In the last year of his government’s tenure Rajiv Gandhi embarked on four initiatives that aimed at reversing his declining popularity. In September 1988 he introduced a bill aimed at checking the freedom of the press. Under its terms, editors and proprietors could be sent to jail if they were guilty of ‘scurrilous publication’ or ‘criminal imputation’, terms whose definition would be the privilege of the state alone. The bill was evidently a response to the spate of recent stories on corruption; it was a ‘belated preemptive strike before more damage could be done to the government’s image’. It prompted a collective protest by editors across the country and a walk-out in Parliament, and was eventually dropped.71
Then, in January 1989, Rajiv Gandhi visited China, the first Indian prime minister to do so in more than three decades. This was, among other things, an attempt to recast himself as an international statesman. In talks with Chinese leaders the border question was delicately side-stepped. However, New Delhi ceded ground on Tibet, while Beijing for its part said it would not aid insurgents in India’s north-east. Rajiv Gandhi had a ninety-minute conversation with the 84-year-old Deng Hsiao Ping, where he was told: ‘You are the young. You are the future.’72
Next, in March 1989, Rajiv Gandhi reversed the outward-looking, growth-oriented economic policies of his first years in office. In the last budget tabled by his government he increased taxes on consumer durables and introduced fresh surcharges on air travel and luxury hotel bookings. At the same time, a new employment generation scheme was introduced for rural areas. With the elections beckoning, Rajiv Gandhi was ‘going back to the kind of populism that his mother specialized in’.73
Finally, in the summer of 1989, the government launched a series of high-profile events to celebrate the birth centenary of Jawaharlal Nehru. Seminars, photo exhibitions, TV quizzes, poetry festivals, musical concerts, even skating competitions, were held in Nehru’s name, all paid for by the state and publicized by state radio and television. On the face of it, these programmes merely honoured India’s first prime minister, but ‘at another, more subconscious level, the blitz repeatedly and subtly whispers the real but hidden message: that there has been no better guardian of the nation than the Nehru family and letting the family down would, in the ultimate analysis, amount to spurning a sacred legacy and inviting the forces of chaos’.74
Still, Rajiv Gandhi was leaving nothing to chance. In his campaign for re-election he addressed 170 meetings in different parts of the country. As in 1984, he was advised by Rediffusion to stress the threats to the country’s unity, stoked and furthered by a sectarian opposition and to be overcome by the Congress alone.75 This time, however, the message did not resonate nearly as widely. For one thing, the accusations of corruption had gravely hurt the government’s credibility. For another, the opposition was far better organized. The three main groupings had co-ordinated their strategy so that in most constituencies the Congress candidate faced only one main opponent – from either the National Front, the BJP, or one of the communist parties.
The elections, held in November 1989, were a body blow to the Congress Party. They won only 197 seats, down more than 200 from their previous tally. On the other hand, the opposition couldn’t quite claim victory either. The Janata Dal won 142 seats, the BJP 86, and the left a few more than fifty. V. P. Singh was sworn in as head of a National Front government, with the left and the BJP choosing to support it from outside. Thus, the second non-Congress prime minister of India was someone who, like the first (Morarji Desai), had spent the bulk of his political career in the Congress Party.
The general election of 1989 was the first in which no single party won a majority. That it constituted a watershed is not merely a retrospective reading; some observers had called it so at the time. ‘India was in for a period of political instability’, wrote Vir Sanghvi: ‘The days of strong governments ruled by dictatorial Prime Ministers were over. This election was the inauguration of an era of uncertainty.’76
XI
Even by the standards of Indian history, the 1980s were an especially turbulent decade. The republic had always been faced with dissenting movements; but never so many, at the same time, in so many parts of India, and expressed with such intensity. Two challenges were especially worrying: the continuing insurgency in Punjab – the first such in a state considered part of the heartland of India (unlike those old trouble spots Nagaland and Kashmir) – and the unprecedented mobilization of radical Hindus across the country, which threatened the identity of the secular state. Adding to the violence, major and minor, was the growing political and administrative corruption, this highlighted but also made more troubling by an alert press. Outside the country’s borders national prestige had been greatly damaged by the bloody nose given to the Indian army by the LTTE in Sri Lanka.
In the summer of 1985 the Calcutta weekly Sunday, then at the height of its importance and influence, ran a cover story on the ‘uncontrollable wave of violence’ in the country. ‘Tension and frustration everywhere – social, economic and political’, said the weekly, was ‘giving way to sporadic terror and mass protests’. ‘Acts of sabotage, arson, killings and destruction are breaking out all over India like an ugly rash.’ Thirty-seven years after Independence, ‘India finds itself at a crucial point in its history’.
