Transitions to Democracy: Chapter 10

Lisa Anderson (editor)

1999

10. Explaining India’s Transition to Democracy

The Continuing Puzzle of Indian Democracy

The vast majority of states in Asia and Africa that emerged from the detritus of the European colonial empires have failed to make viable transitions to democratic rule. Authoritarianism, whether civilian or military, quickly replaced the colonial state. A handful of other states emergent from British colonial rule did successfully made a transition to democracy. However, most of these states have fallen prey to authoritarian temptations since their genesis. India’s democratic experience has been singular. Apart from a period of 20 months between 1975 and 1977, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a “state of emergency” and suspended civil rights and personal liberties, democracy in India has not only survived, but indeed has thrived. Today, though politically unstable, India is in the process of expanding franchise and consolidating democracy. ₁

The Indian constitution guarantees and the executive and judiciary, in large measure, uphold certain civil and political liberties. (Admittedly, some of these have been sharply curtailed when the state has perceived significant threats to national security.) ₂ The country also holds regular elections at local, state, and national levels. Most commentators contend that the vast majority of these elections are free from coercion or malfeasance. When instances of either are unearthed by a remarkably free press, the Election Commission countermands the results and requires fresh polls. Popularly elected governments, after losing their mandate, have peacefully remitted power to successful opponents. Most remarkably, the powerful Indian Army remains strikingly apolitical. It has shown less than scant interest in governing the country.

Of course, Indian democracy has its shortcomings: Rampant political corruption has infected the body politic. Today, a former prime minister Narasimha Rao, still stands in the dock accused of a series of illegal transactions. Laloo Prasad Yadav, a former chief minister of India’s most economically backward state, Bihar, is now out on bail after being charged with raiding the exchequer in a state-run animal fodder scheme. Large numbers of elected legislators in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, have criminal backgrounds or have criminal investigations pending against them.

Another dimension of Indian politics is equally unsavory. Since the early 1980s, many of India’s politicians have come to rely on condotierri to enforce their writ against recalcitrant voters or to intimidate political opponents. In an attempt to draw attention to this growing politician-criminal nexus the Rao government commissioned a study to assess its scope and significance. A former civil servant of unimpeachable qualifications, N. N. Vohra, was entrusted with this task. Though various Indian newsmagazines and newspapers published excerpts from it, the Vohra Commission Report has yet to be made public.

A related issue concerns the loss of probity and neutrality of significant sections of the police force in India. On a number of occasions in recent years, state-level police forces, especially in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Maharashtra, have completely failed to stop sectarian violence. Worse still, in December 1992, the local police proved to be passive spectators when a Hindu mob affiliated with the jingoistic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) destroyed the Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh. ₃ Later, as communal riots ensued in a number of Indian cities, especially in Bombay (now Mumbai), the police tacitly collaborated with Hindu rioters attacking Muslim communities.

Nevertheless, these shortcomings are unlikely to fundamentally undermine India’s democratic ethos. The Indian polity possesses sufficient self-correcting mechanisms to ensure the continuity of democratic norms and practices amid political malfeasance and chicanery. For example, many political institutions denuded in the 1970s and 1980s are regaining their robustness. India’s increasingly activist judiciary is trying to restore some probity and efficacy to a variety of institutions. ₄ For example, it is primarily due to the Supreme Court’s willingness to entertain public interest litigation that Narasimha Rao is still under investigation on corruption charges. The once-somnolent Election Commission has now emerged as a powerful watchdog. Also, since 1992, faced with considerable international and domestic criticism for the harshness of its response to the insurgency in Kashmir, the government created the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). ₅ Justice Jaganath Mishra, a retired judge of India’s Supreme Court, was made the head of the NHRC. Initially, most human rights activists dismissed its creation as merely a symbolic gesture designed to deflect sharp criticism of the government’s human rights record. Yet, contrary to these expectations, the NHRC has acquired a degree of organizational autonomy. Though still wary of publicly upbraiding the government on national-security-related issues, it has shown signs of increasing independence.

