India After Gandhi Revised and Updated Edition

by Ramachandra Guha

  The BJP had taken to coalition politics in the belief that it could never come to power on its own. With its roots so strongly in northern India, its expansion depended heavily on alliances with other parties, each based in a particular state. With the exception of the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, these parties did not subscribe to the ‘Hindutva’ (or Hindu-first) ideology. Thus, in forging alliances the BJP had to promise to put to one side such contentious issues as the Ram temple in Ayodhya and the abrogation of Article 370 (which accorded special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir).1

  II

  Through the 1990s, Indian politics became more complex at the domestic level, with greater competition between parties and the introduction of a third tier of government. However, when it came to India’s dealings with the rest of the world there was a noticeable convergence of views. Whether led by the BJP or the Congress, or indeed the various Third Fronts, the Union government was committed to enhancing the country’s military capabilities, and to a more assertive foreign policy in general.2

  One manifestation of this new strategy was a growth in the size and power of the military. India was rapidly moving ‘from a defence dependent upon diplomacy to a diplomacy strengthened by a strong defence’.3 Military expenditure rose steadily through the decade, from US $7,000 million to $12,000 between 1991 and 1999. Some of this money went on salaries – there were now more than one million Indians in uniform, working in the Army, Navy, or Air Force, with another million staffing the various paramilitary outfits.

  Some of the money also went to buy state-of-the-art weaponry. And some went to manufacturing, indigenously, instruments of war that the richer Western countries were not prepared to sell to India. In addition to the Agni and Prithvi missiles developed in the 1980s, India now had an intercontinental ballistic missile named Surya (with a range of up to 12,000 kilometres), and a missile named Sagarika that could be launched from ships. Indian scientists had also developed a range of defensive options, designing shorter-range missiles to be aimed at any the enemy might throw at them.4

  These missiles were designed by the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), one of two scientific institutions that played a vanguard role in the defense sector. The other was the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which had the responsibility for the production of nuclear power, as well as for the production of nuclear weapons. An atomic device had been tested in 1974, but in subsequent years the AEC scientists were able to considerably improve on its sophistication and destructiveness. From the early 1990s they pressed the government to allow them to test their improved bombs.

  In his history of India’s nuclear programme, George Perkovich tracks the persistent efforts of the scientists. Those who led the missile and nuclear programmes told successive prime ministers that in the absence of tangible results, talented young scientists would prefer high-paying jobs in the commercial sector to the service of the state. ‘Without full-scale tests’, they argued, ‘morale would fall and the nation would not find replacements for the aging cohort that had produced the first device in 1974’. In late 1995, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao sanctioned tests, but backed off when American satellites revealed the preparations, provoking a strong warning from the US government. When a United Front Government came to power in 1996, the scientists urged the new prime minister, H. D. Deve Gowda, to give them the green signal. Gowda demurred; he didn’t care about American opinion, he said, it was only that his priorities were economic development rather than a show of military strength.5

  The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance assumed office in March 1998. The next month Pakistan tested a medium-range missile, provocatively named ‘Ghauri’, after a medieval Muslim warrior who had conquered and (according to legend) laid waste to much of northern India. A quick answer was called for, if only because ‘the BJP’s historic toughness on national security would have seemed hollow if the government did not respond decisively to the new Pakistani threat’.6 The heads of the AEC and the DRDO insisted that a nuclear test would be the most fitting response. Their calls were endorsed by the atomic physicist Raja Rammana, who carried enormous prestige as the man who had ‘fathered’ the 1974 tests. Ramanna met Prime Minister Vajpayee, who assured him that he wanted ‘to see India as a strong country and not as a soft one’. To this the physicist added a definitive caveat: ‘Also, you can’t keep scientists in suspended animation for twenty-four years. They will simply vanish’.7

  In the second week of May 1998, the Indians blasted five nuclear devices in the Rajasthan desert. Three kinds of bombs were tested: a regular fission device, a thermonuclear bomb and a ‘sub-kiloton’ device. Before and after the tests senior members of the NDA government made provocative statements aimed at India’s neighbours. The defence minister, George Fernandes, described China as India’s ‘number one threat’. The home minister, L. K. Advani, said that India was prepared to give hot pursuit across the border to any terrorists that Pakistan may send to make trouble in Kashmir.

