X
A fourth area of democratic imperfection has to do with the provision of justice. This was brought vividly to light in April 2016, when, at a function in New Delhi with the Prime Minister Modi present, the chief justice of India spoke of the unconscionable delays in the process of dispensing justice. Addressing the prime minister in the name of the ‘poor litigant’ and ‘people languishing in jails’, the chief justice urged him ‘to rise to the occasion and realise that it not enough to criticize’. At this point, the chief justice was so overwhelmed with the dimensions of the problem that he broke down, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe away his tears.
The failures to provide speedy justice were largely a consequence of the massive, chronic, under-staffing of India’s courts. In 2016, the Supreme Court had a shortfall of 19 per cent of its assigned strength, the High Courts a shortfall of 44 per cent, and subordinate courts a shortfall of 25 per cent. The Allahabad High Court had as many as 88 unfulfilled vacancies; the Madras High Court, 40.
These shortfalls lead to major delays. In India’s High Courts, once a case is filed, it takes, on the average, three years and one month to be disposed of. The person losing the case can then ask for a stay and appeal to the Supreme Court. Some cases, filed originally in a district court and contested all the way up to the highest court in the land, can take several decades to achieve finality, the litigants sometimes dying in the process.55
The judicial system in India is painfully slow. And it is also shockingly corrupt. In September 2010, Shanti Bushan – one of India’s most respected lawyers who had served as law minister in the Union government – created a stir when he claimed in the Supreme Court that, of the sixteen chief justices of India he had served under, eight were corrupt. He listed their names in a sealed envelope which he submitted to the court, daring the judges to open it.56
The evidence for judicial corruption is even more anecdotal than that for political corruption. Yet, going by the perception of petitioners and lawyers, it does seem that the taking of bribes and inducements is fairly common among the lower judiciary, certainly prevalent among High Court judges, and not entirely absent even in the Supreme Court.
The justice system, at least as it operates in India, is biased in favour of the rich and influential. Thus, in many cases, when a politician, film star or businessman is the accused in a crime he was charged with committing, witnesses have been bought or threatened into changing their original statements. Or they might even be physically eliminated, as has happened in the case of an influential godman accused of sexual harassment, and that of a massive educational fraud in Madhya Pradesh in which senior politicians (of more than one party) were involved. In both cases multiple witnesses died, in mysterious circumstances.57
The autonomy of the judiciary has also been undermined by political interference. The first government to seek to make judges subservient to it was that led by Indira Gandhi. Her key advisers, such as P. N. Haksar, Mohan Kumaramangalam and H. R. Gokhale, vigorously pursued the idea of a ‘committed judiciary’. They actively interfered in judicial appointments, most famously – or notoriously – by superceding several outstanding judges to make A. N. Ray the chief justice of India in 1973.
More recently, some Supreme and High Court judges may have been influenced in their working by the prospect of post-retirement sinecures. For example, a Congress government appointed a former Supreme Court judge to the Rajya Sabha, while a BJP government made a former chief justice the governor of a state. In both cases, the judge in question had passed judgements or conducted enquiries which exonerated controversial ruling party politicians. The eminent jurist Fali Nariman termed such appointments ‘most improper and unfortunate’. Judges ‘seeking jobs or a seat in Parliament from the Executive’, he remarked, ‘gravely affects the concept of independence of the judiciary, proudly and repeatedly proclaimed – alas only by sitting Judges of the Supreme Court – as a basic feature of the Constitution.’58
Then there is the problem of undertrials, whose percentage has been steadily increasing over the years. It now rests at just under 70 per cent. These men and women (most of whom are poor, and many from a low caste background) have merely been charged, not proven guilty. Yet they can languish for years in crowded, dark, dirty jails, eating undercooked and/or adulterated food, drinking contaminated water, and with no access to legal or medical aid.59
The state of Indian prisons is depressing. Meanwhile, in their regular, routine, duties of assuring public safety and security, the Indian police do not distinguish themselves either. There are too few of them in the first place. India has 130 policemen per 100,000 citizens, as against the global norm of 222.60 Those that are there are often overweight, undertrained and corrupt. Like the courts they tend to favour the rich; further, they can display a marked bias against religious minorities. In a rare moment of self-criticism, the Mumbai police admitted in July 2014 that they experienced a trust deficit among Muslims, who saw them as ‘communal, biased and insensitive’, as well as ‘ill-informed, corrupt and lacking professionalism’, the second part of which verdict all Indians regardless of religion would endorse.61
