This chapter will consider some of the main issues that occupied a prominent place in Indian national life after India became an independent nation in 1947, an anniversary that in 2007 was celebrated by remembering the hopes that had not been fulfilled, as well as the many striking accomplishments.
These six decades comprised a period of lively intellectual debate over policies to be followed by the governments at both the central and the state levels. But it was also a time of fierce internal dissensions that sometimes led to civil disturbances, including those often referred to in India as “communal riots,” identified in terms of religious sectarianism, as in Gujarat in 2002. There were also attacks by political groups, like the “Naxalites,” who believed that social change could be achieved only through violence. In addition, there were insurgencies based on demands for self-determination in Kashmir, Punjab, and Northeast India. These same years also witnessed immense social changes, including a raised standard of living for many millions of people, controversial attempts to remove age-old discriminatory practices, improvements in the social status of women and children, increased literacy, a greatly improved and expanded system of higher education, rapid industrialization, a coherent foreign policy, attention paid to the status of Muslims, and the preservation of democracy, with freedom of speech and religion in a more-or-less stable political society.
Cutting across all these issues, however, was a concern for national unity, which is the characteristic motif of Indian political and social discourse after 1947. The reasons for this are suggested by the title chosen for these two volumes: “The Sources of Indian Traditions.” The plural usage emphasizes the diversity, the complexity, and the very ancient and historical legacies that the people of India confronted on August 15, 1947. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of the new India, recognized the legacies of the past and the realities of the present as he envisioned the future in a memorable speech, on the eve of Independence. “A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history,” he reminded his people, “when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.” 1
But finding the voice of India was not easy, as many of the great figures of modern India had recognized before Independence. Rabindranath Tagore (see chapter 5), most famous of India’s modern poets, lamented in the last year of his life (1941) that sometimes he had ventured near the homes of the peasant, the fisherman, and the weaver, but had lacked the courage to go in, for he knew his poetry had not entered the songless land of “those who live near us and yet remain unknown.” 2 When as a young man Jawaharlal Nehru came face-to-face with village India, and saw what he regarded as its appalling poverty, religious superstition, and the crushing burden of British rule, he asked himself: What is this India? How does she fit into the modern world? Why has she fallen so far behind the rest of the world, even China? Is there some hidden well of strength in the people that could be used to revitalize India?3 To a very great extent, the years since the coming of Independence have been a search for the authentic voices of India. What the two volumes of The Sources of Indian Traditions make plain is that there is no one voice of India. Rather, there are many voices, all seeking in a multitude of ways, as Nehru put it, to “to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.” 4
We have called this chapter “Issues in Post-Independence India,” and we have organized it into sections, most of them illustrating and addressing the major issues derived from the definition of India given in the Preamble to the Indian Constitution, as “a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic,” assuring the “unity and integrity” of the nation. The words “socialist” and “secular” were not in the original Preamble but were added in an amendment to the Constitution in 1976, and the words “unity and integrity of the nation” were substituted for “unity of the nation.” These added words, it was argued in the debates in Parliament in 1976, fairly represented the intentions of the drafters of the original Constitution. The importance of the issues that confronted India in the first sixty years has been determined from the treatment they received in the various legislative bodies, the printed media (including books, the popular press, academic and professional journals), television, radio, and the Internet, means of communication that were absent throughout much of the long historical sweep covered in our survey of Indian traditions.
Since 1947 a vibrant civil society has continued to develop, with groups and institutions responding to the needs, wishes, and opinions of the people. Many such groups and institutions made their voices heard, sometimes clamorously, initiating social change, and providing sources of stability while challenging the power of government. Because India had become so deeply involved during the nineteenth century with Western political and social life, many of these institutions have direct links with the Western world, but they are deeply embedded in the indigenous social structures of the South Asian subcontinent.
The first of the sections in this chapter comprises two selections that embody the vision of India as the nation was first brought into being.
India’s national anthem, “Jana Gana Mana,” is the first verse of a poem of five stanzas written in Bengali in 1912 by Rabindranath Tagore, who is also the author of Bangladesh’s national anthem. The words of the anthem are an appropriate starting point for a consideration of the great issues of contemporary India. Unlike many national anthems, India’s includes no hint of military glory, but rather emphasizes the blessings that have come to India through a spirituality that is not identified with any particular religion. Indeed, in 1912, indignant at the request that he contribute a song honoring King George V on his visit to India for his coronation as the country’s “King-Emperor,” Tagore composed this hymn in praise of God, as India’s real Lord. The anthem expresses the unity of India through the naming of its different territorial regions, its mountains, and its rivers. The anthem was adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India on January 24, 1950.
Supreme Leader of the minds of all people, glory to thee,
Ruler of India’s destiny!
Punjab, Sind, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkal, Bengal,
The Vindhyas, Himalayas, Jamuna, and Ganga,
The waves of the swelling ocean,
All awaken sounding thy auspicious name,
Praying for thy fruitful blessing,
And singing of thy glory.
Giver of the people’s good fortune, glory to thee,
Ruler of India’s destiny!
Glory to thee, glory to thee, glory to thee,
Glory, glory, glory, glory to thee.
[Trans. Stephen Hay and Sanjit K. Mitra in Sources of Indian Tradition, 2nd ed., ed. Stephen Hay (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 279–280.]
As India became independent at midnight on August 14, 1947, Nehru made a moving speech to the members of the Constituent Assembly, calling upon them and the nation to remember the past as they pledged themselves to work for the future of India.
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger service of humanity.
At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?
Freedom and power bring responsibility. That responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons us even now.
That future is not one of ease and resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one which we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.
And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that they can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, and so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.
To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.
I beg to move, Sir,
“That it be resolved that:
(1) After the last stroke of midnight, all members of the Constituent Assembly present on this occasion, do take the following pledge: ‘At this solemn moment when the people of India through suffering and sacrifice, have secured freedom, I, ……………, a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, do dedicate myself in all humility to the service of India and her people to the end that this ancient land attain her rightful place in the world and make her full and willing contribution to the promotion of world peace and the welfare of mankind’;
(2) Members who are not present on this occasion do take the pledge (with such verbal changes as the President may prescribe) at the time they next attend a session of the Assembly.”
[From Jawaharlal Nehru, Independence and After, 1946–1949 (Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1949), 3–4.]
The Constitution of India was the product of the Constituent Assembly, the body created in 1946 not by direct elections, but by the provincial legislatures. A separate Constituent Assembly was created in Karachi for the new nation of Pakistan. These were, in effect, the legislatures of the two new Dominions, India and Pakistan, to which the British Parliament through the Indian Independence Act of July 18, 1947, transferred power.
As the Constituent Assembly turned to the work of writing a Constitution, it was essentially controlled by one party, the Indian National Congress, but the members of the Congress represented views ranging from radical socialism to reactionary capitalism, from a Gandhian emphasis on anti-industrialism to wholehearted acceptance of industrialization, and from a belief that India should free herself from the burden of religion to a conviction that India should declare itself a Hindu country. That the Assembly produced within two years a complex but enduring constitution is due to the strong leadership of such able Congress leaders as Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad, Rajendra Prasad, and others mentioned in the previous chapters, as well as many gifted lawyers, like Sir B. N. Rau, whose knowledge of constitutional law shaped the final document.
On August 29, 1947, the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly began its work, with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (see chapter 6), who had been appointed Law Minister in Nehru’s first Cabinet on August 3, as its chairman. His appointment signaled Nehru’s intention to draw all sections of society into the shaping of the new India. Although Ambedkar had dropped his earlier demands for separate electorates for the Untouchables, the Constitution committed India to the abolition of Untouchability and granted a wide range of benefits for depressed minorities. However, Ambedkar later became dissatisfied with Nehru’s failure to support social legislation for women as well as Untouchables. His dramatic acceptance of Buddhism on October 14, 1956, in Nagpur, for himself and his people, was an act of criticism of Hindu society. In the following years, over four million Indians, chiefly from the Scheduled Castes, declared themselves Buddhists. Ambedkar also established the framework for a new political party, the Republican Party, which, like the Buddhist movement, was intended to serve not only the Scheduled Castes but all the dispossessed of India. He died in 1956, but his passionate support for India’s oppressed classes led to new political influence for the depressed classes in later years, which was demonstrated by the role they played in the electoral process.
On November 4, 1948, Ambedkar, as chairman of the Drafting Committee, moved that the first draft of the Constitution be considered by the Constituent Assembly. His thoughtful speeches are among the very best made in the Assembly, and well repay careful study.
A criticism against the Draft Constitution is that no part of it represents the ancient polity of India. It is said that the new Constitution should have been drafted on the ancient Hindu model of a State and that instead of incorporating Western theories the new Constitution should have been raised and built upon village panchayats and District Panchayats. There are others who have taken a more extreme view. They do not want any Central or Provincial Governments. They just want India to contain so many village Governments. The love of the intellectual Indians for the village community is of course infinite if not pathetic (laughter)…. But those who take pride in the village communities do not care to consider what little part they have played in the affairs and the destiny of the country; and why….
What pride can one feel in them? That they have survived through all vicissitudes may be a fact. But mere survival has no value. The question is on what plane they have survived. Surely on a low, on a selfish level. I hold that these village republics have been the ruination of India…. I am therefore surprised that those who condemn provincialism and communalism should come forward as champions of the village. What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism? I am glad that the Draft Constitution has discarded the village and adopted the individual as its unit.
The Draft Constitution is also criticised because of the safeguards it provides for minorities. In this, the Drafting Committee has no responsibility. It follows the decisions of the Constituent Assembly. Speaking for myself, I have no doubt that the Constituent Assembly has done wisely in providing such safeguards for minorities as it has done. In this country both the minorities and the majorities have followed a wrong path. It is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities. It is equally wrong for the minorities to perpetuate themselves. A solution must be found which will serve a double purpose. It must recognize the existence of the minorities to start with. It must also be such that it will enable majorities and minorities to merge someday into one. The solution proposed by the Constituent Assembly is to be welcomed because it is a solution which serves this twofold purpose. To diehards who have developed a kind of fanaticism against minority protection I would like to say two things. One is that minorities are an explosive force which, if it erupts, can blow up the whole fabric of the State. The history of Europe bears ample and appalling testimony to this fact. The other is that the minorities in India have agreed to place their existence in the hands of the majority…. They have loyally accepted the rule of the majority which is basically a communal majority and not a political majority. It is for the majority to realize its duty is not to discriminate against minorities.
[From Constituent Assembly Debates, Official Reports (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, n.d.), 7:38–39.]
At the third and final reading of the bill to enact the new Constitution into law (in November 1949), Ambedkar warned the Constituent Assembly of the dangers threatening India’s independence and democratic Constitution. As remedies, he advised devotion to the country, an end to civil disobedience, avoidance of hero-worship, the fostering of social and economic equality, and adherence to constitutional methods of self-government. Ambedkar’s fear that the Indian union might disintegrate was often expressed at the time, by both Indians and foreigners.
On 26th January 1950, India will be an independent country (Cheers). What would happen to her independence? Will she maintain her independence or will she lose it again? This is the first thought that comes to my mind. It is not that India was never an independent country. The point is that she once lost the independence she had. Will she lose it a second time? It is this thought which makes me most anxious for the future….
Will history repeat itself? It is this thought which fills me with anxiety. This anxiety is deepened by the realization of the fact that in addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds. Will Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above country? I do not know. But this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost for ever….
We must begin by acknowledging the fact that there is complete absence of two things in Indian Society. One of these is equality. On the social plane, we have in India a society based on the principle of graded inequality which means elevation for some and degradation for others. On the economic plane, we have a society in which there are some who have immense wealth as against many who live in abject poverty. On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up.
The second thing we are wanting in is recognition of the principle of fraternity. What does fraternity mean? Fraternity means a sense of common brotherhood of all Indians—of Indians being one people. It is the principle which gives unity and solidarity to social life. It is a difficult thing to achieve….
I am of opinion that in believing that we are a nation, we are cherishing a great delusion. How can people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation? The sooner we realize that we are not as yet a nation in the social and psychological sense of the word, the better for us. For then only we shall realize the necessity of becoming a nation and seriously think of ways and means of realizing the goal…. The castes are anti-national. In the first place because they bring about separation in social life. They are anti-national also because they generate jealousy and antipathy between caste and caste….
I do not wish to weary the House any further. Independence is no doubt a matter of joy. But let us not forget that this independence has thrown on us great responsibilities. By independence, we have lost the excuse of blaming the British for anything going wrong. If hereafter things go wrong, we will have nobody to blame except ourselves.
[From Constituent Assembly Debates, 11:977–981.]
The Constitution makers drew upon three principal sources. The first was the Government of India Act of 1935, which, while keeping final power in British hands, had established the structures of administration and provided for a system of elections to the provincial and central legislatures. The acceptance of this framework meant the continuance of many of the laws, regulations, and practices that had been established during British rule. A second source encompassed the constitutions of other countries where federal systems had been established, especially the United States, Canada, and Australia. The third source comprised the documents produced by the Indian National Congress through the years that emphasized justice, economic and social equality, and freedom of speech and religion. The Constitution is not a revolutionary document, but a notable feature is the inclusion of a long section on fundamental rights that essentially describes the hopes and aspirations of the Indian people. India’s is the longest constitution in the world, and only representative selections are given here—ones that concern significant issues in contemporary India.
Indeed, two sections of the Constitution aroused a great deal of controversy, both in the Constituent Assembly and among the public. One was Article 25, making freedom of religion an inalienable right. While freedom to practice religion was accepted, there was serious objection to the right to propagate religion. Muslims and Christians insisted that the propagation of their faith was a fundamental tenet of their religion. This remains a much-disputed right in India. The other, even more hotly debated issue was the choice of Hindi as the national language in Article 343 (1). To many it seemed absurd that English should continue to retain a privileged place in government when it was spoken by only a very small minority and was the language of India’s oppressors. The issue also aroused religious passions: many felt that Hindi was peculiarly the language of Hindus and that Urdu, widely spoken in North India, but especially by Muslims, was being discriminated against. Even stronger was the feeling that some regional languages, such as Tamil and Bengali, were far more developed as literary languages; others argued that English was a useful link language among all sections of the country and that it was a world language. Both the religion and the language issues are touched upon in a number of later selections in this chapter.
It is important to remember that the “Fundamental Rights” of the Constitution are justiciable—that is, individuals or groups can go to court to have them enforced—but the “Directive Principles” are not. They are aims to be attained by a good society. During the “Emergency” in 1976–1977, when many freedoms were restricted, the Forty-Fourth Amendment was passed; it included a section on the “Fundamental Duties” of citizens. These are aspirations to make people better citizens, and, at the same time, to increase the control of government; like the Directive Principles, however, they cannot be enforced in the courts.
The Constitution was unanimously adopted by the Assembly on November 26, 1949, and it has been of immense importance in shaping the character and nature of the nation. India officially became the republic of India on January 26, 1950.
The numbered paragraphs are as in the original document.
THE PREAMBLE (AS AMENDED IN 1976)
WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.
PART I (1). INDIA, THAT IS BHARAT,
SHALL BE A UNION OF STATES. …
PART III: FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS …
Right to Equality
14 … The State [the Government of India] shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.
15 … (I) The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, sex, place of birth, or any of them. …
16 … There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the State. …
17 … “Untouchability” is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. …
Right to Freedom
19 … (I) All citizens shall have the right—
(a) to freedom of speech and expression … [except that] reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred. … [may be imposed by the State] in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence; (b) to assemble peaceably and without arms; (c) to form associations or unions; (d) to move freely throughout the territory of India; (e) to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India; (f) to acquire, hold and dispose of property; and (g) to practice any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business. …
Right to Freedom of Religion
25 … All citizens shall have the right to freedom of religion
(1) Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion. (2) Nothing in this article shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the State from making any law—(a) regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice; (b) providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus.
Explanation I.—The wearing and carrying of kirpans shall be deemed to be included in the profession of the Sikh religion. Explanation II.—In sub clause (b) of clause (2), the reference to Hindus shall be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jaina or Buddhist religion, and the reference to Hindu religious institutions shall be construed accordingly.
26 … Subject to public order, morality and health, every religious denomination or any section thereof shall have the right—(a) to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes; (b) to manage its own affairs in matters of religion; (c) to own and acquire movable and immovable property; and (d) to administer such property in accordance with law.
27 … No person shall be compelled to pay any taxes, the proceeds of which are specifically appropriated in payment of expenses for the promotion or maintenance of any particular religion or religious denomination.
28 … (1) No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained out of State funds. (2) Nothing in clause (1) shall apply to an educational institution which is administered by the State but has been established under any endowment or trust which requires that religious instruction shall be imparted in such institution. (3) No person attending any educational institution recognised by the State or receiving aid out of State funds shall be required to take part in any religious instruction that may be imparted in such institution or to attend any religious worship that may be conducted in such institution or in any premises attached thereto unless such person or, if such person is a minor, his guardian has given his consent thereto.
Cultural and Educational Rights
29 … (1) Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same. …
30 … All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. …
PART IV: DIRECTIVE PRINCIPLES OF STATE POLICY. …
38 … The State shall strive to promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life.
39 … The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing—(a) that the citizens, men and women equally, have the right to an adequate means of livelihood; (b) that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good; (c) that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment; (d) that there is equal pay for equal work for both men and women; (e) that the health and strength of workers, men and women, and the tender age of children are not abused and that citizens are not forced by economic necessity to enter avocations unsuited to their age or strength; (f) that children are given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity and that childhood and youth are protected against exploitation and against moral and material abandonment. …
44 … The State shall endeavor to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India. …
PART IV A: FUNDAMENTAL DUTIES (AMENDMENT OF 1976)
51 A … It shall be the duty of every citizen of India—
(a) to abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem; (b) to cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom; (c) to uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India; (d) to defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so; (e) to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectarian diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women; (f) to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture; (g) to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life, and to have compassion for living creatures; (h) to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform; (i) to safeguard public property and to abjure violence; (j) to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement. …
PART XVII: OFFICIAL LANGUAGE
343 (1) … The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals. (2) Notwithstanding anything in clause (1), for a period of fifteen years from the commencement of this Constitution, the English language shall continue to be used for all the official purposes of the Union for which it was being used immediately before such commencement: Provided that the President may, during the said period, by order authorise the use of the Hindi language in addition to the English language and of the Devanagari form of numerals in addition to the international form of Indian numerals for any of the official purposes of the Union. (3) Notwithstanding anything in this article, Parliament may by law provide for the use, after the said period of fifteen years, of—(a) the English language, or (b) the Devanagari form of numerals, for such purposes as may be specified in the law.
