METHODS AND APPROACHES IN

COMPARATIVE POLITICAL ANALYSIS

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COURSE- BA(H) POLITICAL SCIENCE

Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi – A Critical Review

Historical narrative depends on familiarity, yet is enlivened by

interpretative freshness and the surprise of new archival research.
It's natural for the nations to look back into their own histories.
While the older, pre-national communities occupied themselves with
mythology, the democratic nation rehearses its history and the very
reasons and outcomes of its existence. However, in both the cases
there is an endless familiarity of subject-matter to the audience.

No master account has yet been written of the modern Indian

nation-state, partly because historians of the subcontinent have
usually shied away from the period after 1947, leaving the task to
political scientists, sociologists and omniscient travellers. The curious
practices of Indian archives and their keepers have not helped either:
documents are declassified and allowed into the public domain on a
very erratic basis. The task that Ramachandra Guha set himself in his
India after Gandhi is the story of the building of a rather improbable
nation-state from a fragmented political landscape, and as such is
primarily a narrative.
India After Gandhi is a political narrative of India's six decades of
independence, with emphasis on how the country continued to
remain a territorially intact and constitutional state, notwithstanding
the pessimism of many after the British left in 1947. Guha
reconstructs the past 60 years of Indian history that witnessed the
possibility of disastrous disintegration of the nation or its
transformation to a totalitarian society or a military dictatorship. In
his paean to the violence marred independent India, he presents the
political complexities revolving around caste, language, class, and
religion, the conflicts arising out which, the founders of modern India
had to cope with. The pains, struggles, humiliations and glories of the
world's largest and least likely democracy and the extraordinary
factors holding it together are given a detailed treatment in the book
peopled with larger-than-life characters. Notwithstanding the
prominence attributed to Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in the narrative,
Guha did not neglect the other historical actors, albeit briefly, who
also set India on course for a democracy that functions, despite
imperfections and corruption. The book offers a panoramic view of
the fight of a young nation against the veritable elements
threatening secularism, it’s dangerous but nevertheless great gamble
with democracy and the rise of populism. Selflessness and foresight
of some, pettiness and fanaticism of some others, revolts for
secession, linguist processions, theocratic and socialist movements,
poverty and hunger, rights of minorities, even the cinema and
cricket, all find their description in the volume.

India is an “unnatural nation”, according to Guha. “Because they are

so many and so various, the people of India are also divided”,
according to Guha.

Guha writes that “the pages of this book are peppered with forecasts
of India’s imminent dissolution, or of its descent into anarchy or
authoritarian rules”. But as he notes “that India is still a single nation
after sixty testing years of independence, and that it is still largely
democratic — these are facts that should compel our deeper
attention”.

And so, Guha tales us on a journey through India’s history as an

independent democracy. This updated and expanded edition,
published in 2017, some ten years after the original, is richer for
having included the rise to power of current Prime Minister
Narendra Modi.

The journey of this book is a long one — almost 800 pages, before
you can read another 100 pages of notes. But the journey is well
worth the ride, with rich detail of all the events and personalities in
the life of this entrancing nation.

There are too many stations in the journey of India to repeat them
all. So just the main ones will suffice.

A potted history of India

Following decolonisation and independence in 1947, the bloody

“partition” of Muslim Pakistan from secular India resulted in massive
movements of people across the borders in both directions, and very
large numbers of refugees.

Over 500 independent princely states (which were never colonised

by the British) were convinced to join the Union. But the status of
Jammu and Kashmir was never cleanly resolved, and remains a major
bone of contention with Pakistan today.

The Constitution of India was drafted from December 1946 to

December 1949, and came into effect in January 1950, and may be
the longest in the world. The first general election was held in 1952,
and was comfortably won by Nehru’s Congress Party, the main
organisation driving the independence movement.
India adopted a foreign policy of non-alignment, but maintained
close relations with the USSR.

The domestic map of India was redrawn with provinces created on

the basis of local languages. The integrity of the state seemed under
constant threat by groups like the Naga tribes seeking independence,
as well as the election of communist state governments in Kerala and
West Bengal.

In 1959, the Dalai Lama escaped Tibet to be welcomed in India, much

to the displeasure of the Chinese government. Then in 1962, China
gave India a humiliating defeat in a brief war, ostensibly over a
disputed border. Relations between China and India remain tense to
this day.

Indira Gandhi became India’s new leader in 1966. To the great

annoyance of Pakistan, she led India into the Bangladesh Liberation
war, which resulted in defeat for the Pakistan military and the
transformation of East Pakistan into the independent state of
Bangladesh.

Democracy seemed to be threatened when Prime Minister Gandhi

declared a state of emergency in June 1975. But the resilience of
Indian democracy was evident when Gandhi’s Congress Party lost
government in the 1977 elections, the first time Congress was out of
power since independence.

Both Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, who followed her as Prime
Minister, were tragically assassinated.

A financial crisis in 1991 became an opportunity for economic

reform. India’s economy has since grown strongly, with the IT sector
being a key driver. India is now seen as an emerging economic
power, one of the leaders of the Asian century.
Nevertheless, poverty remains a major issue, in part because of the
failure of the government to provide adequate education and health
services. And by any objective standard, India is an “environmental
basket case”.

After ten years of lack-lustre leadership from the Congress Party, the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under the leadership of Narendra Modi,
was elected to government in 2014. Unfortunately, the great wisdom
of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, with his powerful
slogan of ‘unity in diversity’, has been ceding place to a ‘muscular
majoritarianism’, with a pro-Hindu and anti-Muslim discourse by the
country’s current leadership. As Nehru once said, one of the greatest
difficulties since Independence was “creating a secular state in a
religious country”.

India today

Guha signed off this second edition of his book in August 2016, some
three years ago. But his Epilogue chapter still remains very powerful.
He writes that: “the astonishing project of creating a nation without
a common language, common religion or common enemy has, thus
far at least, largely succeeded … No part of India is likely to secede
soon, if at all”.

India has been held together by the values of its constitution,

namely, equality for low castes and women, an inclusive model of
economic growth, respect for different faiths, and a strong federal
system in which the rights of provinces are clearly defined and
safeguarded.

But Guha was more circumspect with regard to the quality of India’s
democracy, describing it a “50-50 Democracy”. The strong points of
India’s democracy are holding elections and permitting freedom of
movement and expression.
The weak points of India’s are the institutions of democracy,
according to Guha. “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 law-breakers as well.”

Guha continues that “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.”

And “upper-caste Hindu males still command disproportionate

privileges in the everyday life of the Republic”, with Dalits, women,
Muslims and tribals remaining “less than equal citizens of the land”.

This Epilogue chapter is very insightful and certainly worth the wait
of 800 pages of reading.

Postscript

Since this book was published, in May 2019 India saw the re-election
of the BJP under Prime Minister Modi, with an increased majority.
Perhaps the most controversial step of the new government was to
revoke the special status accorded to Indian-administered Kashmir in
its constitution, the most far-reaching political move on the disputed
region in nearly 70 years.

These events inspired Ramachandra Guha to write: "I would

downgrade my country’s democratic credentials. Given the lack of
any sort of credible opposition to the BJP, the atmosphere of fear
among religious minorities and the attacks on a free press, we are
now a 40-60 democracy, and — if the recent abuse of state power in
Kashmir is any indication — well on the way to becoming 30-70."