One study found that of all the government departments in the state of Karnataka, the police were the most corrupt. In the first eleven months of the year, citizens reported paying close to 9 crores as bribes to the men in khaki. The study surveyed 37 government agencies; the second most corrupt was the transport department, whose yearly takings were less than 10 per cent of that alleged to have been collected by the police department. It is extremely likely that in other states of the Union the same kind of situation prevails.62
The malfunctioning of the Indian police is a product of its increasing politicization over the years. An MLA or MP often decides who shall be posted as the superintendent of police in the district in which his constituency falls. The most prestigious and powerful jobs in the police are allocated, as often as not, on the basis of kin and caste. At other times they are bid for in the open market. In some states chief ministers are said to have demanded, and obtained, lakhs or even crores of rupees in return for posting an officer to a district or division of his choice.
Once the top jobs are decided on considerations other than competence, it hard to prevent lesser jobs being allocated in the same manner. So inspectors and station head officers and constables are also often chosen on the basis of caste, religion, favouritism or bribery. Down the line, this puts a premium on a police officer pleasing the man (or minister) who appointed him to his post, rather than focusing on his main job, which is the protection of the ordinary citizen. It also encourages corruption, the desire to make hay before one is suddenly divested of one’s responsibilities when a government changes, an MP fails to win re-election, or the boss retires.
As the Supreme Court despairingly noted in 2006, ‘many of the deficiencies in the functioning of the police have arisen largely due to a dose of unhealthy and petty political interference at various levels starting from transfer and posting of policemen of different ranks, misuse of police for partisan purposes and political patronage quite often extended to corrupt police personnel’.63
XI
Democracy is about, among other things, the enhancement of individual freedoms. Despite the corruption and corrosion of public institutions, are Indians, acting and thinking as individuals, freer than they were in 1947?
In many respects they are. Growing urbanization has meant a steady delinking of caste from occupation. Now, many more Indians are freer than they ever were to follow a profession of their choice, rather than that of their parents. Urbanization has also led to a lessening of the stranglehold of the family. Many more Indians can now fall in love with and marry a person of their choice (rather than one chosen for them by their parents). They can also more easily make friends across caste and religious boundaries.
Even in matters of sexual choice, Indians are perhaps freer than at any time since Independence. Despite the Supreme Court judgement of 2013 uphol
ding Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, gays and lesbians are relatively immune to ostracism and persecution, at least in the cities.
To be sure, the extent of these freedoms is heavily determined by class and gender. Gays who are middle class are less subject to social prejudice than those who are working class. Parents of all classes are more likely to accept a son’s choice of career or spouse than a daughter’s.
The place where Indians are most free, most able to act as individuals, may be the voting booth. Back in the 1950s, women often voted as their fathers or husbands or brothers did. Dalits often voted as the upper castes told them too. Now, while friends, family and caste fellows may be consulted before voting, the final decision is entirely one’s own.
One area where Indians have become less free in recent decades relates to artistic and literary expression. Archaic colonial laws are too often invoked by courts or the state to ban books and censor films. The rise of identity politics has made it almost impossible to present a fair, unbiased, assessment of the life and work of Indian political figures revered by a particular caste, linguistic, or religious group. Attacks on independent writers and artists have become more frequent; occasionally, they are even murdered for their views. Since no politician or political party has ever taken a forthright stand in favour of freedom of expression, these attacks go unpunished. On the whole, Indian writers, artists and film-makers are probably less free, more vulnerable, than they have been at any time since the Emergency of 1975–7.64
XII
How democratic is India? When asked this question, I usually turn for recourse to an immortal line of the great Hindi comic actor Johnny Walker. In a film where he plays the hero’s sidekick, Walker answers every query with the remark: ‘Boss, phipty/phipty’. When asked what prospect he has of marrying the girl he so deeply loves, or of getting the job he so dearly desires, the sidekick tells the boss that the chances are roughly even, 50 per cent of success, or 50 per cent of failure.
