India After Gandhi Revised and Updated Edition

by Ramachandra Guha

  26Cf. reports in The Telegraph, 1 April 1990; in Frontline, 14–27 April 1990; in The Illustrated Weekly of India, 17 June 1990; in the Times of India, 11 February 1991. See also Alexander Evans, ‘A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001’, Contemporary South Asia, volume 11, number 1, 2002.

  27Cf. Praveen Swami, ‘The Nadimarg Outrage’, Frontline, 25 April 2003.

  28Vinay Sitapati, Half Lion: How P. V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India (New Delhi: Penguin, 2015), Chapters 6 and 7.

  29Anne O. Krueger and Sajjid Chinoy, ‘The Indian Economy in Global Context’, in Anne O. Krueger, ed., Economic Policy Reforms and the Indian Economy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002). For an overview of the Indian economy on the eve of the reforms, see Bimal Jalan, ed., The Indian Economy: Problems and Prospects (New Delhi: Viking, 1992).

  30See Jairam Ramesh, To the Brink and Back: India’s 1991 Story (New Delhi: Rupa, 2015), pp. 35–7, 144–5, 184.

  31Arvind Panagriya, ‘Growth and Reforms during 1980s and 1990s’, Economic and Political Weekly, 19 June 2004.

  32Ashok V. Desai, My Economic Affair (New Delhi: Wiley Eastern, 1993); Kaushik Basu, ‘Future Perfect?’, Hindustan Times, 5 May 2005.

  33See http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/manmohan-singh-opening-indian-economy-1991-economic-reforms-pv-narasimha-rao-rbi-indian-rupee-devaluation-2886876/ (accessed 1 July 2016).

  34See Dani Rodrik and Arvind Subramanian, From ‘Hindu Growth’ to Productivity Surge: The Mystery of the Indian Growth Transition, National Bureau of Applied Economic Research, Washington, March 2004.

  35Dennis J. Encarnation, Dislodging Multinationals: India’s Strategy in Comparative Perspective (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 214–5, 225.

  36Surendra Malik, compiler, Supreme Court Mandal Commission Case, 1992 (Lucknow: Eastern Book Company, 1992), pp. 180, 196, 379, 387, 412, 424, etc.

  37Madhav Godbole, Unfinished Innings: Recollections and Reflections of a Civil Servant (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1996), pp. 344–53.

  38See P. V. Narasimha Rao, Ayodhya: 6 December 1992 (New Delhi: Viking, 2006), pp. 99–100.

  39Godbole, Unfinished Innings, p. 363.

  40Quoted in Sunday, 6–12 December 1992.

  41This account of the demolition of the Babri Masjid is based, in the main, on Dilip Awasthi, ‘A Nation’s Shame’, India Today, 31 December 1992. But see also Harinder Baweja, ‘Today, 10 Years Ago: What Really Happened’, The Asian Age, 6 December 2002.

  42The conversation was reported in Sunday, 13–19 December 1992.

  43K. R. Malkani, The Politics of Ayodhya and Hindu-Muslim Relations (New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1993), pp. 3–4.

  44Quoted in Venkitesh Ramakrishnan, ‘The Wrecking Crew’, Frontline, 1 January 1993.

  45Arun Shourie, ‘The Buckling State’, in Jitendra Bajaj, ed., Ayodhya and the Future India (Madras: Centre for Policy Studies, 1993), pp. 47–70.

  46Francine R. Frankel, India’s Political Economy, 1947–2004: The Gradual Revolution (second edition, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 714–5.

  47See ‘Bloody Aftermath’, India Today, 31 December 1992.

  48Clarence Fernandez and Naresh Fernandes, ‘The Winter of Discontent’, in Dileep Padgaonkar, ed., When Bombay Burned (New Delhi: UBSPD, 1993), pp. 12–41.

  49Kalpana Sharma, ‘Chronicle of a Riot Foretold’, in Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner, Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 277.

  50Translated from the Marathi and quoted in Purandare, The Sena Story, p. 369.

  51Clarence Fernandez and Naresh Fernandes, ‘A City at War with Itself’, in Padgaonkar, ed., When Bombay Burned, pp. 42–104; Sharma, ‘Chronicle’, pp. 278–86.

  52‘Bombay Has Lost Its Character’, The Afternoon Dispatch and Courier, 10 January 1993, reprinted in ‘Busybee’, When Bombay was Bombed: Best of 1992–3 (Bombay: Oriana Books, 2004).

  53Frontline, 1 January 1993; Sunday, 13–19 December 1992; India Today, 31 December 1992.

  54Michael S. Serrill, ‘India: The Holy War’, Time, 21 December 1992.

  55The Times, 7 and 8 December 1992.

  56Geoffrey Morehouse, ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’, The Guardian, 10 March 2001.

