Handbook of Politics in Indian States: Region, Parties, and Economic Reforms 0198081731, 9780198081739

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HANDBOOK OF

P O L IT IC S IN D IA N

IN

STATES

Regions, Parties, and Economic Reforms

OXFORD

Handbook of Politics in Indian States "Ihe Oxford India Handbooks are an important initiative in academic publishing. Each volume offers a comprehensive survey of research in a critical subject area and provides facts, figures, and analyses for a well-grounded perspective. The series provides scholars, students, and policy planners with a balanced understanding of a wide range of issues in the social sciences.

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Handbook of Politics in Indian States Regions, Parties, and Economic Reforms

ed ited by

Sudha Pai

OXFORD U N IV ER SITY PRESS

OXFORD U N IV ERSITY PRESS

. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in India by Oxford University Press YMCALibrary Building, ljai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001, India © Oxford University Press 2013 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted bylaw, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN-13:978-0-19-808173-9 ISBN-10: 0-19-808173-1

Typeset in 11/13 Arno Pro by Excellent Laser Typesetters, Pitampura, Delhi 110 034 Printed in India at De-Unique, NewDelhi 110 018

To Professor C.P. Bhambhri fo r his support in all my academic endeavours

Contents

List of Tables and Figures

x

Acknowledgements

xiii

Publisher’s Acknowledgements

xiv

List ofAbbreviations

xv

Introduction Sudha Pai

1

I R egions and R egionalism : H istorical Legacies and P resent-day D emands 1. Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures: The Two Realities Ainslie T. Embree 2. States Reorganization Commission: A Critical Reading Asha Sarangi 3. Integration through Internal Reorganization: Containing Ethnic Conflict in India Maya Chadda 4. The Continuing Struggle for India’sJharkhand: Democracy, Decentralization, and the Politics of Names and Numbers Stuart Corbridge 5. Divided We Stand: Identity and Protest in the Demand for a Separate Hill State of Uttarakhand Emma E. Mawdsley

23 40 55

73

87

viii

Contents

II P olitical Parties and Electoral P olitics in the States 6. The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh: Dominance, Decline, and Revival? Sudha Pai 7. Coalition Strategies and the BJP’s Expansion, 1989-2004 E. Sridharan 8. A Shift towards Regionalization of Indian Politics Sanjay Kumar 9. From Dominance to Disarray: The Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh K.C. Suri 10. The Changing Politics of Tamil Nadu John Harriss and Andrew Wyatt 11. Asom Gana Parishad: Rise and Prospects Sandhya Goswami 12. Left in the Lurch: The Demise of the World’s Longest Elected Regime? Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya III

147 166 180 197 212

233

250 269 281

296

E conomic Reforms and State P olitics : C hanging Patterns

18. The Iconization of Chandrababu: Sharing Sovereignty in India’s Federal Market Economy Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph 19. Globalization and State Disparities in India Baldev Raj Nayar 20. Unravelling Bihar’s ‘Growth Miracle’ Chirashree Das Gupta

V

123

Social M ovements and P olitics in the States

13. Decline of Backward Caste Politics in Northern India: From Caste-Politics to Class-Politics A.K. Verma 14. Dalit Assertion in Tamil Nadu, 1990s: An Exploratory Note M.S.S. Pandian 15. A Beggar’s Song of Democracy: A Study of Invisible Dalits Badri Narayan 16. The Bahujan Samaj Party: Its Shifting Strategies of Subaltern Mobilization in Uttar Pradesh Sohini Guha 17. Small States in Large Democracy: Ethnic Minorities in a Majoritarian Indian Polity Sajal Nag IV

107

315

339 356

Contents

21. State Capitalism: Provincial Governance and Protest Politics in India’s Special Economic Zones Rob Jenkins 22. Hype, Skill, and Class: The Politics of Reforms in Andhra Pradesh, 1995-2004 and Beyond Jos Mooij

IX

384

401

Index

419

About the Editor and Contributors

439

Tables and Figures

T

a b l e s

6.1 6.2

State Assembly Elections in Uttar Pradesh, 1951-85 State Assembly Elections in Uttar Pradesh, 1989-2007

in

7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10

Elections in Maharashtra Elections in Haryana Elections in Punjab Elections in Bihar Elections in Orissa Elections in West Bengal Elections in Assam Elections in Andhra Pradesh Elections in Karnataka Elections in Tamil Nadu

130 131 132 134 135 136 137 139 140 141

8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4

Vote Share of National and Regional Parties: Lok Sabha Elections, 1984-2009 Support for Regional Parties Voting Consideration: State versus Central Government Average Turnout during Lok Sabha Elections (1989-2009) and Assembly Elections (1989-2009): State-wise Comparative Analysis Turnout among Social Communities: Lok Sabha Elections, 1996-2009 Turnout among Social Communities across States: Lok Sabha Elections, 2009 Turnout among Voters of Different Economic Class: Lok Sabha Elections, 1996-2009

149 150 151 152

8.5 8.6 8.7

116

153 154 155

T a b le s a n d F ig u re s

xi

8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15 8.16 8.17 8.18

Participation in Election Meetings: Lok Sabha Elections, 1998-2009 Participation in Election Rallies: Lok Sabha Elections, 1999-2009 Interest in Election Campaign: Lok Sabha Elections, 1996-2009 BJP’s Strong Presence amongst Brahman Voters BJP’s Popularity amongst Upper Castes Declining Support for the Congress amongst OBC Voters BSP as Threat to Dalit Vote of the Congress Declining Support of the Congress amongst Adivasis Regional Parties as Threat to Congress’Muslim Vote Declining Trend ofAnti-incumbent: State Assembly Election, 1990-2009 Trend in Anti-incumbency during State Assembly Election, 1990-2010

155 156 157 158 158 159 160 161 161 162 163

9.1

Seats Won/Contested and Percentage of Votes Polled by the TDP and Other Parties in the Vidhan Sabha Elections in AP since 1983 Seats Won/Contested and Percentage of Votes Polled by the TDP and Other Parties in the Lok Sabha Elections in AP since 1984

167

9.2

11.1 Asom Gana Parishad in Assembly Elections, 1985-2011 11.2 Asom Gana Parishad in Lok Sabha Elections, 1985-2009 11.3 Party Preference among Various Castes/Communities/Groups (Row Percentage), 1996 11.4 Party Preference among Various Castes/Communities, Lok Sabha, 1998-2009 11.5 Party Preference among Various Castes/Communities, Assembly Elections,

172

198 198 202 208 209

2 0 0 1 -1 1

13.1 13.2

Parties’Vote Share among Caste Groups in 2009 LS Elections in Uttar Pradesh Bahujan Samaj Party Vote Share among Various Caste-Groups in Uttar Pradesh in 2007 Assembly Elections

243 243

14.1

Votes Polled by Puthiya Tamilagam in the Lok Sabha Elections, 1999

262

17.1 17.2

Order of States in Terms of Area Order of States in Terms of Population, 1991 Census

299 303

18.1

State Rankings by Per Capita Domestic Product

323

19.1 19.2 19.3

Per Capita Income and Growth Rates among the Indian States Proportion of Population below the Poverty Line among the Indian States Aviation Passenger Traffic (’000), Domestic and International

343 347 350

20.1 20.2 20.3

Overview of Growth in Primary Sector, Bihar, 2000-1 to 2008-9 Trend Growth/Decline: Major Crops in Bihar, 2000-1 to 2007-8 Overview of Growth Trends in Bihar, 1999-2000 to 2008-9

361 361 365

xii

Tables and Figures

20.4 20.5 20.6 20.7 20.8 20.9 20.10 20A.1

Overview of Crime in Bihar, 1998-2008 Crime against Women, Dalits, and Adivasis in Bihar, 2004-8 Share of Development Expenditure in Total Expenditure of Government of Bihar Sectoral Contributions to Bihar’s GSDP Growth Normality Test of Log-linear Trend Residuals Normality Test of Average Sector Shares Growth and Volatility: Bihar’s GSDP Difference in GSDP Figures for Bihar between CSO Numbers and Government of Bihar at Factor Cost 20A.2 Overview of Crime in Bihar, 1998-2008

380

22.1

403

F

Reforms in Andhra Pradesh, 1995-2004

368 369 372 374 375 375 376 379

ig u r e s

4.1 4.2

The Demand for GreaterJharkhand, c. 1950 The Tribal Population ofjharkhand, 1971

76 82

13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4

Decline of Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh Decline of Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar Dalit and Muslim Voting Patterns in Bihar Subaltern Support to Parties in Bihar

239 240 245 246

18.1 18.2

Rise of State Parties, Percentage ofVotes Rise of State Parties, Percentage of Seats

319 320

19.1

Domestic and International Aviation Passenger Traffic (’000), 1951 to 2004-5

350

20.1 20.2 20.3 20.4

Annual Growth Rate of Bihar’s GSDP: Five-Yearly Trends Annual Growth Rate of Bihar’s GSDP: Three-Yearly Trends Trend Annual Growth Rates: Bihar’s GSDP Growth Rate: Bihar’s GSDP and India’s GDP

363 364 366 367

Acknowledgements

In recent decades, regional politics has come to play a central role at the national level. The rise of regional parties, new social identities which determine the shape of state party systems, the demand for smaller states, and the liberalization of the economy since 1991, have introduced changes which today are defining the course of national politics. Regional parties have also now become partners in central coalition governments, providing state leaders opportunities to shape important public policies that could decide the future of our democracy. For these reasons, development in states is now gaining greater academic attention than before. Handbook of Politics in Indian States is an attempt to provide a set of well-researched essays on some significant aspects of state politics in India which have been responsible for shaping the progress of democratic politics in the post-Independence period. The broad areas on which the volume focuses are democratization, regions and regionalism, political parties and electoral politics, and economic reform. The contributions by eminent scholars examine the significant shifts that have taken place in the functioning of state politics along these three axes, and the interplay between them which creates new patterns. It is hoped that the essays will encourage students and researchers of Indian politics to take up further research on these and other aspects of state politics. In putting together these essays I have received help and encouragement from a large number of persons of whom I can acknowledge only a few here. I am grateful to C.R Bhambhri for his many useful suggestions while the volume was being put together, and to Niraja Gopal Jayal for her insightful comments on the introduc­ tion. Thanks also to Rahul Mukherji who greatly helped in suggesting names of scholars and also contacting some of them. I am grateful to all contributors who wrote the essays included in this volume, completed them within the assigned time, and were willing to revise them at short notice. Without their cooperation this task would not have been possible. Finally I am grateful to the editorial team at Oxford University Press for its efficient handling of the manuscript. Sudha Pai

Publisher s Acknowledgements

The publisher acknowledges the following for permission to include articles/extracts in this volume. Oxford and IBH for Ainslie T. Embree, 'Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures: The Two Realities’, in Paul Wallace (ed.), Region and Nation in India, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 19-39. Taylor & Francis for Maya Chadda, ‘Integration through Internal Reorganization: Containing Ethnic Conflict in India’, in The Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 2(1, September 2002): 44-61; for Stuart Corbridge, "Ihe Continuing Struggle for India’sJharkhand’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 40(3, 2002): 55-71; for E. Sridharan, ‘Coalition Strategies and the BJP’s Expansion, 1989-2004’, in Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 43(2, July 2005): 194-221; and for Jos Mooij, ‘Hype, Skill and Class: The Politics of Reform in Andhra Pradesh’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 45(1, February 2007): 34-56. Manohar for Emma E. Mawdsley, ‘Divided We Stand: Identity and Protest in the Demand for a Separate Hill State’, in R. Jeffery and J. Lerche (eds), Social and Political Change in Uttar Pradesh: European Perspectives, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 129-50. Economic and Political Weekly for Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, ‘Left in the Lurch: The Demise of the World’s Longest Elected Regime?’ XLV(3, 16 January 2010): 51-9; for Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, ‘The Iconisation of Chandrababu: Sharing Sovereignty in India’s Federal Market Economy’, 36(18, 5-11 May 2001): 1541-52; and for Chirashree Das Gupta, ‘Unravelling Bihar’s “Growth Miracle’”, XLV(52,25 December 2010): 50-62. Indian School of Political Economy for M.S.S. Pandian, ‘Dalit Assertion in Tamil Nadu: An Exploratory Note’, Journal ofIndian School ofPolitical Economy,12(3 and4,July-December 2000): 501-18.

Abbreviations

AAGSP AASU ABSU ADB ADMK ADRI AFSPA AGP AGP (P) ALADMK AICC AIMIM/MIM AIUDF AP APL ASDC AUDF BAMCEF BC BJD BJP BJS BKD BIMARU

All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad All Assam Students’ Union All Bodo Student Union Asian Development Bank Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Asian Development Research Institute Armed Forces Special Power Act Asom Gana Parishad Asom Gana Parishad (Progressive) All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam All India Congress Committee All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen All India United Democratic Front Andhra Pradesh Above Poverty Line Autonomous State Demand Committee Assam United Democratic Front Backward and Minority Community Employees Federation Backward Caste BijuJanata Dal BharatiyaJanata Party BharatiyaJana Sangh Bharatiya Kranti Dal Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh

XVI

BLD BoA BPL BPP (S) BPPF BSP CARD CEA CENVAT CID CII CPI CPI (M) CRISIL CSDS CSO CSSSC CST CV DC DK DKVF DMDK DMK DPI DTA EGoM HVP GDP Gol GoM GSDP GST HMSO IAS ICOR ICRIER IMDT Act IMF INC INLD INTUC IT

Abbreviations

Bharatiya Lok Dal Board of Approval Below Poverty Line Bodo People’s Party (Sangsuma) Bodoland Peoples Progressive Front Bahujan Samaj Party Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department Central Electricity Authority Central Value Added Tax Criminal Investigation Department Confederation of Indian Industries Communist Party of India Communist Party of India (Marxist) Credit Rating Information Systems of India Centre for the Study of Developing Societies Central Statistical Organisation Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta Central Sales Tax Coefficient of Variation Development Commissioner Dravida Kazhagam Devendra Kula Vellalar Federation Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Dalit Panther Iyyakkam/Dalit Panthers of India Domestic TariffArea Empowered Group ofMinisters Haryana Vikas Party Gross Domestic Product Government of India Government of Maharashtra Gross State Domestic Product Goods and Services Tax Her Majesty’s Stationery Office Indian Administrative Service Incremental Capital-Output Ratio Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act International Monetary Fund Indian National Congress Indian National Lok Dal Indian National Trade Union Congress Information Technology

Abbreviations

IUML JCC JD JD(U) JD(S) JMM JP JS KNMK LAA LJP LTTE MBC MDMK MFAL MGR MLA MLALAD MMTS MNF MoU MP MPF MPLAD MRBC MSEB NAGP NAPM NCAER NCP NDA NEFA NES NGO NHPC NMC NRC NREGA NRI NSS NTPC NTR OBC

Indian Union Muslim League Jharkhand Coordination Committee Janata Dal Janata Dal (United) Janata Dal (Secular) Jharkhand Mukti Morcha Janata Party Jan Sangh Kongu Nadu Munnetra Kazhagam Land Acquisition Act LokJanshakti Party Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Most Backward Caste Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Marginal Farmers and Agricultural Labourers M.G. Ramachandran Member of Legislative Assembly MLA Local Area Development Multi Modal Transport System Mizo National Front Memorandum of Understanding Member of Parliament Market Preserving Federalism MP Local Area Development More Backward Caste Maharashtra State Electricity Board Natun Asom Gana Parishad National Alliance of Peoples Movements National Council of Applied Economic Research Nationalist Congress Party National Democratic Alliance Northeast Frontier Agency National Election Survey/Study Non-governmental Organization National Hydel Power Corporation New Middle Class National Registrar of Citizens National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Non-resident Indian National Sample Survey National Thermal Power Corporation N.T. RamaRao Other Backward Caste/Class

XVII

xviii

PDF PDS PFC PMK PPA PPP PR PRP PSP PT RBI RLD RJD RPI RSS RTI SAD SAM SAP SC SDB SDP SEB SEBI SEZ SFDA SJP SMART SMSP SP SRC SS SSP ST SULFA TDP TDP(LP) TGP TMC TRS UDF UKD ULFA

Abbreviations

Peoples Democratic Front Public Distribution System Power Finance Corporation Pattali Makkal Katchi Power Purchase Agreement Public-Private Partnership Proportional Representation Praja Rajyam Party Praja Socialist Party Puthiya Thamizhagam Reserve Bank of India Rashtriya Lok Dal Rashtriya Janata Dal Republican Party of India Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Right to Information Shiromani Akali Dal Social Action Movement Structural Adjustment Programme Scheduled Caste Special Development Board State Domestic Product State Electricity Board Securities and Exchange Board of India Special Economic Zone Small Farmers Development Agency Samajwadi Janata Party Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive, and Transparent Single-member District, Simple Plurality Samajwadi Party State Reorganization Commission Shiv Sena Samyukta Socialist Party Scheduled Tribe Surrendered United Liberation Front ofAssam Telugu Desam Party Telugu Desam Party (Lakshmi Parvathi) Trinamool Gana Parishad Tamil Maanila Congress Telangana Rashtra Samiti United Democratic Front Uttaranchal Kranti Dal United Liberation Front ofAssam

Abbreviations

UMF UP UPA VCK VSTC YSR

United Minority Front Uttar Pradesh United Progressive Alliance Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi Veeran Sundaralingam Transport Corporation Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy

XIX

Introduction

S ud ha Pai

Over the last three decades, the states of the Indian union have come to occupy a seminal position in politics at the national level. In the immediate post-independence period, the Constitution established a federal structure, but due to the absence of regional forces in the Constituent Assembly, a single written constitu­ tion, and the existence of a one-party dominant system, the states did not play a significant role. In contrast, today, states enjoy much greater autonomy. With the rise of regional parties they have now become partners in central gov­ ernance, and following liberalization they have attained greater financial freedom. New social and cultural identities and groups have as­ serted themselves by changing the established contours of state party systems, leading to fresh political alignments in every national election. Two interrelated long-term developments in the post-Independence period have been responsible for the growth of state politics as

an arena distinct and relatively autonomous from national politics. On the one hand, with the formation of a federal structure in a large and diverse country, there has developed a common arena of state politics somewhat diver­ gent from that of national politics. The states have become conscious of their autonomy and collective voice against the centre; with the establishment of a market economy, there is greater competition between states over access to common resources or in attracting private investment—domestic and international. On the other hand, each state has developed over time distinct and region-specific characteristics, and a relatively autonomous political arena of its own. The establishment of linguistic states set into motion a process of politicization of underprivileged social groups into politics, and assertion of ethnic/regional identities and movements based upon caste and community in the states creating differentiation. All-India

2

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

politics has also interacted with local political formations thrown up by the specificities of politics in each state creating different pat­ terns. Both these developments—increase in commonalities of structures and processes among states, and greater differentiation due to specificities in each state—are taking place at the same time; both regional and national identities have developed side-by-side that has enabled the states to hold together. The latter has not effaced the former, nor has the contin­ ued presence of the former led to balkanization as predicted in the 1950s. The chapters in this Handbook examine these significant shifts in the functioning of state politics along three axes, the interplay between them creating new patterns: \ " • Pan-Indian and regional forces that have existed historically and determined the process of states reorganization in 1956 and, subsequently, present-day demands for smaller states in particular. • Democratization and regionalization of politics which underlie the rise of regional parties, identity politics, social movements, and electoral politics in the states. • Economic reform which has in recent years shaped state politics around issues of growth, equity, and governance. These three axes have been selected as they are determining significant developments in contemporary politics in the states. At same time they have historical relevance as they have played a significant, formative role in shaping state politics which began in the colonial peri­ od, but more importantly since independence. Moreover, close interaction between these three aspects has helped in the gradual social deepening of democracy in the states. A num­ ber of phases can be discerned in the journey— based on the above mentioned processes—of

the development of an autonomous arena and a distinct identity for the states within the Indian union. The reorganization of states at independence initiated the process of creating a viable social and political federal structure in keeping with the needs of nation-building that is still underway. The three decades from the 1950s to the 1970s, due to the existence of the Congress system, proved to be one of the slow beginnings of party systems, institutions, and electoral politics in the states. Major turning points which initiated a process of differentia­ tion and increasingly made the states important players were the defeat of the Congress party in the mid-1960s in a number of states, the de-linking of state and national elections, the Green Revolution, and the rise of a rich peasant class, rising political consciousness, and social movements in many states (see the chapters on the states in Narain 1972). While earlier democratization and region­ alization of politics were underlying processes, they accelerated in the 1980s initiating a second phase that experienced gradual decline of the cardinal features of the Nehruvian political system—a systemic change leading to the col­ lapse of older structures, processes, and norms necessitating the establishment of new ones. Writing in the early 1980s, a period of fer­ ment, John Wood raised the seminal question of whether political development in the states pointed to continuity or crisis’? (1984: 15). Many of the problems he described were even­ tually responsible for a multi-faceted crisis of much greater magnitude; some attributed it to decline of the traditional ‘social order’ (Frankel and Raol989), while others to a crisis of governability’ (Kohli 1991). Consequently, the 1990s constituted a deci­ sive shift, a period of transition, when collapse of the older polity dependent on single-party dominance and its associated features triggered a number of related changes with enormous

Introduction

implications for the states. Regional parties and identity politics based on caste and community created political instability due to several fac­ tors such as no party gaining a majority in state assemblies, short-lived coalition governments, economic collapse, and poor governance. This was particularly true of the states in the Hindi heartland where, in contrast to states in south­ ern and western India, social change began only in the late colonial period and the pace reduced further after independence. Here the process of transition from the older political system to the newer one was more drawn out and pain­ ful, although longer-term analysis of change in the states is more positive. Two parallel shifts that took this process forward were economic reform and demands for smaller states which have the potential for re-configuration of states within the federal structure. By the early 2000s, these developments created a post-Congress polity in which multi­ party competition had changed the structure of electoral competition in the states, provided space for the rise of new social identities, giving regional parties a greater role in national poli­ tics, and loosened the tight mould of federalism cast at independence. In more recent years, with the relative decline of identity politics, the issue of development during a period of liberaliza­ tion and the impact of creation of smaller states, particularly in the Hindi heartland, has come to the fore. A recent study positing a relationship between faster economic growth and victory of the Congress party in the 2009 elections in the states, argues that when the slow growing states accelerated in the early 2000s to 6 per cent or more growth, incumbents started winning, indicating that fast growth benefits and draws votes from tha masses (Gupta and Panagariya 2010). In the 1990s when economic progress was not good, anti-incumbency was a trend; in the 2000s with faster growth, economic perfor­ mance of the incumbent government became

3

an important determinant of the way voters behave. This suggests that a new relationship is emerging between faster and more inclusive growth and electoral politics (ibid.). However, the nature of economic change taking place in the states and its relationship with policies of liberalization and politics remains complex and controversial, as some of the contributors in this volume have argued. Nor has identity p ohtics disappeared; it is now employed together with a developmental agenda for all sections of soci­ ety and not for the benefit of a particular social group as in the past. Both the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government headed by Mayawati between 2007 and 2012 and the Janata Dal (JD) government headed by Nitish Kumar since 2010, which came to power on a winning caste-combination and the use of inclusive de­ velopment programmes for all social categories once in office, provide good examples where deeper research into these changes is possible and required. Thus, during the 2000s, faster but socially inclusive growth, economic reform, greater participation, improved governance, and rising demands for reconfiguration of the states have come to occupy centre stage. This introduction employs the lens of con­ tinuity and change to interpret these processes analysed by the contributors since indepen­ dence, but more particularly in the contem­ porary phase. It further discusses to what extent past patterns are continuing or have been replaced by newer ones, and the direction and extent of change. The concluding section briefly examines emerging future trends in state politics. R E G IO N S , R E O R G A N I Z A T I O N , A N D N E W A S S E R T IO N S

The reorganization of the Indian states after independence by the nationalist leadership was an attempt to create a coherent federal arrange­ ment in keeping with the wishes of the people.

