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

by Ramachandra Guha

India and the United States did seem to have much in common – the democratic way of life, a commitment to cultural pluralism, and (not least) a nationalist origin myth that stressed struggle against the British oppressor. But on questions of international politics they resolutely differed. America thought India soft on communism; India thought America soft on colonialism. In the end, that which divided seemed to overwhelm that which united; in part because of the personal chemistry – or rather, lack thereof – between the key players on either side.

When the British left in 1947, the Portuguese stayed on in Goa and their other possessions in India while the French remained in control of three slivers of land in the south – most importantly the port of Pondicherry – as well as the eastern enclave of Chandernagore.

The linguistic reorganization of the Congress was encouraged and supported by Mahatma Gandhi. When Independence finally came Gandhi thought that the states of the new nation should be defined on the basis of language. Shortly afterwards, on 10 October 1947, he wrote to a colleague: ‘I do believe that we should hurry up with the reorganization of linguistic provinces . . . There may be an illusion for the time being that different languages stand for different cultures, but there is also the possibility [that with the creation] of linguistic provinces it may disappear. I shall write something [about it] if I get the time . . . I am not unaware that a class of people have been saying that linguistic provinces are wrong. In my opinion, this class delights in creating obstacles.’

It would be absurd to make Hindusthani the medium of instruction in all the regions and it is still more absurd to use English for this purpose.

This committee, known as the ‘JVP Committee’ after the initials of its members, revoked the seal of approval that the Congress had once put on the principle of linguistic provinces. It argued that ‘language was not only a binding force but also a separating one’. Now, when the ‘primary consideration must be the security, unity and economic prosperity of India’, ‘every separatist and disruptive tendency should be rigorously discouraged’.

Since the 1920s the interests of the politically conscious Sikhs had been represented by the Akali Dal. This was both a religious body and a political party. It controlled the Sikh shrines, or gurdwaras, but also contested elections. The long-time leader of the Akali Dal was a man named Master Tara Singh, an important, intriguing figure, who (like so many such figures in Indian history) has yet to find his biographer.

Without question the most vigorous movement for linguistic autonomy was that of the Telugu speakers of the Andhra country. Telugu was spoken by more people in India than any other language besides Hindi. It had a rich literary history, and was associated with such symbols of Andhra glory as the Vijayanagara Empire. While India was still under British rule, the Andhra Mahasabha had worked hard to cultivate a sense of identity among the Telugu-speaking peoples of the Madras presidency who, they argued, had been discriminated against by the Tamils. The Mahasabha was also active in the princely state of Hyderabad.

The agitating Andhras had two pet hates: the prime minister and the chief minister of Madras, C. Rajagopalachari. Both had gone on record as saying that they did not think that the creation of Andhra was a good idea. Both were clear that even if, against their will, the state came into being, the city of Madras would not be part of it. This enraged the Andhras, who had a strong demographic and economic presence in the city, and who believed that they had as good a claim on it as the Tamils.

Suppressing his feelings, Rajagopalachari attended the inauguration of the new state of Andhra at Kurnool on 1 October 1953. Also in attendance, and as the chief guest no less, was that other erstwhile enemy of the Andhras, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Bombay Citizens Committee had a one-point agenda – to keep the city out of the state of Maharashtra. To make the case they printed an impressive 200-page book replete with charts, maps and tables. The first chapter was historical, showing how the city was settled by successive waves of settlers from different linguistic communities. It claimed that there had been little Maharashtrian immigration before the end of the nineteenth century and that Marathi speakers comprised only 43 per cent of the city’s current population. The second chapter spoke of Bombay’s importance in the economic life of India. It was the premier centre of industry and finance, and of foreign trade. It was India’s window to the world: more planes flew in and out of it than all the other Indian cities combined. The third and fourth chapters were sociological, demonstrating the multilingual and multicultural character of the city.

The fifth chapter was geographical, an argument for Bombay’s physical isolation, with the sea and the mountains separating it from the Marathi-speaking heartland.