  57Paul R. Brass, The Politics of India Since Independence (second edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 353–4, 365–6, 348–9.

  27. A MULTI-POLAR POLITY

  1‘In Search of the Messiah’, Sunday, 31 August–6 September 1988.

  2Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution, Chapter 11.

  3Cf. Ghanshyam Shah, ed., Dalits and the State (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 2002).

  4For more on Kanshi Ram and the rise of the BSP, see Sudha Pai, Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution: The Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002); Badri Narayan, Kanshiram: Leader of the Dalits (Gurgaon: Penguin India, 2014); Kanchan Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

  5Badri Narayan, ‘Heroes, Histories and Booklets’, EPW, 13 October 2001.

  6James Cameron, An Indian Summer (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 122.

  7André Béteille, ‘The Scheduled Castes: An Inter-Regional Perspective’, Journal of Indian School of Political Economy, volume 12, numbers 3 and 4, 2000.

  8Hugo Gorringe, Untouchable Citizens: Dalit Movements and Democratisation in Tamil Nadu (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005), p. 112.

  9The posthumous political importance of Ambedkar awaits a serious scholarly analysis. For clues to how important he is to the Dalit consciousness see, among other works: Chandra Bhan Prasad, Dalit Diary: 1999–2003 (Chennai: Navayana Publishing, 2004); Fernando Franco, Jyotsna Macwan, and Suguna Ramanathan, Journeys to Freedom: Dalit Narratives (Kolkata; Samya, 2004); and the ‘Margin Speak’ column in the EPW written by the Ambedkarite intellectual Anand Teltumbde.

  10See V. Jayanth, ‘Narasimha Rao and the Look East Policy’, http://www.thehindu.com/2004/12/24/stories/2004122407541200.htm (accessed 1 July 2016).

  11See Sitapati, Half Lion, Chapter 13.

  12See D. Bandyopadhyay, Saila K. Ghosh and Buddhadeb Ghosh, ‘Dependency versus Autonomy: Identity Crisis of India’s Panchayats’, EPW, 20 September 2003.

  13For details, see Mahi Pal, ‘Panchayati Raj and Rural Governance: Experiences of a Decade’, EPW, 10 January 2004.

  14See T. M. Thomas Isaac and Richard W. Franke, Local Democracy and Development: People’s Campaign for Decentralized Planning in Kerala (New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2000); Jos Chathukulam and M. S. John, ‘Five Years of Participatory Government in Kerala: Rhetoric and Reality’, EPW, 7 December 2002.

  15Rashmi Sharma, ‘Kerala’s Decentralisation: Idea in Practice’, EPW, 6 September 2003; Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee, ‘Poverty Alleviation Efforts of Panchayats in West Bengal’, EPW, 28 February 2004; Arild Engelsen Ruud, Poetics of Village Politics: The Making of West Bengal’s Rural Communism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003); Nirmal Mukherji and D. Bandopadhyay, ‘New Horizons for West Bengal Panchayats’, in Amitava Mukherjee, ed., Decentralization: Panchayats in the Nineties (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1994).

  16There is a growing academic literature on these questions. See, inter alia, the essays by Niraja Gopal Jayal, Bishnu N. Mohapatra and Sudha Pai in the ‘Democracy and Social Capital’ special issue of EPW, 24 February 2001; S. Sumathi and V. Sudarsen, ‘What Does the New Panchayat System Guarantee: A Case Study of Pappapatti’, EPW, 20 August 2005.

  17Cf. M. P. Singh and Rekha Saxena, India at the Polls: Parliamentary Elections in the Federal Phase (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003).

  18See Rasheed Kidwai, Sonia: A Biography (New Delhi: Viking Penguin, 2003).

  19Mehta, The Political Mind of India (Bombay: Socialist Party, 1952), p. 38.

  20Taya and Maurice Zinkin, ‘The Indian General Elections’, The World
Today, volume 8, number 5, May 1952.

  21Susanne Hoeber and Lloyd I. Rudolph, ‘The Centrist Future of Indian Politics’, Asian Survey, volume 20, number 6, June 1980.

  22Quoted in Lise McKean, Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 315.

  23Cf. the evidence and testimonies in Peter Gottshcalk, Beyond Hindu and Muslim: Multiple Identities in Narratives from Village India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).

  24Khadar Mohiuddin, ‘Birthmark’, in Velcheru Narayana Rao, ed. and tr., Twentieth Century Telugu Poetry: An Anthology (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 221–7.

  25D. R. Goyal, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (second edition, New Delhi: Radhakrishna Prakashan, 2000), pp. 17–8. For a fuller exposition of this ideology, and from the horse’s mouth as it were, see M. S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts (Bangalore: Vikrama Prakashan, 1966).

