India After Gandhi
By Ramachandra Guha
While sitting at a bar over a couple of beers, I was telling my son what I learned from this book. In this book I learned about India’s founder’s insistence on democracy. I learned about their insistence on governing with a value for secularism. I learned that formulating a national identity was required to bring unity to a 28 States. This was packed in to 700 plus pages of factual detail blended with a coloring of the personal views of many active participants focusing largely around Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. While I was sharing my views, a guy standing next to me fist made a claim that Indians hate Mahatma Gandhi because he slowed down the Indian movement for independence. He then made the assertion that India’s Independence was not won but only handed to them and therefore not as legitimate as what occurred in the American independence. And finally he asserted that nationalism is bad for any people. This came from a History major. So the first words in my mind were ugly American arrogance, hubris, and ignorance. My recommendation to him was for him to read this book. Apparently after acquiring a Bachelors in History he saw no need. To all the rest of my readers, this can be a case made for the ugly American. However in his defense and in this context, the ugliest American leading the way is our own Richard Nixon who was very indignant towards India and Indira Gandhi personally. I can only guess that college’s place a biased view rout from history’s practice to not call it history until 20 years has elapsed and therefore history majors, without studying current affairs are caught flat footed and behind the times. I too was guilty of ignorance until I read this book. It is only lately that the United States has opened up to India. It is only lately since 1990 that India has found sound international footing as an economic power. In response, GW Bush was the first American President to visit India. It’s my hope and recommendation that all Americans follow suit and this book is a great bridge to understanding today’s India.
This book lays it out there. India’s accomplishments had its challenges, its bright side and its dark side. It is far from perfect, yet because of its secular based democracy and its national unity of over one billion people, there is nothing but potential for national good. On this record, India has never waged a preemptive war on any other country. In fact at the core of India’s governance is to manage themselves on Indian terms alone. Of its domestic problems there is a disparity in people caused by a caste system, religion, language and the cultures that are derived from the previous three. Where Mahatma Gandhi had cast the mold for India to find its independence in a secular democracy it was the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, of like mind with Gandhi, who poured raw material into mold. Nehru ruled over India with a socialistic hand in a parliamentary government through its first 15 years. This period was followed by an equal amount of time under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi daughter Indira Gandhi where in turn her son ruled over India. It is clearly seen through the succession of the Gandhi line that Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy was at the heart of every Indian as the father of their country.
Guha makes it clear that India found its own way un-assisted by outside influence. Unlike Pakistan, India did not seek out foreign assistance from superpower governments. Guha indirectly makes a point that by turning up its nose to the United States, it left India strong and of independent mind. India did find a strong relationship with the USSR but only commercially, albeit the USSR made every attempt to expand her communism. The USSR was marginally successful, where three of India’s States are still lead through pertinent communist parties. The unique reality of this is these three States live in relative harmony with India’s other twenty-four States. During this period India’s relationship with the Unites States was indifferent from India’s perspective and outright rude from the American perspective. Richard Nixon was extremely rude to Indira Gandhi in her visit to the White House, and his disparaging remarks towards her and India are what reverberated down to the American masses. Hence to this day there are generations of American people with the wrong impression of today’s India. This ugly American is only a product of his village, and he can’t alone be charged as guilty.
With Regard to Nehru’s policy, fate and philosophy forced a socialistic agenda. The lower Castes were first and foremost in need of a voice. It was that voice backed by the guiding hand of Nehru and a few other key aids that have given the lower Caste population a venue to climb the ladder. While that social prejudice still exists in many circles, the lower Cast is integrating in to a contributing force in India. They are now contributing at higher level jobs and thus becoming consumers that will churn the economy upwards. It is only a matter of time and this powerful group in terms of shear numbers alone will position India on favorable footing.