  Opinion polls conducted immediately after the tests suggested that a majority of the urban population supported them. The most enthusiastic acclaim, however, came from the BJP’s sister organizations, the VHP and the RSS. They announced that they would build a temple at the test site, and take the sand, contaminated by radioactivity but nonetheless ‘holy’ for them, to be worshipped across India. The Shiv Sena chief, Bal Thackeray, saluted the scientists for showing that Hindu men were ‘not eunuchs’. The scientists themselves posed triumphantly in front of the news cameras, clad in military uniforms.8

  Two weeks later this balloon of patriotic pride was punctured and deflated. On the 28th of May, Pakistan tested its own nuclear device. Their atomic programme had been built on the basis of designs and materials acquired in dubious circumstances from a Dutch laboratory by the scientist A. Q. Khan, supplemented by Chinese technical help. The Indian bomb was wholly indigenous. But these discriminations were made meaningless when six atomic blasts (deliberately, one more than the other side) disturbed the Chagai Hills in Balochistan province. The Pakistani public greeted the news by dancing and singing in the streets. The ‘father’ of this bomb, A. Q. Khan, told interviewers that ‘our devices are more consistent, more compact, more advanced and more reliable than what the Indians have’.9

  The Pakistani achievement was glossed as an ‘Islamic’ bomb, in part because at this time no other Muslim nation had one. In India, too, both supporters and opponents of the tests tended to see them as ‘Hindu’ inspired. In truth, although the BJP was in power in May 1998, the preparations had been laid under successive Congress regimes. The policy of nuclear ambiguity – we have the bomb, but we won’t test it – was becoming unsustainable. Pressed by the West to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, India decided to make its nuclear status a matter of public record.10

  The BJP naturally tried to make political capital out of the tests, but faced with signing the CTBT and thus signing off on all nuclear ambitions, a Congress regime would have acted likewise. Indeed, it had been Congress prime ministers who had, in the past, most insistently laid claim to a ‘great power’ status for India. These claims became more persistent after the end of the Cold War. Indian leaders demanded that in deference to its size, democratic history and economic potential, the country be made a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. That the claim was disregarded made the matter of nuclear tests all the more urgent. Across party lines, strategic thinkers argued that an open declaration of nuclear weapons would make the Western powers sit up and take notice. Reason and argument having failed, India had necessarily to ‘blast’ its way to world attention.11

  III

  The only countries to be officially acknowledged as nuclear powers were the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, Russia, China, France and the UK. It was also known that Israel had nuclear bombs. When, in the summer of 1998, India and Pakistan simultaneously entered this exclusive club it created some disquiet among the older memb
ers. It was feared that the Kashmir dispute could spark the first atomic war in history. Pressure was put on both countries to sort out their differences on the negotiating table.

  In February 1999, the Indian prime minister travelled by bus to Lahore to meet his Pakistani counterpart. Atal Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif spoke of increasing trade between the two countries, and of putting in place a more liberal visa regime. No progress was made on Kashmir, but the fact that the two sides were talking was, to subcontinental eyes as well as Western ones, a most reassuring sign.12

  Barely three months after the Vajpayee-Sharif ‘summit’, Indo-Pak relations were once more on a short fuse. The provocation was the infiltration, into the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir, of hundreds of armed men, some Kashmiri in origin but others unambiguously citizens of Pakistan. The operation had been planned by the Pakistani army, who told their civilian prime minister about it only when it was well under way. The idea was to occupy the mountain tops that overlooked the highway linking Srinagar to Leh, the only all-weather road connecting two towns of crucial importance. The generals apparently believed that their nuclear shield provided protection, inhibiting the Indians from acting against the intruders.13

