India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

by Ramachandra Guha

He saw, more clearly than the British colonialist did then or the Indian nationalist does now, that it was impossible here to separate right from wrong, that horrible atrocities were being committed by both sides.

In Strachey’s view, the differences between the countries of Europe were much smaller than those between the ‘countries’ of India. ‘Scotland is more like Spain than Bengal is like the Punjab.’

the first and most essential thing to learn about India – that there is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India possessing, according to any European ideas, any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious’.

There was no Indian nation or country in the past; nor would there be one in the future. Strachey thought it ‘conceivable that national sympathies may arise in particular Indian countries’, but ‘that they should ever extend to India generally, that men of the Punjab, Bengal, the North-western Provinces, and Madras, should ever feel that they belong to one Indian nation, is impossible. You might with as much reason and probability look forward to a time when a single nation will have taken the place of the various nations of Europe.’3

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.

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 nineteenth 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.

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 roti-beti rishta – a relationship of inter-dining and inter-marriage – and with them they had a shared history of persecution at the hands of the Mughals.

The historian Robin Jeffrey has pointed out that, at least until the month 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 . . .’14 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.

The award enraged the Muslims, who thought that the Gurdaspur district should have gone to Pakistan instead of India. Angrier still were the Sikhs, whose beloved Nankana Sahib now lay marooned in an Islamic state.

This was without question the greatest mass migration in history. ‘Nowhere in known history ha[d] the transfer of so many millions taken place in so few days’.

through heat and rain, flood and bitter Punjab cold. The dust of the caravans stretched low across the Indian plains and mingled with the scent of fear and sweat, human waste and putrefying bodies. When the cloud of hate subsided the roll of the dead was called and five hundred thousand names echoed across the dazed land – dead of gunshot wounds, sword, dagger and knife slashes and others of epidemic diseases. While the largest number died of violence, there were tired, gentle souls who looked across their plundered gardens and then lay down and died.

The world over, the rhetoric of modern democratic politics has been marked by two rather opposed rhetorical styles. The first appeals to hope, to popular aspirations for economic prosperity and social peace. The second appeals to fear, to sectional worries about being worsted or swamped by one’s historic enemies.

In fact, in the summer of 1947 white men and women were the safest people in India. No one was interested in killing them.18 But their insecurity meant that many army units were placed near European settlements instead of being freed for riot control elsewhere.

As it turned out, the most appropriate epitaph on the last days of the Raj was provided by the Punjab official who told a young social worker from Oxford: ‘You British believe in fair play. You have left India in the same condition of chaos as you found it.’

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 Public Relations Officer’.

Notably, while Nehru always wanted Kashmir to be part of India, Patel was at one time inclined to allow the state to join Pakistan.

One might say that Brigadier Usman was to the Indian army what Sheikh Abdullah was to Indian politics, the symbol of its putatively inclusive secularism, the affirmation of it being, if it was anything at all, the Other of a theologically dogmatic and insular Pakistan.

In April 1948 the editor of the Calcutta Statesman visited Nankana Sahib, where he met the handful of Sikhs permitted by Pakistan to stay on as guardians of the shrine. A few months later the journalist visited the centre of the Ahmadiya sect of Islam, the town of Qadian, which lay in the Indian Punjab. The great tower of the Ahmadiya mosque was visible from miles around, but within its precincts there now lived only 300 of the faithful. Otherwise, the town had been taken over by 12,000 Hindu and Sikh refugees. In both Qadian and Nankana Sahib there was ‘the conspicuous dearth of daily worshippers, the aching emptiness, the sense of waiting, of hope and . . . of faith fortified by humbling affliction’.

Thus, ‘what was once a shaded walk where the shopper could stroll at leisure, inspecting the goods on offer and not meeting an insistent salesman, unless he or she went into a store, has become pandemonium

Indeed, a city that was once a Mughal city, then a British city, had by the 1950s emphatically become a Punjabi city.8

The RSS was the Hindu answer to the Muslim League, ‘imbued with aggressively communal ideas, and with the determination that there must be no compromise with the ideal of a pure and predominant Hindu culture in Bharat-Varsh’.

Nehru used the same microphone as Golwalkar, this supplied by the Motwane Chicago Telephone and Radio Company.

India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be the road to the salvation of a soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.

In 1901 the population of India 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 Indians 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 did not decline at a comparable rate, the population continued to rise.62

While Muslims and Christians watched the Ramayana for entertainment alone, for many Hindus delight was also mixed with devotion. By accident rather than design, the televised epic was introducing subtle changes in this pluralistic and decentralized religion, long divided into sects each worshipping different deities, lacking a holy book, a unique and singular god, or a single capital of the faith. Now, in front of their television sets, ‘for the first time all Hindus across the country and at the same time listened to [and watched] the same thing: the serial in fact introduced a congregational imperative into Hinduism’.

Reliance witnessed growth rates unprecedented in Indian industry, and seldom seen anywhere else in the world. Through the 1980s the company’s assets grew at an estimated 60 per cent per year, its sales at more than 30 per cent per year, its profits at almost 50 per cent. Ambani was an innovator, using state-of-the-art technology (usually imported), and raising money from the growing middle class by public issue (something which other Indian family firms were loath to do).

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’. The ‘distance between Gandhi (Mahatma) and Gandhi (Rajiv)’, remarked one observer, ‘is a vast traverse in political ethic.

the main axis of conflict was between ‘India’, represented by the city-based, English-speaking middle class, and ‘Bharat’, represented by the villagers. He argued that economic policies had consistently favoured ‘India’ over ‘Bharat’.

The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint.

