The upheaval in Gujarat has no parallel in recent Indian history not only because it is the first time that a popular agitation has overwhelmed a ministry and a legislature but also because it is the first time since independence that students and teachers have worked in close co-operation on issues which transcend their sectional interests and grievances.
It can be argued that there was a parallel in the fall of the communist government in Kerala in the wake of a popular agitation in 1959. But this view cannot be sustained for two reasons. In Kerala the ministry did not fall apart. It was dismissed by the Union government. And while the Centre was itself not directly involved in the attempt to bring it down, it could not claim to be wholly impartial since the Congress party was backing the movement.
Upsurge
In the years of independence the country has perhaps witnessed only one other student movement which was not based on sectional grievances – the Naxalite movement in West Bengal. But the Naxalites failed to win the support, or even the acquiescence, of either the teaching community or the middle classes. In fact, under the influence of foreign concepts and examples, they used a language and chose a course of action which rapidly alienated the people and led to their complete isolation. The Gujarat students have managed, almost instinctively, to avoid those pitfalls, perhaps because they have been more firmly rooted in tradition.
But while the Gujarat students and teachers possess certain qualities of discipline and perseverance which have not yet been in evidence in the same measure elsewhere, it will be wrong for those in authority to make too much of this subjective element and ignore the grim fact that the socio-economic ills, which led to the upsurge there, prevail in other states, in some cases on a much bigger scale.
For example, on all accounts corruption in Gujarat has been much less than in Bihar, UP and Tamil Nadu where ministers and their relations have been known to strike regular deals not only with businessmen but government employees seeking transfers and other favours. Indeed, it may be unfair to name these states because there is hardly any state administration which is free from this kind of chicanery and brazenness. Similarly, the incompetence of the Patel ministry pales into insignificance in comparison with the performance of one ministry after another in almost the entire Hindi-speaking belt. And, if the prices have risen, necessities of life become scarce and job opportunities shrunk in Gujarat, one of the country’s fastest developing state, what about the others?
It is not a serious criticism of the movement in Gujarat for anyone to say, as Mrs Gandhi did during the UP elections, that it has been a middle class affair. For, while trade unions have from time to time won concessions from the employers for their members, all major movements in India, social, economic and political, have been led and even largely manned by middle class elements since the time of Raja Rammohan Roy. This is as true of various social reform movements, including those of the lower castes which challenged the ascendancy of the Brahmins and other upper castes in the Hindu society, as of the freedom struggle and of the demand for social justice. Even trade unions and kisan bodies have been organised and led by middle class educated young men and women.
The challenge to constituted authority in all developing countries has come from middle class educated youth, irrespective of whether it has taken the form of military coups as in West Asia and Africa or whether it has led to the overthrow of a military regime as recently in Thailand. The slogans have doubtless differed from country to country. For instance, while those who overthrew President Nkrumah and President Sukarno condemned them for their arbitrary rule, their megalomania, their pro-communist sympathies and their incompetent management of the economy, the rebels in Ceylon spoke in the name of xenophobic Sinhala nationalism and Maoism. But these differences are of secondary importance.
Crisis
The reasons for middle class discontent are well known. In most developing countries economic growth has not kept pace with the spread of western-style education and the consequent rise in the number of aspirants for white-collar jobs. And the government in most of these cases is too restrictive and repressive to satisfy the educated youth’s aspirations for personal liberty and participation in the decision-making process. The middle class is also better placed to challenge authority in developing countries by virtue of its organisational ability and staying power.
India is one of the few exceptions in regard to the question of liberty in the third world. The ruling party has generally been tolerant of criticism and those who fall foul of it lose only its favours and not their lives and liberty. But the society’s failure to throw up a viable national opposition or even strong regional parties with the sole exception of the DMK in Tamil Nadu, has inevitably led at once to moral insensitivity within the ruling party, decline in the popular belief in the efficacy of constitutional means for the redress of grievances and increasing resort to extra-constitutional weapons.
This is not an altogether new phenomenon. In a sense it is as old as India’s independence, indeed even older because the rise and growth of the freedom movement itself can be explained in terms of the inability and unwillingness of the established order to accommodate the growing intelligentsia and its refusal under Gandhiji’s leadership to abide by the rules of the parliamentary game as they have evolved in Britain. But stagnation of the economy in the context of a continuing population explosion has given the problem an altogether new dimension.
By itself this would have been a matter of serious concern for all those who favour orderly progress. As it happens, the problem has been further aggravated by a number of other developments.
It may or may not be true that the Congress party collects and disposes of enormous sums for election purposes, but the middle class youth in large urban centres are convinced that this is so and they deeply resent it. Similarly, while interference by ministers, legislators and other leading members of the ruling party in the administrative process may not be much greater today than in the past, the impression has spread that even top bureaucrats manipulate normal rules and procedures at the behest of their political masters. As a result faith in the integrity and impartiality of even well established institutions has been considerably undermined.
The supersession of three judges of the Supreme Court last year and the campaign at the government level against big newspapers for some years have also had a most damaging effect on the standing of the government, the judiciary and leading newspapers. A very large number of articulate persons have come to believe not only that the government has no respect for the independence of the judiciary and the Press but also that both have lost much of their former freedom. These points would not have been pertinent in the context of the present discussion if it were not for the fact that they have contributed to the widespread belief that the democratic norms no longer prevail. For, despite all that has happened, Britain remains the yardstick for many people.
Efficacy
All in all the country is facing a crisis of confidence not only in the efficacy but also in the legitimacy of the system and the recent upsurge in Gujarat is only a symptom of it. Surely it will not do either to condemn the organisers and leaders of the movement there as fascists, as the Congress general secretary, Mr Chandrajit Yadav, has done or to accuse opposition parties, specially the Jana Sangh and the CPI(M), of exploiting a difficult economic situation, or to list achievements of the Congress rule and the advantages of parliamentary form of government. Once the legitimacy of the system has come into question, only a determined bid can stop the rot.
The Times of India, 20 March 1974