[From The Constitution of India (As modified up to the 1st February, 1977) (New Delhi: Government of India Press, 1977), 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 11–12, 19, 20, 22, 143.]
As one part of the process of the transfer of power to the new independent nations of India and Pakistan, the question of the fate of the princely states was vital to the unity of each. Of the more than five hundred princely states, many were small, but a few were large and in strategic locations. Since most were within the borders of India, the deputy prime minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and his assistant V. P. Menon, an able civil servant now installed as secretary of the Ministry of States, devoted themselves to this task. They were assisted by Viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten, who remained in India as governor-general until 1948. While Mountbatten lectured the princes on the virtues of accession and the dangers of delay, Patel and Menon worked on the practical steps, details, and problems involved. In the end, almost all of the princely states acceded to India, a few acceded to Pakistan, and a small number—notably Kashmir and Hyderabad—stalled. Eventually the Indian army moved into Hyderabad in 1948, claiming that order must be kept and the citizens protected.
The maharaja of Kashmir dithered over what to do. But when irregulars, thought to be inspired and helped by the government of Pakistan, invaded Kashmir from the Pakistan side of the frontier, he called for Indian help and acceded to India. However, these “facts” and the whole process involving Kashmir have long been disputed, as is evident from the documents about Kashmir in this and the following chapter.
Vapal Pangunni Menon (1894–1966), widely known as V. P. Menon, son of a Kerala schoolmaster, entered the service of the British Raj in 1917 and rose through the ranks to become constitutional adviser to the governor-general and political reforms commissioner in 1946. Close to the Congress leaders, but still trusted by Mountbatten, Menon helped to formulate the plans for the partition of India in the spring of 1947. When one plan was rejected by Jawaharlal Nehru on behalf of the Congress, Menon drew up an alternative plan, which was eventually accepted by the British government and all Indian parties involved. At the behest of Patel, he later wrote two volumes, the first on the steps to Partition and the second on the integration of the states. Both provide a clear, detailed, and informed narrative from the Congress side, but are not uncritical of the Congress as well as of all others involved.
Here are selections from the conclusion to V. P. Menon’s second book.
When the British Government decided to transfer power to India, they no doubt found it the best solution of a difficult problem to declare that the paramountcy which they exercised over the Indian States would automatically lapse. The rulers generally welcomed this decision; and, after all, the parties directly concerned were the British Government and the rulers. Thus had the edifice, which the British themselves built up laboriously for more than 150 years, been demolished overnight! … In India there were very few who realized the magnitude of the threatened danger of balkanization.
It was easy enough for the British Parliament to declare the lapse of paramountcy, but could such a declaration wipe out the fundamentals on which paramountcy rested? With the departure of the British, the Government of India did not cease to be the supreme power in India. Essential defense and security requirements of the country and geographical and economic compulsions had not ceased to be operative; nor had the obligations of the Government of India to protect their territories against external aggression and to preserve peace and order throughout the country become any the less. Why else had the British Government themselves asserted time and again in their relations with the Indian States that their supremacy was not based only upon treaties and engagements, but existed independently of them?
At the same time, there is no doubt that had paramountcy been transferred to a free India with all the obligations which had been assumed by the British Government under the various treaties, engagements and sanads, it would scarcely have been possible for us to have solved the problem of the Indian States in the way we did. By the lapse of paramountcy we were able to write on a clean slate unhampered by any obligations.
The weakest link in the princely chain was the existence of a large number of small States. Their rulers were naturally apprehensive about their future. The rulers of the bigger States, on the other hand, welcomed the lapse of paramountcy in the hope that they would be able to preserve their territorial integrity and have enough bargaining power to force a satisfactory relationship with the Centre. What they failed to realize at the time was that the new Government of India could not possibly uphold the idea of autocracy in the States and that for their very existence the rulers had to have either the support of their people, or the protection of the Government of India. The former the rulers generally lacked; the latter had automatically terminated with the lapse of paramountcy.
Our first task to prevent the balkanization of the country and to stop any possible inveiglement of the States by Pakistan was to bring the States into some form of organic relationship with the Centre. This we did by means of the expedient of accession on three subjects, as well as a Standstill Agreement which kept alive the relations subsisting at the time between the States and the Government of India. The rulers were at first suspicious of this move; but most of them realized that, with the partition of the country, if they did not give their full support to the Government of India there was real danger that the country would be submerged in one big deluge. The rulers of the bigger States could have stood out and could have given us as much trouble, if not more, than Hyderabad or Junagadh. They certainly had their armies intact and their forces could—in some States at any rate—stand comparison in point of organization, equipment and efficiency with the Indian Army. It was indeed highly selfless and patriotic on the part of these rulers to have placed the wider interests of the country above their own. Some of them even went to the extent of lending us all their troops at a critical period regardless of their own internal security.
Gradually the realization dawned on them that after the advent of independence they would have no choice but to grant responsible government to their people, which meant that their own future would be governed by the whims of their ministries; but that, if they agreed to integration, their interests would be better safeguarded by the Government of India. Besides, they would be earning the goodwill of the country. …
The advocates of viable States could not have studied the geographical aspect of the problem. Even they conceded that the smaller States had to go. There were two courses open: to merge the small States in the provinces in which they were situated or to which they were contiguous; and, in cases where this was not possible, to merge them with the nearest large State. In the latter event, would we be justified in perpetuating the entity of the bigger State? This was exactly the problem which confronted us in Central India and Malwa where a number of small States were embedded between the bigger States of Gwalior and Indore. Once we had integrated Gwalior, which was one of the five premier States in India, could we leave lesser viable States alone? Further, the viability of a State must have some relation to its revenue. There were only nineteen States which had a revenue of Rs 1 crore and above and seven had a revenue from Rs 50 lakhs to Rs 1 crore. Rewa State, for instance, with a revenue of nearly Rs 115 lakhs had been declared as viable. But after surrendering a fair size of its revenue to the Centre for the administration of defense, external affairs and communications, could it provide adequate modern amenities and perform the functions of a Welfare State? …
Another criticism, which is being levelled nearly four years after the inauguration of the new Constitution, is against the quantum of the privy purses fixed for the rulers. In the chapter on “The Cost of Integration,” I have indicated that, apart from other advantages, viewed solely against the assets we have received from the States, the total annual expenditure on privy purses is insignificant. …
The merger agreements and covenants are bilateral documents. As Sardar very rightly remarked, the rulers discharged their part of the contract by surrendering their States and powers. They are now bereft of any bargaining power. Because a creditor is too weak or poor to enforce his rights, a debtor should not, in honour, refuse to discharge his debt. As an honourable party to an agreement, we cannot take the stand that we shall accept only that part of the settlement which confers rights on us, and repudiate or whittle down that part which defines our obligations. As a nation aspiring to give a moral lead to the world, let it not be said of us that we know the “price of everything and the value of nothing.”
After integration, the rulers settled down and adjusted themselves to the new order of things. …
In August 1947, when the transfer of power took place, very few could have conceived as possible the revolutionary change that was to come over the States within such a short time. Speaking in September 1948, Nehru confessed:
Even I who have been rather intimately connected with the States People’s movement for many years, if I had been asked six months ago what the course of developments would be in the next six months since then, I would have hesitated to say that such rapid changes would take place. … The historian who looks back will no doubt consider this integration of the States into India as one of the dominant phases of India’s history.
By the time the Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950, we had integrated geographically all the States and brought them into the same constitutional relations with the Centre as the provinces. The administrative integration in the Unions was proceeding apace. The scheme of financial integration was already worked out and finalized and it was to come into operation within a few months. The Indian States Forces were to be absorbed into the Indian Army.
By the partition India had lost an area of 364,737 square miles and a population of 81 ½ millions. By the integration of the States, we brought in an area of nearly 500,000 square miles with a population of 86½ millions (not including Jammu and Kashmir).
In the words of Sardar, “the great ideal of geographical, political, and economic unification of India, an ideal which for centuries remained a distant dream and which appeared as remote and as difficult of attainment as ever even after the advent of Indian independence,” was consummated by the policy of integration. …
We had demolished the artificial barriers between the States inter se and the rest of India and had indeed laid the foundations for an integrated administrative and financial structure. But the real integration had to take place in the minds of the people. This could not be accomplished overnight. It would take some time for the people of the erstwhile States to outgrow their regional loyalties and to develop a wider outlook and broader vision. …
Contemporary opinion has already anticipated the verdict of history in regard to the integration of the States. To have dissolved 554 States by integrating them into the pattern of the Republic; to have brought about order out of the nightmare of chaos whence we started, and to have democratized the administration in all the erstwhile States, should steel us on to the attainment of equal success in other spheres. For the first time India has become an integrated whole in the real sense of the term, though this is but the foundation on which to build a prosperous Welfare State. An amorphous mass of aspirations has to be integrated. Life has to be made meaningful for the millions who have led a twilight existence.
[V. P. Menon, The Story of the Integration of the Indian States (Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1961), 463–472.]
The federal structure of the Indian government that came into being in 1947 was based upon the political units that had been created by the British, partly as a result of patterns of conquest and partly for administrative convenience. There were, however, political groups that began to agitate for states based upon linguistic and cultural divisions. These movements could cite the high authority of Gandhi, who had argued, as early as 1920, for linguistic states as a rational reorganization of the political map, and had organized Congress Committees based on language. The pressure for reorganization became so strong that the government agreed to the creation of a number of new linguistic states in the 1950s, including Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh (for Telugu), and Maharashtra (for Marathi).
The issue received detailed consideration through the appointment of a high-level commission to study the issue and make recommendations. Its report showed how many complex issues were involved—a national language, jobs in government services, higher education, religious affiliations, and the dangers of arousing what came to be called a “subnationalism” that might destroy the unity and integrity of the nation.
846. We have now come to the end of our appointed task. The problem of reorganisation of States has aroused such passions and the claims which have been made are so many and so conflicting that the background against which this whole problem has to be dealt with may quite often be obscured or even forgotten. In order that the recommendations which we have made may be viewed in proper perspective, we should like to emphasise two basic facts. Firstly, the States, whether they are reorganised or not, are and will continue to be integral parts of a Union which is far and away the more real political entity and the basis of our nationhood. Secondly, the Constitution of India recognises only one citizenship, a common citizenship for the entire Indian people, with equal rights and opportunities throughout the Union.
847. … If the implications of these important facts had been fully appreciated and generally accepted, the question of territorial redistribution would not have developed into a major national problem of disquieting proportions.
849. Unfortunately, the manner in which certain administrations have conducted their affairs has itself partly contributed to the growth of this parochial sentiment. We have referred earlier to the domicile rules which are in force in certain States, governing eligibility to State services. … This is bound to cause discontent among the other groups, apart from impeding the free flow of talent and impairing administrative efficiency.
850. We were greatly concerned to observe that in one State for instance, domicile rules were applied not only to determine eligibility for appointment to the public services but also to regulate the awards of contracts and rights in respect of fisheries, ferries, toll-bridges, forests and excise shops.
851. Such stipulations, in our opinion, are not only inconsistent with Articles 15, 16 and 19 of the Constitution but go against the very conception of an Indian citizenship. …
861. Guided by the consideration that the principal organs of State should be so constituted as to inspire confidence and to help in arresting parochial trends, we would also recommend that at least one-third of the number of Judges in a High Court should consist of persons who are recruited from outside that State. In making appointments to a High Court bench, professional standing and ability must obviously be the over-riding considerations. …
862. As we have already observed, the progressive adoption of Hindi for the official purposes of the Union should operate as a unifying factor. A common national language, however, to be a really integrating force should have a wider range. English, though a foreign language, has helped to bring the people of different regions in India closer to each other firstly because it has been the official language both at the central and at the provincial levels, and secondly because it has been the medium of instruction for higher education throughout the country. It has, therefore, provided a common vehicle for higher thought as well as for administrative activity and has helped to maintain common standards at the higher educational institutions.
865. A wide field of choice for higher education and migration from universities and other institutions for higher education has been possible in this country, not only because English has so far been the medium of instruction in these institutions, but also because the standards of teaching and research have been, generally speaking, comparable. Some of these institutions are contemplating the adoption of the regional languages as the media of instruction. If English in any of these institutions is replaced prematurely, and if facilities are not provided for acquiring necessary proficiency in that language in the interests of higher research, standards of higher education are bound to suffer.
867. We fully realise the importance of the study of Hindi and the regional languages, but we feel that for the present the use of English in higher technical studies does not come into conflict with the growth of these languages.
871. India is now on the eve of vast economic and social changes. These changes must affect every institution and will call for a constant review of our traditional methods of thought and ways of life.
872. One of the important developments in recent times has, for example, been the country’s conversion to the ideal of social, political and economic equality. We do not mean to minimise the difficulties in the way of realising this ideal of equality, to which the country is now committed. Nevertheless, it is a great advance that the comparatively backward sections of the community are now in the picture. An important source of tension within the body politic is, therefore, being progressively removed.
874. The consequences of economic planning to which the country is now committed are very great. When resources are mobilised and investment is undertaken at the national rather than at the regional or State level, the States will inevitably get more and more integrated in a joint endeavour for the economic advancement of the nation as a whole.
878. Free India is now on the move. What has already been achieved can be viewed with a measure of legitimate pride. The manner in which the very difficult problem of princely India was solved in the anxious and bewildering circumstances following the Partition will, by itself, be a standing testimony to the political wisdom and strength of the Indian people and their firm determination to eradicate artificial barriers and cramping loyalties.
879. We conclude in the hope that the scheme of reorganisation which we have proposed will be viewed against this background and that men of goodwill will co-operate with those charged with the onerous responsibility of reconciling competitive claims and of balancing regional sentiments with national interests in giving effect to the decisions which might be taken, in an atmosphere of tolerance and understanding.
S. FAZL ALI, Chairman, H. N. KUNZRU, Member. M. PANIKKAR, Member P. C. CHAUDHURI, Secretary. NEW DELHI, Dated 30th September, 1955.
[Report of the States Reorganization Commission (New Delhi: Government of India, 1955), chapter IV, secs. 846, 847, 849, 850, 851, 861, 862, 865, 867, 871, 872, 874, 878, 879.]
The commitment to a unified, secular state has been strongly challenged by movements for secession and self-determination in three areas—Kashmir, Punjab, and the Northeast, especially Nagaland. These areas differ greatly from each other in their internal histories and in their relationships with the preceding political structures, the Mughal and the British empires. In all three areas, the uprisings can be understood as movements for self-determination motivated by ethnic affiliations, religious identities, political ambitions of local leaders, and economic grievances against the Indian government. Involvement with foreign governments has been an important factor, especially in Kashmir, as has been the role played by immigrant groups settled in Great Britain and North America for the case of Punjab. In Nagaland, however, there has been little outside involvement, and the insurgency has attracted much less attention, even in India. The situations in all three areas are challenges to India’s commitments to democracy, secularism, and justice. The complexities of the insurgencies are not easily disentangled, but statements of attitudes and beliefs from participants in all three areas are presented below. Given the nature of the issues, all are necessarily partisan. What is missing from these selections are details of the enormity of the human suffering caused both by the insurgents and by the government’s responses to them.
The insurgency in the state of Jammu and Kashmir (often referred to simply as “Kashmir”) is a direct result of the Partition of India in 1947 when, as noted in chapter 7, the rulers of the approximately five hundred quasi-independent princely states were given the right to join either India or Pakistan, but not to become independent. For Pakistan’s versions of the events that followed, see chapter 9.
At the time of Partition, the ruler of the state, Maharaja Hari Singh, was a Hindu, but the majority of the people were Muslims. There was thus an expectation that he would join his state to Pakistan. He did not, however, and under some duress acceded to India in October 1947. How his family had become rulers of the state is one of the more sordid episodes in nineteenth-century imperialism. In 1846 the British had defeated the Sikh kingdom in the Punjab, which had seized territory to the north, including the Kashmir Valley. When the British took Punjab, they sold the Kashmir territory to Gulab Singh, the ruler of the state of Jammu, for a million pounds. In the words of the treaty signed at Amritsar in 1846, given below, Kashmir was to belong forever to the male heirs of Gulab Singh. The famous Indian poet Muhammad Iqbal (see chapter 5), who was of Kashmiri descent, captured what many Kashmiris think when they recall this transaction:
Each hill, each garden, field. Each farmer, too, they sold,
A nation for a price, that makes my blood run cold.
The treaty between the British Government on the one part and Maharajah Gulab Singh of Jammu on the other concluded on the part of the British Government by Frederick Currie, Esq. and Brevet-Major Henry Montgomery Lawrence, acting under the orders of the Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Hardinge, G.C.B., one of her Britannic Majesty’s most Honorable Privy Council, Governor-General of the possessions of the East India Company, to direct and control all the affairs in the East Indies and by Maharajah Gulab Singh in person—1846.
Article 1: The British Government transfers and makes over for ever in independent possession to Maharajah Gulab Singh and the heirs male of his body all the hilly or mountainous country with its dependencies situated to the eastward of the River Indus and the westward of the River Ravi including Chamba and excluding Lahol, being part of the territories ceded to the British Government by the Lahore State according to the provisions of Article IV of the Treaty of Lahore, dated 9th March, 1846. …
Article 3: In consideration of the transfer made to him and his heirs by the provisions of the foregoing article Maharajah Gulab Singh will pay to the British Government the sum of seventy-five lakhs of rupees …, fifty lakhs to be paid on or before the 1st October of the current year, A.D., 1846. …
Article 5: Maharajah Gulab Singh will refer to the arbitration of the British Government any disputes or question that may arise between himself and the Government of Lahore or any other neighboring State, and will abide by the decision of the British Government. …
Article 7: Maharajah Gulab Singh engages never to take to retain in his service any British subject nor the subject of any European or American State without the consent of the British Government. …
…: Maharajah Gulab Singh acknowledges the supremacy of the British Government and will in token of such supremacy present annually to the British Government one horse, twelve shawl goats of approved breed (six male and six female) and three pairs of Cashmere shawls.
[“Treaty of Amritsar, March 16, 1846,” in A Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sanads, compiled by C. U. Aitchison, 3rd rev. ed., 14 vols. (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1892–1893), 12:21–22.]
On January 1, 1948, the government of India formally notified the Security Council of the United Nations that its territory, the state of Jammu and Kashmir, had been invaded by Pakistan. The state had become part of India, the letter pointed out, when its ruler, the maharaja, had acceded the state on October 26 to India, as he had a right to do under the arrangements that ended British rule in the subcontinent. India asked for action by the United Nations against Pakistan, claiming that Pakistan had invaded India and was illegally occupying its territory.