Is India a democracy, then? The answer is, well, phipty-phipty. It mostly is when it comes to holding elections and permitting freedom of movement and expression. It mostly is not when it comes to the functioning of institutions crucial to the everyday life of a democracy. Most political parties have become family firms. Most politicians are corrupt, and many come from a criminal background. India’s law-makers are too often lawbreakers as well. Meanwhile, civil servants have lost their autonomy of functioning, doing what their political bosses ask rather than what justice or reason demands. The courts are slow and over-burdened, and not always fair either. The police are corrupt in good days and venal in bad.
As the Republic turns seventy, the national experiment seems more robust than the democratic one. No part of India is likely to secede soon, if at all. The astonishing project of creating a nation without a common language, common religion or common enemy has, thus far at least, largely succeeded. However, the record when it comes to nurturing equality of citizenship is decidedly mixed.
In his famous last speech to the Constituent Assembly. B. R. Ambedkar noted that India would soon become a polity based on the principle of one person, one vote. He wondered when it could become a society based on the principle of one person, one value.
That question remains as pertinent as when it was first posed. For the Republic of India is in danger of becoming what I call an ‘elections-only democracy’. Every election, whether to a state Assembly or to a national Parliament, is free and fair. The Election Committee is rightly praised as a model institution. Yet other instruments of democratic accountability remain deeply imperfect. Parliament meets rarely – when it does, it resembles a wrestling pit more than the stately chamber of discussion it was meant to be. The criminal justice system is in a state of near-collapse. The state is, on the one side, weak and incompetent when providing basic services such as education and health care; but, on the other, savage and brutal in its suppression of discontent.
In India today, Dalits, women, Muslims and tribals are perhaps not as persecuted as one might have feared when the nation was created. Many individual Dalits, women and Muslims (but fewer tribals) have overcome discrimination, becoming successful professionals, public servants, politicians and entrepreneurs. Yet these social groups remain, on the whole, less-than-equal citizens of the land. Seventy years after Independence, upper-caste Hindu males still command disproportionate privileges in the everyday life of the Republic.
In the first edition of this book, published in 2007, I argued that as a multi-lingual, multi-religious political experiment, the Republic of India anticipated the European Union by several decades. Ten years later, I might add that it seems likely to outlive the EU as well. But I do not write this in any spirit of triumphalism. For India, and Indians, could learn a lesson or two from some individual European countries in how to limit the influence of corruption and cronyism in politics; how to nurture impersonal, rule-round institutions; how to dispense justice fairly and speedily; how to train public officials to treat all citizens alike regardless of age or class or gender or ethnicity.
It is easy enough for Indian patriots to compare our democratic record with other ex-colonial nations in Asia and Africa; but tougher, and more necessary, to compare it with the countries of Western Europe and North America. I think that is what B. R. Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Vallabhbhai Patel (among other such figures) would have wanted us to do. For Indians today may be more free than when the British left these shores, but they are surely less free than what the framers of our Constitution hoped or wished them to be.
Acknowledgements
In close to five decades as a citizen of India I have had plenty of opportunity to discover that this is sometimes the most exasperating country in the world. However, it was only while working on its modern history that I found that it was at all times the most interesting. It was my friend Peter Straus who set me off on the journey, by suggesting that I write a book on independent India. And it was the selfless tribe of archivists and librarians who made the journey an adventure rich in thrills and unexpected discoveries.