Simultaneously, civil society in India is becoming increasingly stronger. The Indian press, which has long been feisty, has now become a formidable source of political accountability. A plethora of grassroots nongovernmental organizations routinely contend with the executive on a range of issues. Finally, the forces of economic liberalization, which were unleashed in the wake of a fiscal crisis in 1991, have also narrowed the scope of official graft and corruption. Businessmen no longer have to supplicate and bribe bureaucrats and ministers or to negotiate a Byzantine maze of regulations to enter new industries, expand plant capacity, or locate new factories. ₆

Searching for Explanations

What factors explain this form of Indian “exceptionalism?” The answers that various social scientists have provided are inadequate at best, and often flawed. An eminent scholar of Indian politics, Myron Weiner, has argued that democracy in India is “tutelary.” ₇ In his view, democracy was bequeathed to India as part of the British colonial heritage. This argument is not entirely without merit. ₈ However, it does not provide an adequate explanation. Pakistan, of course, gained independence at exactly the same time. Yet that nation’s transition to democracy is still a work in progress. ₉

A pre-eminent scholar of comparative sociology, Barrington Moore, also attempted to provide an explanation for India’s transition to democracy. However, a close reading of Moore’s work reveals that the argument he constructs is more about India’s failure to modernize than a delineation of India’s pathway to democracy. Encapsulated in his argument are many well-documented propositions dealing with the structure of the nationalist movement that facilitated the transition to democracy. For example, Moore explicitly recognizes Mohandas Gandhi’s critical role in transforming the organizational structure of the principal nationalist organization, the Indian National Congress. Specifically, Gandhi’s contribution lay in transforming a quintessentially moderate, Anglicized and upper-middle-class party into an organization with a mass political base. ₁₀ In pursuit of this end, Gandhi successfully mobilized India’s disenfranchised and poor through the adoption of the tactic of mass civil disobedience. One such episode included the Salt March, where he led thousands of poor and illiterate Indians to violate the British colonial government’s monopoly on salt making.

Judith M. Brown, a historian of contemporary India, provides a sweeping narrative account of the origins of Indian democracy. ₁₁ From her narrative it is possible to glean certain general propositions that contribute to an explanation of India’s transition to democracy. She cites three interrelated sets of factors: the lengthy experience of working under British democratic structures, Nehru’s role in fostering debate within the Congress party, and the ideological commitments of a segment of India’s politicians to the creation of a democratic state. Her argument is largely accurate and compelling. However, she does not specify which of these various factors proved to be the most significant. Furthermore, all British practice in colonial India could hardly be deemed to be democratic. For example, Congress refused to participate in the war effort due to the British failure to consult its leadership before committing India. In response to Congress’s unwillingness to support Britain in the struggle against the Axis powers the colonial authorities incarcerated much of the Congress leadership. Simultaneously, they permitted the Muslim League, an essentially sectarian party under the tutelage of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, to operate at will. ₁₂

Sunil Khilnani, a political scientist of Indian origin, in a recent work on postindependence Indian politics, provides yet another account of India’s successful transition to democracy. He explicitly argues that democracy in India is the result of neither deep-rooted Indian traditions nor the legacy of British colonialism. Instead, he contends that democracy in India arose from distinct elite choices. ₁₃ A critical segment of the Indian nationalist elite adopted democratic norms and practices and infused these into the body of the Indian polity. Subsequently, one of the principal architects of Indian democracy, Prime Minister Nehru, almost didactically built upon the legacy of the nationalist movement. Khilnani’s analysis is fundamentally sound. However, he fails to explicate in his slender volume the pre-independence structures, mechanisms, and social forces that predisposed India toward democracy in the postindependence era.

The Roots of Democratic Practice

To explain the success of India’s transition to democracy from quasi-authoritarian British rule it is necessary to carefully examine the ideology, organization, and structure of the Indian nationalist movement. I will test all four of Dankwart Rustow’s critical propositions that predispose a state toward a democratic transition: the forging of a sense of national unity, the existence of entrenched conflict, the conscious adoption of democratic rules, and the “habituation” of the electorate and the leadership to democratic norms and practices. ₁₄ All four of these conditions obtained to varying degrees in the Indian nationalist context.

The Forging of National Unity

The Anglicized upper-middle-class representatives who formed the Indian National Congress in 1885 did not entertain explicit notions of popular sovereignty and extensive democratic franchise. Instead it was a quintessentially reformist organization pursuing ameliorative goals. Its principal objective was to establish some limited prospect of self-governance, not to challenge the legitimacy of British rule in India. The Indian National Congress maintained its reformist agenda into the early 1920s. During this decade, under the stellar influence of Mohandas Gandhi, the organization underwent a fundamental transformation. Gandhi’s singular contribution to the development of Indian nationalism lay in the metamorphosis that he brought about in the structure, organization, and membership of the Congress. Under his tutelage Congress adopted the principle of “purna Swaraj,” or complete independence. ₁₅ More to the point, Gandhi successfully democratized the Congress Party. Through his adoption of mass-based civil disobedience movements he politicized large segments of India’s peasantry and dispossessed. By the early 1930s the Congress had largely shed its elitist orientation and was beginning to strike deep roots in the Indian soil.

