India After Gandhi: The History of the World''s Largest Democracy by Ramachandra Guha
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
These views resonated with the so-called ‘Young Turks’ in the Congress, who had started a socialist ginger group within the party. This used the pulpit of Parliament to ask embarrassing questions of the more conservative ministers. The Young Turk Chandra Shekhar raised charges of corruption against Morarji Desai’s son Kanti. He also insinuated that the finance minister had issued licenses out of turn to a large industrial house. It was believed that he was speaking as a proxy for the prime minister – at any rate, she refused to censure him.47
Throughout 1968 and 1969, writes one biographer, Mrs Gandhi was a ‘frustrated leader. She was not strong enough to defy the [Congress] organization and not rash enough to quit.’48 Her chance came in the summer of 1969, when Dr Zakir Hussain died half-way through his term as president of the republic. The Syndicate wished to replace him with one of their own: N. Sanjiva Reddy, a former Lok Sabha Speaker and chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. Mrs Gandhi, however, preferred the vice-president, V. V. Giri, a labour leader with whom her own relations were very good.
In the first week of 1969 the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) met in Bangalore. Before she left for this meeting, the prime minister was apparently told by P. N. Haksar that ‘the best way to vanquish the Syndicate would be to convert the struggle for personal power into an ideological one’.49 In Bangalore, Mrs Gandhi openly showed her hand on the side of the Young Turks by proposing the immediate nationalization of the major banks. She also opposed Sanjiva Reddy’s candidature for president, but was overruled by a majority in the Working Committee.
On returning to Delhi Mrs Gandhi divested Morarji Desai of the Finance portfolio. He was a known opponent of bank nationalization, once telling Parliament that it would ‘severely strain the administrative resources of the government while leaving the basic issues untouched’. The state takeover of banks, believed Desai, would reduce the resources available for economic development, and increase bureaucracy and red tape.50
After relieving Desai of the Finance Ministry, Mrs Gandhi issued an ordinance announcing that the state had taken over fourteen privately owned banks. Explaining the action over All-India Radio, she said that India was ‘an ancient country but a young democracy, which has to remain ever vigilant to prevent the domination of the few over the social, economic or political systems’. This mandated that ‘major banks should be not only socially controlled but publicly owned’, so that they could give credit not just to big business but to ‘millions of farmers, artisans, and other self-employed persons’.51
In a statement to the press, the prime minister claimed that there was ‘a great feeling in the country’ regarding the nationalization: 95 per cent of the people supported it, with only big newspapers representing commercial interests opposing it. However, a small weekly, independently owned, suggested that this might be an individual quest masquerading as an ideological battle. Mrs Gandhi had ‘chosen to adopt a radical stance suddenly as a tactic in the personal strife for dominance within the Congress party’, said Thought; she now wished to ‘project herself as a national figure who needs the Congress less than it needs her’.52
The nationalization of banks was challenged in the Supreme Court; the challenge was upheld, but the judgement was immediately nullified by a fresh ordinance brought in by government, signed this time by the president. In the first six months of state control there was a massive expansion in the banking sector – with as many as 1,100 new branches opened, a large proportion of them in remote rural areas that had never before been serviced by formal credit.53
X
Attention now shifted to the election of a new president, in which all members of Parliament and state assemblies would vote. The official Congress candidate was Sanjiva Reddy. V. V. Giri had decided to contest as an independent, while the opposition had put up C. D. Deshmukh, a former civil servant and Cabinet Minister. In violation of party practice and party discipline, the prime minister decided she would support V. V. Giri. This decision was not made public, but it was conveyed to her followers, who went around canvassing the younger Congress MPs to vote for Giri. The Congress president, S. Nijalingappa, now pressed the prime minister to issue a public declaration of support for Reddy. When she wouldn’t, he spoke to the Jana Sangh and Swatantra leaders asking them to shift their own allegiance from Subba Rao to Reddy. This move was seized upon by Mrs Gandhi’s camp, who accused Nijalingappa of hobnobbing with the enemy. They ‘requisitioned’ a meeting of the AICC to discuss the matter. The request was refused.