  The Indian army was first alerted to the infiltration by a group of shepherds. Scanning the mountains with binoculars, in search of wild goats to hunt, they instead spotted men in Pathan dress digging themselves into bunkers. They conveyed the information to the nearest regiment. Soon, the army found that the Pakistanis had occupied positions across a wide swathe of the Kargil sector, from the Mushkoh Valley in the west to Chorbat La in the east. The decision was taken to shift them.14

  The shepherds saw the Pathans on 3 May 1999. Two weeks later the Indians began the artillery bombardment of enemy positions. Air force planes screamed overhead, while on the ground jawans made their way laboriously up the mountain slopes. Men reared in tropical climes had now to battle in cold and treacherous terrain. ‘In battle after decisive battle Indian infantry battalions clambered up near perpendicular cliffs the entire night in freezing temperatures before lunging straight into battle at first light against the intruders . . .’.15

  The exchanges were fierce and, on both sides, costly. Dozens of peaks, each defended by machine guns, had to be recaptured, one by one. A major victory was the taking of Tiger Hill, in the Drass sector. The battles raged all through June. By the end of the month, the Pakistanis had been cleared from 1,500 square kilometres of Indian territory. The areas reoccupied included all vantage points overlooking the Srinagar-Leh highway.16

  In the last week of June 1999, the American president, Bill Clinton, received an unexpected phone call from the Pakistani prime minister. The two countries were close allies, and now the junior partner was asking to be bailed out of a jam of its own creation. More than 2,000 Pakistanis had already lost their lives in the conflict, and Nawaz Sharif was in search of a face-saving device to allow him to end hostilities. Clinton granted him an appointment on 4th July, American Independence Day. In that meeting, Sharif promised to withdraw Pakistani troops if America would put pressure on India to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Clinton agreed to take an ‘active interest’ in the question. With this assurance, Sharif returned to Islamabad and formally called off the operation.17

  Approximately 500 Indian soldiers died in the Kargil conflict. They came from all parts of the country, and when their coffins returned home the grief on display was mixed with a large dose of pride. The bodies were kept in public places – schools, colleges, even stadiums – where friends, family and fellow townsmen came to pay their respects. A cremation or burial with full military honours followed, this attended by thousands of mourners and presided over by the most important dignitary on hand – often a chief minister or governor. The men being honoured included both officers and soldiers. Many hailed from the traditional catchment area of the Indian army (the north and the west of the country), but many others were born in places not previously known for their martial traditions, such as Ganjam in Orissa and Tumkur in Karnataka.18 And some who died defending India came from regions long thought to be at odds with the very idea of India. A particularly critical role in recapturing the Kargil peaks was played by soldiers of the Naga regiment. Their valour at the other end of the Himalaya, hoped one army general, would allow the ‘brave Nagas [to] finally get their Indian identity’. Their bravery was certainly saluted by their kinsmen; when the body of a Naga lieutenant returned home to Kohima, thousands thronged the airport to receive it.19

  The Kargil clashes also furthered the reintegration of the Punjab and the Punjabis. Farmers along the border insisted that if the conflict became a full-fledged war, they would be at hand to assist the Indian army, providing food and shelter and even, if required, military help. ‘We shall fight with the jawans’, said one Sikh peasant, ‘and teach the Pakistanis a bitter lesson for violating our territory’.20

  Across India, the conflict with Pakistan unleashed a surge of patriotic sentiment. Thousands volunteered to join the lads on the front, so many in fact that in several places the police had to fire to disperse crowds surrounding army recruitment centres.21 The war with China had likewise fuelled a similar response, with unemployed youth seeking to join the forces. Yet there was a significant difference. On that occasion, the intruders had overrun thousands of square miles before choosing on their own to return. This time they had been successfully thrown out by the use of force.