Gandhi had successfully democratized the principal organ of India’s nationalist movement. However, the task of forging a sense of national unity fell to one of his closest and most able lieutenants, Jawaharal Nehru, whose contribution to forging a vision of national unity simply cannot be overestimated. In many ways, through his copious writings and speeches Nehru successfully developed a usable past for India. The emergence of India as a state, he contended, contrary to British colonial historiography, was not a function of British colonialism. Instead a civilizational entity had long preceded the arrival of British colonialism and had a deep, underlying sense of unity. He wielded this argument with considerable force in bringing together what must be the largest concentration of human diversity within a fixed geographic space. Unless it was possible to demonstrate that India possessed some intrinsic and underlying unity, the postindependence Indian polity could easily divide into ethnic, religious, and linguistic fragments. In this regard, Nehru and other Indian nationalists faced a key challenge. They had to effectively counter much British colonial historiography that sought to portray India as a quintessentially fragmented entity composed of primordial nations. ₁₆ Worse still, British colonial policy reflected such beliefs. For example, thanks to the entreaties of certain leaders of the Muslim communities of India, the British in an initial step toward democratic governance had granted separate electorates to Muslims and Hindus under the aegis of the Minto-Morley Reforms in 1909. The creation of these electorates helped shape a distinctive, nationwide Muslim identity and provided a structural basis for later Muslim separatism. ₁₇

To combat colonial visions of Indian disunity, Nehru self-consciously attempted to create an alternative perspective on India’s precolonial heritage which emphasized unity and continuity. To this end, Nehru wrote copiously and cogently about India’s underlying unity despite the existence of widespread ethnoreligious, linguistic, and regional diversity. One sample of his prodigious output will suffice:

Some kind of dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization. That unity was not conceived as something imposed from outside, a standardization of externals or even beliefs. It was something deeper and, within the fold, the widest tolerance of belief and custom was practised and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged. ₁₈

Yet Nehru was astute enough to realize that the forging of this sense of national unity could not be accomplished through the creation of a mere nationalist myth. Nor could he hope to meld disparate ethnoreligious groups through coercion or personal charisma. He well realized that the only way India could be effectively governed was through some form of a democratic dispensation. Only as long as the disparate regions and groups agreed on some common political framework with neutral rules could the state forge national unity. The mechanism that provided this arena was liberal, parliamentary democracy.

The key instrument in the quest for a democratic order in postindependence India was the development of the Congress party. As independence approached, the party had successfully constructed a mass political base and sought, however imperfectly, to represent all Indians regardless of religious affiliation, regional loyalty, or ethnic background. Admittedly, it was not entirely successful in drawing in significant segments of India’s largest minority, the Muslims. ₁₉ Muslim nationalism, under the leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, while opposed to British rule, increasingly took on a separatist orientation. In the last few years prior to the independence of the two states, the prospects of cooperation between the Muslim League and the Congress steadily vanished.

It is also necessary to underscore that one segment of the majority Hindu population, though violently opposed to British rule, nevertheless remained outside the ambit of the Congress. This portion of the population cared little for Congress’s secular outlook. Instead a vision of ethnic Hindu nationalism animated Hindu jingoists, who feared the intrusion of British and Western cultural mores and sought to realize a pristine (and largely imaginary) Hindu polity that they claimed once existed. Accordingly, they found refuge in the Hindu Mahasabha Party. ₂₀

These limitations notwithstanding, the Congress proved quite inclusive on another count; it included members of widely varying political persuasions. One segment of the party was firmly committed to free enterprise while others professed their allegiance to some form of socialism. The upper echelons of the Congress also evinced these diverse ideological propensities. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who would become India’s first Home Minister, embodied the pro-business element within Congress. Nehru, on the other hand, represented those who subscribed to a variant of British Fabian socialism. ₂₁ The strength of the Congress lay in its ability to subsume these markedly divergent ideological proclivities of its membership. In effect, the party became an umbrella organization. ₂₂

The only group that did not actively participate in the nationalist movement were the potentates of the 500-odd “princely states.” In fact, many of them feared the departure of the British Crown. Though subservient to the Crown, these rulers had enjoyed wide latitude in the conduct of their affairs. Some of these rulers were benevolent and forward-looking individuals. Others were despotic, cruel, and did little or nothing to ameliorate the lives of their subjects. Indeed the behavior of many resembled Marx’s portrait of Oriental despots. Regardless of their proclivities, however, they all realized that under the new political dispensation in New Delhi they would soon lose their powers and perquisites. Their misgivings were hardly ill-founded. Within a few years after independence the new Congress government in New Delhi had stripped them of their powers, changed their state boundaries, and had absorbed their subjects into the larger Indian fold. ₂₃

The Existence of Entrenched Conflict

According to Rustow, the second condition that predisposes a regime toward democracy is the existence of entrenched conflict. In the Indian case the entrenched conflict was largely between the forces of British imperial rule and the nationalist movement. Indeed this form of entrenched conflict coupled with the inclusive ideology of the Congress gave considerable force to the creation of a democratic nationalist movement.