4

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

But it can also be understood as the product of a long historical process that has shaped the political geography of the Indian subcontinent. Pan-Indian and regional forces have existed here, and their interplay has created distinct cultural regions and identities (Gohn 1987). Beginning from the colonial period, there has been a constant re-orientation of their rela­ tionship with an emerging national identity, a process that remains incomplete. A longer historical view provides a perspec­ tive of the processes of formation of regions and states on the Indian subcontinent and can contribute to an understanding of the recurring demands for reorganization. In fact, it can be argued that the subfield of state politics has not emerged as a truly multidisciplinary area draw­ ing on the work of historians. Until recently, historians were concerned with Indian political history largely at the national level, the focus being on national organizations and leaders. But since the 1980s, attention has shifted to the regional level. Gerald Barrier, examining approximately 200 books and articles pub­ lished on regional and subnational elements in Indian colonial political history, points to a his­ toriographic trend towards understanding the nationalist movement within the perspective of regional and even local developments (Barrier 1985: 111). This shift provides a rich source of material for the contemporary researcher to understand current demands for smaller states. Writing in the 1880s, British administra­ tors raised the issue whether historically there was a country called ‘India’ or is it the peren­ nial nuclear regions of Bengal, Andhra, and Punjab that have formed the enduring reality on the subcontinent. Doubting the ability of India to become a nation, they argued that it was fragile, political artefact of imperialism whose withdrawal would lead to it flying apart leading to the re-emergence of regional states. A related issue is why despite its large size,

distinct, territorially bounded nationalities did not develop into independent states on the Indian subcontinent, such as Europe which has 25 countries. Both the concept of the nation state in Europe and the subcontinental empire in India have been quite different (Rudolph and Rudolph 1985: 43). The European experience of stateness’ was primarily one of narrowing of sovereignty into ethnically homogenous defined areas, whereas in India central author­ ity extended across ethnic boundaries bringing together communities in a layered, segmented but ordered heterogeneity due to cultural and social differences (ibid.). Thus, regions retained their relative fluidity through his­ tory and, even today, are political projects and contested constructs even when they appear to be natural’. Ainslie T. Embree argues in his chapter that these two historical realities—regional cultures and an all-India civilization—have provided the basis for the federal nation state in the post-independence period. Unlike in Europe, an all-India civilization as an enduring political and social entity, continuous with the modern nation state together with the peren­ nial nuclear regions of India—Punjab, Bengal, Madras, etc.—with the lines of regional geog­ raphy matching the structure lines of political and social history, while coexisting, provides the ‘two realities’ of Indian civilization. The central elements of the former, that is, all-India civilization as an enduring political and social entity, have not spread evenly into all regions. It has a ‘thick’ layer in some and a ‘thin’ layer in others, and limited to a small elite group ev­ erywhere, beneath which exist the Tittle tradi­ tions’. In this complex arrangement, it is three ‘stratified linkages’ of religious and philosophi­ cal ideas—literary culture, political theories, and historical memories—that have provided unity: the indigenous Brahmanical and the external:Islamic and Western tradition. The

Introduction

latter two produced empires that spread gradu­ ally over the subcontinent blunting the potenti­ alities ofthe regions for nationality formation by distorting their political development. In fact, Embree suggests that India has held together well after independence, overcoming major separatist movements in the Northeast and in Punjab because by the end of the twentieth century, history and ideology have combined to produce something new in the subcontinent— a state stronger than society. Distinct phases can be discerned in the formation of regions and their interplay with reorganization of states on the subcontinent, a process that began in the colonial period. The national movement contributed to the rise of regional identities and movements that led to the rise of regional consciousness side by side with nationalism. Broomfield (1982) points to the development of regional elites during the colonial period at different points of time, in different ways, and with different interpretations of the past and of the emerging nation. Two kinds of mobilization took place: horizontal and vertical. In the former, large masses joined the movement under the Indian National Congress (INC), while the latter process saw the integration of certain regions under the growing linguistic middle classes in these regions (Reddy and Sharma 1977). Since language was the basis of many of these move­ ments, it emerged earlier as an important ful­ crum around which demands for demarcation of regions along linguistic lines arose gradually. As a result, in the 1920s, the INC under the leadership of Gandhi adopted the principle of linguistic reorganization of states as a political objective. These developments underlie the strident demand for the formation of linguistic states in 1956. These significant aspects are discussed in the next chapter by Asha Sarangi, which analyses the historical reasons and political

5

compulsions that determined the rationale for states reorganization. It is based on a close read­ ing of the report of the State Reorganization Commission (SRC). Entrusted with the task of providing a workable framework to facilitate the process of reorganization, the SRC report discussed factors such as financial viability, size of the states, unity and security of the country, planned economic development of different regions, and linguistic-cultural homogeneity of the states, and tried to provide workable crite­ ria. However, by the 1950s, the demand for lin­ guistic reorganization had become so intensely political that in the final resort the linguistic principle became the main basis of reorgani­ zation. Sarangis chapter also shows that the demands for smaller states such as Telangana or Purbanchal in contemporary times had been stated before the SRC and the specific reasons for not granting them separate statehood. However, with the emergence of region as an important factor in state politics, the reor­ ganization undertaken in 1956 was at best an unfinished task; a product of developments in the colonial period culminating in the forma­ tion of 14 states and 9 union territories. The following decades witnessed the formation of more states: Maharashtra and Gujarat in I960; Haryana and Punjab in 1966; Nagaland in 1963; several states in the Northeast in 1970-80; and Goa in 1992. While many older demands for reorganization since independence remain unresolved, the last two decades have witnessed a third phase of increasing demands for forma­ tion of smaller states that are a product of de­ velopments in post-independence India. There has been a shift away from issues of language and culture that had shaped the earlier process of reorganization to focus upon smaller size for better governance and greater participation, ad­ ministrative convenience, economic backward­ ness, and similarity in the developmental needs of the subregion and broad cultural-linguistic

6

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

affinity (Majeed 2003: 85). The creation of the three new states of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh carved out of the large states of Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh, respectively in 2000, which were ear­ lier viewed as Tow key’ demands and not very economically viable has also taken the process further (Kumar 1998: 130-40). Against this backdrop, the announcement by the central government that it would move a resolution to form a separate state of Telangana on 9 December 2009, sparked offdemands for many smaller states including a second SRC. In this ongoing debate on the grounds on which states can be reorganized, size and economic backwardness have emerged as two central issues. Scholars have argued that mere creation of smaller states does not guarantee that they will be well-governed, or will experi­ ence faster economic development. However, others have pointed out that recently created small states such as Bihar and Jharkhand are not performing badly (Singh 2010). But it is also felt that the focus should not be only on size, rather it should be on state capacity, which varies widely across the country. A related issue is the need for socially and economically inclusive growth, which assumes importance with rising state/regional inequalities in the period of liberalization and retreat of the state from many welfare functions. Demands for new states such as Vidharbha, Saurashtra, Bodoland, Coorg, and Harit Pradesh, among others, are being made on the basis of economic backward­ ness of subregions within large states. Unequal development among regions due to distorted patterns of colonial investment has continued into the post-independence period, leading to capitalist enclaves in the big states surrounded by. poorer regions. However, the Srikrishna report points out that today Telangana is not the most backward region in Andhra Pradesh (AP), all subregions have backward districts.

A close reading of the report suggests that the Telangana movement today is driven not so much by economic backwardness, but a modicum of economic growth and heightened desire for rapid and inclusive development among all sections including the tribal groups which would bring them closer to other more developed regions. However, size and economic backwardness are not the driving factors behind the creation of the three new states in 2000. More im­ mediately, the reasons lie in the tremendous changes that have taken place in the politics of the states in the Hindi heartland. An impor­ tant development is the competition within new, local elites in these states within both the national parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Congress, to create smaller states and gain control over them, and thereby increase their clout in parliament in an era of coalition governments. In Uttarakhand, as Emma E. Mawdsley s chapter shows, the ideas which underlay the movement—in contrast to identities and ideas arising out of old move­ ments such as Chipko—were feelings, within this new local elite, of unity within the hills, difference from the UP plains, and loyalty to India, which were used to skilfully create a strong demand for a separate state. The move­ ment succeeded because these ideas were in keeping with a growing recognition that there was a need to break up some of India’s large states, such as UP, and hence this appealed to the rationalizing and modernizing discourse of the Indian state, particularly the planners and developers. Differences within the movement arising out of caste, community, and subregion were overcome, but not entirely as they sur­ faced during the formation of the state and still need to be resolved. -■ - x In contrast to Mawdsley, Stuart Corbridge has raised doubts that the formation of these three states does not point to greater

Introduction

democratization, or enhanced ability of the new regional political elites to deal with rising identities and demands from below. Rather it is based on fraud and hypocrisy. The state of Jharkhand was formed with little regard to the aspirations of the Adivasis who have led a long struggle since the 1930s for a greater tribal state. His analysis points to a long process of de-tribalization due to narrower definition of tribalness, entry of non-tribals, and rise of an educated class and cooption by the Congress, all of which undermined tribal identity and destroyed the movement. Nor have high growth rates due to entry of private companies helped the tribals. An adivasi cosmovision’ still exists but betrayed by leaders, the tribal movement has turned towards issues of forests, land, and dams rather than a separate state. However, Maya Chadda’s chapter argues that the frequent reorganization of state bound­ aries has helped in strengthening the federal system and not led to Balkanization as feared in the 1950s. Her positive reading is based on the argument that each of the three phases of reorganization since independence has a ‘master theme’ that has aimed at achieving federal balance through various means of accommodation. In the 1980s, the federal structure faced a serious challenge from sepa­ ratist movements in Punjab, Assam, and later Kashmir. But in contrast to scholars who feel that these problems have weakened the Indian state, Chadda argues that the formation of the three new states in 2000 can be viewed as an ex­ pression of a new confidence’ among national elites in the strength of Indian federalism and democracy. This is perhaps due to the resolu­ tion of conflicts in Punjab, Assam, and Kashmir, closer integration of ethnic and caste-based regional parties into the central government, greater space for local politics, freer economy, and new forms ofgovernance using civil society. These debates suggest, as Sanjib Baruah (2010)

7

has also argued, that the problem of reorganiza­ tion looks different when viewed from different regions, particularly peripheral regions such as the Northeast, and it is not necessary that the same model will prove successful in all parts of the subcontinent. P O L IT IC S O F D E M O C R A T I C C H A N G E : P A R T IE S , E L E C T IO N S , A N D M O V E M E N T S

De-colonization and adoption of a democratic federal constitution set into motion two long­ term processes that have shaped politics in the states: democratization and regionalization (Pai 2000: 5). Many changes triggered by these twin processes are addressed by contributors in the second part of the volume. Democratization has been instrumental in the politicization and mobilization of new and underprivileged social groups into politics, assertion of ethnic/ regional identities, and movements based upon caste, community, and region. It is the product of a number of developments: the inauguration of the constitution; adoption of adult franchise; land reforms; spread of literacy; movements and rise in political awareness. During the first four decades of single party rule and central­ ized planning, at least three developments took it forward: the defeat of the Congress party in 1967 in 8 out of 16 major states; the de-linking of state assembly elections by Mrs Indira Gandhi in 1971 leading to a separate arena for state politics; and the rise of regional parties in the 1980s due to demands for greater autonomy and economic developments such as the Green Revolution leading to the formation of rich peasant/backward caste groups contributed to the decline of the Congress in many states such as AP, UP, and Punjab. The parallel process of regionalization underlies the gradual shift of power from a single centre to many poles located in the states though this has not been a continuous process, the balance of power has shifted back and forth

8

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

over phases (Pai 2000: 5). A multidimensional process, it is the consequence of rise of regional consciousness, spread of the electoral pro­ cess, socio-political mobilization, emergence of identities, and shift to multiparty system. The impact of this process is visible as early as the 1980 Lok Sabha elections in which the Congress obtained an absolute majority, but it initiated a process of shifting of its regional base and progressive shrinking of the social base as a result of which it began to lose rapidly in many states one after the other. Certain devel­ opments as part of this process contributed to new patterns in the states: the rise of the back­ ward castes, Dalit assertion, and the politics of Hindutva, which led to the rise of narrower sectarian parties such as the Samajwadi Party (SP), RashtriyaJanata Dal (RJD), BSP, and BJP. Three chapters in this part deal with political developments that underlie much of the chang­ ing patterns in the states: decline and collapse of Congress dominance in the late 1980s; the emergence of the BJP as an alternative; and the resulting shift towards a fragmented multi­ party system. Sudha Pai s chapter examines the decline of the Congress and recent attempts at revival in the key state of UP. It analyses three significant social movements that find resonance in other states—mobilization of the backward caste/rich peasantry; Hindu nation­ alism; and Dalit assertion—that were able to transform themselves into strong opposition parties and mount a serious challenge to the Congress party in UP leading to its progressive decline and marginalization. Pai argues that while the process of revival of the Congress has begun, it faces many daunting problems: regaining the traditional base of the party, inter­ nal elections, and putting into place new cadres and leaders who will be able to rebuild the organization. However, in the 2012 assembly elections, despite hopes of better performance, the Congress has not been able to recover lost

ground. Once again it is lower caste parties that have held their own, this time it is the SP which has been able to gain a majority. The spectacular rise of the BJP from 1989 onwards is closely related to the retreat of the Nehruvian consensus on secularism that pro­ vided room for a right wing Hindu party for the first time after independence. Consequently, at the national level and in an increasing number of states, the rise of the BJP in the 1990s was the defining feature of Indian politics and the party system as it provided a Hindu nationalist alter­ native to the Congress, especially in the Hindi heartland due to the Mandir issue (Brass 1993; Hansen and Jaffrelot 2001). E. Sridharan’s contribution analyses the expansion of the BJP across Indian states between 1989 and 2004, a period when it became a strong national party, using a twofold strategy: forming pre- and post-electoral coalitions with state-level parties based on strategic exploitation of opportuni­ ties, ignoring ideological incompatibilities, and arising out of the way the multiparty system was evolving following the decline of the Congress system. Second, after 1998, through the incen­ tive of bringing regional partners into its ruling coalition the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), it spread from its initial confinement to the states in north India by leveraging its perceived electoral pivotality to form state-level coalitions on progressively better terms with state-level parties so as to expand across states and obtain the desired parliamentary majority at the centre. Sridharan holds that it is too early to say whether the system will stabilise into two broad heterogeneous coalitions—the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the NDA—as the structure of coalitions remain in a flux. The transformation of the party system is evident in the inability of any party to obtain a decisive majority in the parliamentary elections in the 1990s and the fragmentation for the first time of seats among a large number of regional

Introduction

and state-level parties. There was a shift to a new ‘region-based’ multiparty system in which the all-India parties—the Congress and the BJP—reduced to cross-regional parties’, that is, with a base in a few states, compete for power at the centre (Pai 1996). Since the 1999 national elections two poles—the NDA and the UPA— have emerged around which regional parties continue to form pre- or post-poll alliances. These alliances are neither ideological nor do they have a common programme, but they increase their bargaining power of regional parties with the centre and strengthen their position vis-a-vis opposition parties in their own states. Thus, regionalization is the impor­ tant and continuing factor, with blurring of lines between national and state party systems, due to which changing patterns in the states are feeding into the national party system determining its form to a much greater degree than earlier, creating unstable coalitions. The ongoing democratic struggles in the states will, in the long run, create more settled political alignments and development of a stable multi­ party polarized system, in which state/regional parties compete for power and form national coalitions. These issues are discussed in Sanjay Kumars chapter, which illustrates through data on national and state elections and voting patterns among various regions/communities, how the states have emerged as ‘the main theatre of politics’ in at least three ways: greater space and importance for regional parties; increased political participation in voting and other forms of democratic participation; and greater differentiation in patterns of participa­ tion among states and social communities. As voters have developed trust in regional parties, he feels that the revival of national parties is unlikely in the near future and the former will continue to be important in national politics. The next four chapters discuss the emer­ gence, features, and electoral performance of

9

key regional parties: the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in AP, Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu, the Asom Gana Parisha (AGP) in Assam, and the left parties in West Bengal. They under­ line the variety of regional parties emerging from different socio-political contexts making generalization across the subcontinent almost impossible. Regional parties can be understood as the end product of a complex interplay between regional consciousness—which be­ gan in the nineteenth century—and a number of socio-economic and political developments since independence, such as formation of lin­ guistic states, uneven economic development of the states, spread of literacy, increasing levels of mobilization, and entry of new groups into politics leading to the creation of regional elites. The rise of regional elites coincided in time with the growing dissatisfaction with Congress rule in many regions leading to regional parties. Analysing the reasons underlying the success of the oldest regional parties, the Dravidian parties, despite splits, have never been out of power since 1967. John Harris and Andrew Wyatt argue that the non-Brahman movement brought an unusual political elite to power which succeeded in developing a ‘common political language’ shared by the elite and the masses, a federal power-sharing arrangement with the Congress, and successful provision of welfare to large sections of the population. However, recent years have witnessed the breakdown of this pattern of politics and decline of Dravidianism as an ideology that appeals to the masses. While the reasons remain controversial, the authors point to structural weakness, personal and family dominance in the party, corruption, extortion and coercion, and external rise of smaller parties, castebased politics, and progress of the Hindu right resulting in a shift from a fairly stable ‘two and a half party’ to a fragmented multiparty system. These negative developments help explain the

