Makers of Modern India

by Ramachandra Guha

  This is what we told the Nagas. You have your own state of Nagaland now, we said; why are you still underground? You can choose your own Chief Minister now. You are no longer subjugated but free to manage your own affairs. Why you still want an independent state we cannot understand. We also told them that were Nagaland to be a separate nation, there would be real fears about its freedom. Burma is next door, China is not far away either. [East] Pakistan is also only two hundred miles away. These countries can all put pressure on you. Whether an independent Nagaland will be secure, we cannot say. In this situation, why think of being an independent nation, separate from India? You are already free, really free. Just as every part of India is independent, you are too. Are the Indians suppressing you in the way the British did? That is not the case …

  Finally, Narayan explains why the rest of India has much to learn from the independence and community spirit of the Nagas.

  … Gandhi used often to talk of village self-rule. If you want to see village self-rule in practice go to Nagaland. The way that villages run their affairs, the strength they display, is truly admirable. Kohima town is the capital of Nagaland state. This town has no room to expand beyond its present borders. The Government of Nagaland thus wants the village council of Kohima to give it land [to build homes and offices]. They say that the Government cannot take over the land without the consent of the village council. But what is the situation in other states? There, to make roads, airports, etc., the government can uproot village after village without taking anyone’s permission. But this is simply not conceivable in Nagaland …

  People here [in the Indian heartland] think of Nagas as uncivilized.6 But if one travels there one sees how advanced they are … Let me give you an example. Near the town of Mokokchung is a village named Ugma, which is perhaps the largest village in Nagaland. About four thousand people are resident here. There is a very big church there. This is bigger than any church found in Assam or elsewhere in this region. It has a seating capacity of five thousand. You will be astonished to learn that the church was built entirely by the voluntary labour of villagers. They used no material nor any expertise from outside. You may not believe this, but they did not even need an engineer from outside to help them construct this church. The people of the village built it themselves. And the church is so beautiful! Not just this church, even high schools were built by the villagers themselves. And these schools are very pretty too. Wood and bamboo are freely available here … But the most remarkable thing is their spirit of service. A Naga even if he has a B.A. or M.A. Degree, does not consider physical labour to be beneath his dignity. The deficiencies that one finds in educated people elsewhere in India are absent here. If a boy comes home on holiday, he would happily help his parents in the fields or in housework. What we [Gandhians] try to teach under the rubric of ‘basic education’ is already part of the teaching here … The greatest quality of the Nagas is the dignity of labour in daily life, which we can learn from.

  * * *

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Gandhian Liberal

  C. Rajagopalachari

  This chapter, like the two preceding it, is about someone who was once Jawaharlal Nehru’s friend and party colleague but later became a bitter political opponent. This man was considerably older than Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan. Unlike them, he enjoyed high office both before and after Independence. His seniority and distinction lent even greater substance to the criticisms he was to make of the prime minister and the Congress Party.

  This veteran Congressman-turned-anti-Congressman was Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari. He was born in 1878, son of a village headman in the Tamil country. He was sent to school in Bangalore and took his first degree in that city’s Central College. He then proceeded to qualify as a lawyer in Madras where, still a student, he was moved and inspired by Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s arrest in 1898.

  After taking his law degree, Rajagopalachari moved to the town of Salem to practise. He attended the 1906 Congress in Calcutta and was elected to the Salem Municipal Council five years later (he eventually became chairman of the council). He followed Gandhi’s struggles in South Africa with keen interest and collected and sent Rs 1,500 (then not an insignificant sum of money) for his movement.

  In 1919 Rajagopalachari moved to the Presidency capital, Madras, which provided a bigger stage for the law and for public service. The same year, he met Gandhi and at once became his devoted disciple and admirer. The Mahatma, in turn, trusted and respected his integrity and his acumen. Rajagopalachari chose now to only wear homespun cloth and gave up his law practice to devote himself full-time to the nationalist cause.

  By now widely known by the diminutive ‘Rajaji’, Rajagopalachari went to jail in the satyagrahas of the 1920s and 1930s. However, what brought him even closer to Gandhi was his interest in abolishing untouchability and promoting Hindu—Muslim harmony. He was more committed to these programmes than many other followers of Gandhi, who were interested in the attainment of political freedom alone.

  In 1937, when the Congress came to power in Madras, Rajaji was unanimously elected prime minister. He ran a government that was efficient but also controversial, notably for its promotion of Hindi. In October 1939 he resigned along with other Congress ministers/ ministries in protest against the viceroy’s refusal to consult Indian opinion in the matter of the Second World War. Then, in a daring break with his party—and mentor—he opposed the Quit India movement of 1942, asking that the Congress instead work harder to find common ground with the British. He became even more estranged from his old comrades when he advocated a rapprochement with the Muslim League.

  Rajagopalachari had resigned from the Congress in 1942. Readmitted in 1945, he served as the first Indian governor of West Bengal and then as the first (and last) Indian Governor General. Afterwards, he joined the Union Cabinet, before returning to Madras as chief minister. In 1954 he was forced to resign from the post and went into retirement.