The first challenge to foreign and specifically the British presence in India came in 1857 in the twilight of the Mughal empire. The uprising against the East India Company, the forerunner to British imperial control, had briefly united Hindus and Muslims. ₂₄ The British managed to quickly, if brutally, suppress the uprising. This movement, while clearly a reaction against the intrusion of foreign mores, customs, and practices, cannot be fairly characterized as the beginning of the nationalist movement. However, it marked the initial challenge to the entry of foreign customs into Indian society. A more formal movement emphasizing ideas of self-government and political representation emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century.

At the inevitable cost of some oversimplification, three phases of opposition to British imperial rule can be delineated. The initial phase started toward the end of the late nineteenth century. During this phase, nationalist demands were exceedingly limited in scope and were essentially reformist. They did not seek to overthrow British rule but sought a limited measure of self-government. A second phase emerged during which there were outbursts of terrorist activity alongside demands for constitutional reform. ₂₅ This phase lasted from the early part of the twentieth century to the late 1920s. The third phase emerged in the late 1920s. Under the influence of Mohandas Gandhi, the nationalist movement, despite differences in tactics and strategy, sought nothing less than complete independence.

The Conscious Adoption of Democratic Rules

Under the aegis of the Congress party a variety of views and positions could contend with one another. In the process, the membership became socialized into the norms of parliamentary debate and discourse. Most importantly, they learnt the significance of political compromise and logrolling. W. H. Morris-Jones, a long-time analyst of Indian politics has trenchantly argued that

Congressmen were accustomed then to holding together in one organization many interests frequently thought of as requiring much reconciliation and mutual adjustment. Congress, that is to say, was used to performing in some degree the work of a national parliament where clashing viewpoints and concerns meet to determine a generally acceptable line of policy. ₂₆

Many of these developments took place in the wake of the Government of India Act of 1935 which provided for limited representation. Specifically, the act led to creation of provincial legislatures based upon limited suffrage. In the wake of the 1937 elections, held under the terms of the Government of India Act of 1935, the Congress moved from its agitational role to that of a parliamentary party focused on representation and governance. Congress, which won an overwhelming victory in the 1937 elections, did govern until the outbreak of World War Two. The British failure to consult with Congress prior to committing India to the war effort led to the resignation of all Congress governments. Subsequently, at the end of World War Two, and in the wake of the January 1946 elections, Congress came to power in September 1946. Earlier in the year, the British authorities, in a last-ditch attempt to leave behind a unified India, had proposed the Cabinet Mission Plan. This plan envisaged the creation of a three-tier federal system with considerable autonomy for various regions of the country. Only defense, foreign affairs, and communications would be the preserve of the national government in New Delhi. For different reasons, both the Congress and the League, after their initial and conditional acceptances, ultimately chose to reject the Cabinet Mission Plan. ₂₇

One portion of the Cabinet Mission Plan, however, led to the creation of the Constituent Assembly. The task of this Assembly was to write a constitution for postindependence India. The Muslim League, placing the worst possible construction on a careless remark of Nehru, chose to stay out of the constitution-framing process. ₂₈ Subsequently, Nehru and the Congress did make overtures to convince the League to join the Constituent Assembly but to little avail. The last British efforts to forge some unity between Congress and the League failed.

Eventually, the Congress leaders turned their attention to the task of constitution-making. The principal framers of the constitution, with one exception, came from highly privileged backgrounds. Four of them, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, though representing different temperaments and ideological positions, were all Congress stalwarts. One other individual, Dr. Ambedkar, a Harijan (an untouchable), also played a critical role in shaping the constitution’s position on minority rights. It is to their credit that they fashioned a document that set the terms of democratic and representative discourse in India. As Granville Austin, the foremost American authority on the Indian Constitution, has written:

One might assume, aware of the character of monolithic political systems in other countries, that a mass-party in India would be rigid and narrow in outlook and that its powerful leadership would silence dissent and confine policy and decision-making to the hands of the select few. In India the reverse was the case. The membership of the Congress in the Constituent Assembly and outside held social, economic and political views ranging from the reactionary to the revolutionary, and it did not hesitate to voice them. The leaders of the Assembly, who played the same role in the Congress and in the Union Government, were national heroes and had unlimited power; yet decision-making in the Assembly was democratic.The Indian Constitution expresses the will of the many rather than the needs of the few [emphasis added].