10

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

defeat of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in the 2011 assembly election, which could not be compensated as in earlier years, by providing extensive welfare. The TDP in AP and the AGP in Assam are regional parties that are a product of develop­ ments in post-independence India. They were both formed in the 1980s by regional elites that successfully built on feelings of regional consciousness, pride, and, in the latter’s case, neglect. Analysing the emergence and consoli­ dation of the TDP formed by N.T. Rama Rao (popularly known as NTR) in 1982, K.C. Suri in his chapter argues that it arose out of the desire of the people for an alternative regional force to the Congress, which it was felt was unable to articulate or fulfil their needs and interests. High levels of dissatisfaction among the electorate with the Congress, and internal divisions within it due to factionalism, enabled the TDP in the 1983 assembly and 1984 par­ liamentary elections to unite non-Congress votes and establish itself as the single largest opposition party. Despite its defeat in the 2004 state elections, the TDP remains a major party, though in recent years its leaders are mired in corruption, it has no clear cut ideology, and, most importantly, at present, a clear stand on the issue of the creation of a separate state ofTelangana. Sandhya Goswami’s contribution reveals how a regional party has; played both an assimilationist as well as a divisive role in Assam. The regional movement was able to success­ fully transform itself into a regional party, the AGP, and capture power. However, given the socio-cultural divisions within the society, this triggered subregional and ethnic aspirations among the people. The AGP could not deal with these contradictory processes as it did not draw up any comprehensive plan for the state and was mired in corruption, leading to intense mobilization, thus ending in a split. While the

Congress could make a comeback in 2001, its position remains weak due to the BJP-AGP alliance. In the 2011 state assembly elections, the AGP failed to capitalize on the poor gov­ ernance by the Congress and bad seat adjust­ ments, recording its worst ever performance. More fundamental reasons are that it could not fulfil its historic role of uniting all sections, in­ cluding the as-yet-unrepresented social forces, to form a cohesive Assamese nationality. The left parties in West Bengal can be de­ scribed as ‘regionalized parties’ that for over 30 years have represented the interests of the people of the state. Dwaipayyan Bhattacharya examines how with its receding credibility, trust deficit, and reduced ability to maintain social peace, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)- [CPI (M)] led left front faced the challenge of oppositional politics in West Bengal. The basic problem is that the CPI (M) failed to comprehend the new class equa­ tions in which its earlier stock of land reform measures had fast depleted and introduced change in its outlook. However, the greatest danger to the left in being able to sustain itself in West Bengal was the shift it made since the mid-1980s towards market-fundamentalism, globalized consumerism, and the neoliberal transformation of a centrist polity into one of competitive federalism. In sum, the new social coalition of the left has not been able to nego­ tiate with the capitalist in a globalized world. Carrying forward the analysis, the Epilogue by Bhattacharya shows that taking advantage of the left’s ideological failure, administrative and organizational mistakes, corruption and complacency, in the May 2011 assembly elec­ tions the Trinamool Congress and Congress party alliance won a resounding victory with the Left Front obtaining a historic low of 62 seats. However, Bhattacharya comments that the new government without any well-planned agenda is repeating many mistakes of the past

Introduction

and has already lost the initial popular support it enjoyed during the campaign. A second dimension of the process of regionalization that has determined politics in the states has been the emergence of social movements based on caste, community, or ethnic identities. In the states lying in southern and western India, such movements began in the colonial period itself though in recent years, as in Tamil Nadu, they have taken new forms. But it is the states lying in the northern plains and the northeast that have experienced them more recently and are still in the throes of unsettling social change and resulting political instability. The five chapters in the third part of the book address movements in five states that have in recent years impacted on state politics creating new patterns. Backward caste and Dalit movements have played a determining role in the Hindi heardand (Jaffrelot 2003; Pai 2002), while Dalit assertion has taken a different form in Tamil Nadu. In contrast, movements in the northeast based on feelings of marginalization, tending at times towards demands for seces­ sion, require different analytical frameworks for understanding their hopes, aspirations, and sense of alienation from the mainland. Discussing the reasons underlying the decline of backward caste politics in three major states of the Hindi heartland in recent years is the chapter by A.K. Verma. Providing election data from these states, he shows how in more recent years endemic political instabil­ ity has pushed parties to restructure their new social coalitions’. This is taking place through not only homogenization as in the past, but also by reaching out to subalterns from other castes, especially from the upper castes, so as to reinvent a ‘backward class’ constituency for them replacing the ‘backward caste’ constitu­ ency. The Bihar model of Nitish Kumar and the UP model of Mayawati demonstrate, he argues, class orientation which is more open,

11

inclusive, and has greater focus on the verti­ cal integration of the marginalized that runs through the entire hierarchical social structure attempting formation of a ‘subaltern class’. Of course it remains to be seen if such strategies will be successful in both states. M.S.S. Pandian in his chapter illustrates how the relationship between the backward castes in Tamil Nadu—the Thevars and Vanniyars, and the Dalits, the Vellars, Devendra Kula, and Parayars—has undergone a major change since the early 1990s witnessed in the increasing and violent conflicts between the two groups. The problem is asymmetrical power relations between the Dalits and the backwards. While the former have acquired a new cultural capital, through education and jobs due to reservations, they are seeking social equality through selfassertion and have created a space for autono­ mous Dalit mobilization through formation of parties such as the Dalit Panthers. The backward castes, in comparison, remain backward and stagnant in their economic status and still pro­ mote untouchability in various forms and take pride in their caste and martial background, as they no longer, exercise ideological hegemony over Dalits and have to affirm their authority through dominance mediated by violence. Dalit assertion has taken a different form in UP from Tamil Nadu due to both a complex process of assertion at the grass-roots and a strong Dalit party, the BSP, that has chal­ lenged mainstream parties and captured power. Accordingly, two chapters deal with these issues: the first with the larger Dalit movement in the state and the second with the BSP. Badri Narayan’s study, on the one hand, examines the ongoing process of inclusion of Dalits in the democratic sphere and the dialectics of contradiction involved in it. In UP, this process has included and represents the more assertive margins in the sphere of politics and gover­ nance, and continues to exclude many of the

12

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

non-assertive, small, invisible, and insignificant lesser-Dalits as by-product of its functional character. Sohini Guha’s chapter, on the other hand, focuses on the changing strategies of electoral mobilization employed by the BSP to capture power in UP. Initially the party had fought against the vote-bank politics of the Congress party arguing that Dalits must be represented by representatives belonging to their own caste constituents’ who understood their needs and provided an alternative. In more recent years, there has been a reversal of its subaltern agenda seen in the nomination of dominant-caste candidates. She, however, argues that this was a strategy of bahujan em­ powerment in response to changing electoral situations and does not mark a break in the party’s ideological proclivities and in the nature of representation and benefits offered by the party to plebeian groups. Sajal Nag shows how the context and nature of movements are different in the seven states of the Northeast from the rest of the country. Representatives from these states feel both demographically and culturally marginalized, constituting the other’ and only tangentially a part ofmainstream India and Indian democracy. Here movements take two forms: regional and secessionist. Regional parties remain divided due to tribal and sub-tribal loyalties, vulnerable to defection, and anchored in local issues rather than ideologies. The Indian state, by using mili­ tary force and draconian laws against secession­ ist movements, has reduced the region to a war zone leading to high levels of migration by the youth. As a result of such policies governments formed here have no democratic credence and no legitimacy. P O L IT IC S O F E C O N O M I C R E F O R M S I N T H E STATES

The shift from a single party to a multiparty system was accompanied by a move away from

the mixed economy established at indepen­ dence towards a market-oriented economy with the adoption of a Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1991. Consequently, since the second half of the 1990s, scholarly interest has shifted from an analysis of the on­ going process of reform at the federal level since 1991 to understanding the interaction between economic reform and democratic politics in the states. There is a growing consensus that if economic reform is to succeed it must be implemented in the states. This is because under the constitutional division of powers, decision­ making related to the sectors that are central to this process—industrial infrastructure, power, agriculture, education, etc.—lies with the states. With the dismantling of centralized plan­ ning and controls, there has been a progressive devolution of power to the states which makes gaining their support crucial for the successful implementation of reforms. However, this is not easy as different parties are in power in the states; state governments are much closer to the electorate and more vulnerable to instability arising out of pressures by economic interests, conflicting pressures, and diverse local interests (Guhan 1995). Accordingly, the process of economic re­ form has shown immense regional variations in terms of pace, extent, and direction with states being categorized as fast reformers such as AP, Gujarat, and Karnataka; intermediate reformers such as Odisha and West Bengal; and the lagging reformers consisting of the more backward states in the northern belt such as Bihar or UP, which today are trying to catch up (Bajpai and Sachs 2000). Studies also indicate that India’s developmental failure or recent successes cannot be credited to the policies framed by the central government. Due to the federal structure, it is as much the result of varying political choices by regional elites and regional political competition (Jenkins 1999;

Introduction

Sinha 2005). Some of the ‘fast’ reformers had earlier seen the emergence of strong regional parties such as the TDP, DMK, orAll-IndiaAnna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), which were instrumental in pushing reform. Fast-reforming states such as AP and Karnataka under Chandrababu Naidu and S.M. Krishna were characterized by features that seem crucial to successful implementation: some degree of political stability, strong leadership, insulation of the institutions involved, and competent administrative governance. In contrast, during the 1990s, classed as a slow reformer, UP was affected by endemic political instability due to hung assemblies and short-lived governments based on the politics of competitive populism that made economic reform impossible (Pai 2005). However, economic reform has not played a central role in electoral politics in the states in comparison to politics of identity largely because knowledge about liberalization remains relatively low (Kumar 2004; Yadav 2004). But Varshney (1999) has argued that reforms that affect the elite have moved forward while those that affect the masses negatively have not, which implies that social and electoral support base does matter in sustainability of economic reform. The first chapter in the fourth part by Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph shows how two key shifts in the 1990s—liberalization and the emergence of a regionalized multi­ party system—have resulted in the gradual creation of a federal market economy. In this the states enjoy a greater share of economic sovereignty while the centre is moving from an interventionist to a regulatory state that enforces fiscal discipline, accountability, and transparency. Consequently, performance by the states depends much more on themselves. They also need to address the major challenges posed if liberalization is to succeed: deficits, administrative pricing, and failure to collect

13

user charges. Second, improve the policy en­ vironment, governance and infrastructure, and develop human resources to attract investment. Third, deal with the fiscal discipline imposed by the centre, international, and domestic credit­ rating agencies. But the states are on a learning curve, intense and often harmful competition is being gradually replaced by cooperation such as the move to adopt Central Value Added Tax (CENVAT). These measures could moderate, if not eliminate, the race to the bottom, lessen disparities among states, and help them move on to a faster growth rate within a federal mar­ ket economy. Against this backdrop, much research since the mid-1990s has focused on the sharpening of regional disparities and its relationship to economic reform. While some scholars have found evidence of a measure of ‘convergence’ in development among the states, others have pointed to ‘divergence’ due to accentuation of regional disparities in social and economic development (Ahluwalia 2002; Bagchi and Kurian 2005). Focusing on the political impact of the process of reform, Baldev Raj Nayar’s chapter argues that globalization alone cannot be blamed for creating inequalities. Rather political ‘transmission mechanisms’, particularly the working of institutions and policies adopted by various state governments in changing contexts, can play a key role. Also his categorization of 20 major states shows that the simple thesis of polarization or convergence is not useful: the states are spread out along a wide spectrum; acceleration in growth is not confined to any particular set of states; since independence different sets of states have been growth drivers at different times; and under dif­ ferent economic policy regimes. Rather, Nayar finds globalization a positive force as dilution of controls and variety of tax reforms has cre­ ated a national market and generated revenue for loan waivers and welfare programmes such

14

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in the states creating greater political stability and national integration. He also links economic reform to dissatisfaction within some states such as AP and UP leading to demands for smaller states, which he feels could help create a more balanced multi-polar federation. Closely associated is the question of how the newly formed small states in 2001 have performed during a period when the Indian economy has been undergoing liberalization. Most controversial has been the discovery o f‘miracle’ growth of 11.03 per cent in Bihar under the NDA government headed by Nitish Kumar from 2005-10, which, it is argued, has put the state on to a new and higher growth path due to improved quality of governance or sushasan. Joining this debate, the chapter by Chirashree Das Gupta argues that official data for the decade of1999-2009 points to no struc­ tural break under the NDA; the recent growth represents the resumption of a long, fluctuat­ ing, and volatile higher growth continuum that started in 1994-5, which was interrupted by the impact of the bifurcation of Bihar in 2001. Critical of reliance by scholars appreciative of the Bihar miracle on neoliberal prescriptions of techno-managerialism and good governance, Das Gupta argues that it is a politically frac­ tious movement lopsided in three dimensions: regional, sectoral, and social. Moreover, growth acceleration that began in 2002-3 and is evident from 2003-4 to 2004-5, cannot be attributed to the NDA’s policy interventions announced only after November 2005 and operationalized only by the middle of 2006. Thus, the growth miracle is spread over the last years of the RJD government, the two time periods when Bihar was under Presidents Rule since its fall, along with the period under the NDAs rule. Analysing the political economy of Bihar after its bifurcation, Das Gupta points to a

higher growth continuum that began as early as 1994-5 due to two types of social churning. First, land struggles since the late 1970s, out of which change in the political economy of accumulation started in the 1990s leading to diversification in the patterns of accumulation by new entrants due to social empowerment of the backward castes. Second, agricultural growth, construction, a communication boom, and most importantly, an expansion in trade and during the period 1999-2004, which preceded the policies adopted by the Nitish Kumar regime. Political alliances between the upper and lower castes have not helped, even with constant attempts to reconcile breakdown and conflicts between the traditional uppercaste landed ruling classes and the emerging contending factions of the backward, upwardly mobile aspirants. Pointing to an increased perception of a growth miracle following the victory of the Nitish Kumar regime in the 2010 assembly elections, Das Gupta argues for a study of the structural basis of movement of low income states of India towards a higher growth trajectory. The establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) or export enclaves in the states in the 2000s on arable farm land by state govern­ ments is one of the most controversial policies adopted under liberalization and is related to the issue of increasing inequalities between and within states discussed above. Its proponents argue that SEZs will lead to much required industrial development, increase exports, improve infrastructure, and provide employ­ ment to the large army of landless who have not been absorbed into agriculture. Its critics hold that SEZs will have an adverse impact on food production and further aggravate the condition of the rural poor dependent on agri­ culture for their livelihood and create enclaves where multinational capital can easily enter and profit, leading to a nexus of state power and

Introduction

neo-liberal capital or ‘corporate imperialism’ (Srivastava 2008). Examining this policy across states provides a comparative picture of how different state governments have shaped their individual SEZ Acts or rules and dealt with stri­ dent and often well-organized mass movements by Farmers and landless labour for land acquisi­ tion, compensation, and rehabilitation laws as well as greater transparency and accountability in their application. This issue has played an important role in the assembly elections to five states held in 2012. This is particularly true of UP where the key question of land acquisi­ tion and compensation to farmers featured in the electoral campaign and affected the voting pattern in the western districts of the state. In short, this is the arena in which the interaction between economic reform policies and politics including mass politics is best seen. Rob Jenkins in his chapter examines how various states have responded to political forces, mainly oppositional movements that have accompanied the establishment of SEZs. His research shows that states vary widely in not only the kind of resistance to establish­ ment of SEZs—primarily to unfair rules and methods of land acquisition and corruption of local officials—from the local population, but also in terms of whether and how they adapt to and learn from episodes of political conflict and respond to resistance institutionally. He points out that large-scale and well-organized opposition to unfair laws and practices has been underway in the states during the period of liberalization, leading to social legislation such as the NREGA, Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Right to Education Act, and the pending National Food Security Act. It reflects rising political consciousness and role of non­ governmental organizations (NGOs) in taking these issues to the people. In the case of SEZs, it remains to be seen if mass movements will lead to greater transparency in operation, or

15

whether it is precisely to avoid such opposition that industrialists will increase their efforts to create SEZs, which can offer a refuge from the pressures of India’s ‘second democratic upsurge’. An issue that has occasioned much debate is the social and political developments that have made implementation of economic re­ form possible in the states. A major contribu­ tory factor, according to Leela Fernandes, has been the emergence and growing significance of a new, urban middle class which has begun to assertively claim a Vole as the agent(s) of globalization in India’ (2007: xiv). This has created a desire among the newly emerged better-off groups, agricultural and industrial, in the smaller metropolises to emulate and join the privileged lifestyle and patterns of con­ sumption depicted in the media and associated with English-educated professional classes. Economic reform has also been described as one of the ‘elite revolts’—carried out by or on behalf of urban, industrial, and even agricul­ tural and political elite—against the earlier model of state-directed economic development (Corbridge and Harriss 2000: 145). Kochanek (1996) and Pederson (2000) point to a close nexus between economic reforms and orga­ nized business classes that have actively lobbied and have been responsible for policy debates in favour of reforms. Scholars have pointed to the role played by elites in pushing forward reform processes and in mediating the relation­ ship between state politics and mass political responses (Chibber and Eldersveld 2000:354). Thus, there is a close relationship between the political processes of democratization which have thrown up new classes and the consolida­ tion of economic reform in the 1990s. The chapter on AP illustrates how analysis of the new Indian middle class can deepen our understanding of the political dynam­ ics of economic reform and the conditions under which a reform agenda can be pushed.

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

16

Jos Mooijs chapter points to three elements that were deployed by a political leader in AP, a relatively underdeveloped state, from 1994 to 2004 to introduce reform: hype, skill, and class. Chandrababu Naidu, a dynamic and skilled politician, was able to build an image of reform-mindedness, commitment to modern management, as well as hype the reforms as part of a larger development and governance project that appealed simultaneously to the middle classes, his party workers, and the ru­ ral poor. But an equally important reason was that the reforms appealed to a new social class consisting of the middle caste/rich peasant (Reddys and Kammas of the coastal regions) who having experienced considerable agricul­ tural prosperity since the colonial period has in recent years diversified into trade and industry and most recently information technology (IT) industries. As a regional capitalist class, they formed the TDP, are well represented in the assembly, bureaucracy, private sector, and increasingly the central coalition, and were happy with Naidu’s technical, a-political style of working in which it was argued that the reforms needed to be insulated from the deliberative democratic process so as to guarantee rapid development. Such a method worked as there is little evidence in AP of a significant takeover by the lower-caste groups. * * *

The analysis of the contributions in this volume suggests that while some features have contin­ ued from the early post-independence period, there has been a significant and decisive change in the functioning of democratic politics in the Indian states in recent decades. At indepen­ dence, the Westminster system provided the model towards which it was thought that India would gradually move. However, a close reading ofthe contributions in this volume suggests that an Indian variant of parliamentary-cum-federal

democracy is emerging, shaped in great mea­ sure by changes in the states. These changes are taking place, as argued in the beginning, at two levels: across states giving them a common political platform and within states giving politics in each of them their own distinctive character. A key reason is gradual disman­ tling over the last three decades of the older single-party system and its associated forms of democratic governance in the states, which was a legacy of the national movement, propel­ ling the polity into a post-Congress and post­ liberalization era in which new structures and processes are being built. The three aspects selected for examination—regions, movements and party politics, and economic develop­ ment during liberalization in the states—have contributed in considerable measure to these changes in the states and helped shape new national patterns. Despite our large size, cultural diversity, and regional history and identities, commonalities of structures and processes have emerged across states separate from national politics. New regions have emerged based no longer only on language, but a desire everywhere for improved development, governance, and participation. State party systems are gradually emerging in which national and state parties compete, contributing to the creation of a region-based, national party system. Every state election is like a national election, as national issues such as corruption, economic reform, and a second reorganization of the states are debated by parties and the electorate. A common trend has been the emergence of more inclusive democratic structures and social deepening of politics in the states. A common economic market is taking shape due to both competi­ tion and collaboration among states for a share of common resources and private investment both domestic and foreign due to globaliza­ tion. The rise of new regional elites in all states

Introduction

with common goals and desire for a modern economy has made this possible. Yet, due to their distinct historical-cultural past as regions, differential impact of colonial rule and particularly the pattern of political and economic governance after independence, dis­ similar trajectories have emerged giving each state an individual character. Consequently, today, generalization by scholars about politics across the states is no longer possible. Cultural differences have remained and in some cases deepened, though with the rise of a mobile professional middle class, there has been simultaneous strengthening of both regional and national identities. Regional and class inequalities in terms of both income and hu­ man development have become more marked particularly between the states lying in the Hindi heartland and states in southern and western India. While in many large states, there are demands for formation of smaller states, the underlying reasons are distinct due to different historical paths, patterns of governance, and levels of development. These need to be dealt with individually. There are clear differences in the nature, direction, and implementation of economic reform in the states. All this has rendered the nature and type of politics in terms of movements, party politics, and elec­ tions distinct in each state. Collectively, these seminal changes have created space for a new kind of democratic politics across and within the states that has not yet been fully understood or examined. At the same time, it is necessary to con­ sider the impact these momentous changes in the states have had on the larger project of building a democratic, federal nation state. While the larger prognosis is positive, some negative features require correction. The dual transformation of political party realignment in the late 1980s and economic liberalization in

17

the early 1990s have altered the structure of India’s federalism thus weakening the centre. At times, regional parties have been a moderating force, but in recent years, they have made ir­ responsible demands and successfully blocked the passage of central legislation if it does not suit their interests. The growing demand for smaller states is also driven by the desire on the part of national and regional parties to control subregions and thereby improve their clout within parliament. Economic liberaliza­ tion has contributed to widening of regional inequalities with implications for the future economic development and political influence of the backward states as investment has tended to be concentrated disproportionately in the middle and high income states. Studies based on experience of other developing countries suggest that while gradual, incremental reform, through a democratic process, increases its legitimacy by fostering a consensus driven transition, at the same time, successful reform requires state intervention and cannot be left either to the market or to regional governments within a federation. In sum, there is little doubt that India’s fed­ eral democracy has undergone transformation due to change in the states in the three areas that have been examined. While these changes have strengthened Indian democracy giving voice to disadvantaged and marginalized sec­ tions. In this redefined federal system with a region-based party system and competitive market economy there is need for strengthen­ ing of the centre so that it can play a more active role in holding together India’s federal democracy. REFERENCES

Ahluwalia, M.S. (2002) ‘State Level Performance under Economic Reforms in India’, in Anne O. Kruegur (ed.), Economic Policy Reforms and the

18

Handbook of Politics in Indian States Indian Economy. Chicago: Chicago University

Press, pp. 91-128. Bajpai, Nirupam and Jeffery Sachs (2000) ‘Reform in the States V, The Hindu, New Delhi, 24 January. Bagchi, Amaresh and John Kurian (2005) ‘Regional Inequalities in India: Pre and Post-Reform Trends and Challenges for Policy’, in Jos Mooij (ed.), The Politics of Economic Reform in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 323-50. Barrier, Gerald (1985) ‘Regional Political History: New Trends in the Study of British India) in Paul Wallace (ed.), Region and Nation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 111-54. Baruah, Sanjib (2010) ‘Regionalism and Secessionism) Companion to Indian Politics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 181-91. Brass, Paul (1993) ‘The Rise of the BJP and the Future of Politics in UP’, in Harold A. Gould and Sumit Ganguly (eds), India Votes: Alliance Politics and Minority Governments in the Ninth and Tenth General Elections. Boulder: Westview Press, pp.