The first settlers were Europeans; the chief merchants and capitalists Gujaratis and Parsis; the chief philanthropists Parsis. The city was built by non-Maharashtrians. Even among the working class, Marathi speakers were often outnumbered by north Indians and Christians. For the Bombay Citizens Committee, it was clear that ‘on the grounds of geography, history, language and population or the system of law, Bombay and North Konkan cannot be considered as a part of the Mahratta region as claimed by the protagonists of Samyukta Maharashtra’.26

Behind the veneer of cosmopolitanism there was one language group that dominated the ‘save Bombay’ movement: the Gujaratis. If Bombay became the capital of a greater Maharashtra state, the politicians and ministers would be mostly Marathi speakers. The prospect was not entirely pleasing to the Gujarati-speaking bourgeoisie, whether Hindu or Parsi. It was they who staffed, financed, and basically ran the Bombay Citizens Committee.

In May 1954 Golwalkar spoke in Bombay at the invitation of the Anti-Provincial Conference, which saw linguistic demands as a manifestation of ‘the menace of provincialism and sectionalism’. ‘Multiplicity breeds strife’, thundered Golwalkar: ‘One nation and one culture are my principles.’ To see oneself as Tamil or Maharashtrian or Bengali was to ‘sap the vitality of the nation’. He wished them all to use the label ‘Hindu’, which is where he departed from Nehru, who of course wished them all to be ‘Indian’.

The SRC did not agree to the creation of a Sikh state. And it refused to allocate Madras city to Andhra. However, its most contentious recommendation was not to permit the creation of a united Maharashtra. As a sop, the Commission proposed a separate state of Vidarbha, comprising the Marathi-speaking districts of the interior. But Bombay state would stay as it was, a bilingual province of Gujarati and Marathi speakers. They respected the arguments of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, said the Commission, but they could ‘not lightly brush aside the fears of the other communities’.

Everywhere the principle of language had been recognized, except in this one case. The report of the Commission had caused great pain throughout the Marathi-speaking world. The reports of protest meetings should make it clear ‘that anything short of Samyukta Maharashtra with the city of Bombay as capital will not be acceptable’. If these sentiments went unheeded, warned Gadgil, then the future of Bombay would be decided on the streets of Bombay.

The matter now shifted, as Gadgil had warned, from the chamber to the streets. These, as one Bombay weekly warned, were ‘literally seething with an unrest that may possibly erupt into something terrifyingly coercive, making ordered life impossible for some time to come’.35 The discontent was being stoked by politicians of both left and right. The prominent communist S. A. Dange had thrown his weight behind Samyukta Maharashtra; so had the leading low-caste politician B. R. Ambedkar. With them were the Jana Sangh, and the Socialist Party, who were perhaps the most active of all. Many dissident Congress Party members had also joined, making this a comprehensively representative coalition of angry and disillusioned Maharashtrians.

‘Parishad’ is best translated as ‘organization’, thus implying the central role of office-bearers; ‘samiti’ as ‘society’, this connoting a more co-operative and participatory endeavour.

Through the summer of 1956 both sides waited anxiously for the centre’s decision on Bombay. While the Cabinet had accepted the other recommendations of the SRC, it was rumoured that both Nehru and the home minister, Pant, were inclined to make Bombay city a separate union territory. In the prevailing climate this was deemed unfeasible. On 1 November the new states based on language came into being. Joining them was a bilingual state of Bombay. The only concession to the protesters was the replacement of Morarji Desai as chief minister by the 41-year-old Maratha Y. B. Chavan.44

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 behaviour 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 linguistic 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.

The Andhras would not secede from India, but they did redefine what it means to be Indian. Or at least one Andhra did. Potti Sriramulu is a forgotten man today. This is a pity, for he had a more than minor impact on the history, as well as geography, of his country. For his fast and its aftermath were to spark off a wholesale redrawing of the map of India according to linguistic lines. If Jawaharlal Nehru was the Maker of Modern India, then perhaps Potti Sriramulu should be named its Mercator.

Mahalanobis was, among other things, the man who brought modern statistics to India. In 1931 he set up the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Calcutta. Within a decade, he had made the ISI a world-class centre of training and research. He was also a pioneer of inter-disciplinary research, innovatively applying his statistical techniques in the fields of anthropology, agronomy and meteorology.

While the second plan was being finalized, the Indian government signed three separate agreements for the construction of steel plants. The Germans would build one in Rourkela in Orissa, the Russians one in Bhilai in Madhya Pradesh, the British one in Durgapur in West Bengal. The Americans, much to their sorrow, had lost out. That the war-ravaged countries of Europe had grabbed two contracts was bad enough, that their hated Cold War rivals had taken the third was worse.