Nehur’s ambivalence to strong central power was positioned as not so greedy to take anything away from the States. Imagine our forefathers giving voice to our American Indians allowing them power in certain States, rather than on reservations. Imagine the center allowing autonomous control of the many intricate cultural issues. Imagine at the same time promoting a sense of nationalism for which all Indians could identify. Many of Nehru’s social projects were to the benefit of interstate commerce and therefore the improved standard of living in a united India. India also faced a war with China and three wars with Pakistan. All were provoked by their neighbors. Nagaland and Kashmir represent the battle ground for the most part. While each State could have argued for their independence, they each rose to a national ascendance to India, albeit when the boundaries were drawn in 1948, they already were Indian from a legal point of view. Nehru faced similar challenges in the central “Princely States”, where he created unity through socializing natural resources. Nehru’s toughest nut to crack was and still is for his successors is the Hindu/Muslim tension. Oddly enough While Muslims are in the minority population-wise, they all prefer to stay and vote in India. At present they have a strong footing in power at State and Central level, they are also well recognize in the cinema and sports circles.
On Kashmir, it is India’s to hold and Pakistanis to attack. The author explains in numerous different chapters where the fog lay. It comes out in the book that in the beginning a dominant figure was Sheikh Abdullah who had the hearts of the Kashmiri’s While possibly true in his heart to Kashmir’s he believed in accession to India, he apparently abused his position by absorbing his destined power to unite the people around him as opposed to India. It was an ambition for power. In this fog he created Pakistan took license to launch numerous incursions over the boarder, many of which escalated to the level of declared war. However he makes no assertion that the boundaries drawn at the formation of India had this State inside of India.
Within Kashmir the majority of the people are Muslim. However in their minds it was never a choice to be either Pakistani or Indian, but rather to be autonomous of the Indian central government. There has been at times an option to be its own sovereign country but the people elected to stay united with India and not be the trampling crossroads of international wars. In 2002 75% of Kashmi’s people voted which clearly indicates the voice of the people, where election results produced Sikh Prime Minister and Muslim president. But still today, there is always the ever presence of insurgent activity spilling over the boarder to capture once again a land that has always belonged to India. In India, anywhere, the Hindu violence toward the Muslim in was/is largely unorganized emotional reaction of the majority upon the minority at community level. The Muslim violence was/is a calculated by the neighboring State of Pakistan an organized Holy War not just for Kashmir, but for some for the complete destruction of India.
At the end of the chapter on ‘Democracy in Disarray’ Guha draws a contrast between the two leaders of government through the better part of India’s first thirty years. Both were of social mind. But that is where their similarities ended. Where Nehru built a party and a country through unity and democracy, his daughter moved so far left that she could trust no one. Where Nehru was uniting the various Indian States via cooperative water and land management projects for example, Indira was isolating herself from her party of which caused the parties to plot against each other to the detriment of the people. While Indira was decisive, in war it helped her win both the war and her countrymen’s favor. It was that same decisiveness without listening to her political advisers that led to discord in her party and divisiveness in the country. The hard move further left destroyed the political integrity of Indian due process and gave birth to a bedrock of corruption that thrives to this day. Indira did not strangle her country to death as she did hand her imposed dictatorship back to the people after two years of emergency rule. While Indians themselves distain the corruption in politics, where politics has become a family business, it is the legacy of Indira Gandhi. Where India’s democracy will thrive through any storm is the legacy of Nehru.
The reason why democracy will thrive is India’s move to the right. In the wake of emergency rule Indria Gandhi was assassinated by a rival minority Sikh party member. It was her first son Rajiv who assumed power through election that began a significant move to the right, releasing more and more government controls allowing capitalism to flourish. This in conjunction with the breakup of the USSR caused India’s shift in business to America. With a capitalistic mindset and a capitalistic set of trading partners India now has the right chemistry to become a prime mover on the world’s stage.