255-92. Broomfield, John (1982) ‘The Regional Elites: A Theory of Modem Indian History’, in Mostly About Bengal: Essays in Modem Indian History.

Manohar, pp. 1-4. Chibber, Pradeep and Samuel Eldersveld (2000) ‘Local Elites and Popular Support for Economic Reform in China and India’, Comparative Political Studies, 33(3): 350-73. Cohn, Bernard S. (1987) ‘Regions Subjective and Objective: Their Relation to the Study ofModern Indian History and Society’, in Anthropologist among Historians. New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press. Corbridge, Stuart and John Harriss (2000) Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism, and Popular Democracy. Cambridge:

Polity Press. Fernandes, Leela (2007) India’s New Middle Class Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform.

New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Frankel, Francine and M.S.A. Rao (eds) (1989) - Dominance and State Power in India Decline of a Social Order. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Guhan, S. (1995) ‘Centre and the States in the Reform Process in India’, in Robert Cassen and Vijay Joshi (eds), The Eutuve of Reform. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 73-111. Gupta, Poonam and Arvind Panagariya (2010) ‘India: Election Outcomes and Economic Performance’, Unpublished Working Paper of the Indian Council on Research in International Economy, Columbia University, October, New York, available at http://www.google.co.in/url? sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&c ad=rja&ved=0CDwQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F %2Fwww.isid.ac.in%2F~pu%2Fconference%2F dec_10_conf%2FPapers%2FPoonamGupta.doc &ei=xeSAU ObqLqOyOQXmtIDABA&usg=AF Qj CN Gb7mF 3vabDLVUnU760jj-Meey OAw& sig2=YhIcxYYafOIBOZo6HOHaMg (accessed on 16 September 2010). Hansen, Thomas Blom and Christophe Jaffrelot (eds) (2001) The BJP and the Compulsions of Politics in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Jaffrelot, Christophe (2003) India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. Delhi: Permanent Black. Jenkins, Rob (1999) Democratic Politics and Eco­ nomic Reform in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kochanek, Stanley A. (1996) ‘Liberalisation and Business Lobbying in India’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 34: 155-73. Kohli, Atul (1991) Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kumar, B.B. (1998) Small States Syndrome in India. New Delhi: Concept Publishing House. Kumar, Sanjay (2004) ‘Impact of Economic Reforms on Indian Electorate’, Economic and Political Weekly, 39(16): 1621-30. Majeed, Akhtar (2003) ‘The Changing Politics of States’ Reorganization’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Fall: 83-98. Narain, Iqbal (1972) State Politics in India. Meerut: Meenakshi Publications. Pai, Sudha (1996) ‘Transformation of the PartySystem: An Analysis of the 1966 Lok Sabha

Introduction Elections’, Asian Survey, XXXVI( 12, December): 1170-83. ------------ (2000) State Politics in India New Dimen­ sions Party System, Liberalization and Politics of Identity. New Delhi: Shipra Publications. ------------ (2002) Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution: the BSP in Uttar Pradesh.

New Delhi: Sage Publications. ----- ------ (2005) ‘Populism and Economic Re­ forms: The BJP Experiment in Uttar Pradesh’, in Jos Mooij (ed.), 7he Politics of Economic Reforms in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 98-129. Pederson, Jorgen D. (2000) ‘Explaining Economic Liberalisation in India: State/ Society Perspectives’, World Development, 28(2, February): 265-82. Reddy, G. Ram and B.A.V. Sharma (1977) Regionalism in India: A Study of the Telengana Movement. New Delhi: Concept Publishers.

Rudolph, Lloyd I. and Susanne H. Rudolph (1985) ‘The Subcontinental Empire and the Regional Kingdom in India’, in Paul Wallace (ed.), Region

19

and Nation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 40-59. Srivastava, Aseem (2008) ‘The Problem’, Seminar, no. 582, Special Issue on SEZs, February. Singh, Santosh (2010) ‘At 11.03%, Bihar Growth Rate only a Step behind Gujarat’, The Indian Express, New Delhi, 4 January. Sinha, Aseema (2005) The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided Leviathan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Varshney, Ashutosh (1999) ‘Mass Politics or Elite Politics? India’s Economic Reforms in Comparative Perspective’, in Jeffrey D. Sachs, Ashutosh Varshney, and Nirupam Bajpai (eds), India in the Era of Economic Reforms. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 222-60. Yadav, Yogendra (2004) ‘The Elusive Mandate of 2004’, Economic and Political Weekly, 39(51): 5383-98. Wood, John (ed.) (1984) State Politics in Contemporary India: Crisis or Continuity ?Boulder and London: Westview Press.

I R e g io n s a n d R e g io n a l is m : H i s t o r i c a l L e g a c i e s a n d P r e s e n t -d a y D e m a n d s

Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures The Two Realities*

A in slie T. E m b re e

The debate over whether or not there is an allencompassing Indian civilization with clearly identifiable unifying components which can serve as the basis for a modem nation state, as over against a congeries of regional cultures located in a geographic area to which the name ‘India’ was given by foreigners, is a vital aspect of both the political and intellectual history of modern India. Framed in that fashion, the issue appears to be dealing with two absolutes. One is the con­ cept of‘India’as an enduring political and social entity continuous with the modern nation; the other absolute explicitly denies this, asserting * Originally published as 'Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures: The Two Realities’, in Paul Wallace (ed.), Region and Nation in India, New Delhi: Oxford and IBH, 1985, pp. 19-39.

that the reality of the Indian historical experi­ ence is to be found in the existence of what the geographer Spate called ‘the perennial nuclear regions’, with the structure lines of regional geography matching the structure lines of political and social history (Spate 1960:148).1 What will be suggested in this chapter is that one can accept the enduring significance of the nuclear regions of historical geography while at the same time asserting the reality of an allIndia civilization. This can be done without arguing that the elements of that civilization are pervasive throughout all regions and that they are pervasive at all levels of society in the subcontinent. On the contrary; the nature of the unity of the all-Indian civilization is pre­ cisely that, while present throughout most of the subcontinent, many of the most important elements of this civilization are confined in

24

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

some areas, at least in their articulated form, to relatively small numbers of the population. For this reason, one might be tempted to say that indeed there is no ‘Indian civilization, in the sense of a cultural tradition in which most people, at all levels of society, participate. This would obscure the point, however, that a supremely important feature of Indian civiliza­ tion is that the linkages are stratified, and it is these linkages of religious and philosophical ideas, literary culture, political theories, and historical memories that provide the unity for the modern political society. It would he possible to identify many of these unifying linkages in some detail, but here only two very broad categories, which subsume most of the others, will be noted. One is ideo­ logical, the Brahmanical tradition; the other in the historical experience resulting from the impact of two alien civilizations, the Islamic and the Western. More attention will be given to ideology, not only because it is a very com­ plex phenomenon, but also because it is the matrix which made possible the particular role of the Islamic and Western intrusions as unify­ ing factors. The discussion of ideology requires, however, that constant reference he made to actual historical situations. It should also be noted that the use of the adjective ‘Brahmanical’ is not meant to imply an ideology that is confined to one group, but rather a set of values, ideas, concepts, practices, and myths that are identifiable in the literary tradition and social institutions. To take a modern example, Gandhi was not a Brahman, but his ideas were in conformity with the basic thrust of the Brahmanical tradition. Ideology is being used in the ordinary textbook sense of the articulation ofvalues and practices in a form that has such inner consistency that the accep­ tance of its fundamental premises compels the acceptance of a superstructure of practice and belief.

In a striking phrase, Karl Mannheim once referred to ‘the meanings that make up our world’ (Mannheim n.d.: 85), the interpreta­ tions and understandings that appear to be absolutes, fixed inheritances from the past, when in reality they are part of a historically determined and constantly changing structure. Regionalism and unity are such constructs or ‘meanings’ for modern India. Both are artefacts of time and history, available to he used by political and social elites in fashioning struc­ tures that are necessary for a unified nation to cut across regional boundaries or, conversely, to weaken such a state. This underscores the fact that the discussion of regions versus an all-Indian civilization is of necessity a modern phenomenon, the product of nation-building. While the linkages that will he identified are part of a long historical experience, the debate on regionalism is scarcely a hundred years old because in that period it becomes a part of the meanings of the lives of the people of India. The debate emerges in a clear-cut form by the 1880s. On the side of the denial of the unity of India, indeed the denial of India, two magisterial opinions may be noted that were given with an authoritative self-assurance that permitted dissent only by the ignorant. One is from that most readable of books on India, Hobson-Jobson, where the authors say that ‘no modern Englishman, who has had to do with India ever speaks of a man of that country “as Indian” (Yule and Burnell 1968 [1886]). The other is from John Strachey, who told his readers in 1888 in a still-useful book that the first and most essential thing to learn about India is that ‘there is not, and never was an India, or even a country of India, possessing, according to European ideas, and sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious’ (Strachey 1888: 5-8). Strachey and the authors of Hobson-Jobson were speaking for a class that knew India well,

Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures

but who were convinced that the India of the late nineteenth century was a political artefact created by British imperial power and that it was essentially artificial, with its existence dependent upon the careful exercise of that power. On the whole, such people had no illusions about the permanence of the impe­ rial power of the unity; both would disappear, to be replaced by what had always existed, the great natural regions of India—the Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and so on. That the peoples of all these regions should ever think of themselves as ‘Indians’, that they ‘should ever feel they belong to one great nation’, Strachey informed his readers, was impossible. The year Strachey’s book was pub­ lished—1888—is significant, for by then there were Indians who were beginning to assert that there was and always had been an India, attested to by its physical, political, social, and religious unity, exactly the reality that foreigners tended to deny. The meeting of the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885 is the great symbol for this, but a host of writers before the end of the century had begun to insist that the foreign­ ers’ emphasis on regionalism was a misreading of Indian history, partly deliberate to undercut Indian nationalism, partly the product of igno­ rance of India’s past and the internal dynamics of the Indian sprit. D.R. Bhandarkar, Bankim Chatterjee, R.C. Dutt, Vivekanand, Aurobindo, all in different ways spoke of the reality of India’s unity as a continuing inheritance. That the issue continued to remain a matter of great concern was indicated in comments by the former Indian Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi. In 1983, nearly a hundred years after Strachey had poured scorn on the idea that the people of Punjab could ever consider themselves part of an Indian nation, and after the passionate rejection of this view by Indian nationalists, the Prime Minister told a gather­ ing in the Punjab that those who emphasized

25

the distinctive inheritance of the region could wreck the county: ‘It takes a lot of effort to build a house, but only seconds to destroy it.’2In the same vein, she spoke of the support of dis­ sident groups in Punjab and Assam by foreign countries that did not want stability in India, and she pointed out that while she did not want to blame any nation, the base of the Khalistan secessionists was in the United States.3 In an oblique fashion, the Prime Minister seemed to be acknowledging the fragility, even the artifici­ ality, of united India. . India as a political and cultural reality, or India as the geographic location of a large number of distinctive political and cultural regions are, then, the spectres that haunt the study of the historical experience of the sub­ continent. One of the best-known attempts to synthesize the conflicting positions was made by the historian Vincent Smith in his Oxford History of India, first published in 1919. For Smith, the cause of the innumerable political subdivisions that characterize the history of the subcontinent before the unification brought about by British power was obviously the vari­ ety of races, languages, religions, manners, and customs. Only rarely had a paramount power ever succeeded in creating political unity, and then only for a few years. ‘When no such power existed, the states, hundreds in number, might be likened to a swarm of free, mutually repel­ lent molecules in a state of incessant movement, now flying apart, now again coalescing’ (Smith 1923: viii-ix). Smith phrased his concern with this situation, not in terms of its implications for future polity but of the task of the historian. How could such bewildering diversity be made intelligible as a history of India rather than as histories of ephemeral regional principalities? The answer he gave to his query has become the shibboleth of much writing on Indian history: ‘India offers unity in diversity.’ It would be an instructive exercise to identify and quantify the

26

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

usage ofSmiths phrase, since nationalist writers like Nehru saw the principle of unity as a form of high-minded secularism, whereas Smith was quite explicit as to its content. The peculiar type of civilization that India developed is summed up, he wrote, in the word Hinduism, for ‘India primarily is a Hindu country’. This formula­ tion was, of course, rejected with vigour by Nehru and other nationalist leaders, but it is one that both Muslim separatist leadership and right-wing Hindu political movements found accurate, even though they drew different conclusions. Smiths identification o f‘unity in diversity’ as the characteristic feature of Indian society, despite its widespread acceptance, is not very satisfactory. It leaves unanswered some crucial questions, for while it is true that the complex structures of Hinduism differentiate Indian civilization from the other great world cultures, it is not at all clear that in the past it ever acted as a unifying factor in the political realm. On the contrary, a very plausible argument can be made, as it often has, that Hinduism as a social system works against political and social integration. The word unity in his phrase is misleading, as it is in the usage of those who have borrowed it. When Smith said that India possesses a deep underlying fundamental unity’, attributable to Hinduism, it would have been more accurate to have said that the institutions and beliefs that he identifies as Hindu—caste, the place of Brahmans, the cow, sacred geography, and so on—make it distinc­ tive. It is not Hinduism but one element of it, Brahmanical ideology that has been a unifier in Indian civilization and a powerful force in maintaining its integrity in the face of tremen­ dous onslaughts of two other great civilizations, the Islamic and the European. But if ‘unity in diversity’ is a misleading way of understanding the Indian historical experience, so also is the polar position that

emphasizes regionalism and denies the reality of an over-arching Indian civilization. There are, it appears, two sets of realities, one compre­ hended under regional identification, the other under the term Brahmanical ideology, which, while articulating itself in religious and cultural symbols, made use of political experience as embodied in imperial institutions that brought a variety of regions under a central author­ ity. To call that identity Brahmanical is prefer­ able to Hindu, because it has the advantage of indicating well-defined intellectual continu­ ities and commonalities since at least the third century b c . Hinduism is here understood to be correctly applied to the whole complex of religious and social practices that developed in the subconti­ nent over a very long period of time and which have many regional and local manifestations, varying greatly in time and place, while by Brahmanism is meant the much more coherent and consistent intellectual statements of the great classical texts. These texts have, of course, been elaborated and commented upon through the ages, but the content of the core world view remains astonishingly unchanged. In that core there is none of the absorptive quality’ or openness’ so often, and incorrectly, ascribed to Hinduism. It may be noted in passing that this characterization of Hinduism has, for some reason, been one of the most unquestioned assumptions about the nature of Indian cul­ ture. All great civilizations have borrowed and adapted from others, but on the level of ideas Indian religion show none of the eclecticism that has shaped, for example, the Christian and Islamic traditions. While not eclectic, Brahmanical ideology has through the centuries been remarkably flex­ ible, with an ability to adjust itself to radically different political and social situations without yielding ground. It was something of this that Sir John Malcolm had observed in the early

Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures

27

years of the nineteenth century in his dealings there are many possibilities and contradictions, with Maharashtrian Brahmans in Central Indian all of which may be true in some sense. It is states and which led him to conclude that they no accident that Gandhi spoke o f‘his experi­ were the class most likely to prove inimical to ments with truth’. The pervasive doctrines of British rule. The people of India seemed to be karma and reincarnation are clearly part of the divided into many groups but, Malcolm argued, Brahmanic core, as is, above all, the concept of there were ‘some general feelings that unite dharma, perhaps the centre of the tradition. them, and of these the more instructed part Closely linked to these concepts, as well as the of the community understand how to take full others, is the sense of a hierarchical structure advantage whenever it suits their purpose’. The in which each entity occupies a necessary and Brahmans have logical place. The result, at least for those who live within it, is a wholly rational universe. To for ages been the nominal servants, but real masters of the turbulent and the bold, but ignorant and supersti­ say that those who occupy the upper reaches tious, military tribes of their countrymen. Their knowl­ of the hierarchy have, through the centuries, edge of how to wield this dangerous power has been manipulated it for their own advantage would rendered complete by frequent exercise; and when we be to over-simplify the very complex dynamics consider what they have lost by the introduction and of the historical process, but it is hard to escape extension of our dominion, it would be folly to expect the conclusion that while it is a simplification, exemption from their efforts to subvert it. it is not a falsification. The Brahmans were not What Malcolm (1822/1834) especially an aristocracy in the European sense, which feared was that the Brahmans would use the combines blood lineages with economic and new method of the press to strengthen their political power, but rather a class that identified with ideology that provided rationality and ancient power. The genius of the Brahmanical tradition is coherence to society. While asserting the significance of the precisely its extraordinary continuity and its adherence to its own inner core of meaning, Brahmanic tradition for Indian civilization, it is and it is this that provides the substance of the possible to recognize that large segments of the ideology that is a major factor in the unity of population are unfamiliar with it in its articu­ Indian civilization. To sum up the content of lated form. To suggest, however, that this denies this Brahmanical ideology is difficult, because its dominating position is as unhistorical as to it includes the whole vast corpus of the classical argue that Aristode was irrelevant to medieval texts as well as the inheritance of many centu­ Christianity since undoubtedly few European ries of historical experience, but some items peasants were familiar with his work. A troublesome confusion arises continu­ may be mentioned (Brown 1970; Keyes and Daniel 1983).4One is a sense of order through­ ally in discussions of unity and regionalism out the cosmos, linking all of its elements in because of the tendency to identify the modern a continuous and understandable pattern. nation state of India with the India of historical Immediately related to this is the peculiar role imagination. This is illustrated in the decision of the possessor of knowledge, the Brahman, by the framers of the Constitution that India in maintaining this cosmic order. Then there is was to be the name of the successor state of the concept of many levels of truth, the asser­ the former Government of India (Gol).5 This tion that while there is ‘truth’ in the sense of an annoyed Pakistanis, who saw it as a pre-emptive over-arching reality, and there are ‘true’actions, claim by the Indians to the whole historic past

