India Under Pressure

Prospects For Political Stability

Robert L. Hardgrave

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367167196
• eBook ISBN: 9780429716614
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

India, as the dominant power in South Asia, is the region's keystone for stability. Contending that the Indian government is under ever-increasing pressure as a result of internal social and political conflict, Dr. Hardgrave provides a broad survey of the sources of conflict: regionalism, particularly demands for separation and autonomy in Assam and the Punjab; enmity between religious groups, manifested in increased Hindu-Muslim tensions; caste violence; peasant unrest in the countryside; and protests among students and labor groups in the cities. The author analyzes the capacity of India's political parties, the bureaucracy, and the military to cope with change and to manage the country's social diversity and the potential for conflict. In particular, he examines the ruling Congress party, the leadership style of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the problem of succession, prospects for unity among opposition parties, and the potential impact of a coalition government on political stability. In considering the role that foreign relations play in India's political stability, Dr. Hardgrave discusses India's relations with South Asia, the Middle East, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States.

1
Social Change and Political Stability in India

Predictions of national disintegration, the collapse of democracy, social chaos, and revolutionary violence have accompanied the processes of change in India from the time of independence. In the face of illiteracy, poverty, and the “fissiparous tendencies” of caste, religion, language, and region, there are many who have seen democracy as a system that India could ill afford. Cassandras--both Indian and foreign--have greeted each parliamentary election as inevitably its last. The Emergency (1975–1977) was widely mourned as the death of democracy. Some viewed it, no doubt, as proof apparent that democracy cannot work in India.

The “restoration” of democracy in 1977, with the squabbling Janata Government, and the return of Indira Gandhi in 1980, witnessed heightened expectations, sharpened social conflict, and increasing political malaise. In January 1982, India Today, the nation’s leading news magazine, diagnosed India’s political institutions as “in an advanced state of decay and degeneration.” A year later, in the wake of the Congress defeats in the 1983 Andhra and Karnataka assembly elections, Prem Shankar Jha of the Times of India foresaw the imminent disintegration of the Congress party and, in consequence, “a new and dangerously unstable phase” which will put the survival of Indian democracy to a severe test.¹

Dire predictions, if made often enough, may ultimately find fulfillment. Yet India has survived its “dangerous decades” reasonably well, and its political institutions, perhaps somewhat worse for wear, have demonstrated remarkable resilience. Of more than 60 nations that have emerged from colonial rule since World War II, India is one of the few that has retained free elections and democratic institutions. But India does face enormous problems. It is a nation under pressure, and its stability is by no means assured.

Defining Political Stability in the Indian Context

The notion of stability is central to an assessment of socio-economic and political conditions and the projection of trends for any nation. Yet, as is so often true for the most important concepts, it eludes precise definition. Indeed, attempts to define it rigorously--typically in terms of various statistical indicators--have more often than not left the analyst in a conceptual straightjacket. It is not enough, however, to say, with Justice Potter Stewart in his view of obscenity, “I know it when I see it.11 We need a clearer sense of what we are looking at.

Political stability is approached most frequently at the level of the regime and is defined in much of the literature in terms of the prolonged absence of seizures or attempted seizures of power by force--coups, uprisings, and revolution--and by the absence of any common expectation that such seizures are likely to occur. But in the context of South Asia, such gross measurements of stability provide little discrimination other than to place India securely in the “stable” column.

In the broadest sense, political stability refers to the continuity of government--in structure, process, and policy. It is not static, but dynamic, involving the capacity to cope with change--to absorb it, to shape it. Political stability in India involves three forms: ministerial stability at state and Center levels and regime stability.^*

The stability of the ministry (or Government, in the European sense) involves the capacity of the ruling party or coalition to retain the confidence of a parliamentary majority. To do so, it must successfully resist outside pressure and overcome internal dissension that would bring the Government down. Within the Indian federal system, ministerial stability of states and Center are distinct and, to considerable degree, insulated from each other. Thus, a state may undergo periods of political instability while the central Government remains stable--as, in fact, we have seen in numerous cases since India’s independence. Similarly, there may be periods where state Governments are stable and effective, while the central Government is adrift--as in the Janata period, 1977–1980.

Regime stability refers to the continuity of the political order itself. It involves the capacity of the system to withstand and cope successfully with attempted coups, uprising, and revolution.

Sources of Indian Stability

India’s stability stands in sharp contrast to most nations of the Third World. Since independence in 1947, the regime has never been seriously threatened by uprisings, coups, or revolution nor does such a prospect lie on the horizon. India’s political order, parliamentary democracy, has a legitimacy paralleled in few nations of the Third World. On the death of two prime ministers, Nehru and Shastri, it witnessed orderly succession. Through free and competitive elections, India has twice undergone a peaceful transition of political power from one party to another. Indian national unity, once problematic, is fundamentally secure--bound by an increasingly national economy, a national system of communications, and (despite heightened regional sentiment) a growing national consciousness.

Popular images abroad--communal riots, atrocities against untouchables, agitation in the Punjab, massacre in Assam--belie India’s fundamental political stability and national integrity. Moreover, these incidents of unrest must be put in perspective: India, a nation of some 700 million people, has a population greater than all of Africa and Latin America combined.