The constitution that they produced and that India adopted in 1950 had a number of salient features that distinguished it from the structures of British colonial rule. Among other matters, it guaranteed certain fundamental rights, including the right to private property, freedom of religion, assembly, movement, and association. Simultaneously, it provided minorities guarantees to protect their language, script, and culture. The constitution also abolished untouchability; discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste, sex and place of birth; and outlawed forced labor. It also affirmed the sovereignty of parliament and granted the Supreme Court the power of judicial review. In turn, it provided various mechanisms by which citizens would be able to move the Supreme Court and lower courts to enforce fundamental rights. At another level, it created a quasi-federal polity, with significant powers, especially those dealing with fiscal matters, vested in the central government. Perhaps most significantly from the standpoint of democratic participation, it guaranteed universal adult franchise.

In addition to the fundamental rights that it enshrined, the constitution also had an important preamble, the Directive Principles of State Policy. These principles, which are nonjusticiable, exhort the state to ensure that its citizens possess an adequate means of livelihood, that the economic resources of the country are harnessed to promote the common good, that the health of workers is not endangered and that the state will make every effort to improve the standard of living of the citizenry.

The “Habituation” of Leaders and Electorate to Democratic Norms

Rustow’s fourth and final condition, the “habituation” of the leadership and electorate to democratic norms and practices, also played a critical role in ensuring India’s transition to democracy. One episode in particular is emblematic. In August 1945, as independence approached, the Congress leadership was faced with an important dilemma. Certain members of the British Indian Army had defected to the Japanese during the war and had formed the Indian National Army (INA) under the leadership of a disaffected Congress leader, the Bengali nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose. ₂₉ In the wake of the Japanese defeat in Southeast Asia, British forces either killed or captured the majority of the INA in the Burmese theater.

The British authorities decided that they would prosecute the captured senior echelons of the INA. The British decision to try these individuals for treason generated considerable nationalist sentiment. A number of Congress stalwarts, including Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Aruna Asaf Ali, and Jawaharlal Nehru, rallied to the defense of these men. Eventually, they were either acquitted or Viceregal decrees suspended their sentences. The greater significance of the INA trials for the future of India’s democracy lay elsewhere.

In defending these individuals, Nehru supported their right to take up arms against a colonial, oppressive power. He argued that they had acted with the highest of motives. However, after the conclusion of the trials and with the onset of independence, he categorically refused to reinstate them into the Indian Army. Their motivations aside, Nehru held that they had broken the oath of office and had become politicized. Consequently, they could sow discord within the army’s ranks. By refusing to reinstate the INA leadership into the Indian Army, Nehru quickly established the supremacy of civilian authority over the military. Any Bonapartist ambitions harbored by members of the armed forces were effectively quashed.

The significance of this episode for India’s transition to democracy cannot be overstated. Nehru and his colleagues realized the signal importance of the establishment of civilian supremacy over the military in any democratic order. ₃₀ Nehru’s instincts proved to be uncannily correct. In neighboring Pakistan, the civilian authority became increasingly dependent on the military for maintaining public order in the wake of independence. As the military’s role in society expanded and civilian institutions proved to be weak, the armed forces gathered increasing power. In 1958 the Pakistani military staged a coup. Since then Pakistan has seen long periods of authoritarian military rule punctuated by brief, fitful steps toward democracy. ₃₁ Much of the nationalist legacy, especially institutional norms and practices, decayed in India in the 1970s. But the one norm, of firm civilian control over the military, despite many challenges, has survived unscathed. Unlike in much of the developing world the Indian armed forces remain singularly apolitical. In recent years, even a suggestion of expanding the military’s role in governance brought sharp rebukes and stern warnings from the defense minister.

In the early years of the Indian republic, Nehru again played a vital role in socializing India’s elected representatives in parliament to internalize democratic norms. The pre-independence history of the Congress party had emphasized debate, discussion, and compromise. Long before independence, thanks to its diverse social and ideological composition, Congress had acted as a microcosm parliament. Consequently, norms of parliamentary conduct were hardly unknown to the vast majority of India’s elected representatives. The existence of this tradition made his task considerably easier. Nevertheless, Nehru rarely lost an opportunity to persuade, hector, and cajole his parliamentary colleagues, acting much like a schoolmaster imparting civics lessons to his pupils. ₃₂

Finally, the constitutional dispensation that India’s elite created helped in the “habituation” of the electorate to democratic norms and principles. The constitution drafted by members of the Constituent Assembly squarely upheld the principle of universal adult franchise. The extension of suffrage from the very outset had the effect of, at least notionally, enfranchising all of India’s adult electorate. A series of elections at local, regional, and national levels in which growing sections of the eligible electorate participated made Indians, regardless of their station in life, realize the significance of adult suffrage.