Four days before the presidential elections – due on 20 August 1969 – Mrs Gandhi finally spoke. She asked for a ‘vote of conscience’. This was a call to Congress Party members to defy their organization and vote for the rival candidate. Which they did, in fairly large numbers. Many of the older party men voted for Reddy, but in the end Giri won, on the second count. Now commenced a bitter exchange of letters between the Congress president and the prime minister. Finally, on 12 November, Mrs Gandhi was expelled from the Congress for ‘indiscipline’. By this time many MPs had thrown in their lot with her. In December rival Congress sessions were held, the parent body meeting in Ahmedabad and its new challenger in Bombay. The parties were becoming known as Congress (O) and Congress (R). The letters stood in one version for ‘Organization’ and ‘Requisitionist’, in another for ‘Old’ and ‘Reform’.54
In expelling Mrs Gandhi from the Congress, Nijalingappa accused her of fostering a cult of personality, of promoting herself above party and nation. The history of the twentieth century, he pointed out,
is replete with instances of the tragedy that overtakes democracy when a leader who has risen to power on the crest of a popular wave or with the support of a democratic organisation becomes a victim of political narcissism and is egged on by a coterie of unscrupulous sycophants who use corruption and terror to silence opposition and attempt to make public opinion an echo of authority. The Congress as an organisation dedicated to democracy and socialism has to combat such trends.55
Nijalingappa was a lifelong Congressman, a man from peasant stock who joined the freedom movement when he was very young. He built up the party in Mysore, later serving three terms as the state’s chief minister.56 About his commitment to the party and to democracy there could be no question. But ‘socialism was another matter. The nationalization of banks had strengthened his rival’s claim to that label, while Nijalingappa’s wooing of the Jana Sangh and Swatantra had weakened his own. This contrast was assiduously developed in the speeches and letters that bore Mrs Gandhi’s name, but were the handiwork of P. N. Haksar and his colleagues. Here, the prime minister was presented as standing for socialism in economics and secularism in matters of religion, as being pro-poor and for the development of the nation as a whole. The Party president, on the other hand, was said to be promoting capitalism in economics and communalism in religion.57
The presentation was markedly successful. Of the 705 members of the AICC, as many as 446 attended the Congress (R) session; of the 429 Congress MPs (in both Houses), 310 joined the prime minister’s camp. Of these, 220 were from the Lok Sabha, leaving the Congress (R) some forty-five seats short of a majority. To makeup the numbers it tur
In a comparable situation, back in 1950–2, Jawaharlal Nehru had bided his time. Faced with the conservative challenge of Tandon and company, he had worked to get his way with the party rather than divide it in two. But here, as one knowledgeable observer remarked, Mrs Gandhi had ‘displayed a militancy foreign to Congress tradition’. In contrast to the incremental approach of Nehru and Shastri, she ‘represented something ruthless and new. She had astonished people with her flair for cold assessment, shrewd timing, and the telling theatrical gesture; above all, with her capacity for a fight to the finish, even to bringing the eighty-four-year-old party of liberation to rupture’.59
XI
With the banks nationalized, Mrs Gandhi now turned to the abolition of the privileges of the princes. When their states merged with the Union, the princes were given a constitutional guarantee that they could retain their titles, jewels and palaces, be paid an annual privy purse in proportion to the size of their states and be exempt from central taxes and import duties. With so many Indians so poor, it was felt that these privileges were ‘out of place and out of time – these the words of P. N. Haksar, but widely endorsed within and outside his circle.60
As early as July 1967 the AICC passed a resolution asking for an end to titles and privy purses. The Home Ministry prepared a detailed note, recommending action via legislation rather than executive action. The home minister, Y. B. Chavan, was asked to commence negotiations with the princes, represented in these talks by the Maharaja of Dhrangadhara. It was hoped the princes would be amenable to the change; if not, a constitutional amendment would have to be brought.61
Chavan and Dhrangadhara had several long meetings in 1968, but no compromise could be reached. In any case, the power struggle within the Congress ruled out hasty action. There were many MPs who were either princes or under their control, and their votes were needed to see Mrs Gandhi’s candidate for president through. After Giri’s election the government and the princes continued to talk, each side proving as obdurate as the other. At this stage, in December 1969, the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar sent New Delhi an intriguing proposal. This criticized both parties, the princes for adopting ‘a most adamantly uncompromising stand’, the government for ‘going back on their [constitutional] commitments and assurances’. The Jam Saheb suggested, as away out of the impasse, that the government abolish the princes privileges, but pay them twenty years’ worth of privy purses: 25 per cent in cash, 25 per cent in bonds to be redeemed after twenty years, and 50 per cent to a public charitable trust headed by the ruler. This trust’s aims would be the promotion of sport, the education of backward classes and, above all, the protection of ‘our fast-disappearing wildlife’.62
The Jam Saheb thought this a scheme that ‘would befit the dignity of the nation’. Mrs Gandhi passed it on to the home minister, noting that it was ‘animated by a constructive purpose’. But nothing came of it. On 18 May 1970 – the last day of the summer session of Parliament – Y. B. Chavan introduced a bill calling for a constitutional amendment annulling the privileges of the princes. The bill was taken up in the next session, when Mrs Gandhi described it as an ‘important step in the further democratization of our society’.
