Indian Politics and the Historical Legacy

Housekeeping:

• Assign European Union negotiation countries.

• Brief introduction to the European Union negotiation assignment.

• Look over Writing Well Virtual Handout.

Regime Classification:

• Categories:

• Number and kinds of rulers: democratic, authoritarian, totalitarian?

• Political culture: community beliefs and values?

• Political development: modern, charismatic, traditional?

• Economic development: developed, developing?

• Economic system: capitalist, socialist, mixed?

• Answers:

• Number and type of rulers: democratic, authoritarian, totalitarian? Democratic. People have a say, rights and freedoms are protected.

• Political culture: community-held beliefs that affect politics.  Caste.

   

  Brahmans-priests

  Kshatriyas-warriors, rulers

  Vaisyas-traders

  Shudras-farmers

  Beneath the caste system: Untouchables/Outcastes (Pariah)

   

• Political development: modern, charismatic, traditional?  Mix: Modern at national and state levels but also traditional, influence of caste leaders, tribal leaders.

• Economic development: developed, developing?  Developing.  Urbanization 29%, Life expectancy 70, TFR 2.72, Literacy 61%, GDP per capita US$ PPP 2,800, Agriculture as share of GDP 17.2%, as share of labor force 60%.

• Economic system: capitalist, socialist, mixed?  Arch-frame is capitalist but practice has been so statist as to make it difficult for capitalists to operate. Pre-1990s tax rates on some profits 98%, rules limiting firing, rules on what you can produce, rules on what you can buy abroad.  Reforms since 1991 have freed economy to make it a "tiger" today.

The Indian Independence Movement and Non-Violent Resistance

Goals Today:

• to learn how British colonialism transformed India,

• to familiarize ourselves with the means by which India attained its independence from the British (including the thought and tactics of Gandhi),

• to understand implications of the independence movement for the development of India’s political and economic system (how history matters for subsequent politics).

• If time remains, to understand the contemporary political system and the linked issues of communal conflict, terrorism, and relations with Pakistan.

India’s Independence Movement:

• Britain in control of India since the mid-1700s. 
• Linked India into the world system of states, transfer of ideas about society, culture, education, government, economy, fashion, philosophy, and values.

• Typical changes introduced by the British: substitution of the English language for administration (replacing Persian) in 1835. Lord Macauley said that the history in Sanskrit was less valuable than even "the most paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England."  Railroad penetrated and changed the land/economy. 
• But British rule and intrusion of the modern economy confronted Indians with a choice as to how to respond.  Do we withdraw into ourselves, do we adapt strategically, or do we Westernize wholesale?  Different people over time provided different answers to these questions.
• Indian National Congress founded in 1885 essentially as a reformist, rather than a revolutionary, organization, but the British do not respond positively to even modest demands for reform, generally more inclusion of Indian voices in administration, deliberation of policies. 
• By 1906, the Congress endorses the goal of independence (swaraj—self-rule).

Mohandas Gandhi (known as the Mahatma, "Great Soul"):

• Gandhi gives the independence movement unity of purpose and a successful program of action.

• He widens the movement to include the broad masses of the population. 

• He also came to personify the movement. 

• There was a man, clad only in a small white cloth, standing up against the most widespread global empire the world had ever seen.

Interestingly, the ideas that Gandhi eventually developed represent a marriage of both Eastern and Western thought. 

The targets of Gandhi’s attacks also include elements of both the East and the West.

Gandhi's Personal Background: Gujarat, trader caste-ejected for going overseas, family history of serving as ministers in princely state.  London trained to be a lawyer.

South Africa for twenty years-developed ideas on how to struggle and philosophical basis for the struggle.

Midway between liberal reformers desiring gradual reform and extremists favoring violence.  He wanted independence achieved without violence.

Gandhi's Thought:

• For Gandhi, controlling someone else was wrong and it did damage to the person doing the controlling as much as it did to the person suffering from oppression. 

• Colonialism was a manifestation of oppression and denial of autonomy.

• In Gandhi’s words (1930-letter to the British Viceroy in India):

• “My ambition is no less than to convert the British People through non-violence, and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India.  I do not seek to harm your people. I want to serve them even as I want to serve my own . . . . If the [Indian] people join me as I expect they will, the sufferings they will undergo, unless the British nation sooner retraces its steps, will be enough to melt the stoniest hearts."  (emphasis added)

• For Gandhi, perhaps his supreme value would have been ahimsa-love, love of all people.

• Confronting a more powerful oppressor, the answer for Gandhi was in non-violent struggle, satyagraha ("truth force," which Gandhi translated as "soul force"). 

• Gandhi’s ideas on this developed from a variety of sources: American Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience (1849, not support an unjust government with tax over issues of slavery and Mexican-American War) and the then-current pacifist ideas of Russian Leo Tolstoy. 

• The idea of not doing harm also had a great resonance with Indian tradition.  To do violence, would be to harm one’s own karma, condemn one to further rebirths.  Gandhi called the Bhagavad Gita (Song of the Blessed One, perhaps 5^th C BC-1^st C AD) his “infallible guide of conduct.” 

The Bhagavad Gita:

Essence of Hinduism in the Gita, to let go, let go of self into sea of unity of oneness of all creatures.  Do duty but let go of desire for the fruits of action.

Some stanzas from the Gita:

However men try to reach me,

I return their love with my love,

Whatever path they may travel,

It leads to me in the end.

Others, on the path of knowledge,

know me as the many, the One;

behind the faces of a million

gods, they can see my face.

