by Mark Tully
Its constitution commits India to socialism, secularism and democracy. All three had come under unparalleled pressure by the time Rajiv Gandhi stepped down as prime minister. Socialism had become unfashionable in the West, so it was no surprise that Rajiv had attempted to wriggle out of its grip. He had indeed increased India's growth rate by starting to liberalise the economy, but the industrialists he had encouraged all had their eyes on the easiest market – the expanding middle classes. The poor had no purchasing capacity, so they were of no interest to the industrialists. There was a consumer boom, but this only highlighted the difference between the lives of the middle classes and the lives of the majority of Indians. Rajiv's opponents, who knew their India better, were able to present this as a difference between castes – between the so-called backward castes, who by tradition made their living in the countryside, and the upper castes who had cornered the opportunities in the towns. In northern India, where elections are decided, the divisions between town and country, and between upper and lower castes, were deeper than ever before in the election that Rajiv Gandhi lost. Indira Gandhi had said that India would have its own brand of socialism. Rajiv never officially abandoned the search for that, but it's clear that in his heart of hearts he believed that socialism's failures meant that India had no option but to give up the search for greater equality.
Rajiv Gandhi never quarrelled with the principle of secularism, yet during his premiership the relations between Hindus and Muslims degenerated to their lowest level since the holocaust of partition. He was not a religious man himself, and perhaps that, as much as his Western upbringing, was why he failed to understand the power of religion. He behaved as though religious sentiment was just another factor to be manipulated for political purposes. How else can one explain his naïve handling of religious issues?
The crisis started when Rajiv surrendered to pressure from Muslim fundamentalists and altered the constitution to satisfy their objections to the law on maintenance for divorced women. Then, in a crude attempt to achieve a balance, he allowed Hindus to worship in a disputed mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya. There was a tradition that this mosque stood on the birthplace of the Hindu god, Ram, and there had been a long-running but not very energetic campaign for the mosque to be removed and replaced by a temple. The decision to allow Hindus to worship in the mosque put new life into this campaign, and by the end of Rajiv's premiership it had become a major political issue.
But Rajiv Gandhi had not learnt his lesson. During his election campaign he first allowed a Hindu organisation to lay the foundation stone of a temple at Ayodhya, but then, to demonstrate his concern for Muslim sensibilities (or, putting it more realistically, to avoid losing Muslim votes), he prevented the start of work on the temple. Both Hindus and Muslims were enraged, and the Ayodhya issue became even more divisive. Rajiv could only fall back on appeals to respect the secularism bequeathed to India by his grandfather – a secularism he had breached. He did not realise that underlying the Ayodhya issue was growing belief among Indians that Nehru's secularism was hostile to Hinduism – that it was an alien import from India's former rulers. He did not consider that Hinduism's own tradition of tolerance – a tradition that even the new fundamentalists claim as their own – might be a more natural basis for religious harmony in India.
Democracy was not faring too well either when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. He must bear some, but by no means all, of the blame for this too. He didn't understand the Indian way of conducting politics – the need for the personal touch, the need to make yourself available to as many people as possible and the need to gather information from as many different sources as possible. He thought that that was an inefficient and archaic way of doing business, and tried to run his office like a modern captain of industry. I remember a senior member of his party saying to me, ‘I don't like to go to Rajiv Gandhi's house because it doesn't feel like an open house, which a Congressman's should always be.’ Another told me with despair, ‘I have heard that Rajiv is now even trying to get the lists of the people who are going to man every polling station in India on his computer.’ Indira Gandhi certainly did not run her party democratically – during her later years she made sure there was no one who could challenge her – but she never cut herself off from her partymen. Even in opposition Rajiv remained an isolated figure, dependent for information and advice on a small coterie who had no political clout of their own.
Rajiv Gandhi left behind a party so sycophantic that within twenty-four hours of his assassination the leadership was offered to his widow, Sonia. She had never played an active role in politics, except for working in her husband's constituency, and had shown distaste for the profession. She had lost a husband she loved deeply and was in a state of shock. Nevertheless the Congress Party tried to burden her with its problems because it did not have the confidence to fight a general election unless it was led by a member of the Nehru dynasty – even if that member was an Italian by birth and a Roman Catholic by baptism. This was the party which had once contained so many powerful and independent-minded people that even men of the stature of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru could not guarantee to have their own way. Sonia Gandhi rejected the party's offer politely, but the Congress leaders still pined for her.
It has to be said that the Congress Party's rivals were in no better shape when Rajiv died. The Bharatiya Janata Party was energetically pursuing its goal of a Hindu India, but it was still not a national party. The communists had barely advanced out of their two strongholds of Kerala and West Bengal, and the rest were as usual busy fighting their personal rather than their party battles. But it's the Congress Party in which the Indian electorate has placed its faith time and time again, and so the Congress Party must bear most of the blame for the growing disillusionment of the electorate and the violence of elections. When Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, more than 200 people had already been killed in electoral violence. In the constituency in which he voted, less than 50 per cent of the electorate turned out to vote.
Rajiv Gandhi did in the end realise that he was out of touch. That's why he took the courageous decision to ignore the warnings of his security advisers and campaign among the people of India. That's why he died. Terrible though his death was, I don't think it means the death of India. If – and it's still a big if – the Nehru dynasty does come to an end, another life will be born. Because this is India, where change takes some time, the birth will be slow and perhaps painful. I believe it could be the birth of a new order which is not held up by the crumbling colonial pillars left behind by the raj but is genuinely Indian: a modern order, but not a slavish imitation of other modern orders. For all its great achievements, the Nehru dynasty has stood like a banyan tree overshadowing the people and the institutions of India, and all Indians know that nothing grows under the banyan tree.