The alienation of the Kashmiris was deepened by the behaviour of those sent apparently to protect them. Indian soldiers, and more particularly the CRPF men, were prone to treat most civilians as terrorist sympathizers.

‘Like the three domes that crowned the 464-year-old Babri mosque’, wrote Time magazine, ‘the three pillars of the Indian state – democracy, secularism and the rule of law – are now at risk from the fury of religious nationalism’.

forecasts were dire, alarmist, as Western predictions had tended to be ever since India became independent in 1947. Once, it was thought that India would balkanize into many parts or experience mass famine. Now, it was said that India might become a tinpot dictatorship of the African kind or a fascist dictatorship modelled on European examples. These predictions also did not come to pass. That said, the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the riots that followed left deep scars, these felt by individuals, communities, and perhaps the nation itself.

All through his political career Narasimha Rao had been a loyal follower, not to say sycophant, of the Nehru-Gandhi family. But when he became prime minister he began to show that he could be his own man. In his first months in office, he would regularly visit Sonia Gandhi, the widow of Rajiv. However, as time went on these visits became less frequent.

The burqa was contrary to Kashmiri custom – here many women did not even wear head-scarves.

In this reduction of civilian reality, the sights of Kashmir … are redefined: not the … lakes and Mogul gardens …, or the storied triumphs of Kashmiri agriculture, handicrafts and cookery, but two entities that confront each other without intermediary: the mosque and the army camp.40

There were two critical events that, as it were, defined this epoch of competitive fundamentalisms: the destruction of the Babri Masjid, and the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits.

By one reckoning, more than 20,000 lives were lost in the Punjab between 1981 and 1993 – 1,714 policemen; 7,946 terrorists; and 11,690 civilians.49

The troubles in the Punjab went back two decades, long enough for the residents of the state, but actually a fairly short period of time compared to other conflict-ridden states of the Union. Many Kashmiris had been rebelling against the Indians since the 1950s; many Nagas, from the 1940s itself. In the 1990s, the main insurgent group was the National Socialist Council of Nagaland.

The year 1989 marks a watershed in Indian political history. Before that date, the Congress was a mighty colossus; after that date, single-party dominance gave way to a multi-polar system.

Between 1989 and 1998, the vote share of the Congress declined by more than 10 percentage points; over this period, the vote share of the BJP increased by roughly the same extent. However, in the four general elections in these years, these two major parties garnered a mere 50 per cent of the vote between them.

The decline of the Congress had come in two phases. The first phase, which began in Kerala in 1957 and peaked in Andhra Pradesh in 1983, saw Congress hegemony challenged by parties based on the identities of region, language and class. The second phase, which began in north India in 1967 and peaked in the same region in the 1990s, saw the Congress losing ground to parties basing themselves on the identities of caste and religion.

As the decade of the 1990s came to an end, the once unipolar polity came to have several distinct poles. There was the Congress, declining but still significant, and the BJP, rising but by no means dominant. These were the two so-to-say ‘national’ parties. Meanwhile, there was also a third pole, this constituted by a variety of caste- and region-based parties which neither the Congress nor the BJP could ignore.

The most enthusiastic acclaim, however, came from the BJP’s sister organizations, the VHP and the RSS. They announced that they would build a temple at the test site, and take the sand, contaminated by radioactivity but nonetheless ‘holy’ for them, to be worshipped across India.

In this respect the Kargil war was a sort of cathartic experience for the men in uniform and, beyond that, for their compatriots as a whole. The Indian army had finally redeemed itself. It had removed, once and for all, the stigma of having failed to repulse the Chinese in 1962. At the same time, the popular response to the conflict bore witness to the birth of a new and more assertive kind of Indian nationalism. Never before had bodies of soldiers killed in battle been greeted with such an effusion of sentiment. It appeared as if each district was determined to make public its own contribution to the national cause.

As prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee took forward the economic reforms initiated by Narasimha Rao. Besides further encouraging entrepreneurship, Vajpayee’s government gave a push to infrastructure development, seeking to modernize airports and to improve road connectivity. In March 2000 the government announced a ‘Golden Quadrilateral’ project, which aimed to link India’s major cities with four lane highways, to facilitate the speedy transport of goods by trucks.

The sector that had done best was that of services, which grew at an average of 8.1 per cent a year through the 1990s. Much of this was contributed by the software industry, whose revenues grew from a paltry $197 million in 1990 to $8,000 million in 2000. In some years the industry grew at more than 50 per cent a year. Much of this expansion was aimed at the overseas market.

To explain the rise of the software sector one must invoke factors both proximate and distant. Success, said John F. Kennedy, has many fathers. In this particular case, however, all the claimants had truth on their side. Some credit was certainly due to the reforms of 1991, which opened up the foreign market for the first time. But some credit also accrued to Rajiv Gandhi’s government, which gave special emphasis to the then very nascent electronics and telecommunications industries. Moving back a decade further, the Janata government’s expulsion of IBM allowed the development of an indigenous computer manufacturing and maintenance industry. But perhaps the story should really begin with Jawaharlal Nehru’s government, which had the foresight to set up a chain of high-quality engineering schools, and the wisdom to retain English as the language of higher education and of inter-state and inter-national communication.

Catholic priests in the US and Canada sent prayer requests to their Indian counterparts. One could have a thanksgiving prayer said for Rs40 (roughly one dollar) in an Indian church, whereas in an American church it would cost five times that amount.27

Once, the major capitalists in India came from the traditional business communities – Marwaris, Jains, Banias, Chettiars, Parsis. However, in recent years, a range of peasants castes had moved into the industrial sector. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs were now Marathas, Vellalas, Reddys, Nadars and Ezhavas – from castes who for centuries had worked the land.