The Lok Sabha adopted the bill by the necessary two-thirds margin – 336 for, 155 against. However, in the Rajya Sabha the motion failed to be carried by a single vote. The prime minister had apparently anticipated this adverse vote in the Upper House, for soon afterwards a presidential order was issued derecognizing the princes.
Four days later, on 11 September 1970, a group of Maharajas moved the Supreme Court against the order. The case was heard by a full bench, headed by the chief justice. On 11 December the bench ruled that the order was arbitrary and against the spirit of the constitution. Some legal scholars viewed the judgement as a victory for democracy, whereas left-wing radicals saw it as consistent with the ‘tendency of the Supreme Court to protect the vested interests’.
With regard to bank nationalization, too, the Court had put a spanner in the works. This fresh challenge to her authority prompted the prime minister to dissolve Parliament and call for a fresh mandate from the people. The House still had a year to run. Explaining the decision over All-India Radio, Mrs Gandhi said that while her government had sought to ‘ensure a better life to the vast majority of our people and satisfy their aspiration for a just social order . . . reactionary forces have not hesitated to obstruct [this] in every possible way’ ).63
XII
On one front, at least, there was very good news for Mrs Gandhi’s government – the new agricultural strategy had begun paying dividends. In 1967 there was a bad drought, which particularly affected the state of Bihar, but the next year saw a bumper crop of food grains, 95 million tonnes (mt) in all. Much of this increase was accounted for by Punjab and Haryana, whose farmers had planted the new dwarf varieties of wheat developed by Indian scientists from Mexican models. However, the new varieties of rice had also done quite well, as had cotton and groundnuts.
C. Subramaniam’s strategy had been to identify those districts where irrigation was available, and those farming communities most likely to take to the new seeds, and the heavy doses of fertilizers that went with them. The results were sensational. Between 1963 and 1967, before the new methods had been tried, the annual production of wheat in India was between 9and11 mt. Between 1967 and 1970 it ranged from 16 to 20 mt. The corresponding figures for rice were 30–37 mt for the earlier period and 37–42 mt for the latter.64
These figures masked enormous variations by region. There remained large areas where agriculture was rain-fed, and where only one crop could be grown per year. Still, there was a feeling that endemic scarcity was a thing of the past. Modern science was laying the ghost of Malthus. In August 1969 a British journalist who was an old India hand wrote that ‘for the first time in all the years I have been visiting the country, there is a coherence in the economic picture, for the first time an absence of feeling that the economy rested almost wholly on the simple success or failure of the monsoon’.65
The food problem was solved, but India might still fall apart – on account of, as Neville Maxwell and others had claimed, simply being too diverse. In an editorial marking twenty years of India’s existence as a republic, the New York Times called it a ‘remarkable achievement’, then went on to say that ‘both Union and democracy are under increasing strain these days, with the future of both in doubt’.66 However, most Indians were by now comfortable with the diversity within. They could see what bound the varied religions, races and regions: namely, a shared political history (from the national movement onwards), a pluralistic constitution and a tradition of regular elections. Nor did they think the challenges of states a threat to national unity. As one commentator wrote – in rebuttal of doomsayers such as Maxwell – ‘a strong centre is not necessarily conducive to democracy . Federalism and rule by regional parties could help sustain democracy in India, in contrast to (say) Indonesia and Ghana, where the efforts of Sukarno and Nkrumah to impose a strong centre had only led to dictatorship.67
Among thinking Indians then, there was little fear that the events of the late sixties would presage the break-up of the country, or the replace
On the other side, there were some who looked forward to the revolution in the making. These were the Naxalites, of course, but also their Western fellow-travellers. In the winter of 1968/9 the Marxist anthropologist Kathleen Gough – originally American but then teaching in Canada – wrote an article which saw, as ‘the most hopeful way forward for India’, a ‘revolutionary movement that would root itself in the countryside where the bulk of the poor were located. Taking heart from the progress, here and there, of the Naxalites and their ideology, Gough said that ‘parliamentarianism seems doomed to failure, and the rebel Communists’ path the only hopeful alternative’.69
Gough was not alone in seeing revolutionary communism as India’s main hope, perhaps its only hope. That same winter, a young Swedish couple animated by the spirit of ’68 travelled through the Indian countryside. They covered the land from tip to toe, from the parched fields of eastern Uttar Pradesh to the rich rice paddies of the southern Cauvery delta. They saw a new critical awareness among the oppressed, manifest in ‘growing antagonisms in Indian society’. Caste conflict was turning into class conflict (as Marxist theory said, and hoped, it would). Among the intellectuals, they saw a (to them welcome) scepticism about parliamentary democracy. As one left-wing student leader remarked, ‘We must not let ourselves be fooled by the hocus-pocus of elections every fifth year.’