The Government of India have instructed me to transmit to you the following telegraphic communication:
1. Under Article 35 of the Charter of the United Nations, any Member may bring any situation whose continuance is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security to the attention of the Security Council. Such a situation now exists between India and Pakistan owing to the aid which invaders, consisting of invaders and of tribesmen from the territory immediately adjoining Pakistan in the north-west are drawing from Pakistan for operations against Jammu and Kashmir, a State which has acceded to the Dominion of India and is part of India. … The Government of India request the Security Council to call upon Pakistan to put an end immediately to the giving of such assistance, which is an act of aggression against India. If Pakistan does not do so, the Government of India may be compelled in self-defence, to enter Pakistan territory in order to take military action against the invaders. The matter is therefore of extreme urgency and calls for immediate action by the Security Council for a breach of international peace. …
Immediately after the raids into the Jammu and Kashmir state commenced, approaches were informally made to the Government of India for the acceptance of the accession of the State to the Indian Dominion. … On 26 October, the Ruler of the State, His Highness Maharaja Sir Hari Singh, appealed urgently to the Government of India for help. … An appeal for help was also simultaneously received by the Government of India from the largest popular organization in Kashmir, the National Conference headed by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. …
The invaders are still on the soil of Jammu and Kashmir and the inhabitants are exposed to all the atrocities of which a barbarous foe is capable. … Indefinite continuance of the present operations prolongs the agony of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, is a drain on India’s resources and a constant threat to the maintenance of peace between India and Pakistan. The Government of India have no option, therefore, but to take more effective military action in order to rid the Jammu and Kashmir state of the invader. … The Government of India would stress the special urgency of the Security Council taking immediate action on their request. … The text of this reference to the Security Council is being telegraphed to the Government of Pakistan.
[From Letter of India to the Security Council (S/628), Security Council Official Records, Supplement, November 1948, Annex 28.]
The Security Council considered the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir on numerous occasions and passed a number of resolutions for its solution, but the one of April 21, 1948, includes provisions that were reiterated in various forms. At the heart of the Security Council resolutions were the restoration of peace and order, the holding of a plebiscite to permit the people of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir to decide if they would join India or Pakistan, and, to accomplish this, a United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan, under a representative appointed by the Council. Pakistan regarded the holding of the plebiscite as absolutely vital, whereas India found it unacceptable. Looking back over the various actions of the Security Council and its representatives, the prime minister told the Indian Parliament on March 28, 1951, that India had not gone to the United Nations to determine the issue of sovereignty in Kashmir; that was known. India had gone to the UN to complain about Pakistan’s aggression in India’s territory. The Indian government denied the validity of the statement in the resolution that it had agreed to a plebiscite. This resolution was submitted by Belgium, Canada, China, Colombia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The Security Council had no way of enforcing its recommendations to India and Pakistan. India’s response to the resolution was coolly polite, saying that if, despite India’s objections, the Commission wished to visit India, the government would be glad to confer with the members, but there could be no question of the Commission’s implementing the resolution of April 21.
The Security Council,
Having considered the complaint of the Government of India concerning the dispute over the State of Jammu and Kashmir,
Having heard the representative of India in support of that complaint and the reply and counter-complaints of the representative of Pakistan …
Noting with satisfaction that both India and Pakistan desire that the question of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir should be decided through the democratic method of free and impartial plebiscite …
Instructs the Commission to proceed at once to the Indian subcontinent and there place its good offices and mediation at the disposal of the Governments of India and Pakistan … both with respect to the restoration of peace and order and to the holding of a plebiscite by the two governments, acting in cooperation with one another and with the Commission …
Restoration of Peace and Order … the Government of Pakistan should undertake … to secure the withdrawal from the State of Jammu and Kashmir of tribesmen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident therein. … The Government of India should, when it is established that the tribesmen are withdrawing and that arrangements for the cessation of fighting have become effective, put into operation in consultation with the Commission a plan for withdrawing their own forces from Jammu and Kashmir …
The Government of India should undertake that there will be established in Jammu and Kashmir a Plebiscite Administration to hold a plebiscite as soon as possible on the question of the accession of the State to India or Pakistan.
[From Security Council Resolution, April 21, 1948 (S/726), Security Council Documents.]
In recognition of having taken the dispute with Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir to the Security Council of the United Nations, the Indian Constitution recognizes that that state has a special status, different from that of the other states of the Union in regard to provisions in effect at the time of the takeover by India in 1948 through what was known as the “Instrument of Accession.” Over the years, this constitutional provision has been denounced, especially by Hindu nationalists, as a concession to Muslims that weakens Indian unity. Kashmiris have seen it as a guarantee of a larger measure of autonomy than that enjoyed by other states, even though this part of the Constitution was headed “Temporary and Transitional Provisions.”
(1), (b) the power of Parliament to make laws for the said State shall be limited to those matters … which, in consultation with the Government of the State, are declared by the President to correspond to matters specified in the Instrument of Accession governing the accession of the State to the Dominion of India as the matters with respect to which the Dominion Legislature may make laws for that State.
[From The Constitution of India, 161.]
Sheikh Abdullah (1905–1982), one of the founders of the Muslim Conference, later the National Conference, led the struggle for democratic rights against Maharaja Hari Singh, the autocratic ruler of Jammu and Kashmir. He worked closely with Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian National Congress, for which he was jailed by the maharaja. Following the intrusion of Pakistani forces into the state and the accession of Kashmir to India in 1948, he became prime minister of the state. The Indian government, however, became increasingly suspicious that he was seeking independence, or intending to unite with Pakistan. There were also widespread rumors that he was collaborating with the United States. The Indian government claimed that the speech excerpted below, which he made in August 1952, showed his unwillingness to merge the state fully with India. In 1953 he was dismissed as prime minister by the Indian government and jailed for ten years. He was released in 1964 and became chief minister in 1975. He died in office in 1982. The following selection is an extract from the statement of Sheikh Abdullah in the State Constituent Assembly of Kashmir on August 11, 1952.
The Government of India held the view that the fact that the Jammu and Kashmir State was a constituent unit of the Union of India led inevitably to certain consequences in regard to some important matters, namely: …
Residuary Powers: It was agreed that while under the present Indian Constitution, the Residuary Powers vested in the Centre in respect of all the states other than Jammu and Kashmir, in the case of our state, they rested in the State itself. This position is compatible with Article 370 of the Indian Constitution and the Instrument of Accession on which this Article is based. We have always held that the ultimate source of sovereignty resides in the people. It is, therefore, from the people that all powers can flow. Under these circumstances, it is up to the people of Kashmir through this Assembly to transfer more powers for mutual advantage to the custody of the Union Centre.
Citizenship: It was agreed that in accordance with Article 5 of the Indian Constitution persons who have their domicile in the Jammu and Kashmir State shall be the citizens of India. It was further agreed that the State legislature shall have power to define and regulate the rights and privileges of the permanent residents of the State, more especially in regard to acquisition of immovable property, appointments to services and like matters. …
Fundamental Rights: It was agreed … that the Fundamental Rights, which are contained in the Constitution of India, could not be conferred on the residents of the Jammu and Kashmir State in their entirety taking into account the economic, social and political character of our movements as enunciated in the New Kashmir Plan. …
Supreme Court: It was agreed that the Supreme Court should have original jurisdiction in respect of disputes mentioned in Article 131 of the Constitution of India. …
National Flag: We agreed that … for historical and other reasons connected with the freedom struggle in the State, the need for the continuance of [the State] flag was recognised. …
President of India: It was agreed that the powers to grant reprieve and commute death sentences, etc. should also belong to the President of the Union.
Headship of the State: I am glad to inform this House that the Government of India have appreciated the principle proposed by the Basic Principle Committee as adopted by this Assembly in regard to the abolition of the hereditary rulership of the State. …
Financial Integration: In regard to this subject, we agreed that it would be necessary to evolve some sort of financial arrangement between the State and the Indian Union. …
Emergency Powers: … In the event of war or external aggression, … the Government of India would have full authority to take any steps in connection with the defence, etc. In particular, we were averse to internal disturbance being referred to in this connection, as even some petty internal disorder might be considered sufficient for the application of Article 352 [Proclamation by President of India that an emergency existed in the State]. In reply it was pointed out that Article 352 could only be applied in a state of grave emergency and not because of some small disorder or disturbance.
In order to meet our viewpoint, it was suggested on behalf of the Government of India that Article 352 might be accepted as it is with the addition at the end of the first paragraph (1) of the following words: “but in regard to internal disturbance at the request or with the concurrence of the Government of the State.”
We generally accepted this position, but wanted some time to consider the implications and consequences as laid down in Articles 353, 358 and 359 [giving the President power to decree an Emergency] which on the whole we accepted. In regard to Article 354, we wanted to examine it further before expressing our opinion [the articles have to with the Central government and taxation]. …
Conduct of Elections to Houses of Parliament: … I have put before this House the broad indications of the agreements arrived at between us and the Government of India. As the Hon’ble Members will no doubt observe, the attitude of the Government of India has been most helpful. A satisfactory position has emerged and we are now able to assess the basic issues of our constitutional relationship with India in clearer terms. There has been a good deal of accommodation of our respective points of view. Both the representatives of the Government of India and the Kashmir Delegation, have been impelled by the desire to strengthen further the existing relationship to remove all obscurity and vagueness. …
It is, of course, for the Constituent Assembly [of Kashmir], which is seized of these matters, to determine the extent and scope of the state’s accession to India. The Assembly may agree to continue this relationship on the present basis or extend its scope as it might like and consider feasible and proper. In the course of framing the constitution for the State, the Hon’ble Members of this Assembly will have an opportunity of discussing these agreements and expressing their views thereon.
[Vidya Bhushan, State Politics and Government: Jammu and Kashmir (Jammu: Jay Kay Book House, 1985), 395–400.]
As the following statement indicates, the government of India’s attitude toward the settlement of the Kashmir issue by a plebiscite had changed through the years. At first, Nehru had been willing to hold a plebiscite, but he shifted his position when he became aware of the strong opposition to the idea in India. The most forthright acknowledgment of the new position came, however, from the powerful Home Minister, G. B. Pant. He argued that Pakistan’s military alliance with the United States, as well as strong criticism within the Indian National Congress, had made the idea impractical. The Pakistan press denounced the statement as exemplifying India’s duplicity.
We made certain statements when Kashmir acceded to India which cannot be denied. But when we made the statements circumstances were different from what they are now. The time factor is very important. Many things have changed since then. During these eight years Kashmir has been following a certain policy for its advancement and many development schemes are in progress. Pakistan has entered into a military alliance with America. The Constituent Assembly of Kashmir which was elected on the basis of adult franchise has taken a definite decision. Resolutions passed by the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference on the eve of the elections to the Constituent Assembly and the inaugural address delivered by Sheikh Abdullah made it abundantly clear that the Constituent Assembly had been constituted for the purpose of determining and deciding this vital issue. While I am not oblivious of the initial declaration made by the Government of India I cannot ignore the important series of facts. … The Pakistan Government has failed to agree to any reasonable conditions for a plebiscite, nor do I see any possibility of its agreeing to any. We are anxious to reach an agreement with Pakistan on all points. We would like the best neighbourly relations to exist between India and Pakistan.
[G. B. Pant, Speech at Srinagar, July 8, 1955, quoted, with comments from Pakistani newspapers, in Sisir Gupta, Kashmir: A Study in India–Pakistan Relations (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1966), 293–294.]
Sheikh Abdullah’s shift to a more pro-Congress line allowed him to become chief minister, but lost him much of his popular support. The control of the state by the center belied the promise of Article 370 of the Constitution, which was to have provided Kashmir with considerable autonomy. In practice, the central government did not give this freedom to the state; rather, it ruled with a heavy hand.
Through the 1980s resentments grew; in 1989–1990, these gave rise to an insurgency. At first this revolt involved Indian Kashmiris, was led by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), and was Muslim but not Islamist. However, the JKLF was succeeded and pushed aside by a more violent and ruthless organization, the Jammu and Kashmir Hizb-ul Mujahideen (JKHM, “Warriors of the Faith”), which was Islamist and was linked to groups trained in Pakistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. The JKHM and its allies carried on a murderous campaign not only against Indian security forces but also against the JKLF and non-Muslims in Kashmir. They imported foreign fighters to Kashmir and spread the revolt to the rural areas.
Negotiations between India and Pakistan, as well as wars in 1965 and 1971 and then the Kargil episode in 1999, have gone on over decades. The Ceasefire Line of 1949 was changed to the Line of Control in 1972, and there have been efforts at small, incremental advances, such as the bus route between the two parts of Kashmir—Azad Kashmir, as Pakistan calls its part, and the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India. Peace proposals that would involve India, Pakistan, and all Kashmiris have been legion, and all have required an escape from the death-grip of the past. For will India, which has preferred the status quo even at great cost in lives, rupees, and military involvement, give up its claims over Kashmir in exchange for some other arrangement preferred by most Kashmiris? Will Pakistan let go of its claim to the Kashmir Valley and its Muslim-majority population, in exchange for some other connection of the two parts of Kashmir and the two nations that would serve the people of Kashmir more equitably? And will the Kashmiris—many of whom want an independent entity, some of whom want to join Pakistan, and some of whom wish to remain tied to India—accept a plan that gives those holding each view something of what they want, perhaps with greatly increased autonomy on both sides of the border as well as a more porous frontier across which Kashmiris could move?
The second challenge to the unity and integrity of the nation was the insurgency in the 1980s in Punjab, a state central to the territorial and historical heartland of India. The disputes involved issues of national and state political rivalries, as well as an appeal to self-determination based upon the demand by a faction of Sikhs for a national homeland for Sikhs, to be called “Khalistan.” The alienation of groups of young men, the pressures of electoral politics, and misjudgments by national leaders led to widespread violence against Hindus who were regarded as the enemies of the Sikh community, as well as against established figures in the Sikh community.
The unrest found leadership in a fiery young preacher, Sant Jarnail Bhindranwale (1947–1984), a spokesman for and leader of the mingling of politics, historical memories, and religious enthusiasm that constituted the Punjab insurgency. Born into a poor family, he was educated in a traditional religious school of what is often called a “fundamentalist” branch of Sikhism, the Damdami Taksal. He denounced the older, more moderate Sikhs who led the Akali Dal political party as betrayers of true Sikhism. The Akali Dal was the opponent of the Indian National Congress after 1947, and when the Congress leaders in Punjab looked for a popular religious spokesman to oppose the Akalis, they chose Bhindranwale. He did not prove a useful ally because he soon turned against the Congress leaders, whom he denounced as Hindu oppressors of the Sikhs. Many of his followers, both in India and abroad, became proponents of an independent Sikh state, although his own political aims were never clearly enunciated. He was killed in June 1984 when the Indian Army seized the Golden Temple, the symbol of Sikhism, where he had established his headquarters. The subsequent assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by one of her Sikh guards in 1984 led to riots in Delhi and elsewhere, in which thousands of Sikhs were killed by mainly Hindu mobs. The insurgency was finally put down in 1992 by the Indian government. Bhindranwale’s memory and message survive among small groups who see him in as standing in the tradition of Sikh martyrs willing to fight and die for the faith.
The following short, somewhat disjointed, selections are from some of his talks and sermons.
Stay peaceful but be prepared. I appeal to the entire [Sikh nation.] We have orders … to stay peaceful. Peace is necessary too. But I shall certainly say that it should not be such peace that the Sikh Nation is destroyed, that [politicians] should set about annihilating the Sikhs and we maintain peace. I am not in favour of such peacefulness. We have to maintain peace, we have to obey orders. So long as the Government confines its activities to outside [the Golden Temple], definitely stay cool because we are engaged in the Dharam Yudh Morcha [religious struggle]. We all have to achieve success in this struggle. We have to secure our rights. However, when at any time, on any day, the Government enters the boundary of this complex to destroy its sanctity, let me appeal most strongly to the entire Sikh congregation—to all of you who live in villages, towns and in the entire country—that when you learn that they have entered the boundary of the complex and attacked, then it will be your responsibility everywhere to kill every critic of the Guru and every enemy of the Sikh Nation. At that time there should be no hesitation on your part.
Sikhs are a separate nation. My educated brothers must have been delighted at the news that appeared some three or four days back. In connection with the [wearing of the Sikh] turban there has been a decision in England. … It is a weighty matter. The Parliament in England has decided that not only are the Sikhs a separate nation, they are a separate race.
Sikhs are identified exclusively as extremists. On an earlier day too I made a statement that if Sikhs are a part of Hindus and are not a separate entity, then they should start saying in the newspapers, in the Parliament, in the Assemblies [State Legislatures], that Hindus are extremists. And if Sikhs are extremists, then they have to admit Sikhs are a separate nation. They exclusively call the Sikhs extremists, but collectively we are all Hindu.
Atrocities by the present government. A young daughter of the Sikhs was stripped naked, and … her father was forcibly laid on her. [In another village, the police] stripped [a] daughter naked, and … had her held by her breasts and paraded [her] through the village. Has it ever happened to a Hindu? Tell me, if there is a single example. … Only the homes of Sikhs have been set on fire by the police. Has a single Hindu home been set on fire by the police in the whole of Punjab? … Prove even a single one of the statements that I am going to make before you to be wrong. I promise you, standing here in [the Sikh headquarters], I shall chop off my head and place it at your feet. Such blatant discrimination is going on.
[Struggle for Justice: Speeches and Conversations of Sant Jarnail Singh Khalsa Bhindranwale, translated from Punjabi audio and visual recordings by Ranbir Singh Sandhu (Dublin, OH: Sikh Educational and Religious Foundation, 1999), 72, 74, 90–91.]
Nagaland is part of the mountainous region in Northeast India that in the British period was known as the North-East Frontier Agency, officially claimed by the British but left in the control of numerous tribal chieftains. The Nagas, numbering about a million people, were one such tribe, differentiated from others by customs and language, and also by the fact that many of them had adopted Christian beliefs and developed their own leadership. These leaders were the nucleus of the Naga National Council, formed in 1946, which asserted that the Nagas constituted a nation separate from India; on August 14, 1947, the day before India became independent, they issued their own declaration of independence as the Naga nation.
An underground movement was started by a well-educated Christian, A. Z. Phizo (1903–1990), and began making violent attacks on Indian soldiers, policemen, and administrators who tried to assert the authority of the Indian government. Phizo fled to London in 1956 and died there in 1990, but the insurgency in the Northeast still remains, despite the Indian army’s efforts to repress it.