Peril and Promise: Indian Democracy Approaches the Millennium

Where does Indian democracy stand today? It is virtually a commonplace assertion that India’s political institutions have decayed since the early 1970s. A number of social scientists have concerns about India’s “crisis of governability.” ₃₃ The sources of such decay are usually traced to the populist policies of Indira Gandhi. In attempts to consolidate her personal power, the argument goes, she systematically subverted every institution that her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, had so carefully nurtured. She undermined internal democracy in the Congress party by her failure to hold intraparty elections. She undermined judicial independence and politicized the central bureaucracy. She contested the 1971 national election on the slogan of garibi hatao (literally, “abolish poverty”). Even national elections under her leadership became largely plebiscitary exercises. She resorted to a series of populist slogans and policies designed to circumvent institutional checks and constraints. In another populist gesture, she nationalized the banking industry. Yet one of the inadvertent byproducts of her populist slogans and policies was a dramatic rise in political mobilization. Tantalized by her promises to change the existing social order, a range of hitherto disenfranchised groups sought to enter the political arena. Furthermore, fitful increases in levels of literacy, mass media exposure, and the practice of participation in a variety of electoral exercises expanded political demands beyond the capacity of India’s political institutions.

However, Indira Gandhi alone cannot be held responsible for the decline of India’s political institutions. A congeries of other structural factors also contributed to institutional decay. These included the shrinking electoral base of the Congress Party, the concomitant entry of new social groups into Indian politics, and the fragmentation of the electoral base along ethnoreligious, regional, and class lines. Many of the new entrants into the political arena also undermined democratic norms and procedures. Some of these parties, especially the two communist parties, the pro-Soviet Communist Party of India (CPI) and the pro-Chinese Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI/M), openly contested parliamentary norms and parliamentary procedures. ₃₄ Worse still, they encouraged work stoppages, organized strikes and politicized police forces in the states that they governed. In the state of West Bengal, in the early 1970s, in addition to the emergence of a Communist-dominated United Front government, a neophyte Maoist guerrilla movement developed in the border district of Naxalbari. This organization—the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist, or CPI (M-L), popularly known as the Naxalites—received both material and ideological assistance from the People’s Republic of China. The CPI (M-L), unlike the other two communist parties, made no pretense of its contempt for democratic institutions. ₃₅

Other political parties, such as the ultranationalist Jana Sangh, the predecessor to today’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), sought to mobilize along caste and ethnoreligious lines, particularly appealing to the Brahmin and Bania castes. Such mobilization contributed significantly to widespread political instability and communal violence. In later years, the BJP significantly capitalized on the shortcomings of the practice of Indian secularism to stoke the sentiments of communal hatred. ₃₆ For example, in 1986 the Indian Supreme Court had chosen to grant an indigent Muslim woman alimony in contravention of Muslim personal law. The prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, fearful of losing Muslim votes, chose to legislatively overturn the decision and granted Muslims a separate dispensation. The BJP promptly went on the offensive, attacking the Congress government for practicing “pseudo-secularism” and “pampering” minorities.

What does the future hold for India’s democracy? The shortcomings of Indian democracy aside, there is little question that most of India’s political leadership and electorate have become “habituated” to democratic norms and practices. As early as 1977, as Indira Gandhi ended the “state of emergency” and declared elections, India’s poor and illiterate ousted her from office. Their decision to cast Indira Gandhi and the Congress out resoundingly demonstrated their understanding of the power of the ballot. Today, even though significant numbers of India’s politicians are manipulative and venal, they have to comport themselves within the ambit of democratic norms and rules or risk a similar fate. Consequently, though breaches and breakdowns of these norms and principles do occur, the structure of a democratic polity remains above question.

What about India’s national unity? Journalistic accounts of secessionist movements in various parts of the country and tales of sanguinary ethnoreligious violence frequently suggest that India is on the verge of collapse. Yet every one of these lugubrious predictions have been proven wrong. The Indian state has simultaneously weathered multiple crises and has not collapsed. It wields enormous coercive power, which it can bring to bear to produce order if not law. Additionally, despite the existence of centrifugal forces in various parts of the country, a high level of economic and social integration has been achieved in India. Above all, India’s democratic political structures, though compromised, provide important outlets for venting a variety of grievances. Consequently, comparisons with the fates of other polyethnic states, such as the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, are invidious and polemical.

This optimism about the future of democracy notwithstanding there are at least two issues that bode ill for India’s democratic future: the decline of political institutions in India and the rise of ethno-religious fervor. ₃₇ Yet there exist a number of countervailing institutional mechanisms and social forces that will place limits on these two corrosive tendencies.