  26On the growth of the RSS since 1947, see, among other works, Tapan Basu et. al., Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1993); Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Pralay Kanungo, ‘Hindutva’s Entry into a “Hindu Province”: Early Years of RSS in Orissa’, EPW, 2 August 2003; Nandini Sundar, ‘Teaching to Hate: RSS’ Pedagogical Programme’, EPW, 17 April 2004.

  27Gowalkar, ‘Total Prohibition of Cow-Slaughter’, The Hitavada, 26 October 1952,

  28Cf. Thomas Blom Hansen, Urban Violence in India: Identity Politics, ‘Mumbai’, and the Postcolonial City (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), p. 85.

  29Neerja Chowdhury, ‘Sonia Takes a Political Dip at the Kumbh’, The New Indian Express, 20 January 2001.

  30On this last incident, see The Telegraph, 25 January 1999.

  31On the latter question, see P. N. Mari Bhatt and A. J. Francis Zavier, ‘Role of Religion in Fertility Decline: The Case of Indian Muslims’, EPW, 29 January 2005.

  32This paragraph is based on Hasan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (Armonk, N. Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2005), Chapters 9 and 10. The Tariq Ali quote comes from his The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads, and Modernity (London: Verso, 2002), p. 196.

  33Yoginder Sikand, ‘Changing Course of Kashmiri Struggle: From National Liberation to Islamist Jihad’, EPW, 20 January 2001.

  34Pamela Constable, ‘Selective Truths’, in Guns and Roses: Essays on the Kargil War (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 1999), p. 52; Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, interviewed by Amir Mir in Outlook, 23 July 2001.

  35Cf. Anil Nauriya, ‘The Destruction of a Historic Party’, Mainstream, 17 August 2002; Praveen Swami, ‘The Killing of Lone’, Frontline, 21 June 2002.

  36Cf. news report in the Times of India, 24 January 1990; Joshua Hammer, ‘Srinagar Dispatch’, The New Republic, 12 November 2001.

  37Reeta Chowdhuri-Tremblay, ‘Differing Responses to the Parliamentary and Assembly Elections in Kashmir’s Regions, and State-Societal Relations’, in Paul Wallace and Ramashray Roy, ed., India’s 1999 Elections and 20th Century Politics (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003).

  38Prabhu Ghate, ‘Kashmir: The Dirty War’, EPW, 26 January 2002.

  39Jaleel, ‘I Have Seen my Country Die’, The Telegraph, 26 May 2002.

  40Buchan, ‘Kashmir’, Granta, number 57, Spring 1997, p. 66.

  41Chandana Bhattacharjee, Ethnicity and Autonomy Movement: Case of Bodo-Kacharis of Assam (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1996); Sudhir Jacob George, ‘The Bodo Movement in Assam: Unrest to Accord’, Asian Survey, volume 34, number 10, October 1994.

  42Sanjoy Hazarika, Strangers of the Night: Tales of War and Peace from India’s Northeast (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1995), pp. 167–226. Cf. also Sanjib Baruah, ‘The State and Separatist Militancy in Assam: Winning a Battle and Losing the War?’, Asian Survey, volume 34, number 10, October 1994.

  43Anindita Dasgupta, ‘Tripura’s Brutal Cul de Sac’, Himal, December 2001.

  44Bhagat Oinam, ‘Patterns of Ethnic Conflict in the North-East: A Study on Manipur’, EPW, 24 May 2003; U. A. Shimray, ‘Socio-Political Unrest in the Region Called North-East India’, EPW, 16 October 2004.

  45Anon., ‘A Blueprint for Mizoram’, Grassroots Options, Monsoon 1999; Sudipta Bhattacharjee, ‘How to be Thirteenth Time Lucky’, The Telegraph, 30 June 1999; Nitin Gokhale, ‘Meghna Naidu in Aizawl’, Tehelka, 9 October 2004.

  46Sarabjit Singh, Operation Black Thunder: An Eyewitness Account of Terrorism in Punjab (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002), especially Chapters 22 through 30.

  47Cf. Anne Vaugier-Chatterjee, ‘Strains on Punjab Governance: An Assessment of the Badal Government (1997–1999)’, International Journal of Punjab Studies, volume 7, number 1, 2000.

  48See ‘The Dynamic Sikhs’, cover story in Outlook, 29 March 1999.

  49Singh, Operation Black Thunder, p. 338.

  50Robin Jeffrey, ‘“No Party Dominant”: India’s New Political System’, Himal, March 2002, p. 41.

  28. RULERS AND RICHES

  1See E. Sridharan, ‘Coalition Strategies and the BJP’s Expansion, 1989–2004’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, volume 43, number 2, 2005.

  2Cf. the critique of Nehru’s views in Jaswant Singh, Defending India (Bangalore: Macmillan India, 1999), pp. 29, 39, 42–3, 57–8, etc.

