India After Gandhi Revised and Updated Edition

by Ramachandra Guha

  Over the years, English has confirmed, consolidated and deepened its position as the language of the pan-Indian élite. The language of the colonizers has, in independent India, become the language of power and prestige, the language of individual as well as social advancement. As the historian Sarvepalli Gopal observes, ‘that knowledge of English is the passport for employment at higher levels in all fields, is the unavoidable avenue to status and wealth and is mandatory to all those planning to migrate abroad, has meant a tremendous enthusiasm since independence to study it’. But, as Gopal also writes, English ‘may be described as the only non-regional language in India. It is a link language in a more than administrative sense, in that it counters blinkered provincialism’.25

  Those, like Nehru and Rajaji, who sought to retain English, sensed that it might help consolidate national unity and further scientific advance. That it has done, but largely unanticipated has been its role in fuelling economic growth. For behind the spectacular rise of the software industry lies the proficiency of Indian engineers in English.

  English is one of India’s two main link languages. Hindi is the other. When imposed by fiat by the central government, Hindi was resisted by the people of the south and the east. However, when conveyed seductively by the medium of cinema and television, Hindi has been accepted by them.

  The Hindi film is the great popular passion of the Indian people, watched and followed by Indians of all ages, genders, castes, classes, religions and linguistic groups. The most widely revered Indians are film stars. Yet cinema does not merely provide Indians with a common pantheon of heroes; it also gives them a common language and universe of discourse. Lines from film songs and snatches from film dialogue are ubiquitously used in conversations in schools, colleges, homes and offices – and on the street.

  Hindi cinema provides a stock of social situations and moral conundrums which widely resonate with the citizenry as a whole. But, over time, it has also made the Hindi language more comprehensible to those who previously never spoke or understood it. In Bengaluru and Hyderabad, Hindi has become the preferred medium of communication between those who speak mutually incomprehensible tongues. Even in Chennai, where the language was once fiercely resisted, taxi drivers have picked up enough Hindi to converse with passengers from the north and the west.

  The link languages of India are Hindi and English, sometimes working in combination. The English spoken in India today has moved far away from the Anglicized, Oxford-accented and BBC-inflected language once spoken by the country’s elite. It has become indigenized, adopting words and idioms from Indian languages. Meanwhile, a hybrid tongue, called ‘Hinglish’, has also emerged, mingling the two link languages in different proportions, depending on the provenance of the speaker.

  V

  In 1888, John Strachey wrote that he could never imagine that Punjab and Madras could ever form part of a single political entity. But in 1947 they did, along with many other provinces Strachey regarded as distinct ‘nations’. While in 1947 the unity might have been mostly political, in the decades since it has been shown also to be economic, cultural, and, it must be said, emotional.

  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 the sense that this is, after all, one country. In the first decades of independence, it was the public sector that did most to further this sense of unity. In plants such as the great steel mill in Bhilai, Andhras laboured and lived alongside Punjabis and Gujaratis, fostering appreciation of other kinds of tongues, customs and cuisine, while underlining the fact that they were all part of the same nation. As the anthropologist Jonathan Parry remarks, in the Nehruvian imagination ‘Bhilai and its steel plant were seen as bearing the torch of history, and as being as much about forging a new kind of society as about forging steel’. The attempt was not unsuccessful; among the children of the first generation of workers, themselves born and raised in Bhilai, provincial loyalties were superceded by a more inclusive patriotism, a ‘more cosmopolitan cultural style’.26

  More recently, it has been the private sector which has, if with less intent, furthered the process of national integration. Firms headquartered in Tamil Nadu set up cement plants in Haryana; doctors born and educated in Assam establish clinics in Mumbai. Many of the engineers in Hyderabad’s IT industry come from Bihar. The migration is not restricted to the professional classes; there are barbers from Uttar Pradesh working in the city of Bengaluru, as well as carpenters from Rajasthan. However, it must be said that the flow is not symmetrical. While the cities and towns that are ‘booming’ become ever more cosmopolitan, economically laggard states sink deeper into provincialism.