Posing the question ‘What is happening to the country and why?’, Sunday asked a roster of eminent Indians to answer it. The editor Romesh Thapar remarked that the violence and anger showed that ‘no one is in command at any level . . . [T]he fear is growing that we are moving beyond the point of no return, to use a phrase from the jargon of airline pilots. The breakdown is becoming too visible.’ The columnist Kuldip Nayar reproduced a series of newspaper headlines on riots and killings, these recording ‘trouble of varying intensity in areas thousands of miles apart’, the work of people who ‘for a long time lived on the edge of disaster’ but whose ‘discontent seems [now] to have reached a bursting point’. The policeman K. F. Rustomji noted grimly that Indian politics and administration were now captive to the ‘fanatic and the demagogue’, who ‘claim the right to organise the deaths of thousands under the guise of democratic dissent’. ‘Forget the dead, count the votes,’ said Rustomji in a withering but not inaccurate characterization of the political purpose of those fanatics and demagogues. Then he added, ‘In a few years even the votes may not be worth counting because we may have killed democracy by then.’77
These were recurrent themes in the press commentary of the period: that India would break up into pieces, or give up on democracy altogether. Writing in April 1987, Sunday’s own political editor Kewal Verma issued this dire warning:
If Rajiv Gandhi continues to slip and no alternative emerges (. . . none is in sight yet), it will lead to political destabilisation with disastrous consequences. For, Khalistan could become a reality. Already in the rural areas of Punjab, Sikh extremists are running a parallel administration. Also, the Rama Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid issue could lead to large-scale communal war in north India. A prolonged state of political uncertainty and instability would be an invitation to adventurous forces to intervene in the situation. For instance, if the President dismisses the Prime Minister, it may be [the Chief of Army Staff] Gen. Sundarji who will decide who should stay.78
The writers quoted in this section were all Indians in their late fifties or early sixties, who had grown up in the warm glow of the Nehru years and remembered the hopes with which the new nation was forged. Their sentiments were no doubt coloured by nostalgia, at least some of which was merited. For the politicians of Nehru’s day had worked to contain social cleavages rather than deepen or further them for their own interests. But in other ways the nostalgia was perhaps misplaced. The churning – violent and costly though it undoubtedly was – could be more sympathetically read as a growing decentralization of the Indian polity, away from the hegemony of a single region (the north), a single party (the Congress), a single family (the Gandhis).
One must reserve
final comment on whether the gloom was really justified. For as the very many forecasts previously quoted in this book have shown, every decade since Independence had been designated the ‘most dangerous’ thus far. If there was a novelty about these latest predictions, it was merely that they came from Indians rather than foreigners.
XII
With the end of the present chapter, this book moves from ‘history’ to what might instead be called ‘historically informed journalism’. Part Five, which follows, deals with the events of the last two-and-a-half decades, that is, with processes still unfolding.
Most archives around the world follow a ‘thirty-year’ rule, keeping closed documents written in the past three decades. That seems just about right, for once thirty years have passed any new ‘disclosures’ are unlikely to materially affect the lives of those still living.
In my experience, a historian also needs a generation’s distance to write with any conviction or credibility about the past. That much time must elapse before one can place events and policies in a pattern, to see them away and apart from the din and clamour of the present. Once roughly three decades have gone by, much more material is at hand – not just archives that are now open, but also memoirs, biographies and analytical works that have since been published.
While writing about the very recent past one lacks the primary sources available for earlier periods. Besides, the historian is here writing about times that are close to him as well as his readers. He, and they, often have strong opinions about the politicians and policies of the day. In the chapters that follow, I have tried to keep my own biases out of the narrative, but my success in this respect may be limited – or at any rate, more limited than in other parts of the book. For these decades have been as rich in incident and controversy as any other time in the history of independent India.
Part Five
A History of Events
26
Rights and Riots
The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint.
HANNAH ARENDT
I
THROUGH THE 1970s AND 1980s, while state and national elections were won and lost, the Indian political landscape had witnessed a steady rise of the ‘backward castes’, of those groups intermediate between the Scheduled Castes at the bottom and the Brahmins and Rajputs at the top. Yadavs in UP and Bihar, Jats in Punjab and Haryana, Marathas in Maharashtra, Vokkaligas in Karnataka and Gounders in Tamil Nadu – these were all, in the phrase of the anthropologist M. N. Srinivas, the ‘dominant caste’ in their localities: large in numbers, well organized, exercising economic and social power. At election time – to use another of M. N. Srinivas’s concepts – they acted as a ‘vote bank’, lining up solidly behind a politician of their caste.1
In Indian law, these groups are known as the ‘Other Backward Castes (or Classes)’, to distinguish them from the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes. It was these ‘OBCs’ who formed the social base and provided the leadership of the parties that were to successfully challenge the dominance of the Congress party. The DMK, which came to power in Madras after the 1967 elections, as well as the SVD governments of the states in the North, were in essence OBC parties. Ten years later, these backward castes asserted themselves emphatically on the national stage. At least two of the four components of the Janata collective that came to power at the Centre in 1977 – the Lok Dal and the Socialists – were also, effectively, OBC parties.2
Economic power had come to the OBCs through land reforms and the Green Revolution; political power through the ballot box. What was lacking was administrative power. It was thus that the Janata Government had, in 1977, appointed the ‘Backward Classes Commission’, known then, and ever after, as the ‘Mandal’ Commission after its proactive Chairman, the Bihari politician Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal. The Commission concluded that caste was still the main indicator of ‘backwardness’. It identified, on the basis of state surveys, as many as 3,743 specific castes which were still ‘backward’. These, it estimated, collectively constituted in excess of 50 per cent of the Indian population. Yet these castes were very poorly represented in the administration, especially at the higher levels. By the Commission’s calculations, circa 1980, the OBCs filled only 12.55 per cent of all posts in the Central Government, and a mere 4.83 per cent of Class I jobs.
