India After Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  In Punjab, meanwhile, an existing state was in search of a capital of its own. After the state’s division in 1966, Chandigarh served as the capital of both Punjab and Haryana. The Sikhs believed, with reason, that the city should be reserved to them – indeed, the centre had indicated that it would. Now the Punjabis were urging the government to make good their promise. Through 1968 and 1969 there were popular demonstrations to this effect. In October 1969 the veteran freedom fighter Darshan Singh Pherumal died after a fast aimed at making New Delhi hand over Chandigarh. The prime minister issued an anodyne note of sympathy: she hoped that Pherumal’s death would ‘move the people of Punjab and of Haryana towards bringing their hearts and minds together in an act of great reconciliation’.29

  Just as the Sikhs wanted Chandigarh exclusively for themselves, so, with regard to Bombay, did some Maharashtrians. The city had a new political party, named the Shiv Sena after the great medieval Maratha warrior Shivaji. In some ways this was a continuation of the old Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti – albeit in a more extreme form. Instead of ‘Bombay for Maharashtra the call now was ‘Bombay for Maharashtrians’. The Shiv Sena was the handiwork of a cartoonist named Bal Thackeray, whose main target was south Indians, whom he claimed were taking away jobs from the natives. Thackeray lampooned dhoti-clad ‘Madrasis’ in his writings and drawings; while his followers attacked Udupi restaurants and homes of Tamil and Telugu speakers. Another target were the communists, whose control of the city’s textile unions the Shiv Sena sought to undermine by making deals with the management.

  Bombay was India’s urbs prima; its financial and industrial capital, and the centre of its entertainment industry. In this most cosmopolitan of cities, a nativist agenda proved surprisingly successful, being especially attractive to the educated unemployed. In 1968 the Sena won as many as 42 seats in the Bombay municipal elections, standing second only to the Congress.30

  These calls for greater autonomy in the heartland were accompanied by stirrings in the periphery among groups and leaders who had never been entirely reconciled to being part of India in the first place. In March 1968 Sheikh Abdullah was freed from house arrest in Kodaikanal and allowed to return to his Valley. This was a year after the 1967 elections which, in Kashmir at any rate, had not really been free and fair: in twenty-two out of seventy-five constituencies the Congress candidate was returned unopposed when his rivals’ nomination papers were rejected.31 Her own advisers now prevailed upon Mrs Gandhi to free Abdullah. Their information was that the Sheikh was ‘gradually adapting himself’ to the fact that the accession of Kashmir to India was irrevocable.32

  As in 1964, the Lion of Kashmir returned home to a hero’s welcome, driving in an open jeep into the Valley, accepting garlands from the estimated half-million admirers who had lined the roads to greet him. As ever, his statements were amenable to multiple meanings, with him saying at one place that he would discuss ‘all possibilities’ with the Indian government, at another that he would never compromise on the Kashmiri ‘right to self-determination’. To a British newspaper he offered a three-way resolution: Jammu to go to India, ‘Azad’ Kashmir to Pakistan, with the Valley – the real bone of contention – to be put under UN trusteeship for five years, after which it would vote on whether to join India or Pakistan, or be independent. Ambivalent on politics, the Sheikh was, just as characteristically, direct in his defence of secularism. When a dispute between students threatened to escalate into a Hindu-Muslim riot, Abdullah pacified the disputants, then walked the streets of Srinagar urging everyone to calm down. He made his associates take a pledge that they were ‘prepared to shed their blood to protect the life, honour and property of the minorities in Kashmir’.33

  Meanwhile, the rebels in Nagaland were seeking a fresh resolution of their own. With Phizo in London, the movement was passing into the hands of younger radicals, such as Isaac Swu and T. Muivah. Where the older man had opposed seeking help from communist China – owing to its hostility to the Christian faith – these men had no such inhibitions. Reports came that 1,000 Nagas had crossed into Yunnan via Burma, there to receive Chinese machine guns, mortars and rocket launchers, as well as instruction on how to use them. Back in Nagaland, there were violent clashes between the Indian army and the rebels.34

  Endorsing the move towards Peking was that longtime supporter of the Naga cause, David Astor of the Observer. Astor predicted that Nagaland would follow the course set by Ireland – where a colonial government had reluctantly to grant independence to the southern part of the island. Since the Nagas were as stubborn as the Irish, the magnate thought that they ‘can now use the leverage of Chinese support . . . to survive successfully’. Astor hoped that ‘friendly British voices would point out to Delhi the relevance of the lesson we had to learn when similarly challenged by the Irish’.35 The advice rested on a serious, not to say tragic, underestimation of the powers of the Indian state.