  The Republic of India is a union of twenty-nine states. Of these, twenty-six are comfortable with being part of the Union. Yet discontent persists in parts of the other three states. Pre-eminent among these disaffected regions is the Valley of Kashmir. The Indian state’s hold on the Valley and its people has been contested from the start, by Pakistan, which claims this territory as its own, and by many residents of the Valley themselves. The region is once more in the grip of mass protests as I write.

  Pakistan has an interest in stoking and supporting armed insurgents in Kashmir. However, successive Indian governments have scored self-goals of their own, by jailing popular Kashmiri leaders, rigging elections, pressing for the abrogation of Article 370 which assures the state a special status, and, above all, through the repression by brute force of popular protests. There is a massive army presence in Kashmir, these troops complemented by hundreds of thousands of less-trained paramilitary forces. And so, as one thoughtful scholar writes, ‘India’s constitutional settlement, for all its other grandeur, has not yet passed the Kashmir test.’27

  Back in the 1950s, a section of the Tamils wanted to secede from India. In the 1960s, a section of the Mizos launched an insurrection for an independent Mizoram. In the 1980s, a section of the Sikhs fought the Indian state with arms, seeking to create an independent Khalistan. Those rebellions are now all history, with Tamil Nadu, Mizoram and Punjab – and the overwhelming majority of the residents of these states – entirely content to be part of the Republic of India.

  Even in Kashmir, the Jammu and Ladakh regions are not seeking secession. A significant section of the residents of the Valley, however, are. Meanwhile, in Nagaland, where the movement for an independent nation precedes that in Kashmir, the ceasefire called for in 1997 still holds, tenuously. Many rounds of talks have been held between the government of India and the most influential faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland. But no settlement is yet in sight.

  There are two issues still outstanding. The first is that of sovereignty. The NSCN once wanted a solution outside the framework of the Indian constitution. Now, they may be willing to be part of India, so long as the distinctive history of the Naga people is given formal recognition. A way to do so in a manner that would satisfy the honour of both parties has not yet been found. The second, and even more complicated problem, is that of territoriality. The NSCN insists that the government of India create a unified and integrated state incorporating those parts of Arunachal, Assam and (above all) Manipur where Naga tribes live. This would involve a redrawing of boundaries, which those other states (and particularly Manipur, which stands to lose the most) are loath to agree to.

  The perils involved in re-setting provincial boundaries were vividly manifest when, in 2010, the NSCN leader T. Muivah wished to visit his home village, which he had not seen in forty-seven years. Muivah was a Tangkhul Naga, and his village lay in the hill areas of Manipur state. The Manipur government saw the visit as a precursor to the demand that these areas be handed over to a Greater Nagaland. The state’s police assembled in force on the border with Nagaland, to prevent Muivah’s entry. In response, the Nagas in Nagaland organized a two month long blockade of the highway that connected the Manipur Valley to the
outside world. This further soured relations between the two states, making the prospect of a permanent settlement of the Naga question recede further into the future.28

  The third state of the Union where the hold of the Indian ideal is uncertain and fragile is Manipur itself. The dominant community here are the Meiteis, who live in the valley, with Nagas, Kukis and other tribes residing in the hills. The Meiteis fear the colonization of their fertile valley by outsiders, and resent the fact that (because they are technically Hindus) they do not enjoy the fruits of affirmative action (which Manipur’s tribal communities do). They also harbour fond memories of the independent chiefdom they once had.

  Many Meitei activists dislike and distrust the Indian state. Some nourish dreams of an independent nation. Meanwhile, the Nagas and Kukis distrust the Meiteis for their political and administrative stranglehold over the state of Manipur as it exists today. Some, perhaps many, of the Nagas in Manipur wish to make common cause with the Nagas in Nagaland in pursuit of their independent nation. And Kukis and Nagas have on occasion fought each other fiercely too.29

  These multiple rivalries and animosities have generated a lot of violence and bloodshed. To control the situation in Manipur the central government has posted several army detachments, as well as tens of thousands of paramilitary forces. In Imphal town there are security check-points every few hundred yards; in the rural and mountain roads, every few miles. The Indian state’s armed might is on intimidating display in Manipur; as it is in the Valley of Kashmir; and as it would be in Nagaland too, were there not a ceasefire in operation.