The selection given here is from a speech made by Phizo in 1951 at a great gathering called to demand a plebiscite to show the Nagas’ desire to be free from India. It is a kind of template of nationalist movements everywhere in the twentieth century, including India, with its identification of a freedom-loving people held down by an oppressor. Nagaland was made the sixteenth state of the Indian Union in December 1963.
Today is a great day for our people. Throughout Nagaland our people are ceremoniously observing this day May 16 as the day of our Plebiscite Day, which we are going to record by taking the thumb impression of our people. This we are doing to show India and the world of our aspiration and that there is an effective unity of the people in Nagaland. We have been living as a subject nation for the last 70 years. Our country was an Independent country before the British conquered us with superior force of arms. The British left our country and India in the year 1947. Without making any special arrangement for our country the British abandoned us and we found ourselves under the mercy of the Indian people. …
I am not going into details of our past experiences with India especially since 1947. Prior to the transference by the British of their administrative authority and controlling over—that is, military and police—into the hands of Indians, we had talked to the British for our Independence. But there again we made a mistake. We had not put it in writing for record. Anyway, we the Naga people declared ourselves Independent on the 14th of August, 1947, and on the same day we informed India by telegram, and cabled to UNO for information and record. Since then, we have tried to settle our political issue with India on various occasions. But we have not been successful. As a result we have gathered here together in order to try to convince India of our inherent right to be free and equal to any other nation as a distinct people. …
When we examine those rapacious assertions, accusations and misapprehensions we find that the Indians do not know the Nagas. India tried to stop our Independence, they are still trying; and, they will probably continue to do so. … The history of progress and freedom have been written and will continue to be written. Most of the histories of human freedom were recorded in human blood. Most of the foundations of free nations were built on human bones and crushed skulls. But we want our national independence to remain holy and pure. We do not want to mix freedom, and our independence, with human blood. We do hope we shall not be compelled to live on a structure founded on human skulls and bones. We are determined to extricate ourself clear with understanding, by goodwill and through reason, so that we may continue to live in freedom and enjoy national independence. …
I always have a feeling that God, our Heavenly Father—our creator is with us and guiding us. … The Nagas do not ask Independence from India; indeed, we do not want anything from India. India has nothing to give away to Nagaland. We are Independent and sovereign in our own national right. What we ask is not to interfere [with] our administration but leave us alone and allow Nagaland, the national state of the Nagas, to continue to exist in peace and make progress without hindrance. …
Now that India is free, we appeal to them to exercise their sovereign right to let the Nagas continue to remain free and independent which, in verity, is in keeping with the precept of Mahatma Gandhi’s creed of “Non-violence.” …
India puts forward various arguments in their attempt to confound us. The first argument is about the “menace” of China and Burma. They always say this trying to scare us which we do not have the least thing to worry. The second argument is what they called “strategy” for security of India. Just as much as India needs precaution for her security other countries also require the same precaution. … The third Indian argument is about economy. The Indians say that Nagaland cannot maintain itself economically as if we are sort of just crawling out from a hole. Their talk is nothing but insult. The truth is, Nagaland had never been dependent on India at any time in history. …
Being a nation the Nagas have their own distinct way of manners and living; and it is quite possible that we think differently in many respects. In our country, land belongs to the people as private property, and every family possesses land. We uphold every person as sovereign: man and women alike. Every family is a landlord; but, there is no landlordism in Nagaland. Democracy is the very spirit in our country. Land being so owned by the people who are in their person sovereign, there is a sound economic basis and there is no room for anyone to grudge or complain against social injustice. If our Naga civilization is not destroyed there is no possibility for any section of our people to become servile or entirely dependent on someone. …
We do not like to mention about the Indians at all at any time. We have nothing to do with them. …
India wanted to dump her excess population in Nagaland as well as exploit the rich natural resources in our territory. This is so dangerous that it threatens our very existence. Being a small nation (almost a 1000th part of India), we can easily be submerged and get lost: our culture, our civilization, our institutions, our nation and all that we had struggled [to] build up as we are today will be perished without the least benefit to mankind. And, these we shall lose not happily but in anger and in perpetual sorrow. If such a day were to be forced on us, God forbid—it would have been better none of us were ever born into this world.
Someone may tell us that Nagas are Christians following a foreign religion. The Indians publicly say this. We do not take Christianity as foreign religion any more than we consider the light of the sun as foreign origin from outer world. There is a father-creator (Ukepenopfü) as we call it. He is God. The message of the Gospel fulfills our Naga conception of religion—Nanyü—which literally means “anguish of mind” for which we do worship. Once we came to know that there is a personal Saviour to whom one can talk or pray directly, the real light dawned on us, and the weight of man’s “anguish of mind” greatly vanish away. It is the end of the beginning of our personal realization in relieving the anguish of mind in this world and for the next world after death. Whatever the Indians may say of us, there is no foreignness in relationship between father and child; that is, between God the Father and His children. …
NOW WE ARE HERE TODAY to reaffirm the stand of our Naga nation that we do not need India and we do not want her. We are here today to prove to INDIA and to the world that NAGALAND is united and that our nation aspires … to continue to be independent as a distinct nation as we are and have always been in the sovereign national state of the Nagas of Nagaland. …
We want to keep in our possession as a heritage something which is exclusively of Nagaland; something which is bound to vanish and be lost to the Nagas if they were to live under an alien direction. … We want to make our country a place of happiness, of security and rest. We hope and we cherish that we can make our country a meeting place of the East and an understanding center of the world. We believe that we shall become a better friend and that we can remain a better friend to India and the outside world if we are left to ourselves—unmolested and unexploited. We believe that it is not only for Nagaland but for India and other surrounding countries as well that there is a better chance of creating and retaining peace and good will with a SOVEREIGN NAGALAND being in existence. Above everything else, we want to be free as a distinct nation: and we shall be free.
The Preamble to the Constitution declared that India was a democratic republic; and while it contains no definition of democracy, numerous articles provide for the framework of practices generally considered essential features of a democratic society. These include freedom of speech, assembly, and religion, a commitment to free education for all citizens, adult suffrage, elections carefully monitored by nonpartisan bodies, protection of minorities, a definition of citizenship without reference to religion, caste, or sex, property rights, and an independent judiciary.
The main foci of power in the Indian federal system are the central and state governments, where elected legislative bodies share powers as allocated by the Indian Constitution. During the decades since Independence, there have been pressures to work out a system where power was not centralized only at the top of a hierarchy, but was also able to accommodate voices and concerns from below. Mahatma Gandhi was a strong advocate of the devolution of power to local institutions. He wanted the revival of the old institution of the panchayat, or group of five village elders who settled disputes and made decisions at the lowest level. Jawaharlal Nehru had some sympathy for local input and community development, but he presided over a system that worked from the top down, not the reverse. Although state leaders were often resistant to the delegation of power to the villages and districts, some states—notably West Bengal, under a leftist government from 1977—passed laws establishing panchayats.
Then in 1992 the Seventy-Third Amendment to the Indian Constitution was passed to establish panchayats throughout India. This amendment act provides for the devolution of power and responsibilities to local bodies and a role for them in the preparation and implementation of development schemes. It also stipulates that one-third of panchayat members be women. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are also to have reserved seats. The scheme envisions a three-tier system, from the district to the block and the village. A further act in 1996 extended its scope to the tribal areas of eight states.
In the Constituent Assembly debates of 1947–1950, while there was enthusiastic praise of democracy as a defining ideology, there were also a few critics, with some loyal Gandhians seeing it as a repudiation of Gandhi’s belief in the centrality of villages, and some Muslim members speaking of the danger of tyranny in the rule of the Hindu majority. There was also questioning of the suitability of political democracy to a pluralistic society, divided by language, regional differences, class, and religion, and with a vast poor, illiterate population. Many argued that democracy was an artifact of Western history and culture and could not be transferred to the alien soil of India. There was, however, a generalized acceptance of the practice of democratic politics as the correct pathway for India. Examples of such questionings are given here.
In November 1949, at the third and final reading of the bill to enact the new constitution into law, Ambedkar warned the Constituent Assembly of the dangers both to India’s independence and to her democratic constitution. As remedies, he advised devotion to the country, an end to civil disobedience, avoidance of hero-worship, the fostering of social and economic equality, and adherence to constitutional methods of self-government. His reading of Buddhist history, while perhaps fanciful, was indicative of his wish to use the past as a guide to the present. Further, his insight that bhakti, devotional religion, has a function in Indian political life is interesting, suggesting an explanation for the part played for fifty of the first sixty years by what Indians call the “Nehru Dynasty.”
On the 26th of January 1950, India would be a democratic country in the sense that India from that day would have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The same thought comes to my mind. What would happen to her democratic Constitution? Will she be able to maintain it or will she lose it again? This is the second thought that comes to my mind and makes me as anxious as the first.
It is not that India did not know what is Democracy. There was a time when India was studded with republics, and even where there were monarchies, they were either elected or limited. They were never absolute. It is not that India did not know Parliaments or Parliamentary Procedure. A study of the Buddhist Bhikshu Sanghas [monastic orders] discloses that not only there were Parliaments—for the Sanghas were nothing but Parliaments—but the Sanghas knew and observed all the rules of Parliamentary Procedure known to modern times. … This democratic system India lost. Will she lose it a second time? I do not know. But it is quite possible in a country like India—where democracy from its long disuse must be regarded as something quite new—there is danger of democracy giving place to dictatorship. It is quite possible for this new born democracy to retain its form but give place to dictatorship in fact. If there is a landslide, the danger of the second possibility becoming actuality is much greater.
If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgment we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.
The second thing we must do is to observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not “to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions.” This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in 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 a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.
The third thing we must do is not to be content with mere political democracy. We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things. It would require a constable to enforce them.
[From Constituent Assembly Debates, 11:977–981.]
The claim that India needed to be guided by a strong authoritarian hand was a frequent argument of the British rulers and became common among some Indians. One of the most interesting comments on the subject is contained in an anonymous article that appeared in November 1937, suggesting that Jawaharlal Nehru was a potential dictator. The article was in fact written by Nehru himself, and offers fascinating insights into his understanding both of his own character and of India. Chanakya, the alias he assumed, was the name of the ancient Indian writer, also known as Kautilya (see volume 1), who urged the necessity of a strong, authoritarian ruler.
Jawaharlal ki jai! (Hail Jawaharlal!) The Rashtrapati (President) looked up as he passed swiftly through the waiting crowds; his hands went up, and his pale, hard face was lit up with a smile. … The smile passed away and the face became stern and sad. Almost it seemed as the smile and the gesture accompanying it had little reality; they were just tricks of the trade to gain the good will of the crowd whose darling he had become. Was it so? Watch him again.
Is all this natural, or the carefully thought out trickery of the public man? Perhaps it is both, and the long habit has become second nature now. The most effective pose is the one in which there seems to be least posing, and Jawaharlal has learned well to act without the paint and powder of the actor. … Whither is this going to lead him and the country? …
Steadfastly and persistently he goes on increasing his personal prestige and influence. … From far North to Cape Comorin he has gone like some triumphant Caesar, leaving a glory and a legend behind him. …
What if the fancy turns? Men like Jawaharlal, with all their great capacity for great and good work, are unsafe in a democracy. He calls himself a democrat and socialist, and no doubt he does so in all earnestness, … but a little twist and he might turn into a dictator, … we all know how fascism has fattened on this language and then cast it away as useless lumber. …
Jawaharlal cannot become fascist. … He is too much an aristocrat for the crudity and vulgarity of fascism. … And yet he has all the makings of a dictator in him—vast popularity, a strong will, energy, pride and intolerance of others and a certain contempt for the weak and inefficient. … His conceit is already formidable. It must be checked. … It is not thorough Caesarism that India will attain freedom, and though she might prosper a little under a benevolent and efficient despotism, she will remain stunted and the day of her emancipation of her people will be delayed.
[Chanakya, “The Rashtrapati,” in Modern Review 62 (Jan.–Dec. 1937): 546–547.]
Indira Gandhi (1917–1984), daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, and Kamala Nehru, endured an occasionally pampered but also difficult and sometimes lonely childhood. Her father was often in prison and her mother ill. She was educated in schools in Europe and India, and at Oxford University. Against the wishes of her father, she married Feroze Gandhi (no relation of the Mahatma), who was a member of the small Parsi community and a Congress activist and Member of Parliament, and had two sons, Rajiv (1944–1991) and Sanjay (1946–1980). She and her husband parted after a few years, and she became the organizer of her father’s household. She had long been interested in politics, and entered the ring as president of the Congress Party in 1959. With her father’s death, she became Minister for Information; and upon the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri, she became prime minister in 1966. Although the “Syndicate,” a group of Congress leaders who ran the party, believed her to be malleable, she shortly proved to be a tough and wily politician. She challenged their leadership of the party, and when the party split she led her group, the Congress (I), to election victories in 1971–1972, after her successful conduct of the Bangladesh war for independence. As prime minister she was counseled by a small group that included her son Sanjay, and she weakened the regional Congress parties by deciding that she herself should choose regional candidates and leaders. She also carried through several populist measures, including bank nationalization and withdrawal of the privy purses of the princes.
On June 12, 1975, Gandhi was found guilty by a High Court decision of illegal practices in her election in 1971. Her critics had already mounted a fierce campaign against her, and on June 26, 1975, with the consent of the President of India, and eventually of her Cabinet, she proclaimed a State of Emergency in a radio broadcast. (This was legal under Article of 352 of the Constitution, which decrees that when the president has declared that an Emergency exists, his decision is “final and conclusive and shall not be questioned in any court on any ground.”) In rather elliptical language, she referred to recent dangers to the state that required drastic action. This entailed the suspension of many features of the legal framework and of democratic freedoms, including free speech, habeas corpus, and political parties; it also included the imposition of press censorship and the imprisonment of opponents, including Morarji Desai and Jayaprakash Narayan, one of the most famous leaders of the Indian National Congress. Elections slated for 1976 were postponed. Hundreds of lesser politicians from other parties, especially Hindu nationalists and critics of the government, were quickly rounded up. There was widespread criticism from Western democracies, but the Emergency had been so carefully planned and swiftly executed that for a time opposition at home was effectively silenced. It seemed that democracy had been crushed with surprising efficiency.
The following is the radio broadcast in which Prime Minister Gandhi announced the sweeping changes to come.
The President has proclaimed the emergency. This is nothing to panic about.
I am sure you are all conscious of the deep and widespread conspiracy, which has been brewing ever since I began to introduce certain progressive measures of benefit to the common man and woman of India. In the name of democracy, it has been sought to negate the very functioning of democracy. Duly elected governments have not been allowed to function and in some cases, force has been used to compel members to resign in order to dissolve lawfully elected assemblies. Agitations have surcharged the atmosphere, leading to violent incidents. The whole country was shocked at the brutal murder of my Cabinet colleague, Shri L. N. Mishra. We also deeply deplore the dastardly attack on the Chief Justice of India.
Certain persons have gone to the length of inciting our armed forces to mutiny and our police to rebel. The fact that our defence forces and the police are disciplined and deeply patriotic and, therefore, will not be taken in, does not mitigate the seriousness of the provocation.
The forces of disintegration are in full play and communal passions are being aroused, threatening our unity.
All manners of false allegations have been hurled at me. The Indian people have known me since my childhood. All my life has been in the service of our people. This is not a personal matter. It is not important whether I remain Prime Minister or not. However, the institution of the Prime Minister is important and the deliberate political attempts to denigrate it are not in the interest of democracy or of the nation.
We have watched these developments with utmost patience for long. Now we learn of a new programme challenging law and order throughout the country with a view to disrupting normal functioning. How can any Government worth the name stand by and allow the country’s stability to be imperilled? The actions of a few are endangering the rights of the vast majority. Any situation, which weakens the capacity of the national Government to act decisively inside the country, is bound to encourage dangers from outside. It is our paramount duty to safeguard unity and stability. The nation’s integrity demands firm action.
The threat to internal stability also affects production and prospects of economic improvement. In the last few months the determined action we have taken has succeeded in largely checking the price rise. We have been actively considering further measures to strengthen the economy and to relieve the hardship of various sections, particularly the poor and vulnerable and those with fixed incomes. I shall announce them soon.
I should like to assure you that the new emergency proclamation will in no way affect the rights of law-abiding citizens. I am sure that internal conditions will speedily improve to enable us to dispense with this proclamation as soon as possible. I have been overwhelmed by the messages of goodwill from all parts of India and all sections of the people. May I appeal for your continued co-operation and trust in the days ahead?
[From Selected Speeches and Writings of Indira Gandhi (New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1973–1986), 3:177.]
Mrs. Gandhi followed up the shocking news of the suspension of democracy in a broadcast speech a few days later, on July 1, that justified her action and outlined a twenty-point program of economic reforms to improve deteriorating conditions. One well-known journalist described it at the time, but not in print, as “Pie in the sky, by and by.”
I am going to speak to you today about some economic programmes which the Government proposes to follow. … Some of them are new. Others were set forth earlier but require to be pursued with greater vigour and determination. … The campaign of law-breaking, paralysing national activity and inciting our security forces to indiscipline and disobedience would have led to economic chaos and collapse and our country would have become vulnerable to fissiparous tendencies and external danger. With the fumes of hatred having cleared somewhat, we can see our economic goals with greater clarity and urgency. The emergency provides us a new opportunity to go ahead with our economic tasks. … I have only briefly outlined various parts of the new [twenty-point] programme, which will be taken up in the coming weeks. Other matters are being looked into and further measures will be announced from time to time. I have no doubt that together they will make a difference to the country’s economic outlook. What is most urgent is that collectively we should shake off any sense of helplessness. The worst feature of the crisis, which was building over the last few months, was that it spread cynicism and sapped national self-confi-dence. There is a chance now to regain the nation’s spirit of adventure. Let us get on with the job.
