a broom to the dirty riverside ghats of Varanasi. Then there was the ‘Make in India’ campaign, which promised to make the country a hub of manufacturing to match China. Next came Modi’s ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ mission, which sought to promote gender equality through the education of girls. And there was also the ‘Smart Cities Mission,’ whereby the prime minister sought to have 100 urban centers developed as centers of innovation and creativity.”
“In its last year in power, the UPA government had brought about a new Land Acquisition Act, which made the consent of farmers mandatory before their land could be taken over for industrial or other projects. Modi had promised to repeal this with a new law, making it easier for entrepreneurs to acquire land to build factories that would generate employment and wealth. However, the law his advisers drafted was fiercely resisted within sections of his own party, nervous as being seen as excessively ‘pro-business.’
Modi’s election campaign had been handsomely funded by large corporates. He had himself promised faster industrial growth and the rapid generation of jobs. After his proposed land acquisition bill was stalled, he now promoted a new Goods and Services Tax (GST). This was originally an initiative of the previous prime minister, Manmohan Singh, who had however failed to get it passed through Parliament.
The GST bill sought to eliminate the existing taxes, levies, and duties that prevailed in different states, and replace them with a single Value Added Tax for all goods and services. When the UPA government had first proposed it, Modi had opposed it, saying it would infringe on states’ rights. Most entrepreneurs, however, were strongly in favor of a GST, so were most economists, who argued that it would create a unified national market, spur growth, and reduce corruption. In August 2016 a GST bill passed through Parliament; it had now to be ratified by a majority of state assemblies before it could become law.
Modi’s focus on energizing the domestic economy was expected. For the economic growth that India experienced in recent decades hadn’t generated adequate employment. Between 2000 and 2010, India’s total workforce had increased by 63 million. Of these, 44 million joined the unorganized sector, 22 million became informal workers in the organized sector, while the number of formal workers in the organized sector actually fell by 3 million. Despite its long history of industrial enterprise, and its many technical and engineering colleges, India hadn’t been able to match the success of even Bangladesh and Vietnam (let alone China) in generating widespread employment in factories that produced goods for the world market.
By the standards of most developing countries the unemployment rate in India was low. But it was increasing, a worrying sign for politicians. It stood at 7% in 2001, and had climbed to 10% a decade later. The export boom of the 90s had tapered off. New manufacturing projects were inhibited by high (and rising) land and labor costs. The infrastructure promised by the state (better roads, ports, and airports) to ease movement of raw materials as well as finished goods had not substantially materialized. It was thus that the BJP had claimed in its 2014 election manifesto that it would create 10 million jobs a year, an extremely ambitious target which, once in power, it was finding increasingly hard to achieve.
In 2015, the limitations of India’s ‘jobless growth’ model were starkly shown up when some 2 million young men applied for 370 junior posts advertised for by the Uttar Pradesh government. The jobs were at the lowest level of the government hierarchy, riding a bicycle to run errands for senior officers, keeping watch outside their offices, or serving them and their guests tea. Yet so scarce was private sector employment in this part of India that some 25,000 postgraduate and even 255 men with PhDs applied for these menial government jobs.
The prime minister’s emphasis on such programs as Make in India was response to such anomalies in the development process. This push toward more rapid economic growth, however, led to a further dilution of environment standards and safeguards. In October 2015, the Ministry of Environment and Forests made mining easier by deleting the hydrological value of forest cover as a constraint on new projects. Natural forests play a crucial role in sustaining lakes and rivers. The new policy encouraged forest destruction at the hands of new mining and industrial projects, imperiling the supply of fresh water to agriculture and rural households.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests (which now had ‘Climate Change’ added on to its title) had its budget slashed by 50% in Modi’s first year. Meanwhile, existing laws for wildlife and biodiversity protection were also relaxed, and fines levied on industries for causing pollution cancelled. The consent of tribal communities for new projects in their vicinity, previous mandatory, was withdrawn.
Industrial growth at all costs was the new mantra, regardless of what this dilution of environmental norms would mean for the provision of clean air and water to the ordinary citizen, or for the sustainability of the development process itself. The implications of these new policies soon revealed themselves, when, in April 2016, a global study reported that India led the world in environmental conflicts. Some 27% of all nature-related conflicts in the country were related to the scarcity of water. Other conflicts pertained to the destruction of forests, the disposal of untreated garbage, and the impact of industrial pollution.”