Like some other saints, Bhave preferred the grand gesture over humdrum detail. Critics pointed out that the bulk of the land donated to Bhave had never been distributed to the landless; over the years it had slowly returned to the hands of the original owners. Besides, much of the land that stayed under Bhoodan was rocky and sandy, unfit for cultivation. In few places were the intended beneficiaries organized to work the land they had been gifted. On balance, the Bhoodan movement must be reckoned a failure, albeit a spectacular one.

After the end of zamindari, 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 labourers and sharecroppers. Their well-being would have required a second stage of land reforms, 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.

In the West there was Friedrich Hayek, who advocated a retreat of the state from economic activity. His ideas, however, were treated with benign – and sometimes not-so-benign – contempt. (He could not even get a position in the Department of Economics in the University of Chicago, being placed instead in the ‘Committee on Social Thought’.)

Another dissenter was the Chicago economist Milton Friedman. Visiting India in 1955 at the invitation of the government, he wrote a memorandum setting out his objections to the Mahalanobis model. He thought it too mathematical: obsessed by capital–output ratios, rather than by the development of human capital. He deplored the emphasis in industrial policy on the two extremes – large factories that used too little labour and cottage industries that used too much.

THE FRENCH WRITER ANDRÉ Malraux once asked Jawaharlal Nehru what had been his ‘greatest difficulty since Independence’. Nehru replied: ‘Creating a just state by just means’. Then he added, ‘Perhaps, too, creating a secular state in a religious country’.

Prasad wrote ominously that ‘he proposed to watch the progress of the measure in Parliament from day to day’. If the bill was still passed, he would insist on his ‘right to examine it on its merits . . . before giving assent to it’.14 Nehru wrote back saying that in his view there was ‘a very widespread expression of opinion in the country in favour of the Bill’. But the president’s opposition had him worried, for it presaged a possible stand-off between the government and the head of state. He showed Prasad’s letter to several experts on the constitution. They assured him that the president was bound to act with ‘the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers and cannot act independently of that advice’. As they saw it, the position of the president of India was even weaker than that of the British monarch.

The radical changes in the Hindu law pertaining to marriage and property were principally the work of two men: Jawaharlal Nehru and B. R. Ambedkar. Sadly, in the last, crucial stages of the struggle Ambedkar was a bystander. Having failed to win his seat in the direct elections to Parliament in 1952, he then entered the Upper House. There he observed, silent, as the bills were discussed and passed between 1954 and 1956.36 He was already a very sick man, with chronic diabetes and complications thereof, and in December 1956 he passed away.

THE REFORM OF PERSONAL laws was one test of Indian secularism. Another and greater test was with regard to the future of Kashmir. Could a Muslim majority state exist, without undue fuss or friction, in a Hindu-dominated but ostensibly ‘secular’ India?

The Indian Constitution, which came into effect in January 1950, treated Kashmir as part of the Indian Union. However, it guaranteed the state a certain autonomy; thus Article 370 specified that the president would consult the state government with regard to subjects other than defence, foreign affairs, and communications.

Fielden ended his analysis with a warning. In the long run, he pointed out, ‘the most important thing’ about the Kashmir conflict was ‘the expense in armaments in which both countries are getting involved. This means that social services in both countries are crippled, and since both countries, apart from their refugees, have millions of the poorest people in the world, it is easy to see how this can lead to disaster.’

In 1950, the maps of the government of India claimed the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir as part of its territory. New Delhi’s claim to the whole rested on the fact that in October 1947 Maharaja Hari Singh had signed a document acceding to India.

Thus, the Sheikh rejected the option of independence as impractical, and the option of joining Pakistan as immoral. They would join India, but on terms of their own choosing. Among these terms were the retention of the state flag and the designation of the head of government as prime minister.

Bengaluru, which is a great centre of science but not, alas, of the humanities).

The best single-volume treatment remains Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885–1947 (London: Macmillan, 1985). For a more up-to-date account see Sekhar Bandopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2004),

as Salman Rushdie once remarked, half the world had not yet gone to sleep, and the other half was already awake. This witticism did not stop Rushdie from including Nehru’s speech in an anthology of Indian writing that he edited – the only piece of non-fiction to find a place in the volume.