After 40 years of what should been a sobering experience, our opposition leaders continue to discuss their future course of action, as if an all-India alternative to the Congress is feasible, even before the Congress becomes too weak to play the kind of role it has played since independence. This is truly extraordinary; for it betrays a lack of understanding of the nature of Indian society, which must determine the shape of the political order, just as the political order reshapes the social arrangements. Surely, there can be no escape from this dialectical process. On this reckoning, India must, in the foreseeable future, remain a one dominant party system, regardless of whether that party is called the Congress or something else.
It is fashionable to talk of the religious, linguistic and caste divisions in our society, as if they are not suitably ridged. But this represents a misunderstanding of the social reality. India is not a collection of fragments, which the state forcibly holds together. It is a mosaic, the constituents of which fit together to form one whole, though a fluid whole. I regard the distinction between isolated fragments and pieces of a mosaic, or a jigsaw puzzle if you like, as so significant for the purpose of understanding political developments, that I would wish to underscore this point rather heavily.
Partition And After
It follows that, as I see things, there is no fundamental division in India which can polarise the political order in a manner that enables it to produce and sustain two clearly identifiable parties. India was polarised in the forties along communal lines, leading to the partition, in 1947. And it could have been similarly polarised after independence, if the communal electorate system had not been abolished, or if it had been allowed to return by the backdoor, in the shape of proportional representation.
The Indian society was a mosaic before the British consolidated their rule all over the land after 1857. The Muslims were very much a part of that mosaic, indeed the biggest one, in view of the basically confederal nature of the Hindu social arrangement, which in reality was more horizontal than vertical. Despite the upheaval caused by the superimposition of British institutions, thought processes and mores under the Raj, India would have remained the mosaic it was, if the British had not introduced the separate electorate in 1906. It is in fact a tribute to the inherent strength of the mosaic, that it took the Muslim component almost 40 long years to move out of it and that too under the extraordinary conditions created by the outbreak of World War II, the resignation of Congress ministries, the Congress leadership’s opposition to the war effort and the British government’s decision to back the Muslim League to the hilt.
It is now futile to debate whether India’s partition could have been avoided. It makes little sense to trade in the ifs and buts of history. Important for us is the fact that the mosaic was back with us with the departure of the British and the abolition of the separate electorate. Given their distribution in independent India, the Muslims could not become an independent political force in the pre-partition sense. It does not follow that they have been marginalised, as Syed Shahabuddin and his supporters would have us believe. The Muslims are too big and self-aware a community to be marginalised. What has happened is that, once again, they too have to take their place in the mosaic. No significant group can dominate a mosaic and by the same token no group can be marginalised in it.
Let us. for the sake of argument, take the Muslim component out of the intricate mosaic, though in reality that is not possible, because we are not dealing with one but a series of mosaics (linguistic, regional, professional and so on) which fit together to constitute the Indian Union. What is then left, too, remains a mosaic. Indeed, that is precisely why the concept of Hindu nationalism has not taken off the ground, though the Hindus, unlike the Muslims, constitute a majority in almost all parliamentary and most of the assembly constituencies in the country.
In the absence of the caste system among the Hindus, independent India, too, could have been polarised along communal lines, even under the system of joint electorates. For, in a caste-free society, the Hindus could have become a political community in the western sense of the term: that would have provoked the Muslims to make a response as Muslims. But the caste system has survived the assaults on it and so long as it survives, India must remain a mosaic!
English Opposed
There is scope for genuine differences of opinion on the possible consequences of a British policy which emphasised linguistic distinctions, instead of religious ones, and sought to promote them by demarcating provincial boundaries on that basis and using the indigenous languages for administrative and educational purposes. As it happened, the British did not even toy with such a proposition. For the orientalists, who in the early part of the 19th century opposed the introduction of English as the medium of instruction for higher education, favoured Sanskrit and Persian, instead. So the acceptance of their proposal would also have tended to emphasise the same communal divide which the system of separate electorates so successfully promoted.
Once again, however, it is pointless to dwell on the ifs and buts of history. The pertinent point for us is that the British adopted English as the language of higher education and administration, that it created a pan-Indian elite which, despite caste and linguistic differences, shared certain aspirations for the country and itself, that this elite has survived and prospered in independent India, and that it has an enormous stake in ensuring that India remains the mosaic it is. That is the meaning of its qualified opposition to communalism, regionalism and casteism.
I call this opposition qualified, because most Indians, educated in the western system through English as the medium of instruction, retain a measure of loyalty to the language, religion and caste of their forefathers, even if this allegiance is ambivalent, as it has to be in the context of the process of modernisation which, in turn, must involve varying degrees of westernisation. To be candid, I am not one those who regard modernisation – westernisation – as being essentially and wholly antithetical to our own inheritance and who would wish to push secularisation the way the Soviet Communists have done in their country.
As I view the scene, the Indian inheritance needs to be renewed, because it has lost its vibrancy; this inheritance is large enough to accommodate certain western values such as equality and justice and strong enough to avoid being swamped; an elite which is divorced from its past or pasts (as in our case) cannot help renew a civilisation which is what we have been; it can wage war on the people as the Chinese Communists did under Mao Zedong at the time of the “great leap forward’’ in the fifties and the “great proletarian cultural revolution” in the sixties and the seventies.
Another Ladder
In the nature of things, such an elite cannot truly be representative of the common people. Nor can it be wholly unrepresentative of them. As such, it has to be ambivalent in its attitude towards both the state and the political process. It is also unavoidable that the nature of this ambivalence would differ from individual to individual, depending on the degree of his westernisation and status in society. Thus the more westernised and well placed an individual, the more contemptuous he must be of the political process.
The political process, too, is managed by and large by the intelligentsia. Uneducated leaders unfamiliar with the western idiom, such as Mr Mahendra Singh Tikait of the Bharatiya Kisan Union are still a rarity in India. But with the exception of the top leadership in the freedom movement, the political process is managed by and large by the less well-educated and less well-placed sections of the intelligentsia. Mr Nehru felt ill-at-ease with his Congress colleagues, precisely because he was far more westernised. In independent India, politics could not but become another ladder for climbing up and it could attract mainly those who could not avail themselves of other ladders – professions, business and industry. Surprising though it may appear, activists, inspired by sectional aspirations (communal) and interests, are less likely to engage in self-promotion than the others.
The sociology of the Indian intelligentsia and the political process is thus far more complex than it is generally assumed to be. That, however, is a separate subject which deserves to be discussed independently. Pertinent for our purpose at present is the inference that the elite too is a mosaic and part of the larger mosaic.
The Times of India, 24 February 1988