“The rapid decline of the Congress was a consequence of, among other things, the fading appeal of its First Family. With an ever-younger electorate, fewer and fewer Indians remembered the contributions of Nehru, Indira, or Rajiv. The party org had crumbled in many parts of the country; once it lost power in a particular state, the Congress found it extremely hard to regain it. In Tamil Nadu it had not been in power since 1967; in West Bengal, since 1977; in Uttar Pradesh, since 1989. A third reason was the lackluster leadership of Rahul Gandhi. He failed to inspire enthusiasm among voters; indeed, he was the first member of his family not to command the respect of even his party colleagues.”
“As this book goes to press, BJP is in power at the center, and in as many as 13 states. Karnataka remains the only major state in which the Congress is in power. The BJP is today India’s sole national party, with a major presence in a majority of the states. It is to national politics now what the Congress once was.”
“Some newly elected BJP members of Parliament made provocative statements in public. One charged Muslims with promoting ‘love jihad’ by capturing Hindu girls and converting them. A second praised Gandhi’s assassin. A third asked that all Christians and Muslims be ‘reconverted’ to Hinduism. A fourth used an extremely derogatory word, implying a complete lack of morals, to describe the Muslim community as a whole.
The increasing visibility of the RSS, and its growing influence on government policy, sparked a torrent of criticism from scholars and writers on the Left, who had dominated intellectual discourse in India. They feared that the secular and plural character of education would be replaced by one emphasizing the ideals of Hindu supremacists. That the prime minister had stayed silent while these provocative, abusive statements were made by his party MPs was seen as a sign that he agreed with them. Many writers, some very distinguished, returned state awards in protest.”
“The protection of hte cow, and a total ban on cow slaughter had long been a key item in the Hindutva agenda. Now, with the BJP in power, it was sought to be made a major plank of public policy. BJP governments in Haryana and Maharashtra banned the sale and consumption of beef. In other states, Hindutva vigilantes attacked and occasionally killed individuals suspected of selling cows or eating beef.
The early victims of these attacks were Muslims, but then, in July 2016, four Dalits in Gujarat were thrashed by upper-caste vigilantes for skinning dead cows. The leather trade was traditionally dominated by Dalits, and the skinning of dead cows was a ubiquitous phenomena in rural India. But in the heightened passions unleashed by the cow protection campaigners, this everyday practice was deemed blasphemous. Worse, the vigilantes in Gujarat filmed their beating of Dalits and uploaded it to social media.
The outrage sparked condemnation in the press, and, more significantly, massive protests across Gujarat. Dalits threw dead carcasses in front of government offices and burnt government buses. They organized well-attended meetings in many towns, vowing not to submit to upper-caste persecution. The protests were so intense and prolonged that Anandiben Patel, Modi’s handpicked successor in Gujarat, was compelled to resign. The prime minister himself, who had previously stayed silent, was finally forced to speak out once cow vigilantism had manifested itself in his own home state.”
Conclusion
“The story of Indian secularism is a story that combines success with failure. Membership of a minority religion is no bar to advancement in business or the professions. One of the richest industrialists in India is a Muslim. Some of the most popular film stars are Muslim. Many of the country’s most prominent lawyers and doctors have been Christians and Parsis. At least three presidents and two chief justices have been Muslim. Indeed, between 2004 and 2007, the president of India was Muslim, the prime minister a Sikh, and the leader of the ruling party a Catholic born in Italy, a fact that in those months and years was often spoke of with pride by Indians.”
“That, in India, unity and pluralism are inseparable is graphically expressed in the country’s currency notes. On one side is printed a portrait of the ‘father of the nation,’ Gandi; 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 script 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.”
“The U.S. was a land made by successive waves of immigrants, who had perforce to learn English to speak to one another. The USSR, on the other hand, was a political formation constituted of many linguistic communities. In that respect it was closer to India than the US. The Soviet promotion of Russian led eventually to the growth of subnationalist sentiments and the creation of many independent nations. In India, on the other hand, exactly the reverse has happened — that is, the sustenance of linguistic pluralism has worked to tame and domesticate secessionist tendencies.
A comparison with neighboring countries might be helpful here. In 1956, the year the states of India were reorganized on the basis of language, the Parliament of Sri Lanka (then Ceyron) introduced an Act recognizing Sinhala as the sole official language of the country. The intention was to make Sinhala the medium of instruction in all state schools and colleges, in public exams and in the courts. Potentially the hardest hit were the Tamil-speaking minority who lived in the north, and whose feelings were eloquently expressed by their reps in Parliament.”