THE 20-POINT PROGRAMME (SUMMARY)
1. Continuance of steps to bring down prices of essential commodities. Streamlined production. Procurement and distribution of essential commodities. Strict economy in Government expenditure. 2. Implementation of Agricultural land ceilings and speedier distribution of surplus land and compilation of land records. Special care will be given to ensure that tribal people are not deprived of their lands. 3. Stepping up of provision of house-sites for landless and weaker sections in rural areas. 4. Bonded labour, wherever it exists[,] will be declared illegal. 5. Plan for liquidation of rural indebtedness. Legislation for moratorium on recovery of debt from landless labourers, small and marginal farmers owning less than two hectares of land and rural artisans. 6. Review of laws on minimum agricultural wages and suitable enhancement of minimum wages, wherever necessary. 7. Five million more hectares to be brought under irrigation. National Programme for use of underground water and further surveys taken up for provision of drinking water, especially in drought-prone areas. 8. An accelerated power programme. Super thermal stations under Central Control. 9. New development plan for development of handloom sector. Policy of reservation for handlooms to be rationalised to give greater protection to weavers. 10. Improvement in quality and supply of people’s cloth. 11. Socialisation of urban and urbanisable land. Ceiling on ownership and possession of vacant land and on plinth areas of new dwelling units. 12. Special squads for valuation of conspicuous construction and prevention of tax evasion. Summary trials and deterrent punishment for economic offenders. 13. Special legislation for confiscation of smugglers’ properties. 14. Liberalisation of investment procedures. Action against misuse of import licences. 15. New Schemes for workers’ participation in industries, particularly at the shop floor level and introduction of production programmes. 16. National permit scheme for road transport. 17. Income tax relief to middle class—exemption limit raised to Rs. 8,000. 18. Essential Commodities at controlled prices to students in hostels. 19. Books and Stationery at controlled prices to students; book banks to be established. 20. New apprenticeship scheme to enlarge employment and training. Special care will be taken to ensure a fair deal to Scheduled Castes and Tribes, minorities and handicapped persons in recruitment of apprentices.
[Indira Gandhi, Selected Speeches and Writings, 3:357–360.]
Jayaprakash Narayan (1902–1979), one of the best-known leaders of the Indian national movement, studied at the University of Wisconsin, where he joined the Communist Party, but on his return to India he allied himself with Nehru and the Socialist Party. Many, including Nehru, thought he would become prime minister after Nehru, but he left politics to agitate on behalf of the rural poor. He was imprisoned by Mrs. Gandhi in 1975 for allegedly urging the army to revolt. When he was released, very ill and embittered by his treatment in prison, but still believing in what he called “Total Revolution,” he gave an interview to a journalist, which is excerpted here.
Q. How will you describe the present situation in the country, particularly after June 26, 1975?
A. Within the last year, that is, from June 26, 1975, to now [June 26, 1976], India has been converted from a working democracy into a personal dictatorship of the Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi.
Q. What programme should the people take to meet the present situation? …
A. I agree with you that the remedy is a non-violent people’s struggle at all levels as you say. But as you know, that is easier said than done. The past year has shown that the people are still ignorant of and unconcerned about their rights and duties as citizens of an independent and democratic country. A rather glaring proof of this was their complete passivity when their fundamental rights of speech, association, movement, etc., were suddenly taken away by Mrs. Gandhi. Had the people been conscious of their rights, in spite of the emergency there would have been country-wide protests and demonstrations. Therefore our present task is to go to the people: (a) to educate them about the fundamentals of democracy and their relevance to their life; (b) to organise them in appropriate organs of struggle.
Q. Is it not true that the present situation is the culmination of the process initiated by Nehru? When Gandhi suggested to keep the Congress as a national movement and to complete the programme of social, economic and moral revolution in the country, Nehru was creating a situation for an authoritarian rule in the country by converting the Congress into an election machine to capture political power. Do you agree?
A. You are quite right in drawing this vital distinction between Gandhi’s and Nehru’s position after independence. Nehru made the sad mistake of assuming that a new India could be created merely through the power and resources of the State. Therefore not only did he neglect the tasks of converting the Congress into the people’s instrument for national reconstruction and social change but he deliberately reduced it to a mere election machine. … Gandhiji, on the other hand, believed that unless the people were actually involved in it, the task of national reconstruction could never be fulfilled. It was for that reason that he wanted to preserve the character of the Congress as a people’s movement by reconstituting it as Lok Sevak Sangh [Association of the Servants of the People].
Q. You had struggled against the foreign government for the country’s liberation and now you are fighting for social change. Earlier you believed in violent means and now you are completely non-violent. You have therefore the experience of both. What programme of action will you suggest?
A. If Mrs. Gandhi’s tyrannical rule has to be ended and Indian democracy revived, it can be done only by the people’s peaceful movement. … Unfortunately for this country, Mrs. Gandhi’s greatest achievement is that she has instilled fear in the hearts of the people and made them cowards and sycophants. Perhaps there is something in our character, the character of the Indian people, that makes it easy for our rulers, even when they are democratically elected, to frighten us into submission. The supine manner in which the people, with few exceptions, reacted to Mrs. Gandhi’s draconian measures of the 26th June, 1975, and thereafter is a proof of this weakness in our character. The millions who used to crowd my meetings and shout brave slogans just seem to have disappeared. Even the young men have been too cowed down to react.
To make the people shed their fear and stand up to any tyrant or unjust ruler is one of the more important tasks of nation-building. Unless we, as a people, acquire the capacity to stand up to injustice, oppression and corruption, we would remain a weak nation.
[Jayaprakash Narayan, “Total Revolution: Its Future,” June 27, 1976, an interview with Brahmanand, from Towards Total Revolution, ed. with an introduction by Brahmanand (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1978), 179–180, 188.]
After Indira Gandhi was defeated in 1977, the new government, with her old opponent Morarji Desai as prime minister, appointed a commission headed by J. C. Shah, a former justice of the Supreme Court, to inquire into the excesses of the Emergency. The imprisonments without warrants and the censorship of the press were of concern, but the stories that were told everywhere had to do with forced sterilization of men to carry out the rigorous birth control program that was under the direction of her son, Sanjay, who had also been responsible for the leveling of slum housing areas in old Delhi to carry out city planning. The report is filled with accounts of the unconstitutional behavior of the government, with emphasis placed on Mrs. Gandhi’s personal responsibility. Not many convictions followed from it, partly because she was reelected to Parliament in 1980, proving, she claimed, that the majority of the people supported the Emergency.
15.1. The Commission has by now a fairly comprehensive view of the excesses committed in Delhi during the period covered by the terms of reference, especially in relation to the circumstances in which imposition of the emergency was recommended, the manner in which certain key appointments were made for collateral purposes, the callousness with which arrests were ordered on false allegations to serve personal or party objectives and with a view to smother protest, the manner in which the statutory provisions governing detentions, confirmation of detentions and review of the detention orders were honoured in their breach, the total indifference displayed in considering even reasonable requests for parole and for revocation of detention orders and the ease with which established administrative procedures and conventions were subverted for the benefit of individuals, who had contacts at the “right places.” With the Press gagged and a resultant black out of authentic information, arbitrary arrests and detentions went on apace. Effective dissent was smothered, followed by a general erosion of democratic values. Highhanded and arbitrary actions were carried out with impunity. The nation was initially in a state of shock, and then of stupor, unable to realise the directions and the full implications of the actions of the Government and its functionaries. Tyrants sprouted at all levels overnight—tyrants whose claim to authority was largely based on their proximity to the seats of power. The attitude of the general run of the public functionaries was largely characterised by a paralysis of the will to do the right and proper thing. The ethical considerations inherent in public behaviour became generally dim and in many cases beyond the mental grasp of many of the public functionaries. Desire for self-preservation as admitted by a number of public servants at various levels became the sole motivation for their official actions and behaviour. Anxiety to survive at any cost formed the key-note of approach to the problems that came before many of them. The fear generated by the mere threat and without even the actual use of the weapon of detention under MISA [Maintenance of Internal Security Act] became so pervasive that the general run of public servants acted as willing tools of tyranny. That the primary and not infrequently the sole motivation in the case of a number of public servants who acted unlawfully to the prejudice of the rights of citizens, was the desire for self-protection—desire for survival—may be regarded as some extenuation of their conduct. Yet, if the nation is to preserve the fundamental values of a democratic society, every person whether a public functionary or private citizen must display a degree of vigilance and willingness to sacrifice. Without the awareness of what is right and a desire to act according to what is right there may be no realisation of what is wrong. During the emergency, for many a public functionary the dividing line between right and wrong, moral and immoral, ceased to exist.
15.5 … There is no evidence of circumstances which would warrant the declaration of an emergency, much less the imposition of an additional emergency. … There is no evidence of any breakdown of law and order in any part of the country—nor of any apprehension in that behalf; the economic condition was well under control and had in no way deteriorated. … The public records of the times, Secret, Confidential or Public and publications in newspapers, speak with unanimity that there was no unusual event or even a tendency in that direction to justify the imposition of emergency. There was no threat to the well-being of the nation from sources external or internal. The conclusion appears in the absence of any evidence given by Smt. [Mrs.] Indira Gandhi or any one else, that the one and the only motivating force for tendering the extraordinary advice to the President to declare an “internal emergency” was the intense political activity generated in the ruling party and the opposition, by the decision of the Allahabad High Court declaring the election of the Prime Minister of the day invalid on the ground of corrupt election practices. Thousands were detained and a series of totally illegal and unwarranted actions followed involving untold human misery and suffering. In the absence of any explanation, the inference is inevitable that a political decision was taken by an interested Prime Minister in a desperate endeavour to save herself from the legitimate compulsion of a judicial verdict against her.
15.6. The nation owes it to the present and the succeeding generations to ensure that the administrative set-up is not subverted in future in the manner it was done, to serve the personal ends of any one individual or a group of individuals in or near the Government.
[Shah Commission of Inquiry, appointed under Section 3 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, Interim Report II, April 26, 1978 (New Delhi: Government of India, 1978), chapter 15, sections 1, 5, 6.]
In 1991 Myron Weiner (1931–1999), professor of political science at MIT, published an important study about the connection between child labor, education, and state policy in India. It was widely read by Indian officials, scholars, and others, and while it stimulated discussion, no widespread changes in the course of education resulted.
Perhaps the foremost foreign scholar of Indian politics, and a remarkably productive and intelligent scholar and teacher, Weiner argued that bureaucrats and the Indian elite in general agreed to laws requiring compulsory education for children and laws that banned child labor, but in practice disregarded both. His argument was that their mind-set was to blame for this neglect. They believed that lower-class children would be better prepared for work by working, even at the most menial jobs, rather than by attending school. So they disregarded their own laws, failing to implement compulsory education throughout the country. As a result, India had fallen far behind other developing countries, including China, South Korea, and Taiwan, in literacy rates. Year by year India was producing the largest number of new illiterates, as well as the most sizable child labor force, of any country in the world. Weiner maintained that this state of affairs was unfavorable to the long-term economic and social health of India.
Weiner’s book, The Child and the State in India, includes fascinating interviews from the mid-1980s with a range of officials, educators, and public intellectuals concerned with children and education. After a brief selection from some of these interviews, we have included the text of a recent law that yet again requires the compulsory education of India’s children.
“Did you and other officials,” I asked a senior official in the Ministry of Education, who had been working with Rajiv Gandhi on the government’s new National Policy on Education, “consider making education compulsory? If you did, what were arguments for and against, and why was a decision made not to make it compulsory?”
“The question didn’t arise,” came the reply, “because we already have compulsory-education laws in sixteen of our twenty-two states, though given the social conditions in the country it has not been possible to enforce the laws.”
I know, I continued, that you have numerous state laws called “Compulsory Education,” but what you have is enabling legislation that permits local authorities to make education compulsory, but does not compel them.
“That’s not so,” the official contradicted me. “These laws may not be enforced, but they do provide for compulsory education. The question was raised in Parliament when the prime minister introduced the new education policy and my assistant researched the matter for us.”
Once again I challenged him. I explained that my understanding was that the state legislation is modeled after the British Parliamentary Act of 1870, which says that local authorities are permitted to write rules requiring parents to send their children to school and setting penalties for those who fail to do so. A decade later, in 1880, the British Parliament passed legislation requiring local authorities to make education mandatory. I hadn’t seen all the state legislation in India, but none that I had seen made it mandatory upon local authorities to establish compulsory education.
“You’re wrong,” said the official, and he called his assistant and instructed him to bring in the state legislation. After the assistant entered with a large folder in hand, I suggested we look at the legislation for Tamil Nadu since I had just been there, had read the legislation, and had discussed the matter with the former finance secretary of the government, who told me that none of the local authorities had ever made education compulsory. The assistant handed me the Tamil Nadu legislation and I recited from the relevant section (article 44): “any local authority may [my emphasis], by a resolution passed at a meeting specially convened for the purpose and supported by the votes of not less than two-thirds of the members present, resolve that elementary education shall be compulsory within the whole or a specified part of the local area under its jurisdiction.” 5
The official looked surprised. We then turned to other state laws. The Punjab law also said that local authorities “may” make education compulsory. I noted that in my travels I had found few local authorities that had made education compulsory and that state governments were not pressing local authorities to write bylaws to set up enforcement machinery.
“That’s just as well,” said the official. “I was once posted in a union territory which had a compulsory education act. I found poor people were subject to penalties for not sending their children to school. Some teachers were charging parents ten rupees a month for not reporting their children were not in school! How could a poor man send his son to school when he needs him to care for his cattle? Villages have no system of stall feeding. According to the Operations Research Group study there are forty-four million children working. If these children can’t be prevented from working, then to impose compulsory education would be to deal with the problem in an ostrich-like fashion. There’s a double problem. We have an educational system that is not adequate for our children, and a social system that obligates poor people not to send their children to school. So how can we punish poor parents if their children are not in school? In 1995 the government will take a fresh look at child labor and then we can look at the compulsory education question. There is no point in saying things that you cannot do.
“I think,” he continued, “that by and large the people of India want their children to be educated, so we do not need coercive power to send children to school. Besides, what right do we have to compel parents to send children to schools that are not worth much. The teachers aren’t any good. Often they don’t even appear at the school. We must first provide the country with schools that are worth something. Right now our schools are trash!” …
The most articulate and severe critic of India’s educational system that I encountered was Mrs. Ela Bhatt. Mrs. Bhatt is a well-known social activist in Ahmedabad and a Member of Parliament. She is the founder and organizer of the Self-Employed Women’s Association. SEWA has organized thousands of women and children, including workers in the bidi [leaf-wrapped cigarette] industry, garment makers, and ragpickers. … Ela Bhatt is regarded as the doyen of social activists in Ahmedabad. She has successfully brought together people in the unorganized sector, people not easily organized. She has created self-help projects and attracted attention and financial support from outside agencies. She is widely regarded as an articulate spokesperson for poor women.
“Our present education system is good for nothing,” she said as we began our conversation on the small patio of her modest home in Ahmedabad. “The schools do not build character nor are they able to prepare the children for self-employment. Teachers should be sympathetic to children and teach them what is relevant. But what is the situation? The teaching is poor. Sometimes the teachers are not even present, especially in the farming season. For the development of the country, social values should be given to the children in school, and that is not done.”
What social values?
“Work, discipline. Not to cut trees. Communal harmony. Equality. Bringing an end to untouchability.
“If I am a poor family,” she continued, “but I am paid enough, then I will not want to send my child to work. I would send the child to school. If workers had more income child labor would decrease. But one point is left out. Schools do not prepare for careers. There are vendors whose sons have degrees, but their sons do not have jobs. The educational system has educated them to become clerks. We think that if we go to school we should have white-collar jobs. There is no regard for manual labor in our educational system. So these educated sons have become an antisocial element now.
“Our primary schools are worthless. The children do not learn. I see children in the municipal schools up to fourth standard and still they do not know how to write.”
Why are the teachers unable to teach? I asked.
“That love for the children, that need to impart knowledge is not there. The teachers do not care. Sometimes there is rotten food in the lunch boxes the children bring to school and the teachers do nothing! It makes me so sad. It is not because teachers are badly paid. They get seven hundred to eight hundred rupees a month and the pay scales have gone up. The teachers are part of the lower middle class. They have an SLC pass [School Leaving Certificate] plus a diploma in teaching that they get after two years of study. Education is well paid now and the teachers are organized—but they do not teach. If we don’t respect them it is because we see them doing other business than teaching.”
[Myron Wiener, The Child and the State in India: Child Labor and Education Policy in Comparative Perspective (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991), 56–59.]
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, giving all children between the ages of six and fourteen the right to elementary education, was enacted by the Indian Parliament in August 2009 and came into effect on April 1, 2010. On that date Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed the nation, announcing the operationalization of the Fundamental Right to Education, as incorporated in the Indian Constitution under Article 21 A. The Act is intended to benefit the nearly 9 million children who have either dropped out of school or been deprived of prior education entirely. According to the act, it is binding on the local and state governments to ensure that all children have at least one trained teacher for every thirty students and that all schools have playgrounds and appropriate infrastructure. In addition, all private and minority elementary schools must reserve 25 percent of their seats for underprivileged children. As of 2010, the Centre and the States had agreed to share the financial burden in the ratio of 55:45.
About a hundred years ago a great son of India, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, urged the Imperial Legislative Assembly to confer on the Indian people the Right to Education. About ninety years later the Constitution of India was amended to enshrine the Right to Education as a fundamental right. Today, our Government comes before you to redeem the pledge of giving all our children the right to elementary education. …
We are a Nation of young people. The health, education and creative abilities of our children and young people will determine the wellbeing and strength of our Nation. …
To realise the Right to Education the government at the Centre, in the States and Union Territories, and at the district and village level must work together as part of a common national endeavour. I call upon all the State Governments to join in this national effort with full resolve and determination. Our government, in partnership with the State governments will ensure that financial constraints do not hamper the implementation of the Right to Education Act.
The success of any educational endeavour is based on the ability and motivation of teachers. The implementation of the Right to Education is no exception. I call upon all our teachers across the country to become partners in this effort. It is also incumbent upon all of us to work together to improve the working conditions of our teachers and enable them to teach with dignity, giving full expression to their talent and creativity.
Parents and guardians too have a critical role to play having been assigned school management responsibilities under the Act. The needs of every disadvantaged section of our society, particularly girls, dalits [former Untouchables], adivasis [tribal groups] and minorities must be of particular focus as we implement this Act.
I was born to a family of modest means. In my childhood I had to walk a long distance to go to school. I read under the dim light of a kerosene lamp. I am what I am today because of education. I want every Indian child, girl and boy, to be so touched by the light of education. I want every Indian to dream of a better future and live that dream. Let us together pledge this Act to the children of India. To our young men and women. To the future of our Nation.
Many economists were skeptical about democracy in India, arguing that a more authoritarian government worked better for a planned, industrial society. China and the Soviet Union were the examples often cited. Amartya Sen has frequently and eloquently argued the reverse: that democracy is best for India’s economic development as well as human rights. Democracy encourages social welfare and also permits steps to be taken against the risks posed by globalization.
Born in 1933 and raised in Dhaka and Santiniketan, Tagore’s school in West Bengal, Sen attended Presidency College, Calcutta, and later received his PhD in Economics from Cambridge University. He has taught at the Delhi School of Economics, the London School of Economics, and Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and is presently Thomas W. Lamont University Professor at Harvard University. A pioneer in social choice theory, a leader in the study of welfare economics and famines, and an advocate for the conjunction of economics and philosophy, Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998. He has helped to establish the United Nations Human Development Report as an annual snapshot of the progress of the world’s nations in moving toward the well-being of their citizens. One of the world’s foremost public intellectuals, Sen has continued to explore his Indian roots, even as he has taught for years in the West.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST POLITICAL FREEDOM AND CIVIL RIGHTS
The opposition to democracies and basic civil and political freedoms in developing countries comes from three different directions. First, there is the claim that these freedoms and rights hamper economic growth and development. …
Second, it has been argued that if poor people are given the choice between having political freedoms and fulfilling economic needs, they will invariably choose the latter. So there is, by this reasoning, a contradiction between the practice of democracy and its justification: to wit, the majority view would tend to reject democracy—given this choice. In a different but closely related variant of this argument, it is claimed that the real issue is not so much what people actually choose, but what they have reason to choose. Since people have reason to want to eliminate, first and foremost, economic deprivation and misery, they have reason enough for not insisting on political freedoms, which would get in the way of their real priorities. …
Third, it has often been argued that the emphasis on political freedom, liberties and democracy is a specifically “Western” priority, which goes, in particular, against “Asian values,” which are supposed to be more keen on order and discipline than on liberty and freedom. …
DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
Does authoritarianism really work so well? It is certainly true that some relatively authoritarian states (such as South Korea, Singapore and post-reform China) have had faster rates of economic growth than many less authoritarian ones (including India). But [this] thesis is, in fact, based on very selective and limited information, rather than on any general statistical testing over the wideranging data that are available. We cannot really take the high economic growth of China or South Korea in Asia as a definitive proof that authoritarianism does better in promoting economic growth. … Much depends on the precise circumstances.
Governmental response to the acute suffering of people often depends on the pressure that is put on the government, and this is where the exercise of political rights (voting, criticizing, protesting and so on) can make a real difference. This is a part of the “instrumental” role of democracy and political freedoms. …
DO POOR PEOPLE CARE ABOUT DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL RIGHTS?
I turn now to the second question. Are the citizens of third world countries indifferent to political and democratic rights? This claim, which is often made, is again based on too little empirical evidence. … The only way of verifying this would be to put the matter to democratic testing in free elections with freedom of opposition and expression—precisely the things that the supporters of authoritarianism do not allow to happen. …
It is thus of some interest to note that when the Indian government, under Indira Gandhi’s leadership, tried out a similar argument in India, to justify the “emergency” she had misguidedly declared in the mid-1970s, an election was called that divided the voters precisely on this issue. In that fateful election, fought largely on the acceptability of the “emergency,” the suppression of basic political and civil rights was firmly rejected, and the Indian electorate—one of the poorest in the world—showed itself to be no less keen on protesting against the denial of basic liberties and rights than it was in complaining about economic poverty. To the extent that there has been any testing of the proposition that poor people in general do not care about civil and political rights, the evidence is entirely against that claim. …
INSTRUMENTAL IMPORTANCE OF POLITICAL FREEDOM
I turn now from the negative criticisms of political rights to their positive value. We have reason to value liberty and freedom of expression and action in our lives, and it is not unreasonable for human beings—the social creatures that we are—to value unrestrained participation in political and social activities. Also, informed and unregimented formation of our values requires openness of communication and arguments, and political freedoms and civil rights can be central for this process. Furthermore, to express publicly what we value and to demand that attention be paid to it, we need free speech and democratic choice.
When we move from the direct importance of political freedom to its instrumental role, we have to consider the political incentives that operate on governments and on the persons and groups that are in office. The rulers have the incentive to listen to what people want if they have to face their criticism and seek their support in elections. As was noted earlier, no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent country with a democratic form of government and a relatively free press. Famines have occurred in ancient kingdoms and contemporary authoritarian societies, in primitive tribal communities and in modern technocratic dictatorships, in colonial economies run by imperialists from the north and in newly independent countries of the south run by despotic national leaders or by intolerant single parties. But they have never materialized in any country that is independent, that goes to elections regularly, that has opposition parties to voice criticisms and that permits newspapers to report freely and question the wisdom of government policies without extensive censorship. …
CONSTRUCTIVE ROLE OF POLITICAL FREEDOM
The instrumental roles of political freedoms and civil rights can be very substantial, but the connection between economic needs and political freedoms may have a constructive aspect as well. The exercise of basic political rights makes it more likely not only that there would be a policy response to economic needs, but also that the conceptualization—including comprehension—of “economic needs” itself may require the exercise of such rights. It can indeed be argued that a proper understanding of what economic needs are—their content and their force—requires discussion and exchange. Political and civil rights, especially those related to the guaranteeing of open discussion, debate, criticism, and dissent, are central to the processes of generating informed and reflected choices. These processes are crucial to the formation of values and priorities, and we cannot, in general, take preferences as given independently of public discussion, that is, irrespective of whether open debates and interchanges are permitted or not.
The reach and effectiveness of open dialogue are often underestimated in assessing social and political problems. For example, public discussion has an important role to play in reducing the high rates of fertility that characterize many developing countries. There is, in fact, much evidence that the sharp decline in fertility rates that has taken place in the more literate states in India has been much influenced by public discussion of the bad effects of high fertility rates especially on the lives of young women, and also on the community at large. If the view has emerged in, say, Kerala or Tamil Nadu that a happy family in the modern age is a small family, much discussion and debate have gone into the formation of these perspectives. Kerala now has a fertility rate of 1.7 (similar to that in Britain and France, and well below China’s 1.9), and this has been achieved with no coercion, but mainly through the emergence of new values—a process in which political and social dialogues have played a major part. …
THE PRACTICE OF DEMOCRACY AND THE ROLE OF OPPOSITION
… In fact, it can be argued that the contribution of democracy in India has not, by any means, been confined to the prevention of economic disasters, such as famines. Despite the limits of its practice, democracy has given India some stability and security about which many people were very pessimistic as the country became independent in 1947. India had, then, an untried government, an undigested partition and unclear political alignments, combined with widespread communal violence and social disorder. It was hard to have faith in the future of a united and democratic India. And yet half a century later we find a democracy that has, taking the rough with the smooth, worked fairly well. Political differences have largely been tackled within the constitutional procedures. Governments have risen and fallen according to electoral and parliamentary rules. India, an ungainly, unlikely, inelegant combination of differences, survives and functions remarkably well as a political unit with a democratic system—indeed held together by its working democracy. …
A CONCLUDING REMARK
Developing and strengthening a democratic system is an essential component of the process of development. The significance of democracy lies, I have argued, in three distinct virtues: (1) its intrinsic importance, (2) its instrumental contributions, and (3) its constructive role in the creation of values and norms. No evaluation of the democratic form of governance can be complete without considering each. …
However, while we must acknowledge the importance of democratic institutions, they cannot be viewed as mechanical devices for development. Their use is conditioned by our values and priorities, and by the use we make of the available opportunities of articulation and participation. The role of organized opposition groups is particularly important in this context. …
The achievement of social justice depends not only on institutional forms (including democratic rules and regulations), but also on effective practice. I have presented reasons for taking the issue of practice to be of central importance in the contributions that can be expected from civil rights and political freedoms. This is a challenge that is faced both by well-established democracies such as the United States (especially with the differential participation of diverse racial groups) and by newer democracies. There are shared problems as well as disparate ones.
[Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999), 148–159.]
Sen also uses numerous studies to show the vital importance of female literacy in development.
Female literacy, in contrast, is found to have an unambiguous and statistically significant reducing impact on under-five mortality, even after controlling for male literacy. This is consistent with growing evidence of a close relationship between female literacy and child survival in many countries in the world, and particularly in intercountry comparisons. In this case, the impact of greater empowerment and agency [in the] role of women is not reduced in effectiveness by problems arising from inflexible male participation in child care and household work.
[Sen, Development as Freedom, 197.]
While there has been general agreement, both in India and abroad, that democracy has worked remarkably well in India, there has been far less agreement on socialism, another pillar of the Constitution’s definition of Indian society. There has, however, been no attempt to amend the Preamble to the Constitution to remove “socialism” as a defining characteristic of Indian polity, no doubt because the term covers such a wide spectrum of concerns. Socialism in India has tended to link government planning and control of economic development with humanitarian concerns, so there has been much, often heated, discussion about whether socialism has promoted or hindered India’s development. Such discussion has generally been concerned with praise or blame regarding what are often referred to as “Nehruvian policies.” Socialism therefore becomes part of the whole national discourse on democracy, foreign policy, globalization, human rights, and secularism.
Nehru dated his socialism from his living and traveling in Europe in his youth, and when he became general secretary of the India National Congress in 1923 he began to travel throughout India speaking on behalf of the Congress. From the beginning, he stressed the identity of political freedom, socialism, democracy, secularism, and a non-aligned foreign policy, all subsumed under his basic concern, the unity of India. Upon taking office Nehru moved to implement moderate socialist economic reforms by means of centralized economic planning. He personally presided over the government’s Planning Commission, which drew up successive five-year plans, beginning in 1951, for the development of India’s economy. In the decade and a half after Independence, these plans stressed industrial development and national ownership of several key areas of the economy. At the same time, capitalism went forward, with limitations, in India. Nehru also backed plans for community development projects and the creation of many educational institutions, especially ones that emphasized science and technology. Throughout the Nehru years, India’s economy achieved steady growth and its agricultural production increased, though not as rapidly as many hoped. Nehru also encouraged the development of India’s nuclear energy program.
As working General Secretary of the Congress, I was busy in looking after and strengthening its organisation, and I was particularly interested in directing people’s attention to social and economic changes. … The burden of my speeches was always much the same. … Everywhere I spoke on political independence and social freedom and made the former a step towards the attainment of the latter. I wanted to spread the ideology of socialism especially among Congress workers and the intelligentsia: for these people, who were the backbone of the national movement, thought largely in terms of the narrowest nationalism. Their speeches laid stress on the glories of old times; the injuries, material and spiritual, caused by alien rule; the sufferings of our people; the indignity of foreign domination over us and our national honour demanding that we should be free; the necessity for sacrifice at the altar of the motherland. … But though the truth in them remained, they seemed to grow a little thin and threadbare. … They only fostered emotion and did not encourage thought.
[Jawaharlal Nehru, Toward Freedom: The Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 138.]
The Indian National Congress set up a National Planning Committee in 1938 at the behest of Congress president Subhas Chandra Bose, in preparation for the time when India would be independent. Here is Nehru’s description of their hopes.
It was obvious that any comprehensive planning could only take place under a free national government, strong enough and popular enough to be in a position to introduce fundamental changes in the social and economic structure. Thus the attainment of national freedom and the elimination of foreign control became an essential prerequisite for planning. There were many other obstacles—our social backwardness, customs, traditional outlook, etc.—but they had in any event to be faced. …
The original idea behind the Planning Committee had been to further industrialization—“the problems of poverty and unemployment, of national defence and of economic regeneration in general cannot be solved without industrialization. As a step towards such industrialization, a comprehensive scheme of national planning should be formulated. This scheme should provide for the development of heavy key industries, medium scale industries and cottage industries. …” But no planning could possibly ignore agriculture, which was the mainstay of the people. Equally important were the social services. So one thing led to another, and it was impossible to isolate anything or to progress in one direction without corresponding progress in another. The more we thought of this planning business, the vaster it grew in its sweep and range, till it seemed to embrace almost every activity. That did not mean that we intended regulating and regimenting everything, but we had to keep almost everything in view even in deciding about one particular sector of the plan. The fascination of this work grew upon me, and, I think, upon the other members of our committee also. But at the same time a certain vagueness and indefiniteness crept in; instead of concentrating on some major aspects of the plan we tended to become diffuse. This also led to delay in the work of many of our subcommittees which lacked the sense of urgency and of working for a definite objective within a stated time. …
The objective for the country as a whole was the attainment, as far as possible, of national self-sufficiency. International trade was certainly not excluded, but we were anxious to avoid being drawn into the whirlpool of economic imperialism.
[Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (New York: John Day, 1946), 400–403).]
Twelve years after the Indian National Congress had set up its Planning Committee in 1938, a Planning Commission was established in 1950 in independent India, and the first Five-Year Plan was prepared. While there were to be other Five-Year Plans, none of them elicited as much interest as this first one. It was published in 1952, and the selections given here clearly reflect Nehru’s thinking. Details of implementation were worked out as the plan developed. The ideas expressed here guided the country in some fashion until 1990, when there was a deliberate movement away from planning toward a freer economy.
Introduction: The Planning Commission was set up in March, 1950 by a Resolution of the Government of India which defined the scope of its work in the following terms:
The Constitution of India has guaranteed certain Fundamental Rights to the citizens of India and enunciated certain Directive Principles of State Policy, in particular, that the State shall strive to promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life, and shall direct its policy towards securing, among other things,—(a) that the citizens, men and women equally, have the right to an adequate means of livelihood; (b) that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good; and (c) that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment. …
The Planning Commission will—(1) make an assessment of the material, capital and human resources of the country, including technical personnel, and investigate the possibilities of augmenting such of these resources as are found to be deficient in relation to the nation’s requirements; (2) formulate a Plan for the most effective and balanced utilisation of the country’s resources; [and] (3) on a determination of priorities, define the stages in which the Plan should be carried out and propose the allocation of resources for the due completion of each stage. …
PLANNING: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ASPECTS
1. The … economic condition of a country at any given time is a product of the broader social environment, and economic planning has to be viewed as an integral part of a wider process aiming not merely at the development of resources in a narrow technical sense, but at the development of human faculties and the building up of an institutional framework adequate to the needs and aspirations of the people.
2. … In planning for a better economic order, the close interrelation between the technical and social aspects of the process of development has to be continually kept in view. While there is need for concentrating effort on the more immediate problems, planning implies the readiness on the part of the community to view the social process as one whole and to take action designed to shape this process along desired lines over a defined period.
3. … Planning is essentially an attempt at working out a rational solution of problems, an attempt to co-ordinate means and ends; it is thus different from the traditional hit-and-miss methods by which “reforms” and “reconstruction” are often undertaken. A planned economy has inevitably in view a somewhat wider time-horizon, to which the day-to-day decisions have to be related. … We cannot always say for certain that a given set of causes will produce a particular, clearly definable, set of results and none other; we do not always know at what rate the effects of a particular change in a part of the system will be transmitted to the other parts of the system. …
4. The urge to economic and social change under present conditions comes from the fact of poverty and of inequalities in income, wealth and opportunity. The elimination of poverty cannot, obviously, be achieved merely by redistributing existing wealth. Nor can a programme aiming only at raising production remove existing inequalities. The two have to be considered together. …
5. … The modern world is changing so rapidly that it is not enough to think in terms of slow changes and marginal adjustments, a minor shake-up here and a little cementing elsewhere. An underdeveloped country which has suffered long from the effects of cramped development desires inevitably to progress rapidly and in many directions; the aim of planning must be to make this possible. …
6. The rapid advances in science and technology over the last few decades have opened out new possibilities in the direction of abolition of want and the restoration of man to a new sense of dignity, but they also carry potentialities of harm and danger. … All that can be said is that there is need, on the one hand, for clarity in regard to basic values and, on the other, for readiness to adapt practical solutions to the concrete problems arising in the process of transition to a different economic and social order.
7. We should like in this context to stress the essential political and administrative conditions essential to successful planning. Briefly these are: (a) a large measure of agreement in the community as to the ends of policy; (b) effective power, based on the active co-operation of citizens, in the hands of the State; and, earnest and determined exercise of that power in furtherance of these ends; and (c) an efficient administrative set-up, with personnel of requisite capacity and quality. …
11. A planned economy aiming at the realisation of larger social objectives entails a vast increase in governmental functions. … For these to be discharged efficiently, appropriate local, regional and functional organisations have to be built up and strengthened. …
13. In the last four or five decades, there has been considerable industrial development in India, accompanied by urbanisation and expansion of commerce. … But, for the community as a whole, the economic development of the last few decades has brought no significant improvement in standards of living and opportunities for employment, and has perhaps accentuated to some extent inequalities of income and wealth.
15. These are aspects of the problem of economic development which have to be constantly kept in view. Given these basic conditions of rapid and sustained progress, institutional as well as others, the key to higher productivity and expanding levels of income and employment lies really in stepping up the rate of capital formation. The level of production and the material well-being a community can attain depends, in the main, on the stock of capital at its disposal. … The larger the stock of capital, the greater tends to be the productivity of labour and therefore the volume of commodities and services that can be turned out with the same effort. The productivity of the economy depends on other things also, as for instance the technical efficiency and attitude to work of the labour that handles the available capital equipment.
[The First Five Year Plan (New Delhi: Government of India, 1953), 7–13.]
Kamaladevi Chattapodhyaya (1903–1988) has a special place in the history of the making of modern India because her sensitive and imaginative intelligence was linked with an exuberant energy that made it possible, through her extraordinary range of friends in politics, literature, painting, sculpture, and dance, to add the vital element of artistic creativity to the nationalist project. Central to all this was her conviction that what are usually referred to as “local handicrafts” were essential elements in what she called the beauty and totality of Indian life.
Her own life was an expression of that totality. Married at fourteen and widowed two years later, she defied many aspects of Indian convention. She acted on the stage, although acting was not a reputable occupation for women of her class, and also broke convention by remarrying. She and her husband went to England to study, but returned in 1923 to join Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement. She soon became deeply involved in the Socialist Party that was taking shape within the Indian National Congress, and in 1936 she became its president. Influenced by Gandhi, she became convinced that industrialization as supported by Nehru might destroy the local handmade articles that were the staple of most households, and which she saw as expressions of the innate creativity of the people. She encouraged the founding of museums for preserving folk art from all over the country, of a school of drama, and of a dance academy. Most important perhaps was the setting up of the All-India Handicrafts Board and what became one of the most famous centers in India, the Central Cottage Industries Emporium in Delhi.
The handicrafts in this country were in a manner reverenced as an important part of our rich cultural heritage. … For though handicrafts fulfilled a positive physical need in the daily requirements of the people, they also served to satisfy the aesthetic hunger in man and provided a vehicle for his urge for self-expression which reveals a conscious aesthetic approach. … The concept behind handicrafts as originally conceived was imbuing everything used in daily life, no matter how common or mundane, with a touch of beauty to add brightness to an otherwise dull and drab existence. … The handicrafts have now got partially submerged under the rising forces of modern industrialization with its high mechanization and lost their basic role in the overall perspective. We are losing not only an ancient heritage but a more essential element in our social composition which has been a strong cementing force. It is not surprising that we are being torn apart and our very foundations are weakening.
What is the real significance of Handicrafts? It lies in the newness and surprise of each object. No two are alike, for each is a fresh creation. Standardisation is alien, in fact a negation of all that handicrafts stand for. Even the poorest enjoyed a variety in the articles of everyday use, for a special article was assigned for a particular use. This meant a wide range even in the clay water pots and pans, clothes and garments with distinctive colours and designs. Wall and floor decorations varied according to the days of the week and to mark special festivals. All this broke monotony which is perhaps the most deadening element in life. In an age of machine-tooled monotony, the handicrafts stand as symbols of a ceaseless flow of creativity instead of dull repetition. … Complicated and elaborate techniques evolved over the ages to produce imaginative effects are being lightly discarded and bland ones are wrought to speed up to gain time. There is no motive here, except cash profit.
[Kamaladevi Chattopodhyaya, The Glory of Indian Handicrafts (New Delhi: Indian Book Company, 1976), 7–8.]
While many Indian intellectuals supported “Nehruvian” economic and social politics, some of them were trenchant critics. Among the most famous of these is Jagdish Bhagwati (b. 1934), professor of economics at Columbia University, who earned an undergraduate degree at St. John’s College, Cambridge, about the same time as Sen took his degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. They were fellow faculty members at the Delhi School of Economics in the 1960s, but ultimately came to very different conclusions about socialism and the free market. Bhagwati argues that socialism, as exemplified by the Five-Year Plans, limited foreign investment and prevented competition, whereas trade enhances growth and reduces poverty. He writes as an insider, having been involved in research for the First Five-Year Plan and then later as an adviser to the government of India in urging the liberalization of trade and the freeing of the economy from controls after 1991.
In India, the public sector is truly substantial. From the beginning, no doubt as a consequence of the influence of socialist doctrines on Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and indeed on many of us who studied Economics at Cambridge and Politics at the London School of Economics, the public sector was considered to be an important sector to cultivate and enlarge. Fabianism, with its anti-revolutionary thrust, probably helped define a policy of gradualism: nationalizations were not contemplated but it was expected instead that increasing shares of investment in the public sector over successive Five-Year Plans would steadily increase the average size of the public sector to a decisive share in the nation’s capital stock. A measured and slow-paced ascent up the Marxist mountain was therefore part of the ideological agenda.
In turn, the two Industrial Policy Resolutions of 1948 and 1956 shifted a number of industries to the exclusive domain of the public sector. Thus the 1956 Resolution [on the Five-Year Plans] stated:
In the first category there will be industries the future development of which will be the exclusive responsibility of the state. The second category will consist of industries, which will be progressively state-owned and in which the state will therefore generally take the initiative in establishing new undertakings, but in which private enterprise will also be expected to supplement the effort of the state. The third category will include all the remaining industries, and their future development will, in general, be left to the initiative and enterprise of the private sector.
The first category turned out to be an enormous one, embracing not merely defence-related industries but also atomic energy, iron and steel, heavy machinery, coal, railways and airlines, telecommunications, and the generation and distribution of electricity. These industries provide the bulk of the infrastructure of the country; their inefficiency could thus, in turn, create inefficiencies in the user-industries in the private sector. It did, as I argue presently.
In fact, the overwhelming presence of the public sector in India must be spelled out to see why the matter of its functioning is of great importance to Indian productivity and economic performance. Thus, the 244 economic enterprises of the central government alone, excluding the railways and the utilities, employed as many as 2.3 million workers in 1990. In manufacturing, if the small “unorganized” sector is excluded, their employment was over 40 per cent of that provided by the private-sector firms. In fact, the public-sector enterprises in manufacturing, mining, construction, transport and communications, banking and insurance (both now nationalized, partly and wholly respectively), when state-level enterprises are counted in, provided nearly 70 per cent of the 26 million jobs in the large-scale “organized” sector in 1989.
Not merely because of its size, but also, as I have just noted, because of its composition, which is such that it can affect the supply of important productive inputs such as electricity, transportation, finance, insurance, and steel, and hence influence the efficiency of the private sector, the public sector must be efficient. But, as virtually everywhere to some degree or the other, this has not been the case in India either.
Overstaffing due to politics, the “goofing-off” effect of soft budget restraints, have been amply documented by a series of investigations. I must confess that I was among the many who thought in the 1950s and 1960s that the public-sector enterprises could be operated better. … In reality, the conditions that would make the public-sector productive and efficient seem beyond reach, at least in India.
This inefficiency, directly observed and documented, is not the only cause of public-sector losses, and some of the losses are attributable also to a governmental policy of taking over so-called “sick units” (i.e., private firms making losses) to respond to political demands for the avoidance of bankruptcy. It is noteworthy, however, that the public-sector enterprises have as a rule produced abysmally low returns on the enormous amounts of employed capital. Thus, even during the decade of the 1980s, when the awareness of the issue was keen, the (simple) average rate of financial return on employed capital was 2.5 per cent! And that too was heavily weighted by the profits of 14 petroleum enterprises which produced as much as 77 per cent of the 1989–90 profits. Besides, even this meagre profitability was ephemeral, based on historical-cost depreciation: corrected for replacement cost, the profits in public-sector enterprises in coal, steel, fertilizer, power, and transport were even estimated to be negative. …
It is important to recognize that the reforms are not a return to laissez-faire. They seek instead to move the government from counter-productive to productive intervention. There are plenty of things for the government to do, as both Indian intellectuals and masses appreciate and indeed as Adam Smith himself recognized ([in his] support of a governmental role in providing elementary education to offset the deleterious effects of the division of labour on the labouring classes).
The energy, talents, and worldly ambitions of India’s many millions, captured so well in V. S. Naipaul’s latest work (India: A Million Mutinies Now, 1990) that moves him from his earlier cynicism to great optimism, need merely an appropriate policy framework to produce the economic magic that Jawaharlal Nehru wished for his compatriots but which, like many well-meaning intellectuals of his time, he mistakenly sought in now discredited economic doctrines. We finally have this elusive policy framework within our grasp.
[Jagdish Bhagwati, India in Transition: Freeing the Economy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 62–65, 98.]
Nandan Nilekani has been a leader of Infosys Technologies and a spokesman for Indian industries worldwide. Born in Bangalore in 1955 and educated there and later at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, he worked for Patni Computer Systems, in Bombay, upon graduation. In 1981 he decided to join N. R. Narayana Murthy at Infosys, a leader in software development and outsourcing from Western countries. Nilekani became the chief executive officer of Infosys in 2002, taking over from Murthy, and remained there until 2009, when he left to serve as the chairperson of the Unique Identification Authority of India, with the rank of a cabinet minister, upon invitation from the prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh.
Nilekani’s book on India’s economic rise in the last two decades, Imagining India, was published in 2009, and the selections below are drawn from its conclusions, subtitled “The Awakened Country.”
In the 1960s an Indian bureaucrat put the blame for the country’s economic failures on our climate, which he said exhausted us and made us incapable of working. “Our people are frail,” he lamented. As it turned out, nothing could have been further from the truth. It is precisely India’s strength in human capital that has spurred our economic transformation since the 1980s, even as we battled daunting infrastructure challenges, capital inefficiencies and land shortages.
I remember Sam Pitroda telling me that between the time he left India and came back, thirteen years later, in 2004, it had turned into a different country. “I left a little after Rajiv Gandhi was killed,” he said. “I had liked him a great deal, and I lost heart when it happened.” When he returned, he was astonished. In the decade that he had missed, entrepreneurs, civil activists and reformists in the government had remade India’s identity. “So much had changed, especially our sense of confidence,” said Sam. “There was this new belief among people that they could be successful and that there were opportunities here for the taking.”
Freed from the oppressive weight of the control raj, India has revealed itself to be a keen, chaotic and incredibly entrepreneurial economy. And entrepreneurship here has been as much about Tata, Reliance Industries and Ranbaxy, with their global focus and markets, as about the small business-person setting up her stall in a street corner, all her savings invested in her dream of achieving success. This is what is unique about the Indian growth story. A transformation of a country holds a particular power; it is irreversible. As Shankar Acharya said to me, “You can’t bottle up India’s economy again. No matter the uncertainties and challenges of our growth, the Indian people are not going to cede the economic ground they have gained back to the state.”
During my research for this book, I would occasionally run into economists or analysts who argued that India, in retrospect, had not done all that badly even in the first decades after independence. They pointed to the early growth numbers of the 1950s as proof and to our healthy GDP in the non-crisis years. But looking back, it is clear that the difference between the periods before and after the mid-1980s is not about the average GDP. The problems of our past lay in the sudden, sharp slide in our growth rates every time the country faced a crisis—the death of a political leader, for instance, or a spike in oil prices. Each such slump was a failure of our state-controlled economy, which tried to direct the traffic of capital and labor into areas that our governments and planners judged essential.
No plan in India, however visionary, was able to achieve what bottom–up economic power and initiative have enabled in the last two decades. Instead, it was Indian citizens who embraced new ideas for development and became the main impetus of our trajectory toward sustained growth. Since the time people were allowed to make the majority of decisions on investment and enterprise, India’s markets have followed economic demand quite naturally, encouraging innovation and limiting the kind of bad decisions that dominated our first forty years and led to chronic shortages and emergency aid.
Indian firms, big and small, are innovating in business models and in products in a way that will have a greater impact on economic growth than routine increases in capital and labor utilization. For instance, the inexpensive solar lamps SELCO offers people in villages without electricity help shops to stay open longer and children to study after sundown. The community IT kiosks that businesses have opened in villages are becoming a way for people in the countryside to connect to India’s urban markets. The manner in which businesses are targeting consumers—with the Tata Nano car as well as the Honda City and Blackberrys and hundred-rupee mobile phones, one-rupee shampoo packets as well as high-end consumer products—points to a market that is expanding and touching an incredibly broad base of Indians.
The diversity in our markets has spilled over into the realm of ideas. V. S. Naipaul once described Indians as “a people grown barbarous, indifferent and self-wounding.” We appalled him. Today, even that famously provocative, curmudgeonly uncle has revised his opinion. Ordinary people now have more influence than ever before in shaping Indian attitudes toward a variety of issues—from infrastructure and the nature of our cities to our education system and the role of the English language. In this sense, the impact of India’s reforms process has not been limited to the economic sphere alone. Its language has been a much broader one, of empowerment.
Indians are now keenly following and participating in a variety of debates, and we are arguing about markets, politics and governance in a manner I have never seen before. Our discussions have become not just spontaneous but—and there is no other word for it—raucous. An explosion of new media has accompanied this urge for public analysis and debate, and we now have more than two hundred television channels, with more than forty channels for news alone. We are a country with a vibrant public square lit up by camera flashbulbs, our chatter caught by a blur of microphones. …
We are closer today than we have ever been to a truly effective “deliberative democracy,” where individuals and groups across the country are chipping away at the once absolute power of the state. We are shifting away from the “cathedral model” of growth, with its closed, top–down influence, to the “bazaar model”—an open-source model of development. …
Implementation, sadly, has long been India’s weak spot, especially where government responsibility is divided and where issues end up orphaned, owned by no one. Primary education, where the onus is shared by the central, state and local governments, has been a regular victim of budget cuts thanks to straitened funds on every side and a refusal by any of the governments to take complete charge and responsibility. Infrastructure, spread across multiple ministries at the center, has long lacked a cohesive vision, as well as budget priority. And when new ideas have challenged existing political equations, such as efforts aimed at empowering local government, it has led to the ouster of reformist ministers and bureaucrats. …
Our pre-reform, but still persistent, perception of the state as the “giver and taker of all” has doomed many of our most urgent policy proposals. I think that the single reform that will change this is bringing direct benefits into our welfare system. With health and education vouchers, citizens can choose between private- and public-sector alternatives. These and similar vouchers for essential commodities will free the poor of the middleman in India’s public distribution system and from the tyranny of the bureaucracy. Putting benefits such as cash in the hands of the poor, which would in turn allow them to participate in markets more effectively, can also rid us of the confrontational relationship that now exists between the government and markets.
An equally urgent and far-reaching reform is that of decentralizing our governance. The difference between the Indian state in imagination and in action has been enormous, and a big reason for this is that an impenetrable bureaucracy protects the elected minister from the often spiky concerns of citizens. …
Ensuring growth in today’s competitive, interactive dynamic also requires us all—our governments and big business, most of all—to commit to transparency and efficiency like never before. This has become particularly critical after we linked ourselves closely with the global market. We need economic and fiscal discipline to manage the trinity of exchange rates, interest rates and free capital movements. …
Our entrepreneurs too have to realize that their role in nation-building and public welfare is critical. Our reforms have distributed not just economic power and the burdens of growth, but also the burdens of equity and development. This is a contract that entrepreneurs have taken up across the world. …
It is not as if the idea is entirely new to India. Some of our entrepreneurs have had a rich history of philanthropy, and their contributions have built some of India’s most iconic institutions—the Indian Institute of Science, funded by Jamsetji Tata; the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, founded by G. D. Birla; the Mahim Causeway, linking Mahim to Salsette, funded by a donation from Lady Avia Jeejeebhoy. These early examples ought to serve as guiding lights for today’s Indian entrepreneurs. In a country with vast numbers of poor, this is a necessary investment for sustaining India’s growth. It is also, of course, crucial for the widespread acceptance of our reforms.
[Nandan Nilekani, Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation (New York: Penguin, 2009), 452–458.]
Although based in the United States, novelist and journalist Mira Kamdar has an intense interest in her Indian roots. In 2007 she published Planet India, an account of India’s economic rise on the world scene, but also of the attendant challenges. Some of the accomplishments of India since the reforms of the early 1990s have been noted in the selections above; here, by contrast, we find Kamdar’s vivid descriptions of the problems and dangers confronting Indian peasant farmers, as well as the path of suicide that some of them have taken in their despair.
Last April, at the height of the dry season, as reports of suicides by farmers in Vidarbha, a region in eastern Maharashtra, were hitting the Indian press weekly, I got a call from an old journalist friend of mine in Bombay, Dilip D’Souza. He invited me to join him on a trip he was planning to visit villages where farmers were committing suicide. A couple of weeks later, I was on an overnight train from Bombay to Nagpur, the nearest major city to the villages in Vidarbha we wanted to visit. …
While India’s educated urban elite and large landowners are enjoying the country’s economic boom, millions of Indian farming families are struggling. The government has ended some price supports, rains have failed or been erratic, water tables have dropped, and wells have gone dry. These problems are familiar to American farmers, but most get more government support than Indian farmers, and when all else fails, chances are American farmers can get a job off the farm. Indian farmers aren’t so lucky. In an effort to survive, farmers borrow money at usurious rates to purchase expensive new hybrid and genetically engineered seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides. To get the cash they need to repay these debts, they shift production even further from subsistence farming to cash crops. When these fail, they have no way to pay back their debts, and no food either. These factors have conspired to make the future of thousands of Indian farmers so grim, they exert the only power they have left over their fate: they kill themselves.
Since 1997, more than twenty-five thousand Indian farmers have committed suicide. This grim number is directly linked to changes in India’s agricultural policy, a lack of legitimate credit opportunities that drives farmers to borrow from rapacious moneylenders, and a serious water crisis. The worst-hit states are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Maharashtra. Ironically, these are states where urban centers have flourished during the same period: Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, Bangalore in Karnataka, Trivandrum in Kerala, and Bombay in Maharashtra. …
Outside the small city of Akola, we found ourselves in the village of Dadham, a typical assemblage of ramshackle houses, some made of local materials of wattle and daub topped by tile roofs, and some simple concrete, one-room boxes. None of the lanes in the village were paved, and waste water ran in rivulets wherever gravity pulled it, sometimes along the edge of the lanes but more often snaking around the middle. Semiferal dogs napped in the shade, pigs rooted in the muck, and cows were tethered under scrubby acacia trees. The village leaders came out and ushered us toward the Gram Panchayat office. We got a ready reception from these villagers. The situation of farmers in this area is grim. The arrival of a journalist from Bombay and a foreign writer meant only one thing to these people: surely, we were there to help.
The Gram Panchayat is the village-level governance body. Every village in India has a Panchayat or five-member board that decides local matters and receives government funds allocated to the village. The Gram Panchayat office in Dadham is typical: a single-room, concrete box with open windows protected by iron bars, adorned by a collection of old pictures hung just below the ceiling. There are national and regional heroes: Gandhi, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Rajiv Gandhi, Shivaji, Ambedkar, and, the most recent, Indira Gandhi, assassinated in 1984. Behind Bose’s head, a sparrow was busy renovating its nest. There were also two holy figures: Sai Baba and the Buddha.
Dadham, like nearly all the villages we visited, is a village of Dalits or untouchables, the lowest social stratum in India’s rigid hierarchy of caste. … When we asked villagers what their religion was, they inevitably replied “Buddhist,” a religion to which Ambedkar, the great leader of India’s untouchables and the first president of India, converted in order to escape India’s brutal caste hierarchy. Instead of a Hindu temple or a Muslim mosque, these villages had life-size or larger-than-life-size statues of Ambedkar standing smiling in a robin’s-egg-blue Western suit wearing a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses. A couple of village elders and a half dozen young men hurriedly assembled in the Panchayat office. … The men told us their story.
Premchand Pandurang Kule was twenty-two or twenty-three years old when killed himself by drinking liquid pesticide. His father was infected with leprosy and had given over his farm of two acres to Premchand. With only that much land, which he planted in cotton, the family could hardly survive. Premchand’s father needed medicine and Premchand had no money, so, like several other people in the village and millions of poor people across India, Premchand borrowed two thousand rupees (about $45) from a private moneylender. The moneylender, Bhandu Wakhare, lived in Akola. Several people in the village owed him money, and he came around regularly, always in the company of a couple of strong-arms, to collect on his loans. Wakhare charged 10 percent interest—per week. In the beginning, Premchand could pay him the interest, but soon he fell behind, and as his debt soared, any hope of paying it off was lost.
Wakhare terrified the village, striding in as if he owned the place, bursting into homes, beating people up. “People were very afraid,” one of the men told us. “They would run away and hide until he left. He used to take people to his house in Akola and beat them up there too.” One day, Premchand witnessed a brutal beating of another villager who owed Wakhare money. He was so scared, he “went out to the jungle and took poison,” the men said. He then dragged himself back to the village and died a torturous death. Premchand was married and had a one-year-old son.
When Wakhare discovered his prey had killed himself, he became enraged. He stormed into the village, breaking down doors, bellowing, going into other debtors’ houses and verbally abusing their wives. He went out to Premchand’s fields, found his wife and mother working there. He beat Premchand’s mother so savagely he broke her thigh. He told her when he was done, “If you run away, I will rape your daughter.” He stomped back into the village, destroyed the family’s chicken coop, and smashed up a motorcycle. Then he left.
Wakhare had gone too far. The villagers were incensed. They forgot their fear and vowed to stop Wakhare from terrifying them. That afternoon, Wakhare returned. He was drunk, and so cocky he’d come without his bodyguards. The men in the village surrounded him and beat him to death with lathis (long batons used all over India even by police to beat people). The villagers called the police at four the afternoon, but the police didn’t come until 9 p.m. The villagers were surprised it took the police so long. In the past when they had called them during Wakhare’s rampages, the police hadn’t responded at all. The villagers reported they had heard Wakhare saying on his mobile phone, “Shut up. Don’t interfere. You’re getting your fifty thousand.”
When the police finally showed up, they asked who was responsible for Wakhare’s murder. No one would say anything. Instead, the villagers told the police about all the bad things Wakhare had done to them. Then, one man stepped forward and said, “I did it”; then another. One after another, each man said, “I did it.” The village patil or headman said, “Wakhare harassed many people in the village. He also abused these five men.” The police promptly took the five into custody along with Premchand’s old mother-in-law, accusing them of the murder. In a practice typical in India, the police gathered written witness reports from people outside the village who weren’t anywhere near the scene of the crime. Wakhare’s father came and verbally abused the villagers, promising revenge.
When the case came up for trial, every man in the village again testified that it was he who had murdered Wakhare. The judge acquited the five accused and threw out the case. After the trial, the police came to the village and told the men, “What we could not do, you have done.” The villagers of Dadham heard that when Wakhare’s neighbors in Akola learned he’d been killed, they handed out sweets in the streets.
We visited several other villages. The spectacle of dire poverty was evident everywhere: barefoot children in rags with matted hair, open sewers, brokendown string beds shared by whole families, thin, filthy old quilts, crumbling walls draped with plastic tarps. People were barely hanging on. They begged us to help them. Could we get someone in the family a job? Could we help speed up a government pay-out? Could we get them a loan?
In the village of Barshi Takli, we entered a broken-down hovel half-open to the elements with a dirt floor and no furniture other than two old cots. Seated on one of them, a mother cried for her twenty-year-old son. “He had completed seventh standard. He was a karate champion at his school,” she croaked. She showed us a photograph of her smooth-faced boy, now gone forever. I couldn’t help thinking of my own teenage son, and my heart tightened. “We have three and a half acres. We planted them in sugarcane. The rains failed, and the plants dried up,” she explained, tears running down her cheeks. We asked her if they had a well for irrigation. “We have a well,” she replied, “but it has gone dry.” Like everyone else, they’d borrowed money and couldn’t pay back their loans. “We rushed him to the hospital and they tried so hard to save him. They tried. The doctor was a good man, but he couldn’t save my son,” she sobbed, pressing her dupatta to her face. I gave this woman some money. I felt so helpless before her grief, her destitution. I knew it would only help her for a couple of weeks, maybe a month, but it was what I could do then and there. …
On June 30, 2006, Manmohan Singh visited Vidarbha. The crisis of farmer suicides had become a big national news story, with fresh deaths reported at least weekly. Addressing suffering farmers, the prime minister assured them, “I have come here to know your plight. I know what pain you are going through. I will see what needs to be done to prevent such a crisis in the future.” Mr. Singh promised that all interest due on bank loans would be forgiven in the six worsthit districts, making farmers eligible for new loans. He pledged to allocate funds for immediate emergency relief, and to investigate why irrigation projects had not been implemented. He also said he “was aware of the need to move away from cash crops” and promised help to generate parallel income streams for farmers.
[Mira Kamdar, Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy Is Transforming the World (New York: Scribner, 2007), 143, 147–153, 160.]
Perhaps the issues that have most galvanized post-Independence activism in India concern poverty and property inequities, the relationship between state projects and individual rights, caste discrimination, the status of women, and the condition of minorities, especially Muslims. Successive governments have ordered commissions to report on various of these social problems, and in each case the reports have mandated change, with varying levels of subsequent achievement. In addition, besides the regional demands for autonomy and even independence, as explained above, there have been other political and social movements dedicated to improving and transforming rural society, some of which—those in Telangana and North Bengal—have resulted in violent rebellions against state power. As a whole, this section of our chapter demonstrates through individualized histories both the pathos of personal suffering and the powerful resistance to change.
Vinoba Bhave (1895–1982) rejected both socialist and free market solutions. He became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi in 1916 at the very beginning of Gandhi’s career in India. Bhave participated in many of the civil disobedience campaigns, and was active in the movement in South India to allow Untouchables to enter Hindu temples. Gandhi was so impressed by him that he chose him to be the first participant in the non-violent campaign of 1940. After Gandhi’s assassination Bhave began a great campaign, walking throughout India to persuade landowners to give land to landless peasants in what was known as the Bhudan (land-gift) Movement, which was part of his welfare organization, Sarvodaya Samaj. He was given hundreds of thousands of acres, exciting great interest in him as the successor to Gandhi, but he did not have a good support organization—for the reasons he explains below—to handle the gifts, and the movement faded out. His rejection of both religious and secular institutions was an expression of his rigorous interpretation of Gandhian principles—although Gandhi, by contrast, was a great organizer. He also lost support because he backed Indira Gandhi’s declaration of the Emergency, believing it was a call to discipline. He ended his life in 1982 by deciding to fast to death.
The strongest institutions in the world today are of two types: religious, and governmental. Both have as their objective public service. Society felt the need for both types and is still using them. At the time they were formed, society recognized them to be essential, and found them useful.
But as things are today it is necessary that society should be set free from both these types of institution. I do not mean that we need to get rid of religion; that is not what I am saying. What I do say is that we need to get rid of religious institutions. I do not mean, either, that there should be no orderly provision for the public welfare, but I do say that we need to get rid of institutions which exercise authority in the name of service. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that although both the political and the religious institutions were founded for good purposes, those purposes have now been fulfilled, and it will do no good, but only harm, to allow them to exist any longer.
We live in an age of expanding science, an age also which inherits the traditions of a thousand years of wisdom. We ought to be able to see that in such times it is right and proper for every man to take charge of his own affairs, both in matters of knowledge and in matters of religion. It is quite wrong that a few people should be able to confer favours, and that the rest should be burdened by those favours. It is of course proper that parents should be responsible for little children. But are we children still after thousands of years of these institutions?
My chief criticism of the system is this: that the good work which is done by government services is very far from good in its effect upon the minds of the people. When the elections take place, the government party is going to ask for your votes because of all the good work they have done. If it is true that they have done good work, the people will be oppressed by the sheer weight of their charity—and that is exactly what saddens me. Some people ask why I do not protest strongly when the government does something wrong. It is true that I do not make such protests, though I may raise the subject if occasion offers. But I do raise my voice when the government does something good. There is no need for me to protest against the government’s faults, it is against its good deeds that my protests are needed. I have to tell the people what sheep they are. Is it a matter for rejoicing if you all turn into sheep and tell me how well the shepherds look after you? What am I to say? It seems to me that it would be better if the shepherds neglected their duty—the sheep would then at least realise that they are sheep. They might then come to their senses and remember that they are after all not sheep but men—men capable of managing their own affairs.
That is why my voice is raised in opposition to good government. Bad government has been condemned long ago by Vyasa in the Mahabharata. People know very well that bad government should not be allowed, and everywhere they protest against it. But what seems to me to be wrong is that we should allow ourselves to be governed at all, even by a good government.
I am continually urging that believers in non-violence should use their strength to establish lok-niti—government by the people: in other words to put an end to raj-niti—government by politicians. “Raj” and “niti” are words which embody mutually contradictory ideas, they cancel each other out. Where niti, the moral law, rules, government disintegrates; where there is a raj, a coercive government, niti is destroyed. For the future, we want not a kingdom, ruled by political “kings”, but a common-wealth, ordered by the “common” people. I do not know how long it will take to bring this about, but if any work is worth doing, this is, and the Sarvodaya Samaj should be giving itself singlemindedly to this task.
Many of Gandhiji’s old fellow-workers, however, suffer from the illusion that the responsibilities of government are and must remain theirs. I agree with them that there would have been no point in struggling for self-government if we had not been ready for the responsibilities of self-government. We certainly had to take over power, but our purpose in doing so was to begin, from the very first, the process of dissolving power. That process may well take us fifty years, but a beginning at least must be made today. …
The best kind of government is one where it is possible to doubt whether any government exists at all. On this principle, we ought not to be aware of whether there is any government in Delhi or not. We ourselves should be seeing to the affairs of our own villages, instead of doing just the opposite, and handing over all power to the Centre. Any Central authority ought to model itself upon the divine government—unseen, unfelt, decentralised. How many hours a day does God have to work to run the world?—Hindus will tell you that He does not work at all, He is asleep in the Kshir-sagar [the ocean of milk]. The meaning of this is that government is not an activity, it is a thought: “it is thought that makes the world go round.” The less the activity, the better the government. An ideal government would have no armaments, no police force and no penalties; the people would manage their own affairs, listen readily to advice, and allow themselves to be guided by moral considerations. …
The Five Year Plan of the government envisages an expenditure of four or five thousand crores of rupees altogether, that is to say about a thousand crores a year or eighty crores a month. This works out at about two rupees a month for each of our forty crores of people, or five pice a day. That is what the great government plan boils down to. A child can earn five pice in an hour by spinning, so that even a child can produce more than the government plan. Well, what is the government going to do with those five pice? There will be railways, schools, agriculture, commerce; factories will be opened, scientific research will be undertaken, literature will be encouraged and languages taught. All this will come out of those five pice. If the people were to rely on themselves, they could do more than that. How is wealth produced?—by labour. Who does the labour?—the people. So that any power of the purse wielded by the government can never be a match for that wielded by the people.
[Vinoba Bhave, Democratic Values and the Practice of Citizenship (Kashi: Sarva Sangh Prakashan, 1962), 7, 11–13.]
The insurgencies in Kashmir, Punjab, and Nagaland aimed at creating new autonomous territorial areas based on historical experiences, religious affiliation, language, and culture; at the same time in post-Independence India, there were militant insurgencies of a quite different kind in other parts of the country that were based on versions of communist ideologies and made an appeal based on economic deprivation. Two such insurgencies were particularly violent—one centered in the Telangana region in the former princely state of Hyderabad, later the state of Andhra Pradesh, and the other centered in Naxalbari in northern West Bengal. In both areas the local peasants and laborers were subject to harsh exactions by landlords. Their causes were picked up by local and regional communist leaders who believed that Telangana in 1948 and rural northern West Bengal in the late 1960s were ripe for widespread revolution.
The selections on the uprisings in both regions come from manifestos of the political parties involved, giving a vivid sense of the intellectual basis of the ideological imperatives of the leaders, as well as of the nature of the violence. In both situations, the insurgencies were crushed by the government, but only after ruthless military campaigns by the army and police and the killing of landlords, merchants, and suspected traitors to the cause by the insurgents.
In the period immediately after Independence and Partition, from early 1948, an important section of the Communist Party of India (CPI)—believing that they were following the (Soviet) Cominform line and also responding to violent peasant actions against landlords in the Telangana area of the princely state of Hyderabad—declared that India was prepared for a violent, rural-based uprising. They compared the situation in India to China, where the communists were on the offensive, and to Yugoslavia, where the communists had gained power. It is estimated that some three thousand villages in Hyderabad were sympathetic to the insurgency.
The supporters of immediate violent revolution within the CPI gained the upper hand, but those in the center and to the right disagreed with such bloody tactics. In 1950 the communists appealed for guidance from outside India, and R. Palme Dutt, general secretary of the British Communist Party and long an adviser of the CPI, responded.
Dutt recommended that the party drop the left line and search for like-minded allies within other parties, such as the left wing of the Congress, led by Prime Minister Nehru. Although Nehru was anathema to the far left communists, who viewed him as a “lackey of imperialism,” the CPI as a whole did move to the right and into electoral politics, contesting the 1951 elections for the Lok Sabha.
During the left period the party was also divided on how to deal with the government of India’s military action in seizing Hyderabad state. Should the army of the bourgeois India state, tied to international imperialism, be welcomed or resisted? The rebellion in some districts of the Hyderabad countryside remains in the memory of Indian leftists as a model for a spontaneous rising from below that could eventually again take place in a larger action against the landlords and rulers of India. Some analysts of Indian communism have called this the first period of “Indian Maoism,” and that of the Naxalites in the 1960s, the second. Although Telangana was merged with the new state of Andhra Pradesh as part of the linguistic reorganization of the country, to be discussed below, the demand for a separate state remained and, since 2001, has been pursued with increasing vigor.
This selection from 1951 indicates that the Communist Party recognized that ending the insurgency was the wise course, when confronted by the reality of government military power.
In certain sections of the party as well as in circles which have been friendly to the struggle of the Telangana peasants, questions have been raised regarding the policies and methods to be pursued in the struggle going on for the last five years. The central committee wishes to stress that while it is the right and duty of comrades and party units in all parts of the country to make suggestions to the CC about the tactics to be adopted in the Telangana struggle, it is primarily the masses, the people of Telangana, who began, fought and suffered in their great fight against feudal oppression for land and liberty, who have to decide the issue. While the Communist Party of India is proud to state that it stood with the people and led them in their heroic resistance to oppression, it cannot act like the high command of Congress which decides upon struggles and continues, hampers or withdraws them without reference to the will of the masses concerned. Throughout India the question of abolishing feudal landlordism and introducing agrarian reforms, so as to give land to the peasant and solve the people’s food problem, has been torpedoed by the reactionary vested interests entrenched behind the government.
Under such conditions, to protect Telangana, to preserve the gains of the lakhs of peasants and agricultural workers who fought and won land, reduction of rent and interest, and freedom from forced labour, is to show the way to really achieve agrarian reforms and not merely paper promises. At the same time, the CC wishes to state that it is prepared to solve the problem by negotiation and settlement, intended to preserve and protect the interests of the peasantry and the people and to restore peaceful conditions in the area. …
It is believed in some circles that the struggle in Telangana is being fought in order to overthrow the Nehru government. These circles ignore the fact that the struggle of the peasants for land and against the oppression of the feudal landlords and the Nizam began in 1946 long before the Nehru government came into existence. And it continued even after its entry into the Nizam state, solely to protect the peasant against the landlords who were now being reinstated by the Nehru government in alliance with the Nizam, to overthrow whose rule it had ostensibly entered the state.
Hence it should be clear to all that the struggle of the Telangana peasants was neither begun nor continued to overthrow the Nehru government but to do away with feudal oppression. And everyone desiring the progress of our country would agree that to struggle to end feudal landlord oppression is right and necessary because that alone can give us food, employment, prosperity and freedom.
Keeping this in mind, the CC decided to direct the secretariat:
(1) To review the problem of Telangana in order to find ways and means to ensure success of the struggle; (2) Appeals to all party units and members to popularise the demands of the Telangana peasants and to mobilise support of workers, peasants and the people against repression and military atrocities in Telangana; (3) Appeals to democrats of all shades to protect the Telangana people from repression, carried out by military occupation; and (4) Puts forward the following demands of the peasantry before all the people with a view to secure their active intervention: (a) All lands that are being cultivated by the peasants and agricultural workers should continue in their possession and enjoyment. No cultivating peasant and agricultural worker shall be evicted from land. All lands forcibly seized from the peasants should be restored. (b) Right of tribal people to free use and sale of forest produce and freedom to cultivate forest lands under their own elected panchayats. (c) Village administration to be carried on by panchayats elected by all the villagers, including women. (d) Immediate withdrawal of all armed forces and disbanding of home guards convicted or detained. (e) Withdrawal of cases and cancellation of collective fines. (f) Withdrawal of ban on the Andhra Mahasabha and the Communist Party; restoration of civil liberties. (g) Constituent assembly elected by universal adult franchise to decide the future of the Nizam dynasty and the dissolution of the Hyderabad state into linguistic provinces of Andhra, Maharashtra and Karnataka and complete regional autonomy to tribal areas.
[Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India. Vol. 7: 1951–1956, ed. M. Sen (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1976), 55–58.]
From “Naxalbari,” the name of the region in Bengal where the insurgency started, the communists who wanted to achieve their ends by force came to be known as “Naxalites,” even when they were not in Naxalbari. The leaders were not from the original Communist Party of India (CPI) that had been active in Telangana, but were from the breakaway Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), which had split from the CPI in 1964 and was far more radical in its rejection of what it considered the bourgeois liberal political pattern of the new Indian government. Then in 1967, a group from the CPM, completely antipathetic to electoral politics, separated and followed a course of violent acts against landowners and political opponents, including socialists and some communists. This group, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)—CPI(M-L), or Naxalites—gained some support in rural areas, where peasant grievances were many, and from some younger communists. By 1967, the CPM in West Bengal had joined a leftist coalition state government. So the suppression of the violent communist Naxalite uprising was carried out by the more liberal communist state government and the central government, headed by Indira Gandhi. Special armed police were sent by the center to help in this process. According to some accounts, a few thousand radical communists, some young students, and even their relatives were killed in the ruthless quest to eradicate the Naxalites.
This selection shows the rejection by the CPI(M-L) of the leadership of the old Communist Party of India (CPI) and the CPM, as well as its attack on the existing political structure of India and on the relationship of India to the United States and the Soviet Union, which it viewed as imperialist powers. Instead the CPI(M-L) looked to China and its leader, Mao Zedong, as the source of guidance for India. Reading documents of this kind gives a good sense of the internal wrangling over points of doctrine that absorbed the energies of the leadership of the various communist factions. In defeating the insurgents, the government of India was able to take advantage both of the lack of cohesive leadership among the communist groups, and of their rather fanciful reading of Indian political and social reality, which argued that rural India was ready for violent revolution. The “open revolt” mentioned below is against both the state and the Communist Party of India, by rebels who regard the old Party as moribund. For example, the Dange clique, denigrated in the Second Declaration, refers to the followers of S. A. Dange (1899–1991), a founding member of the CPI who in the 1970s supported the Congress and its leader, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
