India. Craig Jeffrey
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3, 4 and 13.
It came to be recognized, in the 1970s, that economic development was not bringing about the kind of transformation in the lives of the mass of the Indian people that the country’s leaders at the time of independence had looked for. The scale of the problems of poverty in India had to be acknowledged by government, and a number of poverty alleviation programmes were introduced. But there was also eloquent questioning of the model of economic development that was being pursued – and this began to change in the next decade (as we discuss in chapter 2).
Secularism
The birth of independent India brought, as well, the Partition of what had been British India, and the creation of the new state of Pakistan, as a homeland for Indian Muslims (for a fine account of Partition, see Khan 2007). This was the outcome of a long-standing fear of Hindu domination, articulated latterly by the Muslim League, under the leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Partition took place amid enormous bloodshed (perhaps as many as two million people were killed) and the largest single displacement of people (an estimated 15 million) in history. These events, and the antagonistic relationship between India and Pakistan, often focused on the status of Kashmir, as the only Indian state with a Muslim majority population, have cast an enduring shadow over South Asia (see chapter 14). A very large population of Muslims remained in India (it still has the third largest Muslim population in the world, and not too much smaller than that of Pakistan). But did they belong in India? For Nehru and other liberals in the Congress leadership, it was extremely important that Muslims should be reassured that they did belong. And the Constitution prohibited discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth (Article 15), laid down the freedom of religion (Article 25), and the right among others, of every religious denomination ‘to manage its own affairs in matters of religion’ (Article 26).
Some of India’s leaders were committed to the idea that India should be a secular state. For them, communalism (the antagonism between communities defined by religion) was a product of unreason. Nehru, in particular, who detested religious dogmatism, looked forward to a society in which a scientific temper would prevail. Yet the word ‘secular’ appeared only once in the Constitution as it was originally drafted, and then only to refer to an aspect of religious practice. As we discuss in chapter 6, the view of secularism that is implicit in the Constitution is not of the radical separation of religion and the affairs of state, as is enjoined in the Constitution of the United States, but rather one of the equality of treatment of different religions. A ‘secular state in India’, Nehru wrote, ‘is a state which honours all faiths equally and gives them equal opportunities’ (cited by Madan 1997: 245).
This stance on his part represented a compromise that he was unhappy about. He, and those who thought like him, had to come to terms with the common view among Indians that theirs is a society in which religion has a particularly important place, and the view, too, that Hinduism is a uniquely tolerant religion. The idea of secularism as denoting equality of treatment of religions was a way of reaching a compromise with the currents of Hindu sentiment among even senior Congress leaders, some of whom were also members of the Hindu Mahasabha, the all-India association of Hindus. Though it was the Congress, which had its origins in an association of educated, middle-class professional people, that came to lead the struggle for independence, others had begun to organize as Hindus, against colonial rule, around such issues as that of cow protection, going well back into the nineteenth century. Hindu nationalism has deep historical roots, though the ascendancy in Indian politics of liberal-minded leaders like Nehru in the early years of post-colonial India tended to obscure its significance among many observers. So, the anthropologist T. N. Madan writes, ‘Nehru’s definition of the secular state in terms of religious pluralism was … a compromise, a strategy to deal with an awkward problem, namely the all-pervasive influence of religion in society, that would not go away’ (1997: 244).
The compromise exposed the state in the end, however, to accusations of ‘pseudo-secularism’ – particularly because of the unequal treatment of different religions in the field of personal law – that have helped to fuel the rise of Hindu nationalism. The accusation that the Hindu majority has been discriminated against by the state has provided powerful fuel for Hindu nationalists. Even as we were writing, in the course of the Indian national elections of 2019, the Congress was accused by some BJP politicians of being a party that wants to favour Muslims.
Federalism
The fourth pillar of the post-independence Indian republic was that it should be a union of states, the boundaries of which were an inheritance from the colonial administration. The Congress as a national movement was successful in defining Indianness ‘not as a singular or exhaustive identity, but as one which explicitly recognized at least two other aspects. Indian citizens were also members of linguistic and cultural communities: Oriyas or Tamils, Kashmiris or Marathi’. And, ‘India’s federal arrangements were intended to embody this idea of a layered Indianness’ (Khilnani 1997: 175). These federal arrangements are reflected in the way the upper house of the Indian parliament, the Rajya Sabha, is composed mainly by members elected by the Legislative Assemblies of India’s states and Union Territories. In turn, the members of those Assemblies are themselves directly elected, and the Constitution lays down the division of powers, responsibilities and resources between the union government at the centre, and the state governments. The federal principle is relatively weak, however, and the founding fathers were greatly concerned that India should have a strong central government. The powers of the states were curtailed from the outset and the centre has considerable authority in relation to them, including the power of suspending the Legislative Assembly of a state, and of imposing President’s Rule – an instrument that has sometimes been used for entirely partisan reasons.
The states of India, as they were inherited from the administrative divisions of British India, were generally multi-lingual, and one of the challenges that the Government of India confronted in the 1950s was that of powerful demands from different parts of the country for the recognition of regional cultural groups through the creation of linguistic states. In spite of fears at the time – not least on Nehru’s part – that these demands threatened the unity of India, states reorganization did take place. The major states were generally redefined on linguistic lines (though not in the Hindi-speaking heartland of the country), without – as it turned out – endangering national unity. Over time, however, this has helped the rise of significant regional political parties, and in the period of minority and coalition governments between 1989 and 2014, regional parties sometimes exercised considerable influence on the central government. It was thought by some politicians and observers in 2019 that between them the regional parties might win a sufficient number of votes to be able to challenge the BJP in forming the government, but in the event these hopes were dashed by the comprehensive victory that the BJP secured.
The administrative capacities of the different states vary very considerably, including in their abilities to raise revenue. Article 280 of the Constitution requires the Government of India to appoint a Finance Commission every five years to advise on the financial relations between the centre and the states, and one of the problems that these Commissions have to deal with is that of achieving a workable balance between states that are relatively efficient in raising revenues and those that are not. The disparities between the major states in terms of economic and social development have tended to increase over time, and the Finance Commissions have to contend with the concerns of the more efficient states about the extent to which they may be subsidizing those that are more backward.
1.5 The Reinvention of India
The Nehruvian state sought to realize the aims of the Constitution. As we argue in chapter