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

by Ramachandra Guha

  The variations in gender relations were spatial as well as cultural.56 Indian women were treated better (or less badly) in the south and in the cities. In the urban context they were somewhat more free to go to school, take a job and choose their life partner. There was a rising class of women professionals making their mark – sometimes a considerable mark – in the law courts, hospitals and universities. Successful women entrepreneurs were running advertising agencies and pharmaceutical companies.

  There was also a vigorous feminist movement. This was based in the cities and led by writers and activists, who produced a steady stream of high-quality essays and books on the lives and struggles of women in modern India.57 After years of lobbying politicians, these feminists were able to bring about a change in the law that would principally benefit their less fortunate, rural-based sisters. This was an amendment to the Hindu Succession Act of 1956, which, for the first time, brought agricultural land under its purview, allowing women the same inheritance rights here as men. Another amendment brought female heirs on par with males with regard to Hindu joint families (where sons had previously had claim to a greater share than daughters). The economist Bina Agarwal, whose own work on gender and agriculture had been a critical influence, said of these changes that ‘symbolically, this has been a major step in making[Hindu] women equal in the eyes of the law in every way’.58 Sadly, social practice remained another matter.

  X

  An old teacher of mine used to say that ‘India is a land of grievance collectors’. The characterization is incomplete, for Indians do not merely collect grievances, they also articulate them. In the 1990s, as before, a variety of rights were being asserted by a variety of Indians, and in a variety of ways. However, as before, while some conflicts were being expressed in more intense and violent forms, other conflicts were being attenuated and even, at times, resolved.

  There was, for instance, the return of peace to the state of Mizoram. The leaders of the Mizo National Front (MNF) had made a spectacularly successful transition; once insurgents in the jungle, they were now politicians in the Secretariat, put there by the ballot box. Peace had brought its own dividend in the form of water pipelines, roads and, above all, schools. By 1999 Mizoram had overtaken Kerala as India’s most literate state. The integration with the mainland was proceeding apace; Mizos were learning the national language, Hindi, and watching and playing the national game, cricket. And since they also spoke fluent English (the state’s own official language), young Mizos, men as well as women, found profitable employment in the growing service sector, in hotels and airlines in particular. Mizoram’s chief minister, Zoramthanga, was speaking of making his territory the ‘Switzerland of the East’. In this vision, tourists would come from Europe and the Indian mainland while the economy would be further boosted by trade with neighbouring Burma and Bangladesh. The Mizos would supply these countries with fruit and vegetables and buy fish and chicken in exchange. Zoramthanga was also canvassing for a larger role in bringing about a settlement between the government of India and the Naga and Assamese rebels. It was easy to forget that this visionary had once been a radical separatist, seeking independence from India when serving as the defence minister and vice-president of the Mizo government-in-exile.59

  The troubles had also been resolved, more or less, in the state of Punjab. Here the process had been more tortuous. In 1987 President’s Rule was imposed on the state, and repeatedly extended for six months at a time. Without elected politicians to report to, the police energetically chased the militants, by means fair and foul. Gun battles were common, quite often around police posts but also in the countryside. In 1990 the army was called in to help; a year later it was withdrawn. In 1992 elections were at last held to the state assembly. The Akali Dal boycotted the polls and the elected Congress chief minister, Beant Singh, was killed by a suicide bomber not long after he took office.

  In 1993, however, the Akalis returned to democratic politics by taking part in elections to local village councils. Four years later they won an emphatic victory in the assembly polls. By this time militancy was perceptibly on the wane. Some terrorists had become extortionists, squeezing money from Sikh professionals and from ordinary peasants. The popular mood had turned away from the idea of a separate state of Khalistan. Sikhs once more saw the advantages of being part of India. Agricultural growth had slowed down, but trade was flourishing and the state’s languishing industrial sector was being primed for revival.60

  A sign of normality was that the Akalis, now in power, were fighting among themselves, individuals and factions vying for control of particularly prestigious or profitable ministries. The veteran chief minister Prakash Singh Badal sought to transcend these squabbles through a celebration of the 300th anniversary of the proclamation by the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, of the Khalsa, or Sikh brotherhood.61 His Government allotted Rs3,000 million for the festivities, and the centre chipped in with a further grant of Rs1,000 million. New memorials to Sikh heroes were built, along with new sports stadia, shrines and guest houses. At the great gurdwara of Anandpur Sahib, Sikh intellectuals and writers were honoured in a colourful ceremony attended by both the chief minister and the prime minister. One of those felicitated, the novelist and journalist Khushwant Singh, noted with satisfaction that this once ‘alienated community’ had ‘regain[ed]its self-esteem and resume[d] its leading role in nation-building’.62 The costs, however, had been heavy. By one reckoning, more than 20,000 lives were lost in the Punjab between 1981 and 1993 – 1,714 policemen, 7,946 terrorists and 11,690 civilians.63

  In February 2005 I visited Punjab for the first time in three decades. At the time, the prime minister of India was a Sikh; so was the chief of army staff and the 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. Travelling through the state myself, I could not tell that the insurgency had ever happened, that the troubles had lasted as long as they did. A spate of fresh investments suggested that things were now very stable indeed. There were signs everywhere of new schools, colleges, factories, even a spanking new ‘heritage village’ on the highway, serving traditional ‘Punjabi food to the sound of Punjabi folk’ music.