“In 1971, two torn medium-size states arose out of one large-sized one. The country being divided was Pakistan, rather than Sri Lanka, but the cause for the division was, in fact, language. For the founders of Pakistan likewise believed that their state had to be based on a single language as well as a single religion. ‘Let me make it very clear to you,’ Mohammed Ali Jinnah said in his first speech in the East Pakistani capital of Dhaka, ‘that the State Language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language. Anyone who tries to mislead you is really the enemy of Pakistan. Without one State language, no nation can remain tied up solidly together and function.’
In the 1950s, bloody riots broke out when the Pakistan government tried to force Urdu on recalcitrant students. The sentiment of being discriminated against on the grounds of language persisted, and ultimately resulted in the formation of Bangladesh.
Pakistan was created on the basis of religion, but divided on the basis of language. And for more than two decades a bloody civil war 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 lanugage, two nations.’ Had Hindi been imposed on the whole of India the lesson might well have been: ‘One language, 22 nations.’”
“Gandhi and company have been widely praised for preferring peaceful protest to violent revolution. However, they should be equally commended for having the wisdom to retain, after the British left India, such aspects of the colonial legacy as might prove useful in the new nation.
The colonialists were often chastised by the nationalists for promoting democracy at home while denying it in the colonies. When the British finally left, it was expected that the Indians would embrace metropolitan traditions such as parliamentary democracy and Cabinet government. More surprising perhaps was their endorsement and retention of a quintessentially colonial tradition — the civil service.
The key men in British India were the members of the Indian Civil Service (ICS). In the countryside they kept the peace and collected the taxes, while in the Sectretariat they oversaw policy and generally kept the machinery of the state well-oiled. Although there was the odd rotten egg, they were mostly men of integrity and ability. A majority were British, but there were also a fair number of Indians.
When independence came, the new government had to decide what to do with the Indian members of the ICS. Nationalists who’d been jailed by them argued that they should be dismissed or at least put in their place. The home minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, however, felt that they should be allowed to retain their pay and prerequisites, and in fact be placed in positions of greater authority. In October 1949 a furious debate broke out on the subject of the Constituent Assembly of India. Some members complained that the ICS men still had the ‘mentality [of rulers] lingering in them.’ They had apparently ‘not changed their manners,’ ‘not reconciled themselves to the new situation.’ ‘They do not feel that they are part of and parcel of this country,’ insisted one nationalist.
Now Patel had himself been jailed many times by ICS men. But this experience had only confirmed his admiration for them. He knew that without them the Pax Brittanica would, simply, have been inconceivable. And he understood that the complex machinery of a modern, independent nation-state needed such officers too. As he reminded the members of the Assembly, the new constitution could only be worked ‘by a ring of Service which will keep the country intact.’ He testified to the ability of the ICS men, but also to their sense of service.”
“Patel was clear that ‘these people are the instruments [of national unity]. Remove them and I see nothing but a picture of chaos all over the country.
In those first, difficult years of Indian freedom, the ICS men vindicated Patel’s trust in them. They helped integrate the princely states, resettle the refugees, and plan and oversee the first general elections. Other tasks assigned to them were more humdrum but equally consequential — such as maintaining law and order in the districts, working with ministers in the Secretariat, and supervising famine relief. In 1950, Patel inaugurated a new cadre modeled on the ICS but with a name untainted by the colonial experience. This was the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
As of this writing there are some 5,500 IAS officers in the employment of India. The IAS is complemented, as in British days, by other ‘all India’ services, among them the police, forest, revenue and customs services. These serve as an essential link between the center and the states. Officers are assigned to a particular state; they spend half or more of their service career in that province, the rest in the center. To the other duties of tax collection and the maintenance of law and order have been added a whole range of new responsibilities. Conducting elections is one; the supervising of development programs another. In the course of his career an average IAS officer would acquire at least a passing familiarity with such different subjects as criminal jurisprudence, irrigation management, soil and water conservation, and primary healthcare.
It was an ICS man, Sukumar Sen, who laid the groundwork for elections in India, and it has been IAS men who have kept the machinery going. The chief election commissioners in the states are drawn from the service. Junior officers supervise polls in their districts; those in the middle rungs serve as a bridge between state and society. In the course of their work, these administrators meet thousands of members of the public, drawn from all walks of life. Living and working in a democracy, they’re obliged to pay close attention to what people think and demand. In this respect, their job is probably even harder than that of their ICS predecessors.