Having said this, the fact remains that social unrest is endemic in India, but it is--or, at least it has been--fundamentally manageable. It has been manageable for three principal reasons: the strength of India’s institutions, particularly the Congress party; the nation’s democratic political framework; and the sheer complexity of Indian society that with its multiplicity of social cleavages has tended to compartmentalize unrest.

It is ironic that the social complexity decried as the bane of national unity is one of the most important sources of India’s stability. The cross-cutting divisions of caste, class, tribe, sect, religion, language, and region give to India the character of a vast mosaic. Each social compartment is, to varying degrees, insulated from the other. This pattern is reinforced by the federal system in which state boundaries follow, for the most part, major divisions of language and regional identity. Structurally quarantined, social unrest that arises in one state rarely spreads to other states. Thus contained, it is more readily managed and controlled.

Whether this will continue to be true remains to be seen. The sources of national unity, particularly the increasingly integrated economy and communications systems, may provide the basis for an expression of all India discontent. This has already been reflected in the remarkably uniform swings in the 1977 and 1980 elections,² with similar voting patterns in both urban and rural areas and across the Indian states. What happens in one part of India increasingly has an impact throughout the nation and invokes similar response. Whether it is a rise in the price of onions in Maharashtra, drought in Tamil Nadu, or strikes in the Bihar coalfields, few Indians are today unaffected. Newspapers, multiplied in their effect by word of mouth, bring to all India reports of conversions of untouchables to Islam in a Tamil village, the farmers’ movement in Maharashtra, and demands from Andhra for greater state autonomy.

Social unrest, once contained within state boundaries, may spill over into a movement of all India dimension. The potential was witnessed in the “J.P. Movement”^* of 1974–75 directed against Indira Gandhi. The movement, essentially limited to North India and largely urban, had in all probability passed its peak, but it served as the excuse for the imposition of Emergency rule in June 1975. From the vantage point of New Delhi, it is one thing to put out isolated brush fires as they occur, quite another to face many at the same time--especially as they may join in a national firestorm of social unrest.

Social unrest, as it grows in intensity and, even more critically, as it arises simultaneously in a number of states, places increasing strain on India’s institutional capacity. The institutional strength of its party system (of which the Congress has been the nucleus), the bureaucracy, and the army is the bedrock of India’s political stability. As those institutions are weakened, so too its capacity to accommodate and reconcile political demands, to cope with change, and to control social unrest is inevitably reduced.

In contrast to most other nations emerging from colonial rule, India came to independence with three strong institutions. The Congress party, shaped and strengthened during the nationalist movement for independence, provided the political structure to accommodate a plurality of interests and to reconcile conflicting demands. The direct legacy of British rule, the bureaucracy--the “steel frame” of the Raj--provided a structure of administration that spanned the nation and reached down into even the most isolated village. The Indian Army, with a proud and honored tradition, provided not only for the defense of the realm, but “in aid to the civil” stood as the ultimate guarantor of internal security--maintaining at the same time a scrupulous non-involvement in politics.

There are those, enamored with authority, order, and discipline, for whom military rule would be a welcome alternative to democratic politics. But stability cannot be purchased through repression--as Pakistan, a powderkeg of pent-up forces, clearly demonstrates. Stability is to be found in the balance between order and liberty.

The strength and responsiveness of India’s democratic political institutions undergird political stability. If the complexity of Indian society is at once a source of both conflict and stability, it is also the most compelling reason why some form of democracy is necessary to ensure that stability. There is in India a broad-based commitment to democratic politics which has been reinforced and extended with each successive election. Democracy in India provides the framework by which expanding participation can be absorbed and ordered; by which the nation’s many interests can find meaningful expression; and by which conflicts can be reconciled. It does so imperfectly and incompletely--but the remedy is not less democracy. Censorship of the press, banning of political parties, postponement of elections, imprisonment of political opponents--in short, the closure of political access--may put a lid on the expression of discontent, but it does not enhance the capacity of the government to cope with change. Instead, it isolates those in authority, as it did during the Emergency, and deepens alienation and discontent within the society. The consequences, as dramatically witnessed in Iran, can be explosive.

In exploring the dynamics of stability in India, we have identified its sources in the pluralism of Indian society, the strength of its institutions, and in democratic politics--all three closely interrelated. But India’s stability is also sustained by its culture and, surely with mixed consequences, by its relatively slow rates of economic and social change.

Indian culture, of which Hinduism is the core, has historically revealed a remarkable capacity to absorb change. Various cultural themes--dharma, the code of conduct particular to each person, and karma, the fruit of action (a doctrine of just deserts)--have given strength, continuity, and an essential conservatism to Indian society. In traditional Hindu society, the government is the repository of the collective dharma. The person who holds power is the instrument of that dharma through which the destiny of the state manifests itself. This concept of dharma--an important element in the legitimacy of India’s government today--is a source of both strength and vulnerability. So long as the government acts in accordance with dharma, it is legitimate, and to oppose it is to jeopardize one’s individual dharma. But if government violates the moral order, the king forfeits the right to rule.

