India After Independence: 1947-2000 (4 page)

The British left behind a strong but costly armed force which had acted as an important pillar of the British regime in India. The British had made every effort to keep the armed forces apart from the life and thinking of the rest of the population, especially the national movement. Nationalist newspapers, journals and other publications were prevented from reaching the soldiers’ and officers’ messes. The other side of the medal, of course, was the tradition of the army being ‘apolitical’ and therefore also being subordinated, as was the civil service, to the political authorities. This would be a blessing in the long run to independent India, in contrast to the newly-created Pakistan.

Referring reproachfully to the legacy bequeathed by colonialism,
Rabindranath Tagore wrote just three months before his death in 1941:

The wheels of fate will some day compel the English to give up their Indian Empire. But what kind of India will they leave behind, what stark misery? When the stream of their centuries’ administration runs dry at last, what a waste of mud and filth will they leave behind them.

An appreciation of the hundred-year-old freedom struggle is integral to an analysis of developments in post-1947 India. While India inherited its economic and administrative structures from the precolonial and colonial period, the values and ideals—the vision—and the well-defined and comprehensive ideology that were to inspire it in nation building were derived from the national movement. Representing the Indian people, it incorporated various political trends from the right to the left which were committed to its ideological goals; it excluded only the communalists and those loyal to the colonial rulers.

These goals and values were, moreover, not confined to the intellectuals and the middle classes. During the era of mass politics, tens of thousands of the most humble cadres disseminated them among the common people in the urban as well as rural areas. Consequently, these ideals were to play a critical role in integrating and keeping together Indian society and polity in the last five decades. They served to link the national liberation movement with the efforts to develop India, in what Jawaharlal Nehru characterized as ‘a continuing revolution’. It is, in fact, these ideals by which people and parties are still evaluated and judged.

The freedom struggle was perhaps the greatest mass movement in world history. After 1919, it was built around the basic notion that the people had to and could play an active role in politics and in their own liberation, and it succeeded in politicizing, and drawing into political action a large part of the Indian people. Gandhiji, the leader who moved and mobilized millions into politics, all his life propagated the view that the people and not leaders created a mass movement, whether for the overthrow of the colonial regime or for social transformation. He added, though, that the success or failure of a movement depended a great deal on the quality of its leadership.

Satyagraha, as a form of struggle, was based on the active participation of the people and on the sympathy and support of the non-participating
millions. In fact, unlike a violent revolution, which could be waged by a minority of committed cadres and fighters, a non-violent revolution needed the political mobilization of millions and the passive support of the vast majority.

It may be pointed out, parenthetically, that it was because of the long experience of this kind of political participation by common people that the founders of the Indian Republic, who also led the freedom struggle in its last phase, could repose full faith in their political capacity. The leaders unhesitatingly introduced adult franchise despite widespread poverty and illiteracy.

The Indian national movement was fully committed to a polity based on representative democracy and the full range of civil liberties for the individual. It provided the experience through which these two could become an integral part of Indian political thinking.

From the very beginning the movement popularized democratic ideas and institutions among the people and struggled for the introduction of parliamentary institutions on the basis of popular elections. Starting from the turn of the twentieth century, the nationalists demanded the introduction of adult franchise. Much attention was also paid to the defence of the freedom of the Press and speech against attacks by the colonial authorities besides the promotion of other political and economic policies. Throughout, the movement struggled to expand the semi-democratic political arena and prevent the rulers from limiting the existing space within which legal political activities and peaceful political agitations and mass struggle could be organized.

Congress ministries, formed in 1937, visibly extended civil liberties to the resurgent peasants’, workers’ and students’ movements as also to radical groups and parties such as Congress Socialist party and Communist party.

From its foundation in 1885, the Indian National Congress, the main political organ of the national movement, was organized on democratic lines. It relied upon discussion at all levels as the chief mode for the formation of its policies and arriving at political discussions. Its policies and resolutions were publicly discussed and debated and then voted upon. Some of the most important decisions in its history were taken after rich and heated debates and on the basis of open voting. For example, the decision in 1920 to start the Non-Cooperation Movement was taken with 1336 voting for and 884 voting against Gandhiji’s resolution. Similarly, at the Lahore Congress in 1929, where Gandhiji was asked to take charge of the coming Civil Disobedience Movement, a resolution sponsored by him condemning the bomb attack on the Viceroy’s train by the revolutionary terrorists was passed by a narrow majority of 942 to 794. During the Second World War, Gandhiji’s stand on cooperation with the war effort was rejected by Congress in January 1942.

Congress did not insist on an identity of viewpoints or policy
approaches within its ranks. It allowed dissent and not only tolerated but encouraged different and minority opinions to be openly held and freely expressed. In fact, dissent became a part of its style. At independence, Congress, thus, had the experience of democratic functioning and struggle for civil liberties for over sixty years. Furthermore, the democratic style of functioning was not peculiar to Congress. Most other political organizations such as the Congress Socialist party, trade unions and Kisan Sabhas, students’, writers’ and women’s organizations, and professional associations functioned in the manner of political democracies.

The major leaders of the movement were committed wholeheartedly to civil liberties. It is worth quoting them. For example, Lokamanya Tilak proclaimed that ‘liberty of the Press and liberty of speech give birth to a nation and nourish it’.
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Gandhiji wrote in 1922: ‘We must first make good the right of free speech and free association . . . We must defend these elementary rights with our lives.’ And again in 1939: ‘Civil liberty consistent with the observance of non-violence is the first step towards
Swaraj.
It is the breath of political and social life. It is the foundation of freedom. There is no room there for dilution or compromise. It is the water of life. I have never heard of water being diluted.’
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It thus becomes clear that Gandhiji was fully committed to liberal, democratic values—only he also saw their deficiencies and believed that the existing liberal democratic structure, as prevailing in the West, was not adequate in enabling the people to control the wielders of political power. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in 1936: ‘If civil liberties are suppressed a nation loses all vitality and becomes impotent for anything substantial.’
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Further, the resolution on fundamental rights, passed by the Karachi Congress in 1931, guaranteed the rights of free expression of opinion through speech or the Press, and freedom of association.

The consensus on the practice of non-violence during the national movement also contributed to the creation of a temper of democracy in the country. Discussion, debate and persuasion, backed by public opinion, was emphasized for bringing about political and social change as opposed to glorification of violence which lies at the heart of authoritarianism.

The defence of civil liberties was also not narrowly conceived in terms of a single group or viewpoint. Political trends and groups otherwise critical of each other and often at opposite ends of the political or ideological spectrum vigorously defended each other’s civil rights. The Moderates—Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Surendranath Banerjea and others—defended the Extremist leader Tilak’s right to speak and write what he liked. And Congressmen, votaries of non-violence, defended Bhagat Singh and other revolutionary terrorists being tried in the Lahore and other conspiracy cases as also the Communists being tried in the Meerut Conspiracy Case. In 1928, the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill, aimed at suppressing trade unions, the left wing and the Communists, were opposed in the Central Legislative Assembly not only by Motilal Nehru but also by conservatives such as Madan Mohan Malaviya and M.R. Jayakar, besides political spokespersons of the Indian capitalists
such as Ghanshyam Das Birla and Purshottamdas Thakurdas.

The basic notions of popular sovereignty, representative government and civil liberties to be exercised even against the rulers were not part of India’s tradition nor were they, as some wrongly hold, ‘the lasting contribution of colonialism.’ It was the national movement and not the bureaucratic, authoritarian colonial state that indigenized, popularized and rooted thein in India. As pointed out in an earlier chapter, the colonial administration and ideologies not only tampered with civil liberties and resisted the nationalist demand for the introduction of a parliamentary system based on popular elections but, from the middle of the nineteenth century, promoted the view that for geographical, historical and sociocultural reasons India was unfit for democracy. It was in opposition to this colonial ideology and practice that the national movement, influenced deeply by democratic thought and traditions of the Enlightenment, succeeded in making democracy and civil liberty basic elements of the Indian political ethos. If free India could start and persist with a democratic polity, it was because the national movement had already firmly established the civil libertarian and democratic tradition among the Indian people. It was this tradition which was reflected in the Indian Constitution and which proved wrong Cassandras who had repeatedly predicted that democracy and civil liberties would not survive in a society so divided by language, religion, caste and culture and in the absence of a minimum of prosperity or economic development and literacy as was the case in western Europe and the United States. It is this tradition which explains why multi-party democracy and civil liberties have met different fates in India and Pakistan, though both equally constituted colonial India. The political party (and its politics) that brought about Pakistan was not known for its defence of civil liberties, or its functioning on democratic lines, or its tolerance towards its political opponents. Democracy was no, a significant part of its political culture. Besides, the national movement and its political culture were weak precisely in the areas which came to constitute Pakistan.

To conclude, over the years, the nationalist movement successfully created, an alternative to colonial and precolonial political culture based on authoritarianism, bureaucratism, obedience and paternalism. Its ideology and culture of democracy and civil liberties were based on respect for dissent, freedom of expression, the majority principle, and the right of minority opinion to exist and develop.

The Indian national movement developed a complex and sophisticated critique of the basic features of India’s colonial economy, especially of its subordination to the needs of the British economy. On the basis of this critique, the movement evolved a broad economic strategy to overcome India’s economic backwardness and underdevelopment. This was to form the basis of India’s economic thinking after independence.

The vision of a self-reliant independent economy was developed and popularized. Self-reliance was defined not as autarchy but as avoidance of a subordinate position in the world economy. As Jawaharlal Nehru put it in 1946, self-reliance ‘does not exclude international trade, which should be encouraged, but with a view to avoid economic imperialism.’
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At the same time, the nationalists accepted from the beginning and with near unanimity the objective of economic development towards modern agriculture and industry on the basis of modern science and technology—India, they held, had to industrialize or go under. They also emphasized the close link between industry and agriculture. Industrial development was seen as essential for rural development, for it alone could reduce population pressure on land and rural unemployment. Within industrialization, the emphasis was on the creation of an indigenous heavy capital goods or machine-making sector whose absence was seen as a cause both of economic dependence and underdevelopment. Simultaneously, for essential consumer goods, the nationalists advocated reliance on medium, small-scale and cottage industries. Small-scale and cottage industries were to be encouraged and protected as a part of the development strategy of increasing employment.

Indian nationalists were opposed to the unrestricted entry of foreign capital because it replaced and suppressed Indian capital, especially under conditions of foreign political domination. According to them real and self-reliant development could occur only through indigenous capital. On the other hand, the nationalists averred that if India was politically independent and free to evolve its own economic policies, it might use foreign capital to supplement indigenous efforts, because of her vast capital requirements and need to import machinery and advanced technology from other countries.

During the thirties and forties a basic restructuring of the agrarian relations also became one of the objectives of the national movement. All intermediary rent-receivers such as the zamindars and other landlords were to be abolished and agriculture based on peasant proprietors.

An active and central role was envisaged for the state in economic development by the nationalists. Rapid industrialization, in particular, needed a comprehensive policy of direct and systematic state intervention. Economic planning by the government and the massive development of the public sector were widely accepted in the thirties. The state was to develop large-scale and key industries apart from infrastructure, such as power, irrigation, roads and water-supply, where large resources were needed, and which were beyond the capacity of Indian capital. As early as 1931, the Resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic Programme, adopted at the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress declared that in independent India ‘the State shall own or control key industries and services, mineral resources, railways, waterways, shipping and other means of public transport.’
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Interestingly, the session was presided over by Sardar Patel, the Resolution drafted by Jawaharlal Nehru and moved in the open session by Gandhiji. To promote planning as an instrument of
integrated and comprehensive development Congress sponsored in 1938 the National Planning Committee while the Indian capitalists formulated the Bombay Plan in 1943.