However, in recent years IAS officers have become excessively subservient to the ministers they work with. The autonomy of the civil services, once so zealously guarded, has been undermined by unprincipled alliances between individual politicians and individual IAS officers furthering personal agendas, including taking illegal commissions on government projects. The IAS’s hegemony on top jobs in government has also impeded the entry of qualified professionals. In the complex, fast-changing world of the 21st century, India needs experts rather than generalists to head government departments and regulatory institutions. It is past time for civil service reform.”
“At the beginning of his tenure India’s first Commander in Chief K. M. Cariappa restricted himself to military matters, but as he grew into the job he began to offer his views on such questions as India’s preferred model of economic development. In 1952, Nehru wrote advising him to give fewer press conferences, and at any rate to stick to safe subjects. He also enclosed a letter from one of his Cabinet colleagues, which complained that Cariappa was ‘givign so many speeches and holding so many press conferences all over the country,’ giving the impression that he was ‘playing the role of a political or semi-political leader.’
The message seems to have gone home, for when Cariappa demitted office in 1953, in his farewell speech he ‘exhorted soldiers to give a wide berth to politics.’ The army’s job, he said, was not ‘to meddle in politics but to give unstinted loyalty to the elected government.’ Nehru knew, however, that the general was something of a loose cannon, who could not be completely trusted to follow his own advice. Within three months of his retirement, Cariappa was appointed high commissioner to Australia. The general was not entirely pleased, for, as he told the prime minister, ‘by going away from home to the other end of the world for whatever period you want me in Australia, I shall be depriving myself of being in continuous and constant touch with the people.’ Nehru consoled the general that was a sportsman himself he was superbly qualified to represent India to a sporting nation. But the real intention, clearly, was to send him as far away from the people as possible.
As the first Indian to head the army, General Cariappa carried a certain cachet. However, by the time he came back from Australia, Cariappa was a forgotten man. Nehru’s foresight was confirmed, however, by the statements the general made from time to time. In 1958 he visited Pakistan, where army officers who had served with him in undivided India had just effected a coup. Cariappa publicly praised them, saying that it was ‘the chaotic internal situation which forced these two patriotic generals to plan together to impose Martial Law in the country to save their homeland from utter ruination.’ Ten years later, he sent an article to the Indian Express, which argued that the chaotic internal situation in West Bengal demanded that President’s Rule be imposed for a minimum of five years. The recommendation was in violation of the letter and spirit of the constitution. Fortunately, the piece was returned by the editor, who pointed out to the general that ‘it would be embarrassing in the circumstances to you and to us to publish this article.’
The pattern set in those early years has persisted into the president. Nehru ‘laid down some very good norms,’ which ensured that ‘politics in the army has been almost absent.’ ‘The army isn’t a political animal in any terms,’ remarks Aurora, and the officers especially ‘must be the most apolitical people on earth.’”
“The English spoken in India today has moved far away from the Anglicized, Oxford-accented and BBC-infelected language once spoken by the country’s elite. It has become indigenized, adopting words and idioms from Indian language. Meanwhile, a hybrid tongue, called ‘Hinglish,’ has also emerged, mingling the two link languages in different proportions, depending on the provenance of the speaker.”
“The USSR witnessed savage violence following its birth, this continuing through the famines and the death camps of the 1930s and beyond. The US was founded on the backs of the genocide of Native Americans and consolidated by the enslavement of millions of Africans. 90 years after its formation, it was torn by a civil war in which some 750,000 people perished.
European nations such as France, England, and Spain also witnessed bloody civil wars at various points in their history. So too, have Pakistan and Sri Lanka. But India hasn’t, at least, so far. Born through the mass violence of Partition, India has since escaped the kind of intense and often endemic strife that has beset so many other national experiments in Asia and Africa, not to speak of Europe and the Americas.”
“In those first general elections voter turnout was less than 46%. Over the years this has steadily increased; from the late 1960s about 3 of 5 eligible Indains have voted on election day. The voter turnout during the most recent general elections, in 2014, was 66%, a record for India, and far higher than is the case in most Western democracies, including the U.S.
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% of eligible women voted; by 1998 the figure was in excess of 60%. Besides, as surveys showed, they increasingly exercised their choice independently, that is, regardless of their husbands’ or fathers’ views on the matter. Also voting in ever higher numbers were Dalits and tribals, the oppressed and marginalized sections of society. In north India in particular, Dalits turned out in far greater numbers than high castes. ‘India is perhaps the only large democracy in the world today where the turnout of the lower orders is well above that of the privileged groups.’