When comparing India with the United State; they are both democratic republics. There is a divergence in balance however in the words republic and democracy. Because of India’s structure of Parliament and through policy in Delhi, their States have much more autonomy in governing themselves. Also the way they elect representation to send to Delhi draws a much more variegated meeting of national interests. In India the State's interest comes first. In our United States the federal interests come first. Hence in India socialism became an ideal that best knitted the interests and welfare of all people and therefore melded a disparate people under one nation. I think the key to success, after reading this book, are Guha’s choice words variegated interests meeting of national interests. I believe that there will be a time here in America where we look to India to reunite our people. History has many examples where a country’s leader has taken their people to war, where there is an alleged agenda to bring unity of the people around said leader. In Germany for example we saw that with Bismarck and then again in Hitler. It is my sincere hope that American unity is not found in war but in India’s example of allowing our great country find its republic roots and hand power back to the States and thrive off of a variegated national interest vested in State politics where it may seem we succession is eminent but in that context is indeed our reason to unite.
My favorite quote, of this book is as follows: To quote a European observer of India’s first election it was;’ perhaps the most motley a assemblage in any quarter of this orb’; to quote another, it was ‘a true centre of the diverse varieties of types of mankind far surpassing the mix of nationalities of Cairo and Constantinople’. Through a national identity under the flag of India, what was written after their first election holds true to this day. So when an ugly American claims diversity in America to be one of its strengths, he must appreciate that in India there is that same virtue times three. If indeed there is power in numbers, as you gloat in apparent world hegemony, beware of the real Asian tiger. And know he is your friend so treat him as such.
Notes
As I copied excerpts of the book I took note of the authors use of quotations, interjecting the exact words of the people chronicling the events at that time. The evidence in the back of the book holds almost 100 pages of notes, which in my mind is a disciplined method to avoid being accused of re-writing history.
Page 58: In truth, both politicians and bureaucrats had their indispensable allies the most faceless of all humans: the people
Page 65 On August 14 several shops and offices in Poonch had flown Pakistani flags, indicating their allegiance lay to that country, and not to the unaffiliated state of Kashmir. In the following weeks clashes between Dogra troops and local protesters were reported. By the beginning of September dozens of Poonch men had equipped themselves with rifles from ‘informal sources in Pakistan’. The also has established a base in the Pakistani town of Murree, here were collected arms and ammunition to be smuggled across the boarder in Kashmir.
Page 68: On the morning of the 26th Menon flew back to Delhi, accompanies by the prime minister of Kashmir. Another meeting of the Defence Committee was convened. In attendance apart from Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel, was Sheikh Abdullah, who happened to be in Delhi that day. Both he and Mahjan urged that India immediately send troops to push back the invaders. Mountbatten suggested, however, that it would be best to secure Hari Singh’s accession to India before committing forces to his defense.
Page 77: Whether or not Abdullah was India’s man, he certainly was not Pakistan’s. In April 1948 he described that country as an unscrupulous and savage enemy’. He dismissed Pakistan as a theocratic state and the Muslim League as pro-prince rather than pro people.
Page 100: Like the integration of the princely states, the rehabilitation of refugees was a political problem unprecedented in nature and scope. The migrants into India from Pakistan, wrote one of their number, were ‘like the fallen autumn leaves in the wind or bits of stray newspaper flying hither and thither in the blown dust’. For those who have come away safe in limb and mind are without any bearings and without any roots.
Page 105:
Thus the All-India Varnashrama Swarajya (based in Calcutta asked that the constitution ‘be based on the principles laid down in ancient Hindu works’ The prohibition of cow-slaughter and the closing down of abattoirs was particularly recommended The low-caste groups demanded an end to their ill treatment by upper-caste people and reservation of separate seats on the basis of their population in legislature, government bodies, etc. Linguistic minorities asked for freedom of speech in their mother tongue and the redistribution f provinces on linguistic basis. Religious minorities asked for special safeguards.
Page 109: The Hindi scholar Raghu Vira claimed that ancient India was the originator of the Republican system of government and spread this system to other parts of the world.
Page 111: For the horrific communal violence of 1946 and 1947 bore witness to the need for a stron centre. In the words of Kazi Syed Kazimuddin, ‘everybody is not Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’ ( in the respect of his commitment to inter-religious harmony)
Page 120: Ambedker ended his speech with three warnings about the future. The first concerned the place of popular protest in a democracy. There was no place for blody revolution, of course, but in his view there was no room for Gandhian methods either. We must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha [popular protest] Under an autocratic regime, there might be some justification for them, but not now, when constitutional methods of redress are available.