Obviously, some political institutions in India are debile. However, others have successfully been resurrected. Moreover, as argued earlier, new institutions have been created to deal with emergent exigencies. Consequently, the picture of institutional decay can hardly be painted in uniform colors. In parts of India, especially in much of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the state cannot perform its most elementary functions. It fails to meet the Weberian standard of possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Or to put it in Marxian terms, the state has indeed withered away but not quite in the fashion that Marx had intended. Yet significant other parts of India are fairly well administered and are also economically prosperous. As long as the overall institutional balance remains in favor of a moderately neutral state as opposed to perverse social elements and forces, democracy in India will survive.

What about the Hindu revivalistic threat to Indian democracy? The BJP, which has spearheaded this movement, became a formidable force in Indian politics in the 1980s and 1990s after having been at the margins of the polity for four decades. The party will no doubt continue to remain a significant player in the Indian political arena. However, its threat to India’s secular landscape may be overstated. India still possesses sufficient countervailing forces to prevent the BJP from implementing its antisecular manifesto. Indeed, following the initial collapse of the United Front coalition government in 1997 the BJP made a concerted bid to form a national government. To its dismay, it failed miserably to co-opt any significant political party to participate in this endeavor. Admittedly, the unwillingness of most political parties to join forces with the BJP may not have stemmed from the most pristine of motives. In all likelihood, their leaders feared the opprobrium of joining an unelected party with a blatantly antisecular outlook. More to the point, once in office, and faced with the task of actually governing the country, the BJP leadership was quickly forced to moderate its stance on a variety of domestic and foreign policy issues. Parties in opposition can frequently wield the wrecking ball.

With the collapse of the Janata Dal led United Front government fresh national elections took place in February 1998. In these elections, the BJP emerged as the largest party in parliament and was asked to form a government. It successfully managed to cobble together a coalition drawing on the support of a host of small and regional parties. The structure of this diverse coalition, which represents varied interests, prevented the BJP from pursuing some of the more extreme goals in its agenda including the passage of a uniform civil code or the building of a temple at Ayodhya.

The existence of larger social forces will also act as important contraints on the BJP’s pursuit of some of its ideological goals. In particular, the mobilization of India’s minorities as well as its lower castes places important societal limitations on the BJP’s upper-caste and anti-secular orientation. ₃₈ Consequently, this form of contestation will force the BJP’s ideologues to adopt more pragmatic policies to maintain social peace and garner electoral support. Though the anti-secular challenge to Indian democracy cannot be dismissed it is still too early to write its epitaph.

Endnotes

The author gratefully acknowledges the criticisms and suggestions of Jyotirindra Das Gupta, Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr., Pratap Mehta, Traci Nagle, and Jack Snyder.

Note 1: For a thoughtful discussion see Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “India’s Disordered Democracy,”Pacific Affairs 64:4 (Winter 1991–92), pp. 536–548. Back.

Note 2: The disregard for civil liberties and human rights has been particularly noticeable when combating insurgencies in northeastern India, the Punjab, and most recently in Kashmir. Back.

Note 3: Hindu zealots attacked and destroyed the mosque in the town of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, on the putative grounds that it had been built on the ruins of a Hindu temple consecrating the birthplace of Lord Rama, an important member of the Hindu pantheon. The Hindu zealots claim that the Mughal emperor Babur had destroyed the temple. For a discussion of the issue see S. Gopal, ed., Anatomy of a Confrontation: The Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid Issue (New Delhi: Viking Penguin, 1991). Back.

Note 4: On the decline of political institutions in India see Paul R. Brass,The Politics of India Since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); for a nuanced discussion see Jyotirindra Das Gupta, “Democratic Becoming and Combined Development,” in Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds.Democracy in Developing Countries: Asia (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1989) Back.

Note 5: For a detailed discussion of Indian strategy and tactics in suppressing the Kashmir insurgency see Sumit Ganguly,The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace (Cambridge and Washington, D.C.: Cambridge University Press and the Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997). Back.

Note 6: Jagdish Bhagwati, India in Transition: Freeing the Economy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Back.

Note 7: Myron Weiner and Samuel Huntington, Understanding Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987), p. 33. Back.

Note 8: See for example the pioneering work of Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1959). Back.

Note 9: Allen McGrath, The Destruction of Democracy in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996). Back.

Note 10: Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 372. Back.

Note 11: Judith Brown,Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 378–79. Back.

Note 12: See for example Stanley Wolpert,Jinnah of Pakistan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). Back.

Note 13: Sunil Khilnani,The Idea of India (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), p. 34. Back.

Note 14: Sunil Khilnani,The Idea of India (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), p. 34. Back.

Note 15: Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee, K.N. Panikkar and Sucheta Mahajan,India’s Struggle for Independence (New Delhi: Viking Penguin, 1988), pp. 266–69. Back.