To redress this anomaly the Mandal Commission recommended that 27 per cent of all posts in the Central Government be reserved for these castes, to add to the 22.5 per cent already set apart for Scheduled Castes and Tribes. For ‘we must recognise’, said the Commission,
that an essential part of the battle against social backwardness is to be fought in the minds of the backward people. In India government service has always been looked upon as a symbol of prestige and power. By increasing the representation of OBCs in Government services, we give them an immediate feeling of participation in the governance of this country. When a backward caste candidate becomes a Collector or Superintendent of Police, the material benefits accruing from his position are limited to the members of his family only. But the psychological spin off of this phenomenon is tremendous; the entire community of that backward class candidate feels elevated. Even when no tangible benefits flow to the community at large, the feeling that now it has its ‘own man’ in the ‘corridors of power’ acts as morale booster.3
By the time the Mandal Commission submitted its report the Janata Government had fallen. The Congress regimes that followed, headed by Indira and Rajiv Gandhi respectively, sought to give it a quiet burial. But when a ‘National Front’ government came to power in the general elections of 1989 the Report was disinterred. The new Prime Minister, V. P. Singh, was sensible of the rising political power of the OBCs, and of his less-than-solid position as head of a minority coalition. Seeking to outflank his critics by presenting himself as a spokesman for, if not the messiah of, the backward classes, in August 1990 Singh announced in Parliament that his Government would implement the Mandal Report. Henceforth, 27 per cent of all vacancies in the Government of India would be reserved for candidates from the ‘Socially and Educationally Backward Classes’ identified by the Commission.4
The Order sparked a lively debate in intellectual circles. Some scholars argued that the criteria for job reservation should be family income, rather than membership of a particular caste. Others deplored the extension of affirmative action in the first place; by allocating one job in two on considerations other than merit, the efficacy and reliability of public institutions was being put at risk. However, there were also scholars who welcomed the implementation of the Mandal Commission as a corrective to the dominance of upper castes, and especially Brahmins, in the public services. They pointed to the states of South India, where more than two-thirds of government jobs were allocated on the basis of caste, without (it was argued) affecting the efficiency of the administration.5
In September 1990, a case was brought before the Supreme Court of India, contesting the constitutional validity of the Mandal Commission’s recommendations. Three principal arguments were made by the petitioner: that the extension of reservation violated the Constitutional guarantee of equality of opportunity; that caste was not a reliable indicator of backwardness; and that the efficiency of public institutions was at risk. While it deliberated on the case, the Bench issued a stay on the Government Order of 13 August.
As so often the case in India, arguments about public policy were conducted in newspapers and courts, and also spilled over into the streets. On the 19th of September, a Delhi University student named Rajiv Goswami set himself on fire in protest against the acceptance of the Mandal Commission report. He was badly burnt, but survived. Other students were inspired to follow his example. These self-immolators were all upper-caste, whose own hopes for obtaining a government job were now being undermined. Altogether, there were nearly 200 suicide attempts – of these, 62 students succumbed to their injuries.
Other protests were collect
ive. Across northern India, groups of students organized rallies and demonstrations, shut down schools, colleges, and shops, attacked government buildings, and engaged in battle with the police. The guardians of the law sought to defend themselves, sometimes to deadly effect. There were incidents of police firing reported from as many as six states of the Union, these claiming more than fifty lives.6
The conflicts sparked by the Mandal Commission recommendations were far more intense in northern India. For one thing, affirmative action programmes had long been in existence in the South. For another, that region also had a thriving industrial sector; thus educated young men were no longer as dependent on government employment. Again, while in the South the upper castes constituted less than 10 per cent of the population, the figure in the North was in excess of 20 per cent. Since there was more at stake all round, the battles, naturally, were fiercer.
Among the strongest supporters of the Mandal Commission were two rising politicians. These were Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had become Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh late in 1989; and Lalu Prasad Yadav, who became Chief Minister of Bihar early in 1990. Although unrelated, they had many things in common. Both were born in peasant households, both became politically active at university, joining the then still influential socialist movement. Both were jailed during the Emergency, and both joined the Janata Party after it was over.
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