Page 130: ‘We have to treat our minorities in exactly the same way as we treat the Majority’, insisted Nehru. ‘indeed, fair treatment is not enough; we have to make them feel that they are so treated.’ Now,’ in view of the prevailing confusion and the threat of false doctrine, it has become essential that the Congress should declare its policy in this matter in the clearest and most unambiguous terms.’
Page 141: The sentiment was Gandhi-like, and indeed Nehru’s next major speech was delivered to Delhi on the afternoon of 2 October, the Mahatma’s birthday. To a mammoth crowd he spoke in Hindustani about government’s determination to abolish both untouchability and landlordism. Once more he identified communalists as the chief enemies, who ‘will be shown no quarter’, and ‘overpowered with all our strength.’
Page 147: On the eve of the polls Sukmar Sen suggested they constitutes ‘the biggest experiment in democracy in human history.’ A veteran Madras editor was less neutral: he complained that a ‘very large majority [will] exercise votes for the first time; not many know what a vote is, why they should vote, and whom they should vote for; no wonder the whole adventure is rated the biggest gamble in history.’
Just as skeptical as the All Souls man was the Organizer, a weekly published by revanchist Hindu group, the RSS. This hoped that Hawaharlal Nehru ‘would live to confess the failure of universal adult franchise in India.’ It claimed that Mahatma Gandhi had ‘warned against this precipitate dose of democracy’, and that Rajendra Prasad, was ‘skeptical about this leap in the dark.’ Yet Nehru, ‘who has all along lived by slogans and stunts, would not listen.’
Page 149: A visiting Turkish journalist focused on the content of the election rather than its form. He admired Nehru’s decision not to follow other Asian countries in taking ‘ the line of least resistance’ by developing a dictatorship with centralization of power and intolerance of dissent and criticism’. The prime minister had ‘wisely kept away from such temptation’.
Page 191: To quote a European observer it was;’ perhaps the most motley a assemblage in any quarter of this orb’; to quote another, it was ‘a true centre of the diverse varieties of types of mankind far surpassing the mix of nationalities of Cairo and Constantinople’.
Page 198: But once Nehru conceded Andhra, and set the States Reorganization Commission, it was inevitable that the country as a whole would be reorganized on the basis of language.
Page 205: From Japan and Russia the NPC took lesson that countries that industrialized late had to depend crucially on state intervention. …In the early stages of industrialization, they argued, it was necessary that the ‘State should exercise in the interests of the community a considerable measure of intervention and control.’ Indeed, ‘and enlargement of the positive as well as preventative functions of the State is essential to any large-scale economic planning.’
Page 211: Planning was thus a ‘might co-operative effort of all the people of India. Nehru hoped that the new projects would be solvent to dissolve the schisms of caste and religion, community and region.
Page 224: This consensus was shared by large sections of the ruling class as well. In their Bombay Plan the leading industrialist had asked for an “enlargement of the positive functions of the State’. The approvingly quoted Cambridge economist A.C. Pigou’s view that freedom and planning were entirely compatible. Indeed, these big businessmen went so far as to state that ‘the distinction between capitalism and socialism has lost much of its significance from a practical standpoint.
Page 228: As it happened, during the last years of their rule the British had belatedly initiated framing of uniform code for Hindus. This sought to reconcile the prescriptions of the two principal schools of law – the Mitakshara and the Dayabhaga – and their numerous local variations. A committee had been set up in 1941 chaired by Sir B.N. Rau, who was also to play a crucial role in drafting the Indian Constitution. The committee toured India, soliciting a wide spectrum of Hindu opinion on the changes they proposed. Their progress was interrupted by the war, but by 1946 that had prepared a draft of a personal law code to be applied to all Hindus.