Note 16: Sunil Khilnani, “India’s Democratic Career,” in John Dunn, ed.,Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 193. Back.

Note 17: Peter Hardy,The Muslims of British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). Back.

Note 18: Jawaharlal Nehru,The Discovery of India (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1995), p. 62. Back.

Note 19: Several factors account for Congress’s failure to bring significant sections of Muslims under its aegis. Most of the senior leaders of the Congress were firm secularists. However, in its quest for electoral advantage, Congress on many an occasion had to make common cause with local notables. The secular credentials of these local satraps left much to be desired. Consequently, many Muslims feared Hindu domination in the aftermath of British rule. On this point see Hardy,Muslims of British India. Back.

Note 20: For the most comprehensive treatment of the origins and evolution of Hindu nationalism see Christophe Jaffrelot,The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New Delhi: Viking Penguin, 1996). Also see Bruce Graham,Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Back.

Note 21: Claude Markovits,Indian Business and Nationalist Politics, 1931–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 102–109. Back.

Note 22: Rajni Kothari, “The Congress ‘System’ in India,”Asian Survey 4:2 (December 1964), pp. 1161–73. Back.

Note 23: During the period of British colonial rule there were two classes of states in the British Indian Empire. One class was directly ruled from Whitehall and constituted British India. The other class consisted of the “princely states,” nominally independent but whose rulers swore allegiance to the British Crown. As independence approached British policy toward these nominally independent states was ambiguous at best. Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy, was in favor of their amalgamation with either India or Pakistan based upon their religious composition and geographic location. Other British officials, such as Sir Conrad Corfield, Mountbatten’s political adviser, encouraged many of the princes to seek independence. Not surprisingly, the Indian nationalists were staunchly opposed to any such plans. In their view, the independence of the princely states would amount to the Balkanization of India. On this point see the excellent work of Ian Copland,The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Back.

Note 24: For a variety of perspectives on the causes of the uprising see Ainslie T. Embree, ed.,India in 1857: The Revolt against Foreign Rule (New Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1987). Back.

Note 25: On the role of political terror, especially in the state of Bengal, see Bipan Chandra et al.,India’s Struggle for Independence, pp. 142–45. For the transformation of the Congress party in the first three decades of the twentieth century see Gopal Krishna, “The Development of the Indian National Congress as a Mass Organization, 1918–1923,”Journal of Asian Studies 25 (May 1966), pp. 413–30. Back.

Note 26: W. H. Morris-Jones,The Government and Politics of India (London: Eothen Press, 1987), p. 35. Back.

Note 27: The League also chose initially to boycott the Interim Government. Its refusal to enter the government stemmed from its dissatisfaction with not being granted an equal number of portfolios in the Interim Government. When it finally joined the government it proved to be a largely obstructionist force intent more on undermining Congress’s initiatives than on tackling the strenuous tasks of administration and governance. Faced with the mutual intransigence of the Congress and the League the British chose to transfer power to two separate entities, India and Pakistan. On this point see the discussion in Chandra et al.,India’s Struggle for Independence, pp. 492–95. Back.

Note 28: On this point see the superb discussion in Granville Austin,The Indian Constitution: The Cornerstone of a Nation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 6–9. Back.

Note 29: Stephen P. Cohen,The Indian Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). Back.

Note 30: Sumit Ganguly, “From the Defense of the Nation to Aid to the Civil,”Journal of Asian and African Affairs 26:1–2 (1991), pp. 11–25. Back.

Note 31: Hasan Askari Rizvi,The Military and Politics in Pakistan (Lahore: Progressive Publishers, 1986). Also see Saeed Shafqat,Civil Military Relations in Pakistan: From Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Benazir Bhutto (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997). Back.

Note 32: Michael Brecher,Nehru: A Political Biography (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959). Back.

Note 33: The classic statement on the relationship between political mobilization and institutional decay is Samuel Huntington,Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). For an application of Huntington’s thesis to the Indian context see Atul Kohli,Democracy and Discontent: India’s Crisis of Governability (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Back.

Note 34: For a discussion of these forces and trends see Francine Frankel,India’s Political Economy, 1947–1977: The Gradual Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). Back.

Note 35: Marcus Franda,Radical Politics in West Bengal (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971). Back.

Note 36: For a discussion of these issues see Sumit Ganguly, “Ethno-Religious Conflict in South Asia,”Survival 35:2 (Summer 1993), pp. 88–109. Back.

Note 37: On the rise of Hindu ethnoreligious fervor see Peter Van der Veer,Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996). Also see David Ludden, ed.,Making India Hindu: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996). Back.

Note 38: Taufiq Subhan, “India’s diversity seen as checking BJP’s growth,”India Abroad, July 3, 1998, p. 2. Back.