  When he demitted office, Rajaji was in his mid-seventies. He had been continuously in public life for close to four decades. Part of him now simply wanted to read and write. He was an autodidact, with a extraordinarily wide range of interests and reading. His biographer, Rajmohan Gandhi, tells us that when he went to jail in 1921 he took with him editions of the Mahabharata in Tamil and English, the Bible, a volume of Shakespeare, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, a book on Socrates and a copy of the ancient classic of Tamil literature and philosophy, the Kural. Thirty-five years later, when an Indian journalist went to see him in his modest Madras home, he found, stacked near the old man’s bed, the collected speeches of Edmund Burke, G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, a book by the American cultural critic Lewis Mumford, a Sanskrit edition of Valmiki’s Ramayana, and some works in Tamil.

  Rajaji was an accomplished writer himself. He had written pioneering short stories in Tamil, and in the 1940s, had published an abridged version of the Mahabharata. Now, in retirement, he wrote a version of the Ramayana which, like its predecessor, was a best-seller in many languages.

  However, there was a part of Rajaji that could not keep out of politics altogether. He had changed his mind about Hindi, which he now did not want imposed on the south. He was concerned about the global nuclear arms race. Above all, he was worried about the lack of opposition to the Congress Party. In 1959, aged eighty, he started the Swatantra (Freedom) Party. He undertook this with some reluctance for, as he told a younger colleague, he was ‘too old, too long a Congressman and too close to Nehru personally to consider an active re-entry into politics’.

  Under Rajaji’s leadership, the Swatantra had mixed electoral success—winning 22 seats in the general elections of 1962, 44 in 1967 and a mere 8 in 1971. It served in coalition governments in some states. However, its chief contribution to Indian democracy was intellectual and ideological, through its searching criticisms of the economic and foreign policies of the ruling party. It achieved a sort of posthumous success when key elements of its credo—outlined in the
excerpts that follow—were, much later, adopted by the Congress Party itself.

  A colonial governor once called Rajagopalachari the ‘wisest man in India’. The sentiment was endorsed by Gandhi, who described him as the ‘keeper of my conscience’. Rajaji had a sharp analytical mind and wrote English (and, of course, Tamil) extremely well. His writings were often precocious, as for example his warning in 1942 that Quit India would alienate the Congress from both the British and the Muslims. For this book, however, we have used his later writings, from the 1950s and 1960s, which speak more directly to the problems of Indian democracy today.

  C. Rajagopalachari died on Christmas Day, 1972.

  Our Democracy

  In 1957 the Congress comprehensively won the second general elections. It was also returned to power in all states except Kerala, where the Communist Party of India came to power. Despite being a long-time member of the Congress, C. Rajagopalachari was deeply worried about the consequences of this dominance for the health of Indian democracy. Looking to the older and more stable democracies in the West, he argued in an essay of August 1957, reproduced below, that a strong two-party system was also needed in India. Note that this call for two all-India parties is consistent in his view with the rise of regional parties in the states.1

  The successful working of parliamentary democracy depends on two factors: first on a broad measure of agreement among all classes of citizens about the objectives of government; secondly, on the existence of a two-party system, in which each of the big political groups possesses effective and continuous leadership and is strong enough to take over the responsibilities of government when the majority of the country’s voters wish it. If political opinion does not succeed in crystallizing into two fairly evenly balanced groups, the semblance of democracy may survive but real parliamentary democracy will not be there. When one party remains always in power, and dissent is dissipated among unorganized individuals and relatively insignificant groups which do not and cannot coalesce, government will inevitably become totalitarian.

  A strong Opposition is essential for the health of democratic government. In a democracy based on universal suffrage, government of the majority without an effective Opposition is like driving a donkey on whose back you put the whole load in one bundle. The two-party system steadies movement by putting a fairly equal load into each pannier. In the human body also, two eyes and two ears aid a person to place the objects seen and heard. A single-party democracy soon loses its sense of proportion. It sees, but cannot place things in perspective or apprehend all sides of a question. This is the position in India today.

  The domination by the Congress Party of the political scene is a product of history rather than of electoral success. Electoral successes are the result of this domination, not its cause. In order to justify the leadership that has resulted from history, the Congress Party has swung well to the Left … [A]s a result the Right elements are depressed and disorganized, leaving the Congress Party in irremovable power. Irremovability, in fact, makes parliamentary democracy nonexistent. In such circumstances it is inevitable that the party should become more important than Parliament. Differences of opinion may exhibit themselves within the party. If the discipline and authority of the party executive does not altogether choke ‘self-criticism’, a two-party pattern may develop within the party itself. The leader will take decisions in accordance with majority opinion in the party. This may be deemed to be a partial alleviation of totalitarianism, but even this may not happen if the leader be an overwhelming force by himself, in which case the party may not be able to divide itself even within closed doors. The mechanics of unadulterated dictatorship would then operate unhindered.