  3Stephen P. Cohen, India: Emerging Power (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 144–5.

  4Anupam Srivastava, ‘India’s Growing Missile Ambitions: Assessing the Technical and Strategic Dimensions’, Asian Survey, volume 40, number 2, 2000.

  5Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 364–76.

  6Ibid., p. 412.

  7Quoted in Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to be a Nuclear Power (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 2000), pp. 51–2.

  8See Paul R. Dettman, India Changes Course: Golden Jubilee to Millenium (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001), p. 41f.

  9Interview in Newsline (Karachi), June 1998.

  10Bhumitra Chakma, ‘Toward Pokharan II: Explaining India’s Nuclearisation Process’, Modern Asian Studies, volume 39, number 1, 2005.

  11For the links between the 1998 tests and India’s wider ambitions, see Hilary Synnott, The Causes and Consequences of South Asia’s Nuclear Tests, Adelphi Paper 332 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1999); Ashok Kapur, Pokharan and Beyond: India’s Nuclear Behaviour (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001). The arguments of the critics of India’s nuclear ambitions are collected in M. V. Ramanna and C. Rammanohar Reddy, eds, Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003).

  12Cf. cover story in India Today, 1 March 1999.

  13On why and how Pakistan planned the Kargil operation, see Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism, pp. 169–74; Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Delhi: Viking, 2002), pp. 87ff; Aijaz Ahmad, ‘The Many Roads to Kargil’, Frontline, 16 July 1999.

  14Praveen Swami, The Kargil War (revised edition, New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2000), pp. 10–1.

  15Rahul Bedi, ‘A Dismal Failure’, in Guns and Roses: Essays on the Kargil War (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 1999), p. 142.

  16The course of the Kargil war is described in the works cited in footnotes 30 and 31 above, and in Srinjoy Chowdhury, Despatches from Kargil (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000).

  17Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism, p. 174; interview with Nawaz Sharif in India Today, 26 July 2004.

  18Cf. news reports in The Asian Age, 4 July 1999; The Telegraph, 9 July 1999; The Hindu, 19 July 1999.

  19The Asian Age, 6 July 1999; The Hindu, 4 July 1999

  20Sarabjit Pandher, ‘Spirit of Nationalism Eclipses Memories of [Operation] Bluestar’, The Hindu, 16 June 1999.

  21‘Army Job Seekers Go Berserk’, The Hindu, 18 July 1999.

  22See Venkitesh Ramakrishnan, �
��A Debate without Direction’, Frontline, 12–25 September 1998.

  23Nagesh Kumar, ‘Indian Software Industry Development: International and National Perspective’, EPW, 10 November 2001; Pradosh Nath and Amitava Hazra, ‘Configuration of Indian Software Industry’, EPW, 23 February 2002; Arun Shourie, ‘Ensuring IT remains Indian Territory’, The New Indian Express, 3 January 2004.

  24AnnaLee Saxenian, ‘Bangalore: The Silicon Valley of Asia?’, in Krueger, ed., Economic Policy Reforms, p. 175.

  25See, for more details, Dinesh C. Sharma, The Long Revolution: The Birth and Growth of India’s IT Industry (New Delhi: HarperCollins India 2009).

  26Raj Chengappa and Malini Goyal, ‘Housekeepers to the World’, India Today, 18 November 2002; ‘Outsourcing to India’, The Economist, 5 May 2001.

  27Saritha Rai, ‘Prayers Outsourced to India’; idem, ‘US Kids Outsource Homework to India’, both originally published in The New York Times, reprinted in The Asian Age, 14 June 2004 and 11 September 2005, respectively.

  28Shankkar Aiyar, ‘Made in India’, India Today, 1 December 2003.

  29R. Nagaraj, ‘Foreign Direct Investment in India in the 1990s: Trends and Issues’, EPW, 26 April 2003.

  30Arvind Virmani, ‘India’s External Reforms: Modest Globalisation, Significant Gains’, EPW, 9 August 2003.

  31See Harish Damodaran, India’s New Capitalists: Caste, Business and Industry in a Modern Nation (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

  32E. Sridharan, ‘The Growth and Sectoral Composition of India’s Middle Class: Its Impact on the Politics of Economic Liberalization’, India Review, volume 3, number 4, 2004.

  33Surinder S. Jodhka and Aseem Prakash, The Indian Middle Class (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016).

  34Devesh Kapur, ‘The Middle-Class in India: A Social Formation or a Political Actor?’, Political Power and Social Theory, volume 21, 2010.

  35Cf. William Mazzarella, Shovelling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 74–6, 240, 258, etc.

  36Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, Social Mobility in Kerala: Modernity and Identity in Conflict (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p. 127.