28

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

of the subcontinent, both of the movements and events associated with the Islamic peoples in the area now controlled by India as well as the prehistoric Indus civilization that had been situated in what was now Pakistan. Bharat, the ancient name from the Sanskrit texts, they argued, would have been more suitable, and more honest, for a Hindu nation. What the Indian legislators were recognizing, no doubt quite self-consciously, was that the term ‘India’, foreign though it might be in ultimate derivation and not used in the classic texts, was associated in a peculiar way with the idea of the subcontinent as a cultural and political unity. The confusion is compounded by the fact that ‘India’ as a designation of a cultural region is a Western construct. For over two thousand years, a constellation of ideas and images associated with the word has been part of the intellectual heritage of the Western world. Because of the nature of the political and cul­ tural linkage with the West in the nineteenth century, these ideas and images had been acquired by the Western-educated elites of India who were the residuary legatees of political power in 1947. The location in time and place of the origin of these Western images of India, and their trajectory through the centu­ ries, can be traced fairly easily (Embree 1972).6 The oldest surviving Western references to India are in Herodotus (ca. 480-425 b c ), and while incidental to his main theme of the strug­ gle between Greece and Persia, he established the pattern for writers in classical antiquity to include India in any survey that claimed to be world history (a pattern only abandoned in the nineteenth century). He is the earliest source for the image of India as a land of mystery as well as possessing political institutions that pre­ supposed an understanding of man and society different from that of the Greeks. India was on the very edge of the oikoumene, the known world, and all kinds of fantasies and dreams

can find fulfilment in a land at the end of the world. Fabulous beasts and fabulous spiritual athletes, great wealth, great numbers of people, all the complexities woven into a marvellous mosaic. On a different and very sophisticated level, images of India as a cultural and political unity continued to function in later European society. Jean Bodin (ca. 1529-1596), for example, turned to Indian rulers for illustrative proof of his universal law that sovereignty, in all times and places, is legitimized by possession of power, not by hereditary right (Bodin 1962: 206). In the next century, the great French trav­ eller, Francois Bernier (1620-1688), strength­ ened this component in the image of India as a total despotism (Bernier 1891: 204). It is interesting that Voltaire was sceptical of Bernier’s account of a monolithic tyranny; he noted that Indian dynasties did not seem to maintain their power for very long, which they presumable would have, if Bernier’s reading were correct. With a remarkable perceptivity to the issue of region over civilization, he com­ mented that once a ruler’s power weakened, and he lost control of the army, regional kingdoms appeared. This suggested to him that the great emperors did not have absolute power if they permitted the continuance of regional powers (Voltaire 1963: Chapter CXCI). But Voltaire’s cautionary reference to regional kingdoms as a basic reality of Indian history was not much noticed; it was the image of monolithic despo­ tism that fascinated the great Germans, Hegel and Marx, in the nineteenth century. Their emphasis on universal political power was the counterpart of the other German vision of the power of India: spirituality finding its apotheosis in the One, the Unity without differentiation. All of this Western constellation images of India is, of course, myth in the sense that it is a product of the process of transmission preserved for its function in a culture (Burkert

Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures

1979).7 Moving from what may seem to be high-sounding pretension to more familiar ground, the persistent images of India as a civilization located in time and place were caught in a memorable passage by the young Kipling. He spoke for past and future travellers when he exclaimed to a stay-at-home friend: ‘I’m in love with the country ... where I find heat and smells and oil and spices, and puffs of temple incense, and sweat and darkness, and dirt and dust and cruelty, and above all, things wonderful and fascinatingly innumerable.’ This catalogue of the items that comprise the contents of the persistent Western image of India, enumerated in this particular vo­ cabulary, is not likely to be met with immediate sympathetic response by Indians, and yet this mythic India did become part of the emotional and intellectual inheritance of the nineteenth and twentieth century Indian elites. This was partly because of the content of education and the enormous prestige of English literary culture, but as so often happened in the intru­ sion of Western ideas and values into India, the Western image of India could be accepted and incorporated into the thinking of the elites because it found an analogue already lodged there. That analogue to the West’s image of India was identified within the classical texts, where a cultural and geographic entity that corresponds to the West’s India can be found. This is what Nehru was referring to when he wrote to Chou En-lai during the dispute over the boundaries between India and China. Chou En-lai had argued that the boundaries as they existed were the artefacts of imperial­ ism, imposed upon both countries when they were under foreign domination. Nehru rejected this argument with vigour, insisting that the boundaries of India had been settled centuries before the coming of the British by ‘history, geography, custom and tradition’.8Anyone with a knowledge of history would know that the

29

frontier of India is traditional and has been associated with ‘India’s culture and tradition for the past two thousand years or so, and has been an intimate part of India’s life and thought’. This point was made more formally, and with detailed textual references, in White Paper prepared by the Historical Division of the Ministry of External Affairs (see Ministry of External Affairs 1959). A quotation from the Vishnu Purana supported the argument the country south of the Himalayas and north of the ocean is called Bharat and all born in it are called Bharatiyas or Indians’. Similar references were given from the Rig Veda, Mahabharata, Ramayana, and other Sanskrit texts, all point­ ing to the cultural and political unity of India from the encircling northern mountains to the southern ocean. This solemn exercise of finding the boundar­ ies of a modern nation state in ancient religious texts is of great significance for understanding the nature of Indian nationalism. The Bharat of Brahmanical ideology was made congru­ ent with the India of the Western imagination and, above all, with the actual boundaries that were created in the second half of the nine­ teenth century to define the territories under the administrative control of the Gol. The process by which this was accomplished is an essential feature of the intellectual history of modern India. Here it is necessary to ask if there is much evidence of its actual role of this Brahmanical ideology as a unifying force in Indian history. First of all, of course, one must avoid accepting the nineteenth and twentieth century asser­ tions of the enduring nature of the concept of Indian unity as evidence; these claims are essential components of the use of history by nationalists. As for textual references ofthe kind used to show the permanent nature of India’s boundaries, there is no doubt that they express a familiarity with the natural boundaries of the

30

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

subcontinent and an awareness of Aryavarta as a region (Despande 1983: 111-34; Mishra 1979: 29-34).9 It also seems reasonable that the creators and transmitters of the texts were aware of sharing a common heritage oflanguage and value with others of their class throughout the subcontinent. This is all the more remark­ able since the area was never under one unifying political authority for long periods of time, as was the case with the Roman Empire or in China, and it witnesses to the remarkable ability of the Brahmanical tradition to main­ tain itself without direct political support. It is significant that the first great political power of which we have reasonably clear evidence, the Mauryas, in their period of greatest expan­ sion propagated an ideology that according to some interpretations was anti-Brahmanical (Thapar 1961). Using the Mauryas as a beginning, it is tempting to read Indian history as character­ ized by movements towards political unifica­ tion, with empires being created that tend in greater or lesser degrees to encompass the subcontinent, but with these periods of political unity being followed by fragmenta­ tion into many small kingdoms. There is some truth in this model, but in fact the moments when anything approaching political unifica­ tion existed were very rare. The actual extent of Mauryan political authority is debatable, despite the appearance of the edicts in many corners of the subcontinent; after them, impe­ rial control, including that of the Guptas, was confined to one or two of the great regions. The Pallavas, Chalukyas, and Cholas in the south are examples of such regional powers. There is a very long stretch of time before the great drive to political dominance under the Tughlaqs in the fourteenth century brought much of the subcontinent under the Delhi Sultanate. At the end of the seventeenth century, Aurangzeb’s conquests brought formal unity to much of the

area, but within fifty years of his death in 1707, the imperial institution maintained little more than ceremonial relationships with the outlying provinces such as Bengal and the Deccan. Any statement about the unifying role of the Brahmanical ideology in this long period of time and over the whole area ofthe subcontinent is obviously vulnerable, but one can venture the generalization that after the disintegration of the Mauryan empire, the source of political and social legitimacy became the complex corpus of Brahmanical learning and its interpreters. Thus, the Satavahana dynasty, which emerges in the first century b c , honoured Brahmans and performed the great Brahmanical rituals, in­ cluding the horse sacrifice. The same pattern is observable in many parts of India in succeeding centuries, indicating that the rulers recognized the importance of an articulated theory of society, with its religious and social sanctions, for political power. Throughout the centuries, the great wealth of inscriptions reiterates the devotion of rulers to dharma, to Brahmans, and the gods. But the dominance of Brahmanical culture is not only demonstrated by such con­ cerns. The famous inscription of Rudradaman of Ujjain reads like a summary of Brahmanical handbooks on aesthetics and the nature ofkingship. According to the inscription, Rudradaman excelled in all the great sciences—grammar, music, logic, the writing of poetry, the manage­ ment of elephants, the bestowing of presents (Smith 1957: fn. 1, p. 140).10None of this may have much correspondence with reality—the kings may have been ignorant and impious— but the deference paid to Brahmanical culture throughout the ages, including the Islamic period, shows its extraordinary dominance as an ideology. The importance of Brahmanical culture as a unifying ideology for India has recently been recognized in an interesting fashion in India in the somewhat unlikely context of the

Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures

debate over the use of feudalism as a heuristic device for the analysis of Indian society. The economist Ashok Rudra has argued that the European model of feudalism, with its empha­ sis on relationships between individuals (the act of fealty, with its elaborate rituals), as well as its emphasis on class conflicts solved by the use of force, is inappropriate and misleading for Indian society because it fails to take into account the characteristic features of Hindu social organization which reflect a different social philosophy form than that of Europe (Rudra 1981: 2133-46). The first of those characteristics, he claims, is that in Hindu social theory and in codes of conduct, people ‘never hand any individual capacities’. Groups had ca­ pacities, not individuals, and these were defined in the dharmic codes. Rudra is careful to point out that he is not denying mobility and trans­ formation within the system but rather that the social theory explicitly rejects such mobility. The second characteristic that Rudra finds of primary importance has to do with the social control of the means of production and the use of its surplus. In the European historical experi­ ence, at least according to the classic Marxist analysis, the hierarchical structure of society, with one class dominating another, was main­ tained by violence. India was different, Rudra argues, for there the hierarchical structure that permitted one class to exploit the others was maintained not by violence but by ideology. This argument has, of course, often been made, most notably, in a somewhat different form by Max Weber. Where Rudra s statement differs is that it comes from an appreciation of the Marxist analysis and is not claiming that Indian society is lacking in violence. He is well-aware that Indian society has been as marked by violence as other societies, but it has usually in the past been between different claimants to political power from within the ruling elites. Indian history, he asserts, does not provide any

31

evidence of the untouchables revolting against the upper classes. ‘What is special about India is the stupendous success that was achieved by ideology’ (ibid.: 2144). It was not neces­ sary, as elsewhere, for the exploiters to use violence against the exploited to force them to accept their oppressed state; the result was achieved by the use of ‘dharma’. As a reminder that he is not endorsing the romantic idea of a peaceful and ordered society, with each person acting harmoniously to achieve social ends, Rudra remarks that ‘it goes without saying that in moral terms the ideology we are talking about is violent to an utmost degree’. He is also insistent that this thesis that the Brahmanic idéology is of overwhelming importance for the understanding of Indian history has impli­ cations for all who desire radical social change, for an attack on this reactionary ideology ‘must constitute a most important part in any struggle for progress in this country’. Such an attack, he points out, has been almost totally absent in progressive movements. If Rudra’s thesis on the centrality of Brahmanism for explaining the nature of Indian society is not new in its general statement, his argument that the Brahmanical tradition must be attacked is indeed unusual in the context of Indian political life. Not only would this be a direct challenge to religion in the same way that Marxism in the West from its beginning identi­ fied Christianity as an enemy, but at the same time it would be attacking what we have been arguing is the major unifying ideology through­ out Indian history. Another identification of the importance of the Brahmanical ideology in what may, with some hesitation, be called India’s civic culture is found in Stanley Heginbotham’s analysis of bureaucratic behaviour in Tamil Nadu (Heginbotham 1975:28). While Heginbotham stresses that the availability of force for en­ suring order in society is always necessary,

32

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

nonetheless, authority in India usually express­ es itself through social pressures and an appeal to tradition. The successful local leader, in a premodem setting, is one who resolves conflict by defining what the traditional rights and duties of the parties involved are and then tries to re­ establish the patterns that have been violated. All this does not imply that the strong did not oppress the weak, but that an understanding of the function of administration developed which Heginbotham identifies as the ‘dharmic model', which emphasizes established procedures and standards, neither seeking innovations nor quality of work that exceeds the traditional system but maintaining norms (Heginbotham 1975: 34). That the Brahmanic idea of the relation of dharma to administrative structures could be reinterpreted to serve in new situ­ ations as a unifying factor in Indian society is suggested by Gandhis version of the dharmic model. The rights and duties of cast could, he once argued, ‘be offered to the world ... as the best remedy against heartless greed and competition’(ibid.: 50). In looking at the political history of the subcontinent, in distinction from its ideologi­ cal history, as the second fundamental category of unifying linkages in Indian civilization, one must always be aware of the use that has been made of that history in modern times. Reference has alrea'dy been made to the dual elements in that usage, the one drawing upon the Western image of India and the other from Indian textual sources; Indian historiography has been dominated in the nationalist period by emphasis on the great empires of the past that stood for a united India. This emphasis in the nationalist period on the existence of a united India undoubtedly reflects the great preoccupa­ tions of nineteenth century European politics, the unification of Germany and Italy, with unification into one great state representing the trend line of historical greatness. It is also a

reaction against the reiterated theme of British historians that Indian political unity was artifi­ cial, created by imperial power and dependent upon it for its continuance. For Indian nation­ alists, the great symbols that stood out against this version of the subcontinent s history were the Mauryan empire, with Ashoka as its pala­ din, and the Gupta, with its dazzling artistic and material creativity. No one who has read modern Indian history textbooks can doubt the value of the Mauryan and Gupta empires in terms of contemporary national integration, but the extent of the con­ tribution in the past to the unification of Indian civilization is far from clear. Reference has always been made to the almost mythic nature of the Mauryan empire, and it was certainly not an empire on the Roman or Chinese model. Only the vaguest of memories of it survived in the historical consciousness of the subcon­ tinent before nineteenth century archaeol­ ogy and historiography rediscovered it and assigned it a historical role analogous to that of those classic empires. Nevertheless, it must have played a role in spreading the elements of pan-Indian culture, even though the official ideology appears to have contradicted some of the Brahmanical statements which it has been argued here are a fundamental component of pan-Indian society. The actual contribu­ tions of the Mauryans are not easy to identify, beyond some artistic motifs, the patronage of Buddhism, and the expansion of trade, but the mere assertion of political authority over a large area of the subcontinent, along with rudimentary mechanisms for central control, must have provided precedents and examples for other rulers. And Kosambi may well be right when he claims that the most significant achievement of the Mauryans was the develop­ ment of the village as the basic productive unit of society, with all the attendant implications for social and political control (Kosambi 1956:

Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures

228). The romantic vision of the ‘universal monarch’ of the Mauryan inscriptions is, in Kosambi’s reading, ‘the absolute despotism of one as against the endlessly varied tyranny of the many’ (Kosambi 1956: 160). He makes a persuasive case that the Mauryan concept of kingship combined with Brahmanism to make possible a political society that exalted the role of the king while ensuring a class-based society that was stronger than the state. The claim for the Gupta empire as a unify­ ing force in Indian civilization is buttressed by far more evidence of all kinds than is the case with the Mauryas, and there is no reasonable doubt that the period from approximately a d 320 to 650 was marked by high levels of material, artistic, and intellectual achieve­ ment. The analogies drawn from European history by writers, both Indian and European, to describe the period, however, must be used with caution. The Golden Age, Periclean Age, Hindu Renaissance—all the terms indicate the application to Indian history of interpretations of Western history that European historians have revised and refined. While recognizing, then, both the achieve­ ments of the period and its creative use in forging a sense of national identity and integra­ tion in the modern period, one can question the actual historic role of the Guptas in unify­ ing Indian civilization. Among the most per­ ceptive insights in this regard have come from the art historian, Joanna Williams, who cau­ tions against the mere fact of the accessibility of lists of kings leading to a dynastic model of history based on a simplified view of European history (Williams 1982: 3). The evidence for dynastic patronage being responsible for the artistic achievements of the age is weak, although it is possible that dynastic claims, however ephemeral, for control of large areas may have encouraged the spread of a com­ mon artistic medium (ibid.: 4). So also was

33

the case, one may conjecture, with the spread of Brahmanical ideology. What is far from clear is the relationship between the ideology and the political authorities. Having stressed the misunderstandings of Indian history that have arisen from using analogues drawn from European history, it is nonetheless profitable to turn to it for comparison. The grand comparative question that can be asked regarding the Indian and European experience in relation to unity and regionalism has to do with the rise of nationalities. One of the favourite characterizations of India by those who wish to emphasize the importance of the regions and the great diversity of its cultures is to say that it is not a country but a continent of many countries like Europe. In fact, what is most striking in a comparative sense is how different India’s political history has been, for, unlike Europe, India did not develop a large number of nationalities that became the basis of nation states. Numerically, the difference is striking: there are about 25 nations in Europe, while South Asia has only 3 countries, with almost all the historic heartlands included in modern India.1' Two explanations for the small degree of nationality formation in India, despite the presence of what appear to have been many of the determining factors in Europe, suggest themselves. One had to do with the question raised about the relationship ofthe Brahmanical ideology to the political authorities, the other to the effect of the alien intrusions from Central Asia and the West. In an interesting study that examines the origins of European nation states before the rise of nationalism, John A. Armstrong (1982: 129-67) has argued that a vital factor in the development of the nation state in Europe had to do with the division of power between church and state or pope and emperor. In the struggles for power, kings were able to get their territorial claims legitimized by the sacred

34

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

authority, so that very early in the Middle Ages ethnicity, language, an actual territory with defined boundaries, and the concept of sov­ ereignty were all fused to form a basis for the nation state. The history of France was crucial for this process for it was the French kings, in Joseph R. Strayer’s words, who ‘solved the problem of the “mosaic” state, that is, a state put together out of provinces which had strongly autonomous cultural, legal, and institutional traditions’ (Armstrong 1982: 157). France then provided the basic models for the rest of Europe, and, Armstrong concludes, a Europe of nations would have been inconceivable with­ out the peculiar combination of circumstance that first produced a France’ (ibid.: 158-9). That India did not become a continent of nations on the European model is because of a very different historical experience. Not only did it lack anything that corresponds to France as a model for the development of national politics, but the understanding of territorial sovereignty and the key element of boundar­ ies defining such territories seem not to have existed (Embree 1977: 255-80).12 Above all, while the Brahmanical ideology certainly had rituals for legitimizing kings, it does not appear to have stressed the importance of a defined territory in which the ruler had sovereignty. The familiar example of the Brahmanical rec­ ognition of Shivaji indicates that the ceremony brought Shivaji and his lineage into the cosmic order of the Brahmanical ideology rather than confirming him as a territorial ruler. In neither theory nor practice was the territorial ruler in India hedged about with the divinity that in Europe, in Strayer’s and Armstrong’s persua­ sive readings, had a decisive role in solving the problem of the ‘mosaic’ state and at the same time recognizing the legitimate sovereignty of a large number of small states. The Brahmanical emphasis on kingship is on the ruler as part of a universal order rather than, in the European

sense, on territorial sovereignty. This em­ phasis, while it may have worked against the development of nationalities on the European model, was as a corollary, a potent factor in the processes of political unification associ­ ated with three great moments in the historical experience of the subcontinent—the intrusion of the Turks in the twelfth century, of the British in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the nationalist movements that created three nation states India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh— in the twentieth century. Of the three countries, the focus here is on India, but the other two are to a considerable extent mirror images of the same forces. The second general explanation suggested for the relatively small degree of the formation of nationalities in India (Brass 1974: 40334),13 in contrast with Europe, is the great historic fact of the intrusion of two powerful alien civilizations—the Islamic and the European—both of which produced empires that encompassed much of the subcontinent. Despite the dramatic metaphors sometimes used, the conquests by the representative of both civilizations took place very slowly. The Islamic world made its first thrust into the Sind in 712, and the western marchlands of Afghanistan and Punjab were occupied over the next three centuries. The push into the heartlands of the subcontinent and to the south which began in the last years of the twelfth century and continued to the middle of the fourteenth century with the establishment of Khalji power in a nominal fashion in the south was followed, not just by the contraction of the power of the Delhi Sultanate but by an actual decrease in the territory controlled by Islamic rulers. During the next two centuries, principalities with Islamic rulers emerged in many of the perennial nuclear areas referred to above, notably in Gujarat, Malwa, Bengal, and the Deccan. In Rajasthan, the Rajput lineages

Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures

reasserted their control, and in the south, the powerful Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar became the paramount power. Of all the kingdoms that emerged, Vijayanagar might have become the basis of a national state on the European model, but the pressures from the Deccan Sultanates effectively prevented this. Elsewhere, even when the Islamic kingdoms coincided with the stress lines of Indian historical geography, dynasties were too peripheral to the regional cultures to provide the fusion of culture and political power that seems to underlie the rise of nationalities. The overall effect of the Islamic intrusion appears to have been a blurring of regional identities, while at the same time there does not appear to have been any doctrine of sovereignty that might have shielded to some extent the regional kingdoms from the ambi­ tions of stronger rulers. Developments in the Deccan Sultanate of Bijapur provide an interesting example of re­ gionalism in relation to Islamic rulers. During the reign of Ibrahim II (1580-1627), great impetus was given to the process of cultural syncretism that had long been underway in the region. Part of the explanation for this is no doubt the personal prediction of Ibrahim for Hindu aesthetics, philosophy, and religious ideas but beyond this was his conscious con­ cern to make the administration less ‘foreign’, and one way to do this was to emphasize the indigenous, non-Muslim aspects of regional culture. This meant not just fusion of Hindu and Islamic styles but also the widespread use of Maharastrian Brahmans in the administra­ tion (Eaton 1977: 90-105).14 Reaction to Ibrahims pro-Hindu cultural policies soon set in, however, and the Koranic inscription on his mausoleum is careful to place him in an Islamic context: ‘He was a Muslim and one pure offaith; certainly he was never of the idolaters’ (ibid.: 104). Internal pressures from the Muslim elites,