  That said, if to the disturbed districts of Nagaland, Manipur and Kashmir one adds the territory under the control of Maoist revolutionaries in central India, this would amount to not more than 10 per cent of the total area of the Republic of India. Thus some 90 per cent of the population of the Republic of India, living in roughly 90 per cent of the country, palpably feel themselves to be part of a single nation. Across this vast and diverse terrain, the elected government enjoys a legitimacy of power and authority. Throughout this territory the citizens of India are free to live, study, take employment and invest in businesses.

  There are perhaps only two other modern political experiments comparable in scale and size to the Republic of India, which have likewise sought to forge national unity amidst an astonishing diversity of languages, religions, ethnicities, and ways of life. These are the now deceased Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the still flourishing United States of America. The USSR witnessed savage violence following its birth, this continuing through the famines and the death camps of the 1930s and beyond. The United States was founded on the backs of the genocide of the Native Americans, and consolidated by the enslavement of millions of Africans. Ninety years after its formation, it was torn by a civil war in which some 750,000 people perished.

  European nations such as France, England and Spain also witnessed bloody civil wars at various points in their history. So too, as I have noted already, have the countries of Pakistan and Sri Lanka within South Asia itself. But India hasn’t, at least thus far. Born through the mass violence of Partition, India has since escaped the kind of intense and often endemic strife that has beset so many other national experiments in Asia and Africa, not to speak of Europe and the Americas.

  VI

  The history of independent India has amended and modified theories of nationalism based on the experience of the West. However, it has even more frontally challenged theories of democracy emanating from the Western experience.

  Ever since the 1952 elections were described as the ‘biggest gamble in history’, obituaries have been written for Indian democracy. It has been said, time and again, that a poor, diverse and divided country cannot sustain the practice of (reasonably) free and fair elections.

  Yet it has. In those first general elections voter turnout was less than 46 per cent. Over the years this has steadily increased; from the late 1960s about three out of five eligible Indians have voted on election day. The voter turnout during the most recent general elections, in 2014, was 66.3 per cent, a record for India, and far higher than is the case in most Western democracies, including the United States.

  In Assembly elections the voting percentage has tended to be even higher. When these numbers are disaggregated they reveal a further deepening. In the first two general elections, less than 40 per cent of eligible women voted; by 1998 the figure was in excess of 60 per cent. Besides, as surveys showed, they increasingly exercised their choice independently, that is, regardless of their husband’s or father’s views on the matter. Also voting in ever higher numbers were Dalits and tribals, the oppressed and marginalized sections of society. In north India in particular, Dalits turned out in far greater numbers than high castes. As the political analyst Yogendra Yadav points out, ‘India is perhaps the only large democracy in the world today where the turnout of the lower orders is well above that of the most privileged groups’.30

  Recent studies of voter behaviour suggest that while the middle and upper castes vote because they consider it a civic duty, the poor vote to assert their identity as, at least on this day, equal citizens of the land. A rickshaw puller in UP told a researcher that ‘voting is important. If I don’t vote, I am dead to the state’. A peasant in the same state put it even more emphatically: ‘I am because I vote on Election Day. Otherwise, what is my stature in this society?’ A respondent in Maharashtra remarked that ‘the system may not work for us, but I can vote. It is still “Lokshahi” – rule by the people, not “Rajshahi” – rule by the King’. And a citizen in Tamil Nadu remarked that ‘if the government does not work [for us], we will vote for someone else’.31