Recent studies of voter behavior suggest that while the middle and upper castes vote because they consider it a civic duty, the poor vote to assert their identity as, at least on this day, equal citizens of the land.”
“A dark spot, growing darker, is the growing criminality of the political elite. As early as 1985, Sunday ran a cover story on ‘The Underworld of Indian Politics,’ which spoke of how, in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar especially, candidates with criminal records were contesting elections, sometimes winning them, and sometimes being made ministers as well. Among the crimes these men were charged with were ‘murder, abduction, rape, molestation, gangsterism.’ Over the next decade, a greater number of criminals entered politics, so many in fact that a citizens group filed a Public Interest Legislation in the Supreme Court demanding that parties release details of their candidates. In 2002, the Court made it mandatory for those contesting state or national elections to make public their assets and their criminal record (if any).
In the major political parties between 15–20% of candidates had criminal records in 2002–3.”
“In 2014, one of the founders of the group that filed the original PIL published an analysis of the affidavits filed by candidates in all state and national elections over the past decade. This revealed that roughly 18% had pending criminal charges against them. What was more disturbing was that 28% of those with criminal records won the seats they contested. In every party except one, those with serious criminal records were more likely to win than those without. This suggested that, despite the secrecy and credibility of the voting process itself, candidates with money and muscle power could impress or intimidate citizens into casting votes in their favor.”
“A Gallup survey in sixty countries found that the lack of confidence in politicians was highest in India, where 91% of those polled felt that their elected reps were dishonest.”
“The dominance of a single family is not active only at the level of the top leadership of India’s political parties. The practice has been extended down the system, so that if a sitting MP dies, his son or daughter is likely to be nominated in his place. In analysis of the Lok Sabha in 2009, a historian found that some 29% of MPs were ‘hereditary MPs,’ who had entered politics through family connections, with 1+ member of their family having previously been an MLA, an MP, or a minister. The phenomenon was especially pervasive among the regional parties and among the younger generation. Thus as many as two-thirds of MPs under age 40 were from political families, but less than 10% of those aged 70+.
“The failures to provide speedy justice were largely a consequence of the massive, chronic understaffing of India’s courts. In 2016, the Supreme Court had a shortfall of 19% of its assigned strength, the High Courts a shortfall of 44%, and subordinate courts a shortfall of 25%.
These shortfalls lead to major delays. In India’s High Courts, once a case is filed, it takes, on average, three years and one month to be disposed of. The person losing the case can then ask for a stay and appeal to the Supreme Court. Some cases, filed originally in a district court and contested all the way up to the highest court, can take several decades to acheive finality, the litigants sometimes dying in the process.
The judicial system is also shockingly corrupt. In 2010, Shanti Bushan — one of India’s most respected lawyers who’d served as law minister in the Union government — created a stir when he claimed in the Supreme Court that, of the 16 chief justices of India he had served under, 8 were corrupt. He listed their names in a sealed envelope which he submitted to the court, daring the judges to open it.
The evidence for judicial corruption is even more anecdotal than that for political corruption. Yet, going by the perception of petitioners and lawyers, it does seem that the taking of bribes and inducements is fairly common among the lower judiciary, certainly prevalent among High Court judges, and not entirely absent even in the Supreme Court.
The justice system, at least as it operates in India, is biased in favor of the rich and influential. Thus, in many cases, when a politician, film star, or businessman is the accused in a crime he was charged with committing, witnesses have been bought or threatened into changing their original statements. Or they might even be physically eliminated, as has happened in the case of an influential godman accused of sexual harassment, and that of a massive educational fraud in Madhya Pradesh in which senior politicians (of more than one party) were involved. In both cases multiple witnesses died, in mysterious circumstances.
The autonomy of the judiciary has also been undermined by political interference. The first government to seek to make judges subservient to it was that led by Indira Gandhi. Her key advisers vigorously pursued the idea of a ‘committed’ judiciary.’ They actively interfered in judicial appointments, most famously — or notoriously — by superseding several outstanding judges to make A. N. Ray the chief justice of India in 1973.”
“India is danger of becoming what I call an ‘elections-only democracy.’ Every election, whether to a state Assembly or to a national Parliament, is free and fair. The Election Committee is rightly praised as a model institution. Yet other instruments of democratic accountability remain deeply imperfect. Parliament meets rarely — when it does, it resembles a wrestling pit more than the stately chamber of discussion it was meant to be. The criminal justice system is in a state of near-collapse. The state is, on the one side, weak and incompetent when providing basic services such as education and healthcare; but, on the other, savage and brutal in its suppression of discontent.”