35

whether Sunni or Shia, combined with the aggressive force of Mughal imperialism to pre­ vent the development of a kingdom based on a fusion of regional and Islamic culture. Although the sources are unclear on the point, it is also possible that the Maharastrian Brahmans, as representatives of what has been identified as a pan-Indian ideology, weakened the develop­ ment towards a regional kingdom. The successful expansionist policies of the Timurid dynasty were dependent upon the achievements of the previous Islamic states, both the Delhi Sultanate with its pretensions to all-India rule as well as that of the regional kingdoms. The Mughal empire occupies a larger place, however, in the historical experi­ ence of the subcontinent because the adminis­ trative institutions of Akbar and his successors almost certainly furthered the possibility of the political unification of a large portion of the subcontinent while working against nationality formation. It is true thát the names of the subas recall the perennial nuclear region—Malwa, Gujarat, Bengal, and so on—but they were the product of conquest and administrative convenience. Other aspects of the Mughal system worked in the same direction, such as the mansabdari system, which in theory, and often in practice, served to break down regional particularism. The revenue system, although its application varied widely throughout the empire, was also a statement of universalism, as was, to a lesser extent, the system of criminal justice. Culturally, the Persian language was acquired by the upper classes over much of the empire, and the influence of Persian painting was immense, even in the great art of eighteenth century Hindu India. Finally, the prestige of the imperial symbol itself, the style of the emperor, was felt in the havelis of Rajasthan and the places of Bundelkhand as well as in Lucknow and Murshidabad. Much has been made of the rebellions in the early years of the eighteenth

36

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

century, but no chieftain or usurping governor took the title or style of the emperor, or denied his legal authority. All seekers after the reality ofpower, whether the Maratha chieftains or the East India Company, acknowledged the empire as the source of legitimacy. After the East India Company had acquired the vast Mughal province of Bengal, it was strictly enjoined by Parliament, and commonsense of its ablest servants, not to seek further conquests. As one of those servants pointed out, the example of the fate of the Mughals was fresh before them: ‘With what energy and success can a distant delegated government like ours ... hope to wield the sceptre of Hindostan, that sceptre which proved too ponderous for the ablest princes of Timours race?’ (Morris 1904:258). Of all the reasons that impelled the Company’s officials to disobey these injunc­ tions, one of the most potent was, nevertheless, the fact that the Mughal achievement had made expansion natural; the stress lines of history led them outward from Bengal in search of the frontiers of India. Ellenborough made this very explicit in defending his policies in the con­ quest of the Sind. The Company’s government could gain the whole Mughal inheritance, but this meant that he ‘must write and act for India, not for England’.15 Then, antedating Disraeli by thirty years, he envisioned the assumption of the imperial title by the Queen, with all the chiefs and rulers becoming her feudatories.16 Beyond this rhetoric were the actualities of unification: the army, a compact bureaucracy, railways, postal service, telegraphs, legal sys­ tem, the English language. Having given the mechanisms of unifica­ tion, the British insisted, as noted in the begin­ ning, that the realization of the India of the Western imagination was their achievement; that apart from their creation of political India, there existed only the traditional regions. This denial of Indian nationhood was based on a

close reading of day-to-day Indian life, but it failed to take into account the realities of a panIndian ideology and the impact of two foreign intrusions, including their own. Both intrusions had blunted the potentialities of the regions for nationality formation by distorting their politi­ cal development. By the end of the nineteenth century, as the early nationalists correctly perceived, there was a possibility of creating one great Indian nation, because India was not like Europe, Punjab was not like Spain and Madras was not like England, even though the English argued that the differ­ ences between the Indian regions were as great. While almost none of the nationalist would have given to the alien intrusions and the Brahmanical ideology that role that has been stressed here, they were seized by the convic­ tion that the territorial entity that had been defined by British power corresponded to the India of the past and could be the independent India of the future. What the nationalists did call upon for their vision of Indian unity was a reading of history that saw the convergence of India’s great achievements in art, literature, and religion as coinciding with times of political unity, pre-eminently the Mauryan and Gupta periods. Time was telescoped, so to speak, so that these periods stood out, not as atypical exceptions, but as embodying the quintes­ sential India. Akbar was added to the lists, and as with Ashoka, special emphasis was placed on him as a unifier and an apostle of religious toleration. That the British also saw themselves as the inheritors ofAshoka and Akbar increased the strength of this nationalist use of history. For an understanding of the political devel­ opment of the subcontinent in the twentieth century, it cannot be overemphasized that claims for regional autonomy, much less for re­ gional independence, were not a major feature of the nationalist movement. This statement may appear to be flatly contradicted by the

Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures

constitutional discussions, especially in the 1940s, when provincial autonomy was indeed a central element in the conflicts between the Muslim League and the Congress, but the demands for autonomy were not the prod­ uct of regional nationalism. They came from the perception by Jinnah and other Muslim leaders that autonomy was a solution for an all-India problem, the protection of minority rights. The rival nationalisms of the Congress and the League at this point were perhaps on a collision course because of the very different understandings of the past and future of India that informed them. These differences became remarkably clear in that year of decision, 1928, when an attempt was being made to present a united front to the Simon Commission. The issue that prevented agreement between the League and Congress was the nature of the electorate. The most articulate Congress leaders—Motilal Nehru, Sapru, Subhas Bose—wanted a constitution that was based on a common electorate, with all the people of India having a political identity only as Indians. ‘If communal electorates were eliminate, if reservations of seats were minimized at every level of government, then the communal prob­ lems of heterogeneous India would disappear’ (Gordon 1983: Chapter 5, p. 65). So stated, the aspirations of the Congress leaders bespoke a modern, secular liberalism, which to questions, as Jinnah did, seemed to indicate a narrow obscurantism. What Jinnah saw, and which the Nehrus, father and son, apparently never saw, was that their liberal constitutional formula coincided exactly with the aspirations of the Hindu Mahasabha and other Hindu groups who saw majority rule as Hindu rule and as a way of making Hindu and Indian into convert­ ible terms. At the All-Parties Convention in December, 1928,Jinnah made a moving speech, pleading for a compromise that would unite the major factions against the British. ‘We are sons

37

of this land, we have to live together.... I believe there is no progress for India until Muslims and Hindus are united. Let not logic, philosophy and squabbles stand in your way of bringing this about’ (ibid.: Chapter 5, p. 67). The squab­ bles against which Jinnah pleaded were rooted in local politics, but the logic and philosophy, which were grounded in the more powerful forces of history and of Brahmanical ideology, converged with the majority represented by the Congress leadership, secularism, socialism, and Brahmanism marched under the strange ideological device of the chakra which Gandhi had emblazoned on the banner of Congress nationalism. Their victory was not over any assertions for autonomy on the part of the great historic regions, not even by Bengal, but over a rival all-India ideology for which Jinnah was a skilled advocate but in whose full implications, as worked out in post-independence Pakistan, he almost certainly did not believe. So, one can argue, there are few other nationalist move­ ments in modern times where regional differ­ ences played so small a part as they did in India, where they seem at first glance so obvious and so important. The historical experience of political unification brought about by two alien elites combined with the potent force of two rival ideologies to create, in fashion that has no real historical analogy, the two nation states of India and Pakistan. The general argument put forward has been that what exists in India, both in the geographic India of the past and in the modern nation state, are two realities, that of the regions, principally defined by geography and language, and the reality of an all-India ideology that has been dominant throughout its history, and that the historical experience of the subcontinent for the past thousand years has worked, along with ideology to prevent the regions becoming the basis ofnations. From this, one can argue that re­ gionalism is not the counterforce to unification

38

Handbook of Politics in Indian States

that it has appeared to be in many readings of Indian history. To say this is not to accept, how­ ever, the misreading of the palimpsest of Indian history that discerns ‘unity in diversity’. The cement of unity is external, both as a product of historical forces or as ideology, to the reality of the regions. A necessary corollary to this argu­ ment is that in the past the forces that destroyed the attempts at imperial unification, as under the Tughluqs or Mughals, were not expressions of regionalism but of powerful internal political rivals to the imperial institution. That the present phase of Indian history demonstrates how the cement of unity has held can be illustrated by reference, without elabo­ ration, to two regional movements. One is the long attempt by the tribal peoples of the Northeast to reassert their autonomy, in both political and cultural terms, from India. Ihe area had not been integrated into their empires by either the Islamic powers or the British, and its civilization was quite alien to that of the domi­ nant Brahmanical culture. The area’s pretensions to political and cultural independence seem, however, to have been overcome by the cultural dominance of India as well as its military power. The other case is that of the Sikh claims for autonomy in the Punjab. Here the classic ingredients of nationality formation or seces­ sion seem to be present: a geographical region, an arena of history and language linked to culture, and a militant religious ideology There is, however, very little in the history of the sub­ continent that suggests that the Sikhs can offer a serious alternative to the unified power of the nation state. It appears that at the end of the twentieth century history and ideology have combined to produce something new in the subcontinent: a state stronger than society.

Schwartzberg (1978) and also in Patterson (1981). Both of these monumental works, perhaps inadver­ tently, demonstrate that if one is to think seriously about Indian history, the regions must be a central focus. 2. Quoted in The Overseas Times, Jersey City, NJ, 3 June 1983, p. 1. 3. See India News, Consulate-General of India, New York, 24 June 1983. 4. Brown (1970) provides a good summary. On karma and related concepts, see Keyes and Daniel (1983), especially Babb (1983:163-84). 5. Constitution of India, Preamble, 1,1, (l). 6. A summary is found in Embree (1972: 25569). 7. For an elaboration of this idea, see Burkert (1979). 8. Nehru to Chou En-lai, 26 September 1959, in Documents of the Sino-Indian Border Question, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1960. 9. A collection of such references in given in Mishra (1979: 29-34). The argument is also made in Despande (1983:111-34). 10. See Epigraphia Indica, viii, 36. 11. Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka have been excluded. 12. For a fuller statement of this idea, see Embree (1977:255-80). 13. Brass (1974: 403-34) is an excellent analysis of national formation in modern India. 14. Eaton (1977: 90-105) provides a summary of the evidence for this political and cultural movement. 15. See British Museum, Add. Mss. 40471, Peel Mss., Ellenborough to Peel, 23 March 1843. 16. See British Museum, Add. Mss. 40475, Ellen­ borough to Hardinge, 15 April 1845. REFERENCES

Armstrong, John A. (1982) Nations before Nation­ alism. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Bodin, Jean (1962) The Six Bookes of the Commonweale. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Babb, Lawrence A. (1983) ‘Destiny and Responsi­ bility’, in Charles F. Keyes and E. Valentine Daniel (eds), Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry. NOTES Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1. The reality of the regions in terms of geogra­ 163-84. phy, culture, and history is spelled out in detail in

Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures Bernier, Francois (1891) Travels in the Mogol Empire, trans. Archibald Constable. London: Constable. Brass, Paul (1974) Language, Religion and Politics in North India. New York: Cambridge University Press. Brown, W. Norman (1970) Man in the Universe: Some Cultural Continuities in India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burkert, Walter (1979) Structure and History in Greek Mythology. Berkeley: University of Cabfornia Press. Despande, M.N. (1983) ‘Nation and Region, in Milton Israel (ed.), National Unity. The South Asian Experience. New Delhi: Promilla, pp. 111-34. Eaton, Richard (1977) The Sufis ofi Bijapur, 13001700. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Embree, Ainslie (1972) ‘Oriental Despotism: A Note on the History of an Idea’, Societas, pp. 255-69. ------------ (1977) ‘Frontiers into Borders: From the Traditional to the Modern State’, in Richard G. Fox (ed.), Realm and Region in Traditional India. Durham: Duke University Program in Comparative Studies on Southern Asia, pp. 255-80. Gordon, Leonard (1983) ‘Brothers against the Raj: A Biography of Subhas and Surat Bose’, Unpublished manuscript. Heginbotham, Stanley (1975) Cultures in Conflict: The Four Faces ofi Indian Bureaucracy. New York: Columbia University Press. Keyes, Charles F. and Daniel E. Valentine (eds) (1983) Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kosambi, D.D. (1956) An Introduction to the Study ofi Indian History. Bombay: Popular Prakashan. Lord Birkenhead (1978) Rudyard Kipling. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Malcolm, Sir John (1822/1834) ‘Memorandum’, Parliamentary Papers, 12 April.

39

Mannheim, Karl (n.d.) Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Ministry of External Affairs (1959) Notes, Memoranda and Letters Exchanged between the Governments ofi India and China, SeptemberNovember, 1 959. NewDelhi: Ministry ofExternal

Affairs. Mishra, R.N. (1979) ‘A Perspective of Integration’, in D. Devahuti (ed.), Problems ofi Indian Historiography. New Delhi: D.K. Publications, pp. 29-34. Morris, Henry (1904) The Lifie ofi Charles Grant. London: John Murray.. Patterson, Maureen (ed.) (1981) South Asian Civilizations: A Bibliographical Synthesis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rudra, Ashok (1981) Against Feudalism’, Eco­ nomic and Political Weekly, 26 December, pp. 2133-46. Schwartzberg, Joseph E. (ed.) (1978) A Historical Atlas ofi South Asia. Chicago: Ihe University of Chicago Press. Smith, Vincent A. (1923) Oxford History ofi India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ------------ (1957) The Early History ofiIndia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spate, O.H.K. (i960) India and Pakistan. London: Methuen. Strachey, John (1888) India. London: Kegan Paul. Thapar, Romilia (1961) Asoka and the Decline ofi the Mauryas. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Voltaire (1963) Essai sur les Moeurs et I'esprit des nations. Paris: Gamier. Williams, Joanna (1982) The A rt ofi Gupta India: Empire and Province. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Yule, Henry and A.C. Burnell (eds) (1968 [1886]) Hobson-Jobson. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

States Reorganization Commission A Critical Reading

A s h a S a ra n g i

The reorganization of states and territories in independent India was a long-drawn and com­ plex process initiated by the Indian state soon after independence. It shows how the demo­ cratic political order had to be synchronized with social and cultural diversity while inau­ gurating the state formation process at large. In this chapter, I look at the procedural rationale of reorganization as was recommended by the State Reorganization Commission (SRC) in its report. The analysis below draws upon a close reading of the report, its various aspects and themes related to the question of reorganiza­ tion and its after-effects. It alerts us to historical disputes over territorial limits of various states and regions, which now begin to contest the given political mandate of the Indian state in terms of their call for cultural and political

equality of participation in matters of territorial division and governance. H IS T O R I C A L C O N T E X T

Within a week’s announcement by Jawaharlal Nehru in Parliament on 22 December 1953 about the need to appoint a commission to examine objectively and dispassionately’ the question of the reorganization of the states in independent India, the Ministry of Home Affairs set up the commission known as SRC on 29 December 1953 with Saiyid Fazl Ali (then Governor of Orissa, now Odisha) as its Chairman and Hriday Nath Kunzru (then Member of the Council of States) and Kavalam Madhava Pannikar (then Ambassador of India in Egypt) as its members. The Commission was entrusted with the major task of providing

States R eorganization Com m ission

guidelines, recommendations, and a workable framework to facilitate the process of reorga­ nization of different states and their constitu­ tive units. In this regard, the Commission had to submit its recommendations to the Government of India (Gol) by 30 September 1955. The SRC could devise its own procedural rational and methodological criteria to collect adequate information and public views on this subject within the given time limit of about twenty months. In its first press note of 23 February 1954, it invited written memoranda from people as well as various public organiza­ tions to consider various aspects of the reor­ ganization. The Commission refrained from distributing any questionnaire to collect an­ swers from the people and organization simply to avoid any kind of standardized and uniform responses to otherwise a complex issue of reor­ ganization of states. The Commission received 152,250 written communications consisting of telegrams, printed resolutions, documents, and memoranda from different parts of the country. Alongside these written documents, the Commission also began to interview in­ terested persons in Delhi from 1 March 1954 till the end of July 1955 to ascertain a variety of views and counterviews on this subject. In addition to this, the Commission started an allIndia tour on 8 April 1954 visiting about 104 places and travelling more than 30,000 miles to solicit peoples wishes and desires on this issue. During this journey, it interviewed more than 9,000 people from different parts of the country. The interviewees belonged to different political parties, public associations, were social workers, journalists, local-level representatives, educationists, linguists, policymakers, demog­ raphers, geographers, and economic-cultural analysts. To keep the report relatively unbiased, Chairman Fazl Ali, due to his long association with Bihar, refrained from taking any part

41

in investigating and deciding the territorial disputes between Bihar and West Bengal and Bihar and Orissa. Regarding the statistical and factual descrip­ tive details on languages, dialects and mother tongues spoken in the country to determine the criterion of geo-linguistic compactness of different regions and states in the country, the Commission relied on the census figures of 1951 and culled the details required from the ‘Census Tracts’ in order to make estimates of taluk or tehsil-wise. figures dependent on some statistical details needed to ascertain the question of numbers of speakers of a language in the population of a state for reasons of reor­ ganization. Taking account of language tables was to know of the cultural and historical lin­ eages of different communities living in various regions and states which would subsequently go through processes of territorial demarca­ tion and dis/integration. In this respect, lack of adequate historical and statistical data would render the exercise ofremappingtheboundaries of various states questionable and contestable. S TA T E R E O R G A N IZ A T IO N C O M M IS S IO N : R E - R E A D IN G T H E T E X T

The report deals extensively with several im­ portant factors which would have bearing on reorganization, such as, the financial viability, size of the states (smaller or bigger), cost of change, the question of unity and security of the country, planned economic development of different regions, a comprehensive national outlay of development of the country, and linguistic-cultural compatibility and homo­ geneity of the units and regions constituting different states of the Indian union. The report consisted of four significant sections focusing on the conditions of the problem) factors bear­ ing on reorganization, proposals for reorganiza­ tion, and the administrative and allied matters.