  In this respect the Kargil war was a sort of cathartic experience for the men in uniform and, beyond that, for their compatriots as a whole. The Indian army had finally redeemed itself. It had removed, once and for all, the stigma of having failed to repulse the Chinese in 1962. At the same time, the popular response to the conflict bore witness to the birth of a new and more assertive kind of Indian nationalism. Never before had bodies of soldiers killed in battle been greeted with such an effusion of sentiment. It appeared as if each district was determined to make public its own contribution to the national cause. The mood was acknowledged and stoked further by reporters in print and on television, whose competitive jingoism was surprising even to those familiar with that profession’s hoary record of making truth the first casualty of war.

  IV

  The successful repulsion of the invaders in Kargil encouraged the BJP to dissolve Parliament and call fresh elections. By claiming credit for the nuclear tests and the military victory, the ruling alliance hoped to consolidate patriotic pride behind it. The BJP’s main rival, the Congress, was now led by Sonia Gandhi. In September 1998, while making her first formal speech as party president, Sonia Gandhi had urged that Dalits, adivasis and the youth be brought back into the Congress fold. The party, she said, should adopt a ‘social justice’ platform; as and when it returned to power, its policies would focus on the ‘basic issues of health, education, food security, nutrition and family planning’.22

  In May 1999, several major leaders, notably the Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar, left the Congress, citing the ‘foreign origins’ of the new leader. There were other and more weighty criticisms being made of Sonia Gandhi. In particular, she was an indifferent speaker, her Hindi grammatically correct but heavily accented (betraying that her first language was Italian).

  Meanwhile, with the withdrawal of one of its major coalition partners, the AIADMK, the Vajpayee government lost a no-confidence vote in Parliament by a single vote. The Sonia Gandhi-led Congress sought to form an alternate government but failed to garner the required support. The president, K. R. Narayanan, now dissolved Parliament in preparation for fresh elections. When these were held, in September–October 1999, the Congress slipped to 114 seats in Parliament. The BJP got 182 seats, the same as in the last elections. However, the NDA as a whole had obtained 270 seats, just a few seats short of an overall majority. Now it was more or less assured of a full term in office.

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

  By the early 2000s, after a decade of market and trade liberalization, the Indian economy had finally escaped from what was mockingly referred to as ‘the Hindu rate of growth’. Annual GDP growth rates were in excess of 6–7 per cent rather than hovering around the 2–3 per cent mark. The sector that had done best was that of services, which grew at an average of 8.1 per cent a year through the 1990s. Much of this was contributed by the software industry, whose revenues grew from a paltry $197 million in 1990 to $8,000 million in 2000. In some years the industry grew at more than 50 per cent a year. Much of this expansion was aimed at the overseas market. While in 1990 the Indian software industry’s exports were valued at $100 million, by the end of the decade the figure had jumped to $6,300 million.

  In the year 2000, there were 340,000 software professionals in India, with some 50,000 fresh engineering graduates being recruited annually. About 20 per cent of these professionals were women. In the first years of the twenty-first century the industry grew at an even faster rate. By 2004, it was employing 600,000 people, and exporting $13 billion worth of services.

  In both India and abroad, the software industry was commonly acknowledged as the ‘poster boy’ of the reforms. The industry was a largely indigenous product, with firms big and small owned by Indian entrepreneurs, employing Indian engineers trained at Indian universities. Yet the work they did was mostly for foreign clients, who included many of the Fortune 500 companies. Some of this work was routine – maintaining accounts and employee records, for example. Other work was more innovative, such as designing new software which was then patented and sold overseas. (I-Flex, a financial package developed by an Indian company, was in use in more than 70 countries.) In its early years, the industry focused on ‘body-shopping’, sending engineers on short-term visas to work ‘on-site’ in European and American companies. However, with the development of satellite communications and the World Wide Web, and the increasing sophistication of the work being done, the emphasis shifted to ‘outsourcing’, to the codes being written within India and then sent back overseas.