The greatest thanks are owed to the staff of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, that capacious repository of private papers, periodicals, microfilms and books about modern India. For weeks on end I had as my kindly companions Shri Jeevan Chand and Shri Rautela of the Manuscripts Division, who brought file after file up from a large, dark corridor into the sunny reading room where I worked. Outside, in the Main Section, the library staff were unfailingly courteous. In sourcing manuscripts, I also received much help from the Library’s Deputy Director, Dr N. Balakrishnan, and his sterling assistant Deepa Bhatnagar.
Next in order of importance is that other – and more famous – public repository, the British Library in London. My base here was the old India Office Library and Records, which – while I worked there – was called the ‘Oriental and India Office Collections’ (it now functions under the label of ‘Asian and African Studies’). By any name it remains a happy place to work in, with its brisk and efficient staff, its close links to other collections, and – not least – the serendipitous meetings it allows with scholars from around the world.
Among the other libraries and archives where I collected material for this book are those maintained by the National Archives of India, New Delhi; the Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge; the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; Cornell University; the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the University of Georgia, Athens; Friends House, Euston; the India International Centre, New Delhi; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Imperial War Museum, London; Oslo University; the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai; Tata Steel, Jamshedpur; and the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie. A special thanks is owed to the Centre for Education and Documentation in Bengaluru, from whose fabulously comprehensive collection of news clippings I have extensively drawn.
Aside from private papers and periodicals, this book also dr
aws on other books old and new, as well as pamphlets. Not many of these could I find in libraries (at least not the libraries in my home town, Bengaluru, which is a great centre of science but not, alas, of the humanities). The bulk were bought from bookshops known and unrecognized. I am grateful, in particular, to the Premier Bookshop, Bengaluru; the Select Bookshop, Bengaluru; Prabhu Booksellers, Gurugram; the New and Secondhand Bookshop, Mumbai; and Manohar Booksellers, New Delhi. As handy and helpful were the unnamed pavement stalls in Mumbai’s Flora Fountain and Delhi’s Daryaganj – from whom and where, over the past two decades and more, I have obtained so much of the material for my work as a historian.
The photographs that I have used here come principally from four collections: those maintained by the Press Information Bureau, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, and the Hindu and Ananda Bazaar Patrika group of newspapers. I thank these institutions for their assistance, and my wife Sujata for advice on the final selection.
For help of various kinds, I would like to thank Chinmayi Arun; Kanti Bajpai; Suhas Baliga; Rukmini Banerji; Nupur Basu; Millicent Bennett; Stanley Brandes; Vijay Chandru; Shruti Debi; Kanak Mani Dixit; Zafar Futehally; Amitav Ghosh; my parents S. R. D. and Visalakshi Guha; Supriya Guha; Wajahat Habibullah; Rajen Harshe; Radhika Herzberger; Trevor Horwood; Shreyas Jayasimha; Robin Jeffrey; Bhagwan Josh; Nasreen Munni Kabir; Devesh Kapur; Mukul Kesavan; Soumya Keshavan; Nayanjot Lahiri; Nirmala Lakshman; Edward Luce; Lucy Luck; Raghu Menon; Mary Mount; Rajdeep Mukherjee; Rudrangshu Mukherjee; Anil Nauriya; Nandan Nilekani; Mohandas Pai; Sriram Panchu; Prashant Panjiar; Shekhar Pathak; Srinath Raghavan; Nitya Ramakrishnan; Ramesh Ramanathan; Jairam Ramesh; my nephew Karthik Ramkumar; Mahesh Rangarajan; Anuradha Roy; Tirthankar Roy; John Ryle; P. Sainath; Sanjeev Saith; Rajdeep Sardesai; Jalpa Rajesh Shah; Rajbhushan Shinde; K. Sivaramakrishnan; Arvind Subramanian; R. Sudarshan; Nandini Sundar; M. V. Swaroop; Shikha Trivedy; Siddharth Varadarajan; A. R. Venkatachalapathy; Rajendra Vora; Amy Waldman; and Francis Wheen.
India After Gandhi Revised and Updated Edition Page 99