Page 241: Others viewed this caution more cynically. As Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee pointed out in the provisional Parliament, ‘it is nobody’s case that monogamy is good for Hindus alone or Buddhists alone or for Sikhs alone?’ Why not have a separate bill prescribing monogamy for all citizens? Having asked the question, Dr. Mookerjee supplied this answer: ‘I am not going to tread on this question because I know the weakness of the promoters of this bill. They dare not touch the Muslim minority. There will be so much opposition coming from throughout India that government will not dare to proceed with it. But of course you can proceed with the Hindu community in any way you like and whatever the consequences may be.’
Page 257: Ten days after he assumed power he visited Jammu, where he spoke to a large crowd, assuring them that ‘ties between Kashmir and India are irrevocable. No power on earth can separate the two.’ Next speaking in Srinagar Sheikh Abdullah played directly in to the hands of foreign invaders but entertaining the idea of an independent Kashmir.’ That said was a dangerous game, pregnant with disastrous consequence for Kashmir, India and Pakistan. Since Kashmir lacked resources to defend itself, independence was a ‘crack-brained idea’, calculated only to make the state a center of superpower intrigue, it was an idea that can devastate the people.
Page 289: These (socialistic moves) were important measures, helping hundreds of thousands of poor peasants, but still somewhat short of Red catechism prescribed. The contradiction was resolved by recourse to the ‘stages’ theory of classic Marxism. It was argued that rural India was still ‘semi-feudal’. All no-feudal classes were to be rallied around the proposed reforms which, when in place, would unleash agrarian capitalism, the next necessary stop in the high road to socialism.
Page 298: In May 1959, and touching eighty Rajaji launched a new political party, the Swatantra Party. This party focused its criticism on the ‘personality cult’ around the prime minister, and on economic policies of the ruling Congress. Its founding statement asked for a ‘proper decentralized distribution of industry through the nurturing of ‘competitive enterprise’ and, in agriculture, for encouragement of ‘self-employed peasant proprietor who stands for initiative and freedom’. It rejected the ‘techniques pf so called socialism and the ‘bringing into being of Statism’
Page 319: This ( the Chinese reason to invade Kashmir) was clearly because of their need to have speedy access to Tibet.
Page 325: The following year, in 1961, the writer Aldous Huxley visited India after a gap of thirty-five years. He was overwhelmed by what he found, namely, ‘the prospect of overpopulation, underemployment, growing unrest’.
Page 332: In the event it was the enemy who acted first. A phony war, which had lasted all of three years, was made very real on the night of 19/20 October, when Chinese simultaneously launched an invasion in both the eastern and western sectors. The blitzkrieg across the Himalaya had come as ‘Pragmatist’ had predicted it would.
Page 334: Nehru’s speech might be read as a belated acknowledgment of the correctness of Vallaabhbhai Patel’s warning of 1950: that communism in China was an extreme expression of nationalism, rather than its nullification.
Page 352: On April 28, the day before Abdullah was due to arrive in Delhi, the Jana Singh held a large procession in the capital. The marchers shouted anti-Abduallah and anti-Nehru slogans and demanded that government of India abrogate Article 370 and declare Kashmir to be an ‘integral and indivisible part of India’ (which it already was as the article was intended to bring a peaceful resolution to unrest cause by Abdullaha’s antics.)
Page 369: The prime minister acknowledged that ‘Pakistan is pursuing a policy of utter callousness in this matter’. However, he insisted the ‘we cannot copy the methods or ideals of Pakistan.” The have declared themselves openly to be an Islamic State believing in the two-nation theory We reject the theory and call ourselves a secular State giving full protection to all religions.
Page 371: Among Tyanji’s other suggestions were that Muslims ask for technical and commercial education, rather then merely study the humanities and join the ranks of the educated employed. Even as regards ti humanistic learning, he deplored attempts to keep ‘our Islamic culture…in a state of fossilized purity.’
Page 383: On Untouchables: Recalling the reactionary forces which came into play after partition, the editor remarked that ‘had Nehru shown the slightest weakness, these forces would have turned the country into a Hindu state in which minorities…could have not lived with any measure of safety or security’. It was also to Nehru;s credit that he insisted that Untouchables be granted full rights, such that ‘in public life and in all government action, the equality of man would be scrupulously maintained in the secular state of India.’