  What is wanted to save parliamentary democracy is an Opposition that will operate not privately and behind the closed doors of the party meeting, but openly and through the electorate … Since, as I have said, the Congress Party has swung to the Left, what is wanted for the body politic is not an ultra or outer-Left, but a strong and articulate Right. The people of India, however docile they may ordinarily appear, are not just clay. Life, not being a mechanical system of forces but full of complex sentiments and feelings, the creaks and jolts caused by change are painful realities that have to be borne by living people in all grades of society, whose patterns of life are the product of long history. The distress is not dissipated into the stratosphere, but strikes at the living, sensitive nerves of men, women and children.

  The pain of change is a simple-looking phrase that sums up all that follows from over-taxation, disemployment, high prices, exploitation by the newly-favoured classes and groups, unbalanced family budgets, and the hysteria resulting from all these things in themselves, and from the ordinary individual’s sense of his own impotence in face of them. Those who suffer these impacts would welcome a parliamentary party that would compel attention to these creaks and jolts and disturbances in life, and which would meet the Left on level terms and, by testing and measuring both proposed legislation and day-to-day administration, would challenge the wisdom of the governing party and compel modification when those in power act in a way which would produce more pain than profit to the community. This is the function of the Right, and there is a widespread demand for such a party …

  Although there is today abundant material for a powerful Opposition, hypnotic fear and the pressure of individual interests operate to prevent the gathering together of the forces. Day-to-day life cannot be carried on without appeals for favours of all kinds from the government in power, and any effort in the direction of forming an Opposition party must involve sacrifice and considerable risk on the part of those who would make such a venture. Sacrifice comes naturally with revolutions but conservative wisdom does not excite a similar emotion. Reason generates fear, and men of experience are inclined to political caution in the personal sense. Distress is accepted with fatalism, not with the spirit of sacrifice which is determined not to allow similar distresses to be inflicted on others. Unless the conservatives realize their duty, throw off their dejection, overcome their fears and unite to build a worthy Opposition, parliamentary democracy in India has a dismal future. Parties which are to the left of the Congress can never hope to function as more than prodding ginger-groups, since it is quite unrealistic for them to imagine themselves as alternatives to a government which is itself prepared to go as far to the left as it is possible to do and which has installed itself on the crest of historic success.

  There is another factor that must be taken into account in India. The centrifugal force of regional interest cuts across all political issues. In a country of this size, with all the differing conditions prevailing in the various States, regional interests and issues arising from them in the effort to build welfare overshadow other matters. This creates an additional and great obstacle to two-party polarization in politics. Each regional interest is a solid reality, and this fact tends to impose on Parliament a chequered pattern which in Westminster is only faintly perceptible in Scottish and Welsh nationalism.

  The solution for this problem is not to keep blowing scorn at regional feelings, but to concede greater autonomy to the States, so as to minimize regional thinking and eliminate the pressure of regional interests at the Centre, and to make the Centre an instrument for the broadest policies and not, as now, one for dealing with every tank bund, school, hospital and social service club. This statement about the Centre may seem exaggerated, but it is not. During the last few years the tendency to centralize has grown to proportions which are both ridiculous and alarming …

  [T]he main remedy lies not in the remodelling of the Council of State, but in a much greater autonomy of the States themselves. The legislatures of the States and the administration of their governments should be run on the parliamentary model, while the Centre gradually crystallizes into a true federal authority. Federal powers, on issues other than foreign affairs and defence, should shrink to the barest minimum, while the powers exercised by the States should expand very greatly.
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  During the period of transition to greater regional autonomy, politics in the States may take a curious course. Conflict of opinion will naturally develop around the issue of division of powers between the States and the Union. The Congress Party in all the States during this period is bound to be a Unionist or Centrist party, the Opposition being a party pledged to conserve and increase local autonomy. Until a balance is reached, centrists would try to create emotion around slogans of national unity, while provincialists would fight zealously for the interests of the region. These healthy struggles would cut across and minimize caste and sub-caste politics, which in itself would be a great gain for efficiency and integrity in administration. The growth of a vigorous localist party in each State, without distinctions arising from caste feeling, will save provincial governments from deterioration on account of unchecked power in the hands of a majority.

  Whatever may be the political structure, the people want fair and impartial as well as efficient administration. In an environment dominated by family and communal loyalties and attachments, parochial authority quickly causes deterioration among officials. All-round progress and the elimination of unhealthy practices would be largely secured if, while the States are given larger powers, the personnel of administration all over India—Federal as well as State—are kept under the strict and independent guardianship of an all-India body, consisting of very senior officials, whose concern would be to maintain professional quality in the various services, and to protect the officials against political pressures and victimization. This should not interfere with greater devolution of authority to the States. The professional aspect of administration is different from the execution of policy. The defence forces, the police, and the administrative services should be true to their own standards of efficiency and character and be above party politics. They should carry out government policies irrespective of whatever party may be in power. Their discipline must therefore be self-sustained. Efficiency, independence and integrity in officials are necessary both for Federal and State affairs, and the more the services are released from political pressure and temptations to discriminate unfairly on account of political or communal influences, the better it will be for all concerned; for government as well as Opposition, and certainly for the people governed. An efficient administrative machine is absolutely necessary if democracy is to result in that general happiness which is our aim.