  VII

  Disturbingly, the late 1960s also witnessed arise in violence between Hindus and Muslims. According to figures released by the National Integration Council, there were 132 incidences of communal violence in 1966, 220 in 1967 and as many as 346 in 1968 (the upward trend continued during 1969 and 1970). These conflicts often had their origins in petty disputes, such as the playing of music before a mosque or the killing of a cow near a temple. Sometimes attacks on women or fights over property sparked the trouble. In terms of number of incidents, the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were the worst hit.36

  One reason for this sudden upsurge in violence was the weakness of state governments. Particularly culpable were the SVD regimes, who vacillated in using force to quell riots or rioters. Another reason was that, in the aftermath of the war of 1965, feelings against Pakistan ran high. These could easily be turned against Indian Muslims, seen (unfairly) as fifth columnists working on behalf of the enemy. ‘Jana Sangh-inspired Hindus’ were particularly prone to taunting Muslims in this fashion. Now, when a dispute broke out, to the old, religiously inspired slogans – ‘Har Har Mahadev’ and ‘Allah O Akbar’ – was added a new one on the Hindu side: ‘Pakistan ya Kabristan’ (Go to Pakistan, or else we will send you to your grave).37

  One of the worst riots took place in Ahmedabad, the Gujarati city that Mahatma Gandhi had once called home. Ironically, it took place on the eve of the centenary of Gandhi’s birth, and was thus a deep source of embarrassment to the government, which had planned a lavish celebration, with dignitaries coming in from all over the world. On 12 September 1969 a procession commemorating a Muslim saint ran into a group of sadhus walking back to their temple with cows. Hot words were exchanged, whereupon Muslim youths entered the temple and smashed a few idols. A Muslim delegation, led by a respected lawyer, went immediately to apologize, but the priests were not to be pacified. As word spread of the desecration, crowds of Hindus began collecting, looking for targets to attack. Qurans were burnt in one place, Muslim shops attacked in another. With the Muslims fighting back, the trouble spread through the city and, in time, to towns near Ahmedabad as well. As the police looked mutely on, gangs battled each other in the narrow streets of the old town. After a week of fighting, the army was called in to restore the peace. More than 1,000 people had lost their lives. Thirty times that number had been rendered homeless. A majority in both cases were Muslim.38

  There was a very serious riot in Ranchi, in Bihar, in the summer of 1967; a very bad one in Jalgaon, in Maharashtra, three years later. In between, numerous other towns in north and west India had witnessed intercommunal violence. The writer Khush want Singh bitterly noted that the Indian adolescent was now learning the geography of his country through the history of murder. Aligarh and Ranchi and Ahmedabad were no longer centres of learning or culture or industry, but places where Indians butchered one another in the name of religion. As Singh pointed out, in these riots ‘nine out of ten killed are Muslims. Nine out of ten homes and business establishments destroyed are Muslim homes or enterprises.’ Besides, the majority of those render
ed homeless, and of those apprehended by the police, were also Muslim. ‘Is it any great wonder’, asked the writer, ‘that an Indian Muslim no longer feels secure in secular India? He feels discriminated against. He feels a second-class citizen.’ 39

  In 1967–8, when the communal temperature began to rise, India had a Muslim president (Dr Zakir Hussain) as well as a Muslim chief justice of the Supreme Court (M. Hidayatullah). However, as a Delhi journal pointed out, this was by no means representative of ‘the position of Muslims in the totality of Indian life’. They were seriously under-represented in professions such as engineering and medicine, and in industry, trade and the armed forces. This was in part because of the flight of the Muslim upper crust to Pakistan, yet subtle social prejudice also contributed. The Muslims had long stood solidly behind the Congress, but in the elections of 1967 they voted in large numbers for other parties as a way of showing their disillusionment. The Muslim predicament was a product of bigotry and communal politics on the Hindu side, and of an obscurantist leadership on their own.40