Page 401:…This is the difference between India and Pakistan. Where as Pakistan proclaims herself to be an Islamic State and uses religion as a political factor, we Indians have freedom to follow whatever religion we may choose [and] worship in any way we please. So far as politics are concerned, each of us are as much Indian as the other.
Page 403: What Shastri gave India Life said, ‘was mainly a mood- a new steeliness and sense of national unity.’ The Chinese war had brought the country to a state of near collapse, but this time, when war came, ‘everything worked – the trains ran, the army held fast, there was no communal rioting. The old moral pretentiousness, the disillusion and drift, the fear and dismay were gone.’
Page 425: (on Calcutta’s move to the left)These stoppages created a ripple in the British press, in part because many of the great Calcutta firms were British owned, in part because this had once been the capital of the Raj. ‘West Bengal expects more lawlessness’ ran one headline; ‘Riot stops opening of West Bengal Assembly’ ran another. The response of many factory owners, Indian as well as European, was to shut down their units. Other shifted their business elsewhere, in a process of capital flight that served to displace Calcutta as the leading center of Indian industry.
Page 433: (on parallels between the Raj and Nehru) Here the parallels end. Seeking to unite a divided India, Nehru articulated am ideology that rested on four main pillars. First, there was democracy, the freedom to choose ones friend and speak one’s mind ( and in the language of ones choice) – above all the freedom to choose ones leaders through regular elections based on universal adult franchise. Second, there was secularism, the neutrality of te state in matters of religion and its commitment to maintaining a social peace. Third, there was socialism, the attempt to augment productivity while ensuring a more egalitarian distribution of income (and social opportunity). Fourth there was non-alignment, the placement of India beyond and above the rivalries of the Great Powers. Among the less compelling, but not necessarily less significant, elements of this worldview were the conscious cultivation of a multiparty system…
Page 436: Speeches made by Mrs. Gandhi after her re-election show her identifying explicitly with the poor and vulnerable. Speaking to Lok Sabha in February 1968, she stressed the problems of landless labor, expressed her concern for all the minorities of India’ and defended the public sector from criticisms that it was not making profit ( her answer that it did not need to, since it was building a base for economic development).
Page 443: They could see what bound the varied religions, races and regions: namely a shared constitution and a tradition of regular elections. Nor did they think the challenges of the states a threat to national unity.
Page 457: On her November visit Mrs. Gandhi had two meetings with President Nixon. Kissinger had the impression that this was ‘a classic dialogue of the deaf’. Nixon said that the US would not be party to the overthrow Yahya Khan, and warned India that consequences of military action were incalculably dangerous’. Mrs. Gandhi answered that it was the Pakistanis who spoke of waging a ‘holy war’. She also pointed out that while West Pakistanis had ‘dealt with Bengali people in a treacherous and deceitful way and…always relegated them to an inferior role’, India, ‘on the other hand, has always reflected a degree of forbearance toward its own separatists elements.
Page 460: Said Nixon: “The Indians are such poor pilots they can’t even get off the ground,’ he had claimed in October. His hope now was that ‘the liberals are going to look like jerks because the Indian occupation of East Pakistan is going to make the Pakistani on look like child’s play.’
Page 462: The left-wing jurist V. R. Krishna Iyer saw in the recent movements a progressive maturation of Indian leadership; ‘What in Gandhian days was a vague creed was spelt out in Nehru’s time as an activist social philosophy, and became, under Mrs. Gandhi’s leadership a concrete and dynamic program of governmental action.
Page 467: On 15 August 1972 India celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Independence. A special midnight sitting was held in the Lok Sabha where the prime minister recalled the struggle for freedom from the 1857 rebellion to the present, marking the major landmarks along the way. The Indian quest, said Mrs. Gandhi, ‘has been friendship with all, submission to none.’ The next morning she addressed the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort. ‘India is stronger today that it was twenty-five years ago’, said the prime minister. ‘ Our democracy has found roots, our thinking is clear, our goals are determined, our paths are planned to achieve goals and our unity is more solid today than ever before.’ ‘Nations march ahead’, insisted Mrs. Gandhi, ‘not by looking at others but with self-confidence, determination and unity.’