42

H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

In addition to it, extra attention was paid to the specific needs and requirements of two other states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The report contextualizes several historical reasons for the colonial territorialization of India and the arbitrary and coercive manner of re/aligning non-contiguous areas to exercise imperial control. The SRC report takes into account factors responsible for the integration of princely states and the disparate status of the constituent units, such as, the broader catego­ ries of Parts A, B, and C of states specified and others, such as, chief commissioners’ provinces and governors’ provinces. Various other forms of classification resulting from the colonial administrative process of governmentalization had affected the territorial re-demarcation of various states and their constitutive regions. A close reading of the text familiarizes us with a number of significant themes that concerned the state officials at that time. In no uncertain terms, the report stresses right at the very be­ ginning a curious mix of historical contingency, accidental factors, and an arbitrary use of power in annexing and dis/integrating various states, regions, and provinces of India by the colonial state. Such a long historical process lacked any kind of scientific rational or robust planning by the colonial state, which, instead, used excessive military, administrative, and political power and prowess to conquer and control various parts of colonial India. The over-centralized state apparatus of the colonial state in India served this purpose even better. In this process of colo­ nial governance, the natural frontiers of history, geography, and culture were decimated endan­ gering the inter-regional dynastic fiefdoms and loyalties which began to be replaced by new bonds of affinity and economies of power regu­ lated by relatively more centralized colonial state and its various constituents. The ratio­ nale of administrative convenience working

overwhelmingly in the minds of the imperial rulers began to be legitimized through another criterion of homogeneity of some sort subor­ dinated to predominant concerns of military and administrative control. The anti-colonial nationalist upsurge in nineteenth century India is interwoven with a complex trajectory of events culminating in the re-amalgamation of various geographical units and borders exemplified through the division and union ofBengal. The report identifies three factors, such as, linguistic, ethnic homogeneity, and his­ torical tradition, clearly visible in the process of reorganization undertaken immediately after independence. It also underlines the ‘disparate status of the constituent units of the Union’ in the Indian constitution whereby the status of Parts A, B, and C states have been organized and given unequal powers between the cen­ tre and the states (Ministry of Home Affairs 1956: 6). Regarding the rationale of reorganization, the report underlines the fact that the process of reorganization began alongside the process of redistribution of provinces which had been consolidated and typified following the emer­ gence of various language movements provid­ ing a certain degree of cultural and linguistic consciousness and identity to these disparate and arbitrarily aligned territorial units of the colonial state. There was no sudden and abrupt emergence of linguistic homogeneity as a cri­ terion of nationalistic ideology to reshape the political geography and boundaries of these constitutive units of the colonial state. Instead, what is noteworthy historically, the report emphasizes, is to note the historical modular­ ity which precipitated this consciousness of linguistic identity among different groups and communities of people that could eventually grow into an ideology for the creation of lin­ guistic states. However, for the imperial state,

States R eorganization Com m ission

the call for linguistic principle was not for reasons of cultural and historical coherence and contiguity of regions and communities but for purely political utilities and administra­ tive conveniences. However, such moves did usher in movements for vernacularization of political and cultural spaces of colonial India. The subsequent constitutional reforms, mainly of 1918 and 1935, had to pay attention to de­ mands for linguistic states from various parts of the country. In its report, the Indian Statutory Commission clearly emphasized: If those who speak the same language form a compact and self-contained area, so situated and endowed as to be able to support its existence as a separate province, there is no doubt that the use of a common speech is a strong and natural basis for provincial individuality. But it is not the only test—race, religion, economic in­ terest, geographical contiguity, a due balance between country and town and between coast line and inte­ rior, may all be relevant factors. (HMSO 1930: vol. II, para 38)

Following this, the O’Donnell Committee appointed in September 1931 began to examine the case of separate state for the Oriya-speaking people and to make recommendations to the colonial state for its formation based not merely on the criteria of geo-linguistic and cul­ tural contiguity, economic and administrative rationale but taking into account ‘the primary importance to the wishes of the inhabitants’. Following these recommendations, both Sind and Orissa were formed as separate states on 1 April 1936. In addition to these administra­ tive colonial measures, the reorganization of the twenty Provincial Congress Committees on the linguistic basis in the year 1920 had ear­ lier seen the formation of a separate Congress province of Bihar in 1908 and of Sind and Andhra in 1917 predominantly on some sort of a linguistic principle which clearly signalled a significant departure from the imperial design of the constant re-demarcation of boundaries

43

and territories. Soon thereafter, the Nehru Committee of the All Parties Conference, 1928, too supported the linguistic principle in its de­ liberations: ‘If a province has to educated itself and do its daily work through the medium of its own language, it must necessarily be a linguistic area.... Language as a rule corresponds with a special variety of culture, of traditions and literature. In a linguistic area all these factors will help in the general progress of province’ (AICC 1928: 62). But the Nehru report emphasized that the primary consideration should be accorded to the ‘wishes of the people and the linguistic unity of the area concerned’ (ibid.: 61). For the next 20 years or so, the Indian National Congress (INC) continued to engage seri­ ously with this subject in its various meetings and proceedings to reconfirm its position on the linguistic principle for the reorganization of the provinces. For example, in its Calcutta (now Kolkata) session in October 1937, it rec­ ommended the formation of the Andhra and Karnataka provinces, and the following year in 1938 it passed a resolution at Wardha assuring the deputations from Andhra, Karnataka, and Kerala to reconstitute them linguistically soon. A decade later, just before independence, in its election manifesto of 1945-6, Congress reiter­ ated its position to reconstitute administrative units on the linguistic and cultural basis as much as possible, though independence with partition held back the nationalist leaders on this issue for some time. In an anxious tone, Nehru, while speaking before the Constituent Assembly on 27 November 1947, said that ‘first things must come first and the first thing is security and stability of India’. But the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly strongly recommended setting up a body to ex­ amine the issue ofreorganization ofstates. Soon thereafter, a Linguistic Provinces Commission known as Dar Commission was constituted to

44

H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

look into the demands for the creation of the proposed states of Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala, and Maharashtra primarily in terms of their territorial and geographical re-demarcation, keeping in view their financial, economic, cul­ tural, political, and administrative viability. In its report submitted to the Constituent Assembly in 1948, the Dar Commission did not endorse the linguistic principle solely for the reorganization of states in independent India. Instead, it advised to keep the criterion of administrative convenience intact along with considerations of history, geography, economy, and culture (Government of India Press 1948: Para 131). The Commission also clarified that linguistic homogeneity as a principle of reor­ ganization should be taken wherever it seemed essential and justifying. It feared that unless restrained and complemented with other factors such as geographical contiguity and financial self-sufficiency, the linguistic crite­ rion alone could result in the conflict between majority and minority linguistic communi­ ties within the reconstituted units. Since Dar Commission could not suggest an alternative to the linguistic principle, Congress again set up, at its Jaipur Session in December 1948, a Committee to consider the question of reor­ ganization of provinces on the language basis. The Committee known as the JVP consisted of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, and Pattabhi Sitaramayya as its members and de­ liberated on this question for some time. The JVP too gave priority to the security, unity, and economic prosperity of India and warned against any kind of disintegrative and disruptive forces consequent upon the formation of states following purely the linguistic basis. However, the JVP reaffirmed Congress’ earlier position of having to form the linguistic provinces only if a particular case was suitable for it. However, the JVP suggested taking into account the continuous presence of public sentiment along

with a proper examination of the consequences of acceding to the demand of a language-based province. In order to avoid the emergence of linguistic-cultural extremism in this regard, the Committee further suggested that the linguistic principle should be applied to a welldefined area having mutual agreement, and not all provinces should be formed linguistically simultaneously. Despite these alerts, the JVP recommended that Andhra could be formed as the first state on this principle. In a broader sense, Congress accepted the recommenda­ tions of the JVP partially and also included the agenda of states reorganization in its first elec­ tion manifesto issued in 1951. Both ‘wishes of the people’ and linguistic reasons along with other factors such as economic, administrative, and financial considerations would provide the guiding principles for the process of reor­ ganization. It agreed to form Andhra Pradesh (AP) since the Andhra Provincial Congress, Tamil Nadu Congress, and the Madras (now Chennai) government had also agreed to the reorganization and the formation of AP. The state’s formation excluding the city of Madras was done according to the principles of JVP Committee. The death of Shri Potti Sriramulu hastened the process of the state’s forma­ tion. Soon thereafter, Shri Justice Wanchoo was appointed to report on the financial and other consequences of this decision. It was on 10 August 1953 that a bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha for the formation of Andhra state and, finally, the state came into being on 1 October 1953. There was also a significant degree of oppo­ sition to this process of reorganization. Those opposing the formation of states predominant­ ly on the linguistic basis favoured some delay in this process to avoid any risk for the security and stability and to accord adequate attention for the economic and political development and some amount of autonomy to the regional

States R eorganization Com m ission

rulers and provincial chiefs under the newly defined forms of territorial sovereignty of the country. While taking into account the factors influ­ encing reorganization, the report noted quite seriously the cost likely to be involved in this kind of change which should, however, take note of any kind of unsettling consequences’ of reorganization (Ministry of Home Affairs 1956: 25). The reorganization was not simply a formal-legal and rational administrative restructuring of the units of the Indian state but it also meant dislocation and relocation of human lives and their civic-cultural ties and historical lineages associated with specific ter­ ritorial geo-linguistic spaces of inhabitation for several hundred years. This would have meant disturbing historical enclaves of human settle­ ments and their traditional patrimonial forms of authority and power. Consequent upon changes in the boundaries and territorial units, the customary laws and local practices of everyday life and its governance also came under significant changes. Therefore, various legislative acts and laws needed to embrace these socio-cultural and ethnological pluralities on the part of the Indian state and hence would require constitutional amendments in the future. Such an exercise will ensure some degree of uniformity in laws and their common applicability in otherwise heterogeneous and diverse regions and provinces. The unification of laws such as related to taxes, salaries of the administrative staff at various levels, multiple tiers of administration in the respective state, etc., would usher in a certain kind of equality in patterns of governance and rules of the states. The report stated emphatically that reorga­ nization process would be incomplete unless every state engaged in a serious and extensive review of its existing legislation to make it com­ patible inter-regionally. In doing so, a stable and sustainable administrative order needed to

45

be set up to ensure that this process of integra­ tion of states does not result in disintegration with major consequences for the polity of the country. The report suggested very clearly that the reorganized administrative machinery will thus take quite some time to function smoothly and to be able to deliver tangible results. It is within this context that the report indicates that the case of AP as the first reorganized state should not be viewed as an ideal or a good prec­ edent since it came into being quickly without proper deliberation and rationalizatioirof the process itself. Alongside this, the report clearly expressed the future course for the ,redraw­ ing of constituencies under the Delimitation Commission and thus the need to bring major amendments in the Representation of the People Act, 1950. Another important aspect running through­ out the SRC text is related to the unity and security of India. It is critical of regional consciousness impacting the growth of one­ ness and thus loyalties based on communal, provincial, or linguistic considerations can at times prove to be disintegrative. The text clearly warns against any kind of exclusivism based on a linguistic and cultural homogeneity which becomes more as a hindrance in the process of reorganization (ibid.: 31). In this respect, notion of nationhood articulated in the text is of primary significance and a hegemonic construct of the idea of nation overwhelmingly calls for some kind of an internally evolved loyalties and allegiances by the constitutive units of the state. It is here that one can see very clearly the design of nation state as a statecraft proposed and to be revered and mandated in the due course. The most important aspect on which the text elaborates in detail is about language and culture and their impact o n ;the process of reorganization of states. The report clearly states: l-

46

H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

The States of the Indian Union can achieve this internal cohesiveness only if they are constituted on a unilingual basis, because language being the vehicle for the communion of thought and feeling provides the most effective single bond for uniting the people. Linguistic homogeneity, therefore, provides the only rational basis for reconstructing the States, for it reflects the social and cultural pattern of living obtaining in welldefined regions of the country. (Ministry of Home Affairs 1956: 35)

An intricate issue here is that of relation­ ship of multilingual and multicultural plurality with an administrative-state-driven uniformity. Whether or not it is possible to strike a bal­ ance between the two is a question running through the SRC report. A democratic form of government requires ‘a real consciousness of identity of interests between the people and the government’ working with a degree of mutual trust and understanding in each other (ibid.: 36). In this regard, an alternative measure was suggested saying that ‘if the Legislature of a State is not to develop into a Babel of tongues, it must conduct its work in one language, the language of the people’ (ibid.: 36). This was to ensure a minimal degree of communicability between a state and its people and to facilitate the interaction among people with unequal educational capabilities through the medium of common regional language or mother tongue. The demand for linguistic states, the report explained, was to secure political and economic justice to various minor language groups which otherwise remain marginalized and subordi­ nated to more dominant language groups. This would enable the language minorities to have a share in their own governance and to restrain the dominance executed by an administrative authority and the political leadership belong­ ing to the dominant class, caste, and language hierarchy. This kind of cultural equality should be made the basis of political and economic equality. The developmental plans could then

be drawn on a more fair and egalitarian distri­ bution of resources and rights among people of the reorganized states. Language ties would provide a much needed degree of internal coherence for the nation state and its vari­ ous constituents if pursued not ‘as an abstract proposition but as a practical administrative issue with a sense of perspective and propor­ tion (ibid.: 40). The report briefly refers particularly to Yugoslavia and Soviet Union as well as more generally to Europe to indicate the relationship between language and politics or language and state. The historical trajectory of events in modern Europe of twentieth century clearly shows incessant language conflicts and divisions affecting its process of state formation and the emergence of sovereign states. In case of India, the report emphasizes, linguistic ties and loyalties have to be ideologically grounded as well as acquire political legitimacy in order to be part of the administrative rational of the newly independent Indian state. It also cau­ tioned against any kind o f‘undue emphasis on the linguistic principle to impede the rapid de­ velopment of the new areas’ and to prevent any excessive identity associated with the notion of homeland (ibid.: 43). The report suggests in­ terestingly that ‘in determining the boundaries between linguistic groups the village should be taken as the unit’ and the language composition of village should be retained as much as pos­ sible. Yet, at the same time, a blind adherence to the principle of homeland will undermine the administrative structure of the state in its agenda of national unity which was uppermost in the minds of the state functionaries after inde­ pendence. The homeland concept, in its views, will trigger the majority-minority conflicts and stunt the growth of the principle of nationality evolved as part of the ethno-linguistic-cultural bond of affinity and identity among people of the new state. Therefore, report suggested that there was no need to generalize overtly and

States R eorganization Com m ission

predict that multilingual states would be more unifying or the unilingual ones more divisive or vice versa. In a tentative conclusive manner, it further suggests that the ‘maintenance of multi-lingual units will prevent the utilization of the machinery of the state for furthering pro­ grammes of linguistic exclusivism and ... may lead to tolerance and adjustment’ (Ministry of Home Affairs 1956:45). The balanced approach, SRC report con­ tinuously emphasized, should therefore rec­ ognize the criteria of linguistic homogeneity, administrative convenience, and efficiency in a mutually responsive manner. Such an approach, in its views, will ensure communicational, educational and cultural needs of different lan­ guage groups’, and wherever conditions permit, composite states (multilingual) will remain and hence the overtly excessive and extremist cultural nationalism in the calls for ‘homeland’ or one language, one state’ will not be justified (ibid.: 46). Another significant factor that the report asked to take into account was financial viability of these reconstituted states which meant that they should be ‘capable of living or existing or developing’ and be able to maintain their own ‘maintenance and growth’ (ibid.: 49). The idea was to somehow make an equitable distribution of resources through a mutual understanding whereby a more developed state will provide some kind of welfare incentives and ensure flow of resources to a less devel­ oped one. It also meant a rational planning of expenditure and a balanced budget standard for all the states and their regional specification of planning within a balanced economy. The report seriously examined the question ofsmaller versus larger states and took a rational view on this issue arguing for consideration to be paid not just to the size but rather to factors such as economic and social conditions within different areas and the administrative efficiency of the region or state concerned. It did point

47

to the fact that smaller states might incur more expenditure. The criterion of administrative efficiency, the report suggests, favours the case of larger states more intensely. It also suggests that ‘if the principle of self-determination were to govern the internal reorganization of states, every linguistic or other minority group might demand a state for itself, and the wishes of the people could be swayed by purely temporary considerations’ (ibid.: 64). Common history, geographical contiguity, administrative con­ siderations, and the totality of circumstances were to govern each case distinctively and specifically. S p e c ific R e c o m m e n d a t io n s f o r S ta te s a n d T e r r ito r ie s

The report takes into account each state and union territory existing at that time to look into the possibilities of reorganizing them within specific recommendations proposed. It is im­ portant to analyse each of these cases in order to understand the logic of reorganization as it unfolded based upon its recommendations. In this section of the chapter, I locate the main recommendations about each of the constitu­ tive units suggested in the SRC report. To begin with, the report states that the separation ofAndhra from the composite Madras state has already been accepted and the residual Madras state is ‘linguistically homogeneous’ except for two districts of Malabar and south Kanara as they are not Tamil speaking predominantly (ibid.: 81). The report draws specific attention to the claims made for Tamil-speaking areas of Travancore-Cochin mainly on grounds of linguistic and geographical contiguity. Since the report accepted district as the basic unit for making territorial adjustments, it also used census records to determine the percentage of Tamil-speaking population of nine taluks par­ ticularly belonging to the Travancore-Cochin area. Considerations over the Periyar river,

48

H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

protection of rice fields, forest areas, planta­ tions, hydroelectricity, migrant population, and geoeconomic and linguistic contiguity of the areas determined while considering the territo­ rial adjustment of the state of Tamil Nadu along with other southern states of Kerala, Karnataka, and AP. The report clearly stated that the two non-Tamil areas of Madras are the two districts of Malabar and south Kanara and the Kannada­ speaking areas on the borders of Mysore, espe­ cially the Kollegal taluk of Coimbatore district, would cease to be a part of Madras. In case of Kerala, report clearly suggests that Malabar is culturally and physically not con­ tiguous with Madras state. Following upon Dar Commission recommendations, the SRC also recommended that whole of south Kannara taluk should be joined with Kerala because of its more than 70 per cent population speaking Malayalam language. To follow the principle of linguistic and geographical contiguity closely in case of Kerala, the report drew attention to the financial deficit of the Malabar district and strongly favoured for its merger in the Kerala state along with district of Travancore-Cochin. Regarding the state of Karnataka, the report emphasizes the need for the unification of Kannada speaking areas along with the inte­ gration of the state of Mysore state excluding the Siruguppa taluk, Bellary taluk, the Hospet taluk, and the small‘area of the Mallapuram sub-taluk. Furthermore, the reorganized Karnataka state would have, as per the reports recommendations, four Kannada-speaking dis­ tricts of the southern division of Bombay (now Mumbai), namely, Belgaum, Bijapur, Dharwar, and north Kanara, districts of Raichur and Gulbarga, the south Kanara district except the Kasargod taluk, Coorg and the Kollegal taluk of the Coimbatore district of Madras. In case of Karnataka, the report emphasized, linguistic considerations were not the sole criteria for determining its border areas. The Commission

recommended the exclusion of a portion of the present Bellary district along the course of the Tungabhadra from Karnataka and its transfer to the Andhra state (Ministry of Home Affairs 1956: 93). It rationalized by stating that ‘the retention of Kolar district in the Karnataka state and the addition of the major part of Belgaum district to it will be, in our opinion, more advantageous to the new State than the continuance in it of the eastern portion of the Bellary district’ (ibid.: 94). However, the SRC report did suggest that the Chandgad taluk of Belgaum district is predominantly Marathi speaking as evident from the census returns showing 92.4 per cent Marathi-speaking popu­ lation in the taluk. It therefore indicated that this area could be administered by the state of Bombay and Karnataka should not have any objection to it (ibid.: 97).1 The report also alluded to the fact that both Tungabhadra and Upper Krishna irrigation cum hydroelectric projects will be border projects benefiting both the northern and southern Karnataka in a uni­ fied state of predominantly Kannada-speaking people. The report recognizes the multilingual and multicultural character of the state of Hyderabad. It underlines the fact of public sentiment, particularly of the Congress Party, favouring the disintegration of the state. The fear of twin cities of Hyderabad and Secundarabad losing their linguistic-cultural uniqueness is expressed in the report which also dismisses the idea of making them as centrally administered areas to preserve their historical heritage and continuity. What it therefore suggests is that ‘other measures have to be adopted to give adequate protection to the linguistic, cultural, and other interests of the large Urdu-speaking people in the twin cities. These measures should, in our opinion, include the recognition of the special position of Urdu in the educational institutions and

States R eorganization Com m ission

in the administration (Ministry of Home Affairs 1956: 103). The report deliberates and suggests the gains and losses with the creation of vishalandhra by retaining Telengana in it even though the state of AP had already been formed on 1 October 1953. It found Telangana to be financially more secure with greater revenue-generating possibilities than the Andhra. Expressing fears of Telangana becoming a colony of Andhra on the part of Telangana supporters was noted in the report, and yet alerted to the complex administrative difficulties arising out of the separation of Telangana from Andhra which was formed just about three years ago and thus needed to stabilize itself. However, the report clearly stated its position in the following manner: After taking all these factors into consideration, we have come to the conclusion that it will be in the inter­ ests of Andhra as well as Telangana if, for the present, the Telangana area is constituted into a separate State, which may be known as the Hyderabad State with provisions for its unification with Andhra after the general elections likely to be held in or about 1961, if by a two-thirds majority the legislature of the residu­ ary Hyderabad State expresses itself in favour of such unification. (Ibid.: 107)

This intervening period of five years was considered adequate for unifying processes to settle down with sufficient measures for the stable unification of Andhra and Telangana. It reiterated the earlier position on Madras city’s retention in the state of Tamil Nadu due to its predominant Tamil-speaking popula­ tion. Regarding the formation of states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, the report consid­ ered very seriously their border areas, such as, the Marathwada areas of Hyderabad, eight Marathi-speaking districts of Madhya Pradesh, city of Bombay and Saurashtra, and Kutch states. In this case, too, the language factor as the sole criterion was not acceptable to the Commission. It recommended that a special

49

position should be accorded to the Bombay city due to its cosmopolitan multilingual and multicultural character and disapproved of making it into a separate administrative unit as was suggested by Dar Commission and the JVP Committee earlier. Hence, keeping in view the administrative and financial considerations, the SRC recommended that the reconstituted state of Bombay might comprise the areas of the existing Bombay state without the Abu Road taluk of the Banaskanth district, the Karnataka districts of Dharwar, Bijapur, north Kanara, and the districts of Belgaum. Whereas, Osmanabad, Bhir, Aurangabad, Parbhani, Nanded districts of the existing Hyderabad state, Saurashtra, and Kutch would remain part of this reconstituted state. Considering the wishes of the people, it recommended to retain Marathwada with Bombay and not to integrate it with Hyderabad. The report alerted that Maharashtrians would ‘enjoy a position of some advantage in the proposed State’ (ibid.: 119). The SRC dwelt upon the separation of eight Marathi-speaking districts of Madhya Pradesh for the demand of Maha Vidarbha that arose almost fifty years ago. The report clearly states that the demand for the separation of the Marathi-speaking areas from the Hindi­ speaking areas can no longer be ignored. The case for Vidarbha as a separate state and not integrating it with western Maharashtra, in views of SRC members, is based on historical, cultural, administrative, and financial reasons. It clearly indicated that just as Maharashtra without Greater Bombay might be a deficit area on revenue basis, Vidarbha’s joining Maharashtra might suffer as its resources might not be spent within its own areas on suitable development schemes and projects. The report states fears about the overshadowing of Nagpur by the Bombay city and the merger of specific land and tenancy laws within the larger state of Maharashtra if the demand of Vidarbha