  VII

  To the historian, the late 1960s are reminiscent of the late 1940s, likewise a time of crisis and conflict, of resentment along lines of class, religion, ethnicity and region, of a centre that seemed barely to hold. I wonder if these parallels occurred to the Indians who lived through these times, to people in authority in particular, and to the prime minister most of all.

  The resonances were not merely national or sociological, but also familial. With the Raj in its death throes, Jawaharlal Nehru became prime minister of an interim government in 1946; the next year, the post became more substantial when India became independent. Indira Gandhi was unexpectedly thrust into office in 1966; the next year, the job was confirmed formally when she led her party to an election victory. Like Nehru, she was in control in Delhi; like him, she could not be certain how far her government’s writ ran beyond it. He and she had both to contend with communist insurrection and communal conflict; he was additionally faced with the problem of the princely states, she with the problem of a dozen anti-Congress state governments.

  Here the parallels end. Seeking to unite a divided India, Nehru articulated an ideology that rested on four main pillars. First, there was democracy, the freedom to choose one’s friends and speak one’s mind (and in the language of one’s choice) – above all, the freedom to choose one’s leaders through regular elections based on universal adult franchise. Second, there was secularism, the neutrality of the state in matters of religion and its commitment to maintaining social peace. Third, there was socialism, the attempt to augment productivity while ensuring a more egalitarian distribution of income (and of social opportunity). Fourth, there was non-alignment, the placement of India beyond and above the rivalries of the Great Powers. Among the less compelling, but not necessarily less significant, elements of this worldview were the conscious cultivation of a multi party system (notably through debate in Parliament), and a respect for the autonomy of the judiciary and the executive.

  Although rearticulated in the context of a newly independent India, these beliefs had been developing over a period of more than twenty years. Nehru was a well-read and widely travelled man. Through his travels and readings, he arrived at a synthesis of socialism and liberalism that he thought appropriate to his country. In other words, the political beliefs he came to profess – and invited the people of India to share – were his own.

  With Mrs Gandhi one cannot be so sure. She had neither read nor travelled extensively. She was unquestionably a patriot; growing up in the freedom movement, and with its leaders, she was deeply committed to upholding India’s interests in the world. How she thought these could best be upheld was less certain. In all the years she had been in politics her core beliefs had not been revealed to either party or public. They knew not what she really thought of the market economy, or the Cold War, or the relations between religions, or the institutions and processes of democracy. The many volumes of Nehru’s Selected Works are suffused with his writings on these subjects – subjects on which Mrs Gandhi, before 1967, spoke scarcely a word.

  The prime minister was, so to say, non-ideological – an attribute not shared by her advisers. The chief among these was her principal secretary, P. N. Haksar. Educated at the London School of Economics, he was called to the Bar in the UK before returning to practise law in Allahabad. At Independence he joined the Foreign Service and served as India’s ambassador to Austria and its first high commissioner to Nigeria. In 1967 he was deputy high commissioner in London, when Mrs Gandhi asked him to join her Secretariat. Haksar and she shared a home town, a common ancestry – both were Kashmiri Pandits – and many common friends.

  Haksar was a kind of polymath: a student of mathematics, he was also keenly interested in history, particularly diplomatic and military history. Among his other interests were anthropology – he had attended Bronislaw Malinowski’s seminar at the LSE – and food (he was a superb cook). Haksar tended to overpower friends and colleagues with the range of his knowledge and the vigour of his opinions. However, in this case intellectual force was not necessarily matched by intellectual subtlety. His political views were those of the left wing of the British Labour Party, circa 1945 – pro-state and anti-market in economic affairs, pro-Soviet and anti-American in foreign policy. He was also – it must be added – a man of an unshakeable integrity.41