Page 486: The Party President, L. K. Advani, claimed that Abdullah still ‘wanted to use the instrument of power to pursue his ambition of an independent Kashmir.’ Others saw the matter very differently. After the Sheikh was sworn in as chief minister on 25 February, the Indian Express called it an ‘epochal event in the history of free India’. Abdullah’s return to his old post, twenty-three years after he had been forced to leave it, was a tribute to the resilience and maturity of Indian democracy, for it is only in a true democratic set-up that even the most serious differences can be harmonized and reconciliations effected within the framework of common loyalty to country.
Page 495: These were the signs of a creeping dictatorship. Like military men who seize power via a coup. Mrs. Gandhi claimed to have acted to save the country from itself. And like them, she went on to say that, while she had denied her people freedom, she would give them bread in exchange.
Page 500: Mrs. Gandhi, and Congress, were now supreme al over the land. When the art historians Mildred and W.G. Archer went to meet her in March 1976, the prime minister expressed satisfaction with her progress of the emergency. The new regime, she told them, ‘had made the State Ministers shake in their shoes’. This was ‘long over due and was excellent’, for ‘too much devolution [was] fatal to India’. ‘I have to keep India together’, insisted Mrs. Gandhi.
Page 508: The India and/vs democracy was discussed most vigorously in the British press. The political class in the United Kingdom was divided; while some MPs signed the Free JPappeal, Mrs Gandhi’s regime was endorsed by, among others, Labor’s Michael Foot…they concluded that the emergency was, on balance, beneficial to its people. Wrote a conservative; that the emergency was far less oppressive than the Times reported it to be,
Page 523: The prime minister told the interviewer that the Janta men ‘are only united against me, but not on any positive program’. The name could not hide the same old aim, which is to get rid of Indira Gandhi. In his interview JP claimed that ‘the Janta Party is no greater hotchpotch than the Congress’ For the ruling party had within it all types of vested interests and it is seething with internal differences’. Asked for a message for the weekly readers, Naryan said they should vote without fear, and remember that ‘ if you vote for the Opposition you will vote fore freedom. If you vote for the Congress you will vote for Dictatorship.’
Page 528: A year later Vajpayee visited China, the highest ranking Indian to do so since the boarder war of 1962. On this occasion, however, the trip was marred by the Chinese attack on Vietnam, launched in arrogant disregard of India’s long friendship with the country be invaded.
Page 537: Mrs. Gandhi was kept overnight by the police, but when they produced her before the magistrate the next morning, he threw out the charge sheet as flimsy and insubstantial. The bungled arrest rebounded badly for the Janta government and helped redeem the reputation of their hated opponent. She began making combative speeches…the New York Times in the last week of October said ‘the deposed prime minister has been speaking more and more boldly lately, trying to assume once more the posture of a national leader.
Page 541: Looking back on the three years of the Janta regime, one analyst remembered it as a chronicle of confused and complex party squabbles, intra-party rivalries, shifting alliances, defections, chargers and countercharges of incompetence and the corruption and humiliation of persons who had come to power after the defeat of Mrs. Gandhi’.
Page 556: In the last week of July 1980 the prime minister warned the AASU leaders that their actions could lead to retribution. ‘Suppose other states refused to supply Assam with steel?’ She asked. Indian federalism was based on interdependence. For ‘it was only in the shadow of a bigger unity that each unit can survive; otherwise outside pressures will be too great to bear.’
Page 558: In October 19972 the Working Committee of the Akali Dal passed the Anandpur Sahib Resolution This aked the government of India to hand over Chandigarh to Punjab ( it then shared the city with Haryana); to also had over Punjabi-speaking areas then with other states; and to increase the population of the Sikhs in the army. Asking for a recasting of the Indian Constitution on ‘real federal principles’, it said that ‘in this new Punjab and in other States the Center’s interference would be restricted to defense, foreign relations, currency, and general administration’ all other departments would be the jurisdiction of Punjab (and other States) which would be fully entitled to frame [their] own laws on these subjects’.