(Wikipedia)

* Gives Gandhi a highly tolerant and open-minded approach to religion: Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity—all ways to come closer to God.  All gods one God.

Wise men regard all beings

as equal: a learned priest,

a cow, an elephant, a rat,

or a filthy rat-eating outcaste.

* Gandhi’s acceptance of all people, work with the untouchables.

Pleasures from external objects

are wombs of suffering, Arjuna.

They have their beginnings and their ends;

no wise man seeks joy among them.

So, the Gita inspires Gandhi to struggle: Arjuna’s duty (he is a warrior) is to fight, as is Gandhi’s.  But it inspires Gandhi to fight in a way that is non-violent.

Gandhi's tactics:

• Non-cooperation "the Salt March" of 1930/Accepting punishment for violation of laws

• Hunger strikes (used against the British and fellow Indians like untouchable leader Ambedkar)

• Doing the dirty work of untouchables (harijans "children of God"/dalits "oppressed" or "broken to pieces")

• Encouraging spinning of khadi cloth (self-reliance/strike at British)

• Write/speak/teach

• Live the talk (ashram, communal living, abstain from sex, material goods)

Gandhi would not live to see much of independence, achieved in August 1947.  He was killed in early 1948 by a Hindu extremist who felt that Gandhi was "giving away the store" to Muslim Indians and who favored a Hindu, rather than a plural/secular, India.

How did India’s independence movement matter for the subsequent development of the political and economic systems?

• Gandhi’s struggle widened the Congress party and made it more representative of India.   Profound effect in democratizing future politics, in legitimizing popular involvement in politics.
• The way the movement was conducted created expectations in society about how Indian democracy would function.  Strength of India's democracy since 1947, brief interruption 1976-77, despite vast poverty and illiteracy.
• Gandhi’s unassailable moral uprightness as well as his drawing on indigenous thought and tradition in the formulation of his program imbued Indians with great pride in themselves and in their country. 
• In addition, Gandhi’s actions helped to delegitimize colonialism globally.
• India’s independence struggle became a model for struggles elsewhere.  Non-violence may have been eschewed but strikes and non-cooperation were important methods in national liberation movements in many countries.  India stood out as a paragon of success. 
• Gandhi’s death freed his successors from his vision of politics and economics. 
• The Indian National Congress, Gandhi's organization, was rewarded for its role in spearheading independence by a long, uninterrupted stretch in power, as the Congress Party, 1947-77, in power much of time since.  If trying to understand the institutions of Indian politics, we must understand this historical legacy to understand how India's politics have progressed over the last decades.
• Nehru’s role in the independence movement (slighted in my account above) also made him a father of Indian independence.  Legitimacy from the independence movement was transferred to his person and to his dynasty (Nehru-Indira Gandhi (married Feroze Gandhi)-Rajiv Gandhi-Sonia Gandhi-Rahul Gandhi next?).  Formally a modern parliamentary system, like Britain's but federal/not unitary, coalitions necessary due to wide spread of interests but looks like charisma??

(from SoniaGandhi.org) (from TribuneIndia.com)

• Nehru’s development model, subscribed to by broad swathes of Congress Party leaders and followers, developed from a different mindset than Gandhi’s.  Quoting Nehru: “Capitalism has been of the greatest service to the world and individual capitalists are but tiny wheels in the big machine. The question now is whether the capitalist system has not outlived its day and must now give place to a better and a saner ordering of human affairs, which is more in keeping with the progress of science and human knowledge”  (1933—Whither India?). Hindu Disease, License Raj. Indian Institutes of Technology (engineers, software, cause of being an economic tiger today?).

Questions:

• Is Gandhi’s non-violence universally valid or relevant only in India?
• Was Gandhi a “magnificent failure,” as an Indian journalist once said?
• Was British rule in India positive or negative, good or bad (justify your criteria)?

Indian Politics Today

See, Indian Politics Since Independence.

Feature of Contemporary Politics: Communal Conflict

• Communal conflict. Hindus @80%, Muslims @13%, Christians 2%, Sikh 2%, other (Jains, Buddhists, Jews).
• Both Gandhi and Nehru downplayed the importance of the schisms in Indian society.  Hoped to create a plural, tolerant India.  Problem was that the schisms returned to the surface.  Outbreaks of inter-communal violence were real, and wishing them away, telling people that they were wrong for thinking that their religion or ethnic group was important did not work.  Legacy in political parties: Congress v. Bharatiya Janata Party, asserts a Hindu land, stop coddling Muslims and other minorities.
• Difficulties of national consolidation.  India long movement toward independence, then it came suddenly.  What was India?  Why should the Nagas or the Bengalis remain a part of the new state?  What would be done with the various princely states?  How could this mess of languages, vast territory, differing religious and caste groups be turned into a nation?
• Partition in 1947 into separate state for Muslims (India) and the rest (India), partition led to perhaps millions of deaths, legacy of mistrust between Pakistan and India, legacy of hatred between Hindus and Muslims.

Babri Masjid (Mosque) Left, BEFORE 1992 Destruction, from Wikipedia. Right, DURING from BBC.

• Terrorism. A number of attacks in the 2000s: May 2008 Rajasthan, August 2008 Ahmedabad, November 2008 Mumbai (@200 killed). Related to Pakistan but also to indigenous grievances of Muslims in India.

February 9, 2010

Author: tanp@uncw.edu

Return to Dr. Tan's homepage: http://people.uncw.edu/tanp/