  This book owes a great deal to P. N. Haksar, whose papers, all 500 files of them, provide a privileged window into the history of the times. But the prime minister of the day owed him even more. For, as Katherine Frank writes, ‘Indira trusted Haksar’s intelligence and judgement implicitly and completely. From 1967 to 1973, he was probably the most influential and powerful person in the government.’42 Haksar shared his influence and power with the career diplomat T. N. Kaul, the politician turned diplomat D. P. Dhar, the economist turned mandarin P. N. Dhar and the policeman turned security analyst R. N. Kao. Collectively they were known (behind their backs) as the ‘Panch Pan-dava’, after the five heroic brothers of the Mahabharata. Coincidentally, all were Kashmiri Brahmins. There was also an outer core of advisers, these likewise officials or intellectuals rather than politicians per se.

  This was not accidental. Even more so than Lal Bahadur Shastri, Mrs Gandhi needed to assert her independence of the Congress ‘Syndicate’ which had chosen her. Socially, she shared little with the party bosses –her own friends came from a more rarefied milieu. She could not be certain when they might try to unseat her. Thus she came to rely on the advice of the mandarins around her, who had no political ambitions themselves. But they did have political views to which, in time and for her own reasons, she came to subscribe.

  IX

  After the elections of 1967, Morarji Desai once more made manifest his desire to become prime minister. A compromise was worked out under which he would serve as finance minister and deputy prime minister – the latter a post that no one had held since the death of Vallabhbhai Patel.

  Hemmed in by the Syndicate, and threatened by Desai, the prime minister now sought to mark out her own identity by presenting herself as a socialist. This was done on the advice of P. N. Haksar. In a note he prepared for her in January 1968, the mandarin advised his mistress to clip Desai’s wings, perhaps by appointing one or two other ‘deputy’ prime ministers in addition. While choosing ministers loyal to her, the prime minister had also to forge ‘wider progressive alliances under [her] more effective personal lead’. For this, she needed to ‘project more assertively [her] own ideological image directly to the people over the heads of [her] colleagues and party men’.43

  Mrs Gandhi had rarely invoked the word ‘socialist’ before 1967, although it was one of the four pillars of her father’s political philosophy. Notably, it was the pillar that was propped up most enthusiastically by her mandarins. In part, the appeal was negative, stemming from a Brahmanical distaste for business and businessmen. But there was also a positive identification with the idea of socialism. A great
er role for the state in the economy, they believed, was necessary to ensure social equity as well as promote national integration. The public sector, wrote one mandarin, was ‘a macrocosm of a united India’. In the private sector, Punjabis employed Punjabis, Marwaris trusted only Marwaris, but in the Indian Railways and the great steel factories Tamils worked alongside Biharis, Hindus with Muslims, Brahmins with Harijans. Whether or not socialism was economically feasible, it was a ‘social necessity’. For, ‘socialism and a large public sector . . . are effective weapons for forging a united and integrated India’.44

  There was a strong moral core to the socialism of P. N. Haksar and his colleagues. For the prime minister, however, the appeal was pragmatic, a means of distinguishing herself from the Congress old guard. In May 1967 she presented a ten-point programme of reform to the party, which included the ‘social control’ of banking, the abolition of the privy purses of princes and guaranteed minimum wages for rural and industrial labour. The Syndicate was unenthusiastic, but the programme appealed to the younger generation, who saw the party’s recent reverses as a consequence of the promises unfulfilled over the years.45

  Speeches made by Mrs Gandhi after her re-election show her identifying explicitly with the poor and vulnerable. Speaking to the Lok Sabha in February 1968, she stressed the problems of landless labour, expressed her ‘concern for all the minorities of India’ and defended the public sector from criticisms that it was not making profit (her answer that it did not need to, since it was building a base for economic development). Speaking to the Rajya Sabha in August, she asked for a ‘new deal for the down-trodden’, in particular, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, pledging her ‘unceasing attention and effort to this cause’. A few days later, in her Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort, she singled out ‘industrialists and businessmen’ who had the nerve to talk of worker indiscipline while continuing to ‘make big profits and draw fat salaries’.46