  An ethnographic study of rural Bengal found that ‘on election day, the village woke up earlier than usual and bustled around urgently with an air of suppressed excitement, like on important festivals’. Men preferred to vote as soon as the booth opened in the morning, with women going in the afternoon, after lunch. Both men and women chose to go in groups, seeing this as a convivial, social, occasion. Notably, the ‘egalitarian mechanics of the poll afforded particular pleasure’, the fact that on this day, this occasion, this ritual, the traditional hierarchies of caste, class and gender broke down completely.32

  The Indian love of voting is well illustrated by the case of a cluster of villages on the Andhra/Maharashtra border. Issued voting cards by the administrations of both states, the villagers seized the opportunity to exercise their franchise twice over.33 It is also illustrated by the peasants in Bihar who go to the polls despite threats by Maoist revolutionaries. Dismissing elections as an exercise in bourgeois hypocrisy, the Maoists have been known to blacken the faces of villagers campaigning for political parties, and to warn potential voters that their feet and hands would be chopped up. Yet, as an anthropologist working in central Bihar found, ‘the overall effect of poll-boycott on voter turnout seems to be negligible’. In villages where Maoists had been active for years, ‘in fact, election day was seen as an enjoyable (almost festive) occasion. Women dressed in bright yellows and reds, their hair oiled and adorned with clips, made their way to the polling booth in small groups’.34 Likewise, in parts of the north-east where the writ of the Indian state runs erratically or not at all, insurgents are unable to stop villagers from voting. As one chief election commissioner wryly put it, ‘the Election Commission’s small contribution to the integrity of the country is to make these areas part of the country for just one day, election day’.35

  These developments vindicate the faith in universal adult franchise placed by the framers of the Indian constitution. After the first such exercise, in 1952, Devadas Gandhi, the Mahatma’s son and also the editor of the Hindustan Times, wrote to an American friend that ‘the general elections are a very great event, greater than I had anticipated. Adult franchise has had a wonderful start. It has meant an awakening and education which could not have been achieved by any other means’.36 And so it has turned out.

  That e
lections have been successfully indigenized in India is demonstrated by the depth and breadth of their reach – across and into all sections of Indian society – by the passions they evoke, and by the humour that surrounds them. There is a very rich archive of electoral cartoons, poking fun at promises made by prospective politicians, their desperation to get a party ticket and much else.37 At other times the humour can be gentle rather than mocking. Consider the career of a cloth merchant from Bhopal named Mohan Lal, who contested elections against five different prime ministers. Wearing a wooden crown, and a garland gifted by himself, he would walk the streets of his constituency, ringing a bell. He unfailingly lost his deposit, thereby justifying his own, self-inflicted sobriquet of Dhartipakad, or he who lies, humbled, on the ground. His idea in contesting elections, said Mohan Lal, was ‘to make everyone realise that democracy was meant for one and all’.38

  That elections allow all Indians to palpably feel part of India is also made clear by the experience of Goa. When it was united – or reunited – with India by force in 1961, there was much adverse commentary in the Western press. But where in four hundred years of Portuguese rule the Goans had never been allowed to choose their own leaders, within a couple of years of coming under the rule of New Delhi they were able to do so. The political scientist Benedict Anderson has tellingly compared India’s treatment of Goa with Indonesia’s treatment of East Timor, that other Portuguese colony ‘liberated’ by armed nationalists:

  Nehru had sent his troops to Goa in 1960 (sic) without a drop of blood being spilt. But he was a humane man and the freely elected leader of a democracy; he gave the Goanese their own autonomous state government, and encouraged their full participation in India’s politics. In every respect, General Suharto was Nehru’s polar opposite.39

  VII

  Considering the size of the electorate, it is overwhelmingly likely that more people have voted in Indian elections than voters in any other democracy. India’s success in this regard is especially striking when compared to the record of its great Asian neighbour, China. That country is larger, but far less divided on ethnic or religious lines, and far less poor as well. Yet there has never been a single general election held there. In other ways, too, China is much less free than India. The flow of information is highly restricted – when the search engine Google set up shop in China in February 2006, it had to agree to submit to state censorship. The movement of people is regulated as well – the permission of the State is usually required to change one’s place of residence.