50

H a n d b o o k o f Politics in Indian States

statehood is not adequately addressed and ac­ cepted in due course of time. It therefore said that a new State should be formed in this area consisting of the following Marathi-speaking districts, namely Buldana, Akola, Amravati, Yeotmal, Wardha, Nagpur, Bhandara and Chanda’ (Ministry of Home Affairs 1956: 125). Once again, the commission did not propose break-up of the existing districts of Nimar, Betul, Chhindwara, and Balaghat to the north and Bastar to the east in order to recog­ nize the claims made on behalf of the Vidarbha mainly on linguistic grounds. Alongside this, the reorganization of Madhya Pradesh involved the formation of a state consisting of the Hindi­ speaking areas of the then Madhya Pradesh, the Malwa portion of Madhya Bharat, and the whole of Vidhya Pradesh and Bhopal. The report rightly suggests the territorial claims made by the neighbouring states of Orissa, AP, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra on different parts of Madhya Bharat. In this regard, the report summarily suggests that linguistic, eco­ nomic, administrative, and other affiliations of the area must be established in such a manner that it becomes advantageous to disturb the existing arrangements (ibid.: 132). It was in this regard that claims made by AP and Orissa over Bastar were not acceptable to the Commission. The proposed new state of Madhya Pradesh, according to SRC, would thus include fourteen districts of the residuary Madhya Pradesh, the whole of Bhopal, Madhya Bharat except the Sunel enclave of the Mandsaur district, and Sironj subdivision of the Kotah district of Rajasthan. The report highlighted significance of cities ofJabalpur, Bilaspur, and Hoshangabad in making the state of Madhya Pradesh rich and prosperous in due course of time. The Report is disinclined to disintegrate Rajasthan. Regarding the proposal to form a Maru Pradesh, it suggests that ‘if this State is formed, it is unlikely to have adequate resources

in manpower or material to police a seven hun­ dred mile frontier, and financially it will be a weak unit’ (ibid.: 136). The Commission dealt with the problem of boundaries of Rajasthan, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh in a very com­ prehensive manner. Unlike several other states where the demand for linguistic formation of states has been particularly intense and sustain­ able for a long time, in Punjab, the report noted, the ‘demand for a Punjabi-speaking State is strongly opposed by large sections of people speaking the Punjabi language and residing in the areas proposed to be constituted into a Punjabi-speaking State’ (ibid.: 141). The SRC recommends against a unilingual state and recognizes the equal importance of both Hindi and Punjabi languages in the state of Punjab for administrative and educational purposes and suggests that the ‘creation of a Punjabi­ speaking State would offer no solution to the language problem’ (ibid.: 145). This bilingual retention of the state would exercise some degree of restraint on the homeland politics supporting the cause of Maha Punjab. With regard to the possibilities of communalization over linguistic-ethnic and territorial issues, the report emphasizes that whether the proposed Punjabi-speaking State is formed or not, the Hindus and the Sikhs in the Punjab have to live together in amity. The two communities are so interspersed in this region that no form of reorganiza­ tion can be a real substitute for communal harmony. To base a decision regarding the future of this area on the assumption that the Hindus and Sikhs are destined to drift apart will be both shortsighted and unwarranted in these circumstances. (Ibid.: 155)

Regarding the state of UP, the report states the low level of literacy and administrative efficiency. However, it does not support any particular dominating influence due to its nu­ merical representation in both houses of parlia­ ment. The report emphasized the continuity of the state and did not endorse its disintegration

States R eorganization Com m ission

into smaller states. Alongside the case of UP, the formation of Jharkhand state in south Bihar including Chota Nagpur division and Santhal Parganas too occupied SRC’s attention. Besides, it also considered Orissa’s claim for the restoration to it the Seraikella subdivision of the Singhbhum district having Ho, Oriya, Bengali, Hindi, and Santhali linguistic communities in significant proportions, the border adjustments proposed by the West Bengal and claims made by Bihar on parts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Malda, and west Dinajpur in the north and to Sundargarh, Keonjhar, and Mayurbhanj in the south (Ministry of Home Affairs 1956: 168). The SRC seriously considered the opposition to the formation of Jharkhand presented by several parties other than the Jharkhand party and found separation to prove disadvanta­ geous to ‘the balance between agriculture and industry in the residual state which will become poorer with fewer opportunities and resources for development’ (ibid.: 169). Hence, for the Commission, unequal development between agricultural north and industrial south is due to the natural divide between the two regions and need not be disturbed artificially. Rather, it proposed to constitute a special development board for the Chota Nagpur division and the Santhal Parganas district of Bihar. Disregarding once again the linguistic principle, the re­ port reiterates the earlier position followed by the British colonial state in retaining the whole of Singhbhum including Seraikella and Kharsawan—predominantly Oriya-speaking regions—to Chota Nagpur division and not to transfer to the state of Orissa. In case of Bengal and Bihar too, the idea of cultural contiguitywas supported on extra-linguistic factors since the commission found linguistic affinity criterion of both Bihar and Bengal government with respect to Purnea district having either north Bengali written in Kaithi script or having a Maithili language. Similarly, it found West Bengal

51

government’s claims on Santhal Parganas and Dhanbad unconvincing as integrating the latter would not just be linguistically unjustified but Bihar would also lose the Rajmahal coalfields to West Bengal in this move. It is noteworthy that the Commission argued for the inclusion of Purulia sub-district (excluding the chas thana) in West Bengal due to the Bengali-speaking ma­ jority in this district based on the 1951 census records. The report clearly gives its mandate that ‘in and around Jamshedpur, the population is so mixed that no State can legitimately claim the city on cultural or linguistic grounds ... and there is no case in our opinion for transfer­ ring to West Bengal either the Jamshedpur city or any other area by breaking up Dhalbhum’ (ibid.: 180). Furthermore, West Bengal’s claim to Goalpara district of Assam or any part of it was not accepted by the SRC. The proposal for the formation of a Kamatapur state con­ sisting of Goalpara, Garo Hills, Cooch Behar, Darjeeling, and Jalpaiguri or of a Purbachal state consisting of the area round Cachar was also suggested before the Commission by vari­ ous representatives of these regions. Taking a more comprehensive view, the Commission argued against the proposal of a hill state to avoid conflicts between the hill and plain areas and to prevent any kind of clash among differ­ ent and distinct tribal groups inhabiting these areas. In case of the Northeast, the Commission did not favour creation of smaller states but focused more on educational, administrative, and economic development of the region as a whole. This meant retaining the autonomous bodies, commissioner for the hill districts, Northeast Frontier Agency (NEFA) and the Naga Hills District. The new state of Assam, in the Commission’s views, should be formed along with Tripura and Manipur not yet qualifying for the separate statehood. Lastly, the report argues to retain the existing state of Orissa formed in 1936 without affecting its

52

H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

territorial disputes with Bihar, AP, and Bengal. The Commission did not suggest anything specifically for the state ofJammu and Kashmir and its boundaries. It also did not recom­ mend any major change for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Fazl Ali, Chairman of SRC, recommended retaining Himachal Pradesh as a separate unit under the direct control of central government and not be made part of the state of Punjab. In his note added separately at the end of the report, he cautioned against the wide gap between plain and hill areas in these two regions and any attempt to combine them would create a sense of doubt and suspicion in the inhabitants of both of these regions. In his views, Himachal Pradesh as a separate small centrally adminis­ tered unit could be financially more stable and sustainable. Similarly, K.M. Panikkar, member of the SRC, added in his note on UP that the state could be partitioned due to the unmanage­ able large size of it. He strongly argued for the division of UP and thus making of a new state consisting of the Meerut, Agra, Rohilkhand, and Jhansi Divisions of UP (minus Dehradun district of Meerut division and Philibhit district of Rohilkhand division), the district of Datia from Vindhya Pradesh and the four districts of Bhind, Morena, Gird (Gwalior), and Shivpuri from Madhya Bharat (Ministry of Home Aifairs 1956: 251). He also suggested making Agra as the capital of this new state to balance the communicative order among different parts of the state. Regarding the basic pattern of the constitu­ tive units of the Indian union, the commission strongly recommended to remove existing disparity between different constituent units of the union. It also suggested that the Part B states could be merged with Part A states and Article 371 of the Constitution could be omitted along with the abolition of the institu­ tion of the Rajpramukh. Besides, it was also

recommended that Part C states should be merged with their adjoining larger states. In all, the SRC suggested to form sixteen states and three administrative territories with states of Madras, Kerala, Karnataka, Hyderabad, AP, Bombay, Vidarbha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, The Punjab, UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Orissa, andJammu and Kashmir along with ter­ ritories of Delhi, Manipur, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. S A F E G U A R D S F O R T H E L I N G U IS T IC - C U L T U R A L M IN O R IT IE S A N D G R O U P S

The report clearly states that not all language groups can be considered for forming sepa­ rate states. The conflict between bilingual and multilingual zones need to be resolved in a more sustainable and comprehensive manner. Thus, the report explicitly argues for extralinguistic rationale to be considered for the formation of new states in independent India. The SRC report elaborates upon various provi­ sions provided in the Indian Constitution to protect the rights of linguistic minorities and groups particularly with respect to the use of regional languages, minority languages, and mother tongues in the school education and administration on the part of the state as well as union government. These protective measures also included special considerations based on language and territorial identities to various minority communities in the employment opportunities and in the promotion of edu­ cational and economic interests. The report also urged that the safeguards provided to the linguistic-cultural minorities should provide reasons for separatism or political opportun­ ism of some kind. It emphasized that a state in which a particular language group constitutes the majority cannot be considered to be the custodian of the interests of all people seeking that language, even when they are residents of other States’ (Ministry of Home Affairs 1956:

States R eorganization Com m ission

208). Regarding their political representation in the state cabinets, the SRC suggests to treat each case separately in this regard. The creation of multilingual and multicultural states as favoured by the SRC too was predicated upon the idea of making administration, education, and political order at all levels more diverse and culturally nuanced in postcolonial India. The Commission did not make any recommendation about the details of the policy to be followed in prescrib­ ing the use of minority languages for official purposes but only suggested the proportionate value to be assigned to various language groups based on their numerical strength to determine the official language/s of majority/minority language groups in the newly constituted states. In this case too, district was to be considered a primary unit for assessing the use of language in administration, law, and education of the state. In short, the SRC report does give out a provisional blueprint for the language policy of the country and different states of India at that time. The Commission strongly recommends the principle of non-discrimination with regard to the issue of domicile for employment and educational opportunities of the citizens of the country. It also dwelt upon several other impor­ tant issues directly resulting from the process of reorganization, such as, the integration of personnel drawn from yarious areas into the administrative cadres of the new states and the rationalization and efficiency of the administra­ tive structure, integration of princely states and the formation of AP as a new state. Along with it were the questions of financial powers of the states, the implementation of the Second Five Year Plan, financial aid to the new states, rec­ onciling the revenue gaps, and deficits grantsin-aid among various states, settling down the liabilities of areas being dis/integrated into their neighbouring states or border areas, need for interstate agreements, particularly with

53

respect to the river-water sharing and hydel power project disputes and regional griev­ ances, constitution of Special Development Boards (SDBs), and many other plans for the comprehensive development of all states and their regions. The Commission repeatedly emphasizes the durable ethos of Indian nation­ hood and a common citizenship for its people in the report. In its final recommendations, the SRC also drew attention to the linguisticcultural unity of the country through several administrative and political measures including the nature and form of all-India Services such as Indian Administrative and Indian Police Services required maintaining certain degree of inter-regional sociocultural diversity and its integration of employees within and outside the state cadres. The First Official Language Commission set up by the government was as­ signed the task of evaluating and enforcing the constitutional provision related to the adoption of Hindi as the official language of the country without discontinuing the English language. In a somewhat peculiar manner, the SRC rec­ ommended that the Osmania University in Hyderabad might be placed under the central government and the medium of instruction at this University should become Hindi. It was probably to avoid any kind of narrow regional consciousness developing in this region after the formation of AP as a separate state. The Commission also proposed to set up a ‘Central University with some emphasis on Hindi in some part of Southern India and the teaching of South Indian languages and cultures in prin­ cipal North Indian Universities’ (ibid.: 235). A moral-nationalistic call for the strengthen­ ing of the Indian union and the survival of its various units echoes throughout the report of the SRC. Thus, the analysis of the SRC text above clearly suggests a host of important issues which determined the course of reorganization

54

H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

of states and union territories in indepen­ dent India. The subject of reorganization has acquired a certain degree of urgency in con­ temporary times in view of the demand for Telangana statehood and the recommendations suggested in the Sri Krishna Committee report submitted. Reading through the SRC report enables us to track the historical records of the demand for smaller states as well as while keep­ ing in mind the changing political and social needs of territorial redistribution. NOTE

1. However, the report accepted the fact that all the taluks of Belgaum district have economic relations with both the Marathi as well as Kannada-speaking areas, but this may not be counted a sufficient reason for detaching either Khanapur or Belgaum or portions of Chikodi from the rest of the Belgaum district. Thus, on administrative grounds and not on the geolinguistic, the report recommended to retain Belgaum town and

taluk in the Karnataka state only. Similarly, it proposed that Kollegal taluk of the Coimbatore district having 72 per cent of the Kannada-speaking population should form part of the Karnataka state. REFERENCES

AICC (All India Congress Committee) (1928) Report o f the Committee by the All Parties Conference to determine the principles of the Constitution o f India by Motilal Nehru. Allahabad: AICC. Government o f India Press (1948) R ep o rt o f the Linguistic Provinces Comm ission. New Delhi: Manager, Government o f India Press. HMSO (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office) (1930) R ep o rt o f the Indian

Statu tory

Commission.

London: National Government Publications. Ministry of Home Affairs (1956) R eport o f the States Reorganisation Commission, 1 9 5 5 . New Delhi: Manager of Publications, Government o f India Press.

Integration through Internal Reorganization Containing Ethnic Conflict in India*

M aya Chadda

During August and September of 2000, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) govern­ ment of Prime Minister Vajpayee created three new states in northern India. The hill regions of the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), namely, Gadhwal and Kumaon, became the state of Uttaranchal, Jharkhand was carved out of south Bihar, and Chhattisgarh was separated from eastern Madhya Pradesh.1With the creation of these 3 new states, India became a union of 28 states and 7 union territories. This is the most recent of several waves of reorganization of existing state boundaries since the consolida­ tion of the Indian union in 1950. The first * Originally published as ‘Integration through Internal Reorganization: Containing Ethnic Conflict in India’, in The Global Review o f Ethnopolitics, 2 (1 , September 2002): 44-61.

major reorganization occurred in 1956, follow­ ing a nationwide movement for the creation of linguistically compact provinces. Kashmir had already heen incorporated within the Indian union based on the special status granted to it by Article 370. The second major initiative came in the 1970s, when the Northeast was split up and several new states were created following the establishment of Nagaland in 1963. The third phase was inaugurated with the creation of Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, and Chhattisgarh in the northern Hindi-Hindu belt provinces of India. Why is it pertinent to analyse the evolution of India’s federal reorganizations? What is the significance of such internal remapping to de­ bates on federalism and ‘third wave’ democra­ cies? Even a cursory glance at post-Cold War conflicts shows that management of ethnic

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H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

identities is important to the balance between domestic and international peace and for future democratic development. While this balanc­ ing act has burdened central authorities in democratizing countries, new forces of interde­ pendence and globalization have strengthened the cause of ethnic and religious nationalists, who have increasingly demanded the grant of large-scale autonomy, or, failing that, a separa­ tion from the mother country. Containing such demands within national boundaries has become a matter of ‘life and death’ for many multiethnic, multireligious nation states. The Indian experience of federal nation-building provides valuable insights into the dilem­ mas of power-sharing in an ethnically plural country. As the Indian experience reveals, splitting up existing federal units and creating new ones is only one of the many strategies new democracies can use to build nation states and contain ethnic conflicts. Over the course of five decades since independence, Indian governments have entered into various ethnic accords (as, for example, that between the Rajiv Gandhi government and Sikh and Assamese militants in the mid-1980s), created regional councils straddling several state units (as in the Northeast), and constituted district level autonomous councils to address the needs of rump ethnic regions surrounded by competing ethnic communities. Other strategies range from confederal arrangement to the inclusion of nationalities based on layered sovereignty. The special constitutionally granted arrangement (Article 370) to include the state ofjammu and Kashmir within the Indian union is an example of the latter. While each strategy has a variable record of ethnic containment, the creation of new state units is easily the most successful one in India. ; Although there is prolific literature on the evolution of ethnic and regional movements,

the response of Indian governments, and the impact of regional conflicts on the Indian polity, very little material is available on the central governments ability to create new states (Brass 1991; Chadda 1997; Kapur 1986; Phadnis 1989; Puri 1981). Yet, such powers have been of fundamental importance to the consolidation of the Indian federation. The way in which these constitutional powers came to be exercised provides clues to the political intent behind it. As current literature on failed federal experiments in ‘new wave’ democracies shows, ethnopolitics can vitiate from constitu­ tional designs (Ross 2000; Rotimi 2001). We therefore need to discover the political intent behind the three Indian federal reorganizations. Parallel inquiries by Suberu Rotimi in Nigeria and Cameron Ross in Russia suggest that in itself, federalism is no panacea. According to Rotimi, ‘far from promoting democracy [feder­ alism] has allowed authoritarianism to flourish’ (2001: 171). We might then ask how the three federal reorganizations which are the focus of discussion here enhance India’s democracy, particularly the constitutional provisions that permit Parliament to create or break up exist­ ing units without having to seek consent from the affected province-state or its people. Could these powers have been differently defined so as to forestall ethnic conflicts that have marked India’s post-independence history? Rotimi asks a similar question for Nigeria and concludes that the ‘overweening’ central state prevented democratic development and produced a fed­ eral structure that unleashed ‘unproductive, divisive and ultimately destructive competi­ tion for state power (2001: 171). The result was violence, political impasse, and military rule in Nigeria. In other words, whether in India or elsewhere, the nation-building project as well as prospects for democracy are shaped by political bargains between the centre, state, and its provinces. There is a danger in excessive

Integration th ro u g h Inte rn al R eorganization

centralization as there is in excessive decentral­ ization. While Nigeria represents the former, the example of Russia alerts us to the dangers of putting too much faith in federal devolution of power. According to Ross, in Russia, federal autonomy led to local-level authoritarian rule unchecked hy the central government. Independent India’s federal history is long and complex. To narrow the scope of this in­ quiry, I will focus on the three waves of federal reorganizations and the debates they triggered about the shape of India’s federal balance. This broader discourse on federal reorganization— of the mid-1950s, early 1970s, and between 1999 and 2001—uncovers the ways in which ethnic plurality, federal arrangements, and de­ mocracy have taken shape in India. Each phase of reorganization was based on a new balance of political power between the central state and its federal units. Each phase was guided by a master theme. In the aftermath of the partition in 1947, the question that haunted Indian lead­ ers was whether the country they had inherited could be fashioned into a territorially coherent nation state. In the mid-1950s, the linguistic/ regional agitations unleashed a debate about India’s cultural antecedents—ethnic, regional, religious, and linguistic—and whether these might pull the fragile union apart. In the early 1970s, the twin problems of governance and security shaped the rival perspectives on what the Indian federation should be. The discourse on federalism became sharply polarized when separatist movements in Punjab and Assam in the 1980s, and later in Kashmir, challenged India’s territorial unity. It is, then, puzzling why the fears that had haunted Indian leaders for so long—about disintegration and separatism— should so abruptly vanish in the 1990s. As India enters the twenty-first century, the con­ cern over excessive centralization is replaced by concerns about the eroding ability of the central government to implement the national

57

agenda. The ebb and flow of these waves of federal remapping provide valuable clues as to how a particular federal design might advance or retard the cause of democracy in an ethni­ cally plural country. T H E A N T E C E D E N T S T O T H E F IR S T F E D E R A L R E O R G A N IZ A T IO N ( 1 9 4 7 - 5 6 )

The political context of the 1956 reorganiza­ tion needs to be viewed against the backdrop of three important events in South Asia, namely, the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, the creation of the separate nation state of Pakistan, and the territorial dispute over Kashmir that led to the first war in that year. The partition itself had been bloody. It claimed more than a mil­ lion lives and produced 8 million refugees who trekked across the newly created international border between India and Pakistan. The details of these historic events have been covered extensively elsewhere and need not detain us here (Hasan 1997,- Menon 1956). It is impor­ tant to note, however, that the first confederal government, proposed in the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, failed within a few months of its creation and unleashed a storm of communal killings among Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims, which put an end to the vision of a confederal, undivided India where the Muslim League and the Congress could coexist in amicable coop­ eration. Conflict over Kashmir has remained, ever since then, at the centre of Indo-Pakistani relations (Ganguly 1997). By the end of 1948, partition was a fact and two new countries had emerged on the subcon­ tinent. This was not what Congress leaders had anticipated. The task before them was to weