Most educated persons in the big cities had become so used to demonstrations, strikes and attacks on public property before June 26 that not many of them sat back to think of either the long-term consequences on the country’s economy and polity or of the fact that no democracy has ever had to cope with so many agitations over so prolonged a period. Some of them approvingly quoted Mr Galbraith’s description of India as being a “functioning anarchy” as if this could go on indefinitely.
The agitational approach to politics was, of course, no sudden development. In a sense it was a hangover from the pre-independence period when public meetings, processions and demonstrations were the staple of politics. Gandhiji had doubtless spoken and written a great deal on his concept of satyagraha and tried his best to make sure that the movements launched by him conformed as much as possible to his standards. But by and large politics in India fell far short of the norms he laid down.
Leadership
The top Congress leadership was fairly sensitive to this reality and after independence it was quick enough to take the stand that civil disobedience could no longer have place in free India. So long as the country was ruled by a foreign power and laws were framed in an undemocratic manner, it argued, the people were justified in violating them. But now that laws were being made by democratically elected legislatures, these should be obeyed and those opposed to them should work for changing them through the well-known democratic procedures. Mr Nehru made these points again and again in the ‘fifties.
There can be no question that this was a sensible view. It was in line with the prevalent practice in well-established democracies like Britain and the United States and it took note of the fact that the country needed a reasonably stable and strong structure of authority to deal with the immediate problems resulting from partition and the influx of around ten million refugees as well as the long-term ones of ending economic and social stagnation of several hundred years and ensuring the country’s security. But this view was resisted and rejected by some of the opposition leaders on the ground that the government was not fully responsive to the grievances of the people, that elected Congress legislators, who formed the majority both in Parliament and the state legislatures, voted as they were directed by the party whip and that so long as the Congress had a monopoly of power, others had a choice between passivity and defiance of the law.
Dr Rammanohar Lohia was perhaps the best known exponent of the activist role of opposition parties. Though he could hardly claim to be a consistent follower of the Mahatma, he invoked the hallowed name in order to argue that democracy was more than a once-in-five-year exercise in franchise, that it called for mobilisation of the weaker sections of the community who had otherwise little share in power and that this mobilisation was inconceivable without trenchant and continuous opposition to the government. His own Socialist Party was the first victim of his approach to politics because it involved him in a feud with his colleagues as much as with Mr Nehru. But that is less pertinent than the fact that his view came to prevail with some people.
This combination of electoral and agitational politics became such a heady brew in independent India that even the beneficiaries of the system did not care to reflect on the consequences. In fact, some of them, specially in recent years, turned into strong critics and detractors of the system.
Apart from the great dangers inherent in it, Dr Lohia’s approach did little to mobilise the truly depressed sections of the community like the scheduled castes and tribes, the landless and others below the poverty line or help in creating a more just social order. Until today there has been little pressure from these groups for land and other reforms.
Politics in India has been a middle class affair. It was so in the ‘fifties when the country witnessed powerful agitations for the formation of unilingual states and it has been so since the mid-’sixties when white collar workers in the government, banks, the Life Insurance Corporation and elsewhere have secured sizable increases in their emoluments to the detriment of savings, investment and growth. By 1973 a stage had been reached when power engineers could hold millions of ordinary citizens to ransom without fear of punishment. Student indiscipline and violence were facets of the same general phenomenon.
Politician
It is ironical that these dangerous trends should have found their consummation in Gujarat where the people are among the most disciplined and performance oriented in India. It is perhaps precisely because the Gujaratis are the kind of people they are that they reacted so sharply to Mr Chimanbhai Patel’s personality and behaviour. But in retrospect there can be no doubt that the forcible dissolution of the Gujarat state legislature in March 1974 was a disastrous development and that those who raised and pressed the demand did grave disservice to the cause of democracy.
The identity of the men who inflicted this deep wound on the country’s body politic is not a secret. They belonged to the RSS. But however worthy of censure their conduct, it is less pertinent than the fact that the forced dissolution of the Gujarat legislature represented the triumph of disruptive and agitational politics over electoral politics and that very few people either in that state or elsewhere recognised at that time the significance of this development.
It is also immaterial whether the men who masterminded the operation were guided by an insensate hatred of the Congress party and its leadership or by an alternative concept of polity. For, whatever their motive or motives, they struck a body blow at the very foundation of democratic polity – the right of a freely and fairly elected legislature to serve its term and of the majority party to elect a new leader if the existing one is found inadequate or becomes a liability. Mrs Gandhi saw the point quicker than most. She not only dug in her toes on the question of the dismissal of the Bihar ministry and the dissolution of the state legislature but also said publicly that she had made a big mistake in Gujarat and was not going to repeat it.
Performance
Be that as it may, no politician with the good of the country at heart can now fail to recognise the need for a code of conduct which binds those in office to consult the opposition on major issues and those in opposition to shun the politics of the street. This may appear impractical or even utopian in the given situation. But the alternative will be full of danger.
Other older democracies have witnessed demonstrations and marches in the post-war period. But these have had limited objectives – opposition to nuclear weapons in Britain in the ‘fifties and the early ‘sixties and to the Viet Nam war in the United States, for instance. The upheaval in France in May 1968 was the result of a more widespread but less well defined discontent. In Italy neo-Fascist groups have thought in terms of overthrowing the elected government by force. But France and Italy have been special cases among Western democracies. And if Britain has been plagued by the labour problem in the form of catcall strikes in the ‘sixties and exorbitant demands for higher wages more recently, the results in terms of economic decline and loss of elan are there for everyone to see.
The broad approach that is commended here is not fool-proof because the educational system will continue to feed the fires of populism and extremism and it is easier to talk of overhauling it than to overhaul it. But that problem need not prove unmanageable if parties which firmly believe in the supremacy of the electoral process can work out a code of behaviour and if the ruling party can ensure that the economy grows at a reasonable rate – say five to six per cent a year – and that bureaucracy does not abuse the powers it has come to possess as a by-product of not only the emergency but also the very process of establishing a modern state on the foundations of a still fragmented society. To put it at its lowest, accommodation among middle-of-the-road parties will render the problem of extremism less intractable than it may turn out to be otherwise.
The Times of India, 30 July 1975