Page 600: For politicians of Nehru’s day had worked to contain social cleavages rather than deepen or further them from their own interests. But in other ways the nostalgia was perhaps misplaced. The churning-violent and costly though it undoubtedly was – could be more sympathetically read as a growing decentralization of te Indian polity, away from the hegemony of a single region (the north, a single Party (the Congress), a single family (the Gandhis).
Page 631: In February 2005 I visited Punjab for te first time in three decades. At the time, the prime minister of India was a Sikh; so was the chief of army staff and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. That Sikhs commanded some of the most important jobs in the nation was widely hailed as a sign of Punjab’s successful reconciliation with India.
Page 649: In the 1990’s the BJP came to define the political agenda in a way the Congress once did in the 1950s and 1960s. ….the political discourse in general came to be obsessed with questions of religious identity rather than matters of economic development or social reform.
Page 650: The literacy rate for Muslims was well below the national average, and te gap between them and other communities was growing. Few Muslim girls were sent to school, while boys were often placed in madrasas (religions schools) whose archaic curricula did not equip them for jobs in the modern economy. Meanwhile the taunts of the Sangh Parivar had inculcated a defensive, almost siege mentality among Muslim intelligentsia. The young men, especially, sought succor in religion, seeing in it a renewed commitment to Islam as an alternative to poverty and persecution in the world outside. Now was the turn to faith always the quietest. A student Islamic Movement of India had arisen, whose leaders argued that threats from rival religion could be met only through force of arms.
Page 652 A larger ambition was to catalyze a civil war in India. As the chief leader of the Lashhkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, boasted, that they were aiming to set up a mujahdeen network across India, which when it was up and running, would spell the start of disintegration of India. ‘Revenge is our religious duty’, said Saeed to an American journalist. ‘We beat te Russian superpower in Afghanistan; we can beat the Indian forces too. We fight with the help of Allah, and once we start jihad. No force can withstand us.’ Speaking to a Pakistani reporter, the Lashkar chide claimed that ‘our struggle will continue even if Kashmir is liberated. We still have to take revenge [against India] for [the loss of] East Pakistan.
Page 719: On riches; One Delhi columnist was so certain that India was becoming the worlds titan that he worried that it would repeat the errors of those it had replaced. Where the West in its heyday had callously exploited its colonies, he urged Indian business to establish a loving and friendly relationship with other countries.
Page 745: Forty years later the Atlantic Monthly carried another report on the state of Pakistan. Between the times the country had passed from dictatorship to democracy and then back again to rule by men in uniform. It had also been divided, with its eastern wing seceding to form the sovereign state of Bangladesh. And it had witnessed three wars, each one initiated by the generals whom the peasants had hoped would bring them peace.
Page 746: India’s record in nurturing democracy from within gathered renewed appreciation. When, in April 2004, India held its fourteenth general election the contrast with Pakistan was being highlighted by Pakistanis themselves” ‘India goes to the polls and the world notices’, wrote Karachi columnist Ayaz Amur. “Pakistan plunges into another exercise in authoritarian management – and the world notices, but through jaundice eyes.
Page 751 By contrast with these (and other examples) the Indian nation does not privilege a single language or religious faith. Although the majority of its citizens are Hindus, India is not a Hindu nation. Its constitution does not discriminate between people on the basis of faith nor, more crucially did the nationalist movement that lay behind it do so. From its inception the Indian Congress was, as Mukul Kesavan observes, a sort of political Noah’s Ark which sought to keep every species of Indian on board. Gandhis political program was built upon harmony and co-operation between India’s two major religious communities, Hindu and Muslims. Although in the end, his work and example were unsuccessful in stopping the division of India, the failure made his successors more determined to construct independent India as a secular republic. For Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues, if India was anything at all it was not a ‘Hindu Pakistan.
Page 764: The economic integration of India is a consequence of its political integration They act in a mutually reinforcing loop. The greater the movement of goods and capital and people across India, the greater sense that this is, one country.