  I drove the entire breadth of the state, from the town of Patiala to the city of Amritsar. My last stop, naturally, was the Golden Temple. The temple was as tranquil as a place of worship should be; spotlessly clean, with orderly queues of pilgrims whose eyes shone with devotion and wafts of music coming in from the great golden dome in the middle.

  It was only when I entered the Museum of Sikh History, located above the main entrance to the temple, that I was reminded that this was, within living memory, a place where much blood had been shed. The several rooms of the museum run chronologically, the paintings depicting the sacrifices of the Sikhs through the ages. Plenty of martyrs are commemorated on its walls, the last of these being Shaheeds Satwant, Beant and Kehar Singh. Below them lies a picture of the Akal Takht in tatters, with the explanation that this was the result of a ‘calculated move’ of Indira Gandhi. The text notes the deaths of innocent pilgrims in the army action, and then adds: However, the Sikhs soon had their revenge’. What form this took is not spelt out in words, but in pictures: those of Satwant, Beant and Kehar.

  To see the killers of Indira Gandhi so ennobled was unnerving. However, down below, in the temple proper, there were plenty of contrary indications, to the effect that the Sikhs were now thoroughly at ease with the government of India. A marble slab was paid for by a Hindu colonel, in grateful memory of the protection granted him and his men while serving in the holy city of Amritsar. Another slab was more meaningful still; this had been endowed by a Sikh colonel, on ‘successful completion’ of two years of service in the Kashmir Valley.

  27

  * * *

  RIOTS

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

  HANNAH ARENDT

  I

  IN OCTOBER 1952 THE chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) wrote a rare signed article in the English-language press. ‘Cut from its moorings, regeneration of a nation is not possible’, insisted M. S. Golwalkar. It was, therefore,

  necessary to revive the fundamental values and ideas, and to wipe out all signs that reminded us of our past slavery and humiliation. It is our first necessity to see ourselves in pristine purity. Our present and future has to be well united with our glorious past. The broken chain has got to be re-linked. That alone will fire the youth of free India with a new spirit of service and devotion to our people. There cannot be a higher call of national unity than to be readily prepared to sacrifice our all for the honour and glory of the motherland. That is the highest form of patriotism.

  How could one give shape and meaning to this very general ideal? What specific issue would charge the youth to sacrifice their all? ‘Such a point of honour in our national life’, believed the RSS chief,

  is none else but MOTHER COW, the living symbol of the Mother Earth – that deserves to be the sole object of devotion and worship. To stop forthwith any onslaught on this particular point of our national honour, and to foster the spirit of devotion to the motherland, [a] ban on cow-slaughter should find topmost priority in our programme of national renaissance in Swaraj.1

  In the opinion of Guru Golwalkar and his Sangh, India was a ‘Hindu’ nation. But the Hindus themselves were divided – by caste, sect, language and region. From the time it was founded in 1925, the mission of the RSS had been to make the Hindus a strong and cohesive fighting force. For its members, as for the organization as a whole, religious sentiment went hand-in-hand with political ambition. We may not doubt Golwalkar’s own personal devotion to the cow. Yet his call to make cow-slaughter a national priority stemmed from a much greater goal, that of uniting the Hindus.

  The cow was found all over India. Hindus too were found all over India. And Hindus worshipped the cow, whereas Muslims and Christians preferred to butcher and eat it. That was the logic on which the RSS sought to build a nationwide campaign. Fourteen years after Golwalkar’s article, a large crowd marched on Parliament to demand a countrywide ban on cow-slaughter. That was the campaign’s high point, and its appeal steadily declined thereafter. Even at its zenith its main attractions were to Hindu holy men and RSS workers – it never quite achieved the popular support its promoters had hoped for.

  In the 1980s, however, a single holy spot in a single small town was able to accomplish what a ubiquitous holy animal could not. The campaign to build a temple where a mosque stood in Ayodhya generated a widespread appeal. Many Hindus across India, and of different castes, were beginning to see this as a ‘point of honour in our national life’. To these people, the Babri Masjidin Ayodhya was indeed are minder of ‘our past slavery and humiliation’. To put a temple to Ram in its place had become the ‘sole object of devotion and worship’ for thousands of Hindu youths. This was energy expended in a cause which Golwalkar himself had not anticipated. Were he alive, he might have been surprised, and certainly also pleased.

  II

  In 1984 the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), successor to the old Jana Sangh, won a mere two seats in the eighth general election. Five years later its tally was eighty-six. A major reason for this rise was its involvement in the Ayodhya campaign.

  Anxious to keep the Congress out of power, the BJP now supported V. P. Singh’s National Front without joining the government. However, the decision to implement the Mandal Commission’s report, announced in August 1990, threw the party into a tizzy. Some leaders thought this a diabolical plan to break up Hindu society. Others argued that the extension of affirmative action was a necessary bow to the aspirations of the backward castes. Within the party, and within RSS shakhas, the debate raged furiously – should, or should not, the Mandal recommendations be endorsed?

  Rather than take a position, the BJP chose to shift the terms of political debate, away from Mandal and caste and back towards religion and the mandir/mosque question. The party announced a yatra, or march, from the ancient temple of Somnath in Gujarat to the town of Ayodhya. The march would be led by L. K. Advani, an austere, unsmiling man reckoned to be more ‘hard line’ than his colleague Atal Behari Vajpayee. He would travel in a Toyota van fitted up to look like a rath (chariot), stopping to hold public meetings on the way.

  Commencing on 25 September 1990, Mr Advani’s rath yatra planned to reach Ayodhya five weeks later, after travelling more than 6,000 miles through eight states. Militants of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) flanked the van, flagging it off from one town and welcoming it at the next. At public meetings they were complemented by saffron-robed sadhus, whose ‘necklaces of prayer beads, long beards and ash-marked foreheads provided a strong visual counterpoint’ to these armed young men. The march’s imagery was religious, allusive, militant, masculine, and anti-Muslim’. This was reinforced by the speeches made by Advani, which accused the government of ‘appeasing’ the Muslim minority and of practising a ‘pseudo-secularism’ which denied the legitimate interests and aspirations of the Hindu majority. The building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya was presented as the symbolic fulfilment of these interests and aspirations.2

  Advani’s march through north-western India was a major headache to V. P. Singh’s government. For the procession ‘posed a provocation that could not be ignored. Growing disorder, riots, and a final destruction of the mosque loomed ahead. Yet there would be serious consequences to stopping it. Not only would Singh have to act against [the revered god] Rama, but he would also bring down his own ruling coalition and risk serious disorder.’3 The yatra reached Delhi, where Advani camped for several days, daring the government to arrest him. The challenge was ducked, and the procession started up again. However, a week before it was to reach its final destination, the van was stopped and Advani placed under preventive detention. The arrest had been ordered by the Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, through whose state the march was then passing.

  While L. K. Advani cooled his heels in a Bihar government guest house, his followers were making their way to Ayodhya. Thousands of kar sevaks (volunteers) were converging from all parts of the country. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav, was, like his Bihari namesake, a bitter political opponent of the BJP. He ordered the mass arrest of the visitors from out of state. Apparently as many as 150,000 kar sevaks were detained, but almost half as many still found their way to Ayodhya. Twenty thousand security personnel were already in the temple town, some regular police, others from the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF).

  On the morning of 30 October a large crowd of kar sevaks was intercepted at abridge on the river Sarayu, which divided Ayodhya’s old town from the new. The volunteers pushed their way past the police and surged towards the Babri Masjid. There they were met by BSF contingents. Some kar sevaks managed to dodge them, too, and reach the mosque. One planted a saffron flag on the structure; others attacked it with axes and hammers. To stop a mass invasion the BSF jawans used tear gas and, later, live bullets. The kar sevaks were chased through narrow streets and into temple courtyards. Some of them resisted, with sticks and stones – they were supported by angry residents, who rained down improvised missiles on the police.4

  The battle between the security forces and the volunteers raged for three whole days. At least twenty kar sevaks died in the fighting. Their bodies were later picked up by VHP activists, cremated, and the ashes stored in urns. These were then taken around the towns of northern India, inflaming passions wherever they went. Hindus were urged to take revenge for the blood of these ‘martyrs’. The state of Uttar Pradesh was rocked by a series of religious riots. Hindu mobs attacked Muslim localities, and – in a manner reminiscent of the grisly Partition massacres – stopped trains to pull out and kill those who were recognizably Muslim. In some places the victims retaliated, whereupon they were set upon by the Provincial Armed Cons
tabulary, long notorious for its hostility towards the minority community.5

  As one commentator put it, L. K. Advani’s rath yatra had, in effect, become a raktyatra, a journey of blood.6

  III

  Among the casualties of the rath yatra was Prime Minister V. P. Singh. In November 1990 he resigned, unable to sustain his minority government in the absence of BJP support. As in 1979 – when Morarji Desai demitted office – the Congress allowed a lame-duck prime minister (in this case Chandra Shekhar) to hold charge while they prepared for midterm elections to be held in the summer of 1991. In the middle of the campaign Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated while speaking in a town in Tamil Nadu. The assassin, who was also blown up by the bomb she was carrying, was later revealed to be a representative of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The killing was an act of vengeance, for the LTTE had not forgiven Rajiv Gandhi for sending troops against them in 1987.

  Notwithstanding the murder of Rajiv Gandhi, the elections went ahead on schedule. Pollsters had predicted a hung Parliament, with no party anywhere near a majority. However, the sympathy generated by the killing allowed the Congress to win 244 seats. With support from independents they were in a position to form a government. P. V. Narasimha Rao, a veteran of the Congress Party from Andhra Pradesh who had held important positions in Rajiv Gandhi’s Cabinet, was sworn in as prime minister.