There is in Indian society a tolerance for ambiguity that cushions the impact of change. Change is compartmentalized, the modern coexisting with rather than displacing the traditional. But it would be as great a misconception to assume that traditional society is impervious to change as it would be to portray the Indian masses as inert and unresponsive, bound in resignation to their fate. Under pressure of change, Indian society has responded variously by resistance, reaction, and transformation. That change in India has not been more traumatic is, in part, related to its pace.

Much to the frustration of the leaders of India’s development efforts, the rate of social and economic change has been slow. In the years since independence, the annual rate of economic growth has averaged roughly 3.5 percent, leaving real growth, once the population increase is accounted for, of little more than 1 percent per year. Described by the economist Raj Krishna as the “Hindu rate of growth”, it has severely limited India’s capacity to meet the expectations and demands of its people for a better life. Yet, at the same time, it has blunted the impact of more socially disruptive rapid change. What may have been in the short term a contribution to stability is in the long term, however, one of the greatest threats to stability. Heightened expectations exceed the capacity of the system to respond, and growing frustration is already marked by sharpened social tension and political unrest.

The “Foreign Hand”: External Sources of Instability

Few incidents of political or social unrest have occurred in India that have not been linked by accusation to outside interference. Blitz, a pro-Moscow weekly from Bombay, regularly reports the CIA at work in destabilizing India. The Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sees Pakistan or an even more sinister “international Islam” behind communal tension in India and periodic Hindu-Muslim rioting. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi alludes periodically to a “foreign hand”--usually unnamed but typically implying the United States or Pakistan--at the source of India’s troubles.

In assessing external sources of instability, it is important to distinguish between influence, interference, and subversion, as well as between instability which is an unintended consequence of either influence or interference and instability as the intended result of activity directed against the state.

There have been few instances of actions taken by a foreign government that were, in design, intended to destabilize India--and these were directed less against regime stability than India’s national integrity.

During the 1960s, Pakistani agents in Kashmir sought to stir disaffection among local Muslims, but there is nothing to suggest that after 1971, this has continued. In the ethnically volatile Northeast, tribal insurgency has been linked to China--and, indeed, during the 1960s and early 1970s, China did provide training and arms for Naga and Mizo guerrillas. In 1979, however, China informed the Government of India that it was no longer aiding the insurgents, and New Delhi has accepted Chinese assurances.

Bangladesh has surely been a source of instability in India’s Northeast, as Bengalis--both Hindu and Muslim--have moved across the borders into the states of Tripura and Assam. But like the illegal immigration from Mexico into the United States, immigration from Bangladesh into India is a result of poverty, not political design.

Much lies in the eyes of the beholder. How both actions and consequences are perceived is critical. Any foreign contact with groups for whom external allies as a source of money or support could be important may be seen as potentially “destabilizing.11 Thus, Saudi assistance to Indian Muslims in refurbishing mosques or in establishing schools has been perceived by apprehensive Hindus as foreign interference in the sensitive area of communal relations. More directly, the RSS and others, including the Congress(I), have alleged (without evidence) that Gulf money financed recent “mass conversions” to Islam among untouchables at Meenakshipuram in Tamil Nadu--an incident that sharpened Hindu-Muslim tension and sparked rioting as far away as Gujarat.

India is an open society, and freedom of movement for foreigners--as for its own citizens--within India stands in sharp contrast to many Third World nations and to the Socialist bloc. Nevertheless, any foreigner in contact with minorities or groups nurturing special grievances is potentially suspect. The matter of conversion has always been a source of unease in India, and Christian missionaries--especially those working among the tribals of the Northeast--are often viewed as fermenting unrest. The Government of India has restricted foreign scholars--especially Americans--in research on such topics as untouchability, Muslims, and tribals. (Yet, in fairness, it must be said that while India has restricted foreign research on designated sensitive topics and in certain border areas, few nations are as hospitable to foreign scholars as India and provide as far reaching access to government officials and archival sources.) International journalists--barred from such areas as the Northeast--are sometimes seen as a source of trouble insofar as their stories may come back into India to fuel the fires upon which they report.

Indians abroad may also be viewed with apprehension, as in the support for an independent Sikh nation of “Khalistan” expressed by a handful of Sikhs in Canada and the United States. Gandhi’s talk of a “foreign hand” in the Akali agitation in the Punjab refers both to Pakistan and to these expatriate Sikhs, and India has registered its official displeasure with those governments admitting Sikh dissidents--albeit in accordance with their own laws.

The spectre of the “foreign hand” goes back to the 1950s and such publications as American Shadow Over India,³ a catalog of American activities alleged to have been taken against India. But it was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s that Mrs. Gandhi regularly accused the United States--and the CIA in particular--of attempts to destabilize India. The Indian press often met such allegations with skepticism and sometimes with ridicule, as in a cartoon suggesting that India was so vulnerable to outside interference that even the weather was under foreign control. Whether Indira Gandhi reall...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Social Change and Political Stability in India
• Chapter 2 The Prospects for Political Stability in India: A Five-Year Perspective
• Chapter 3 Continuity and Change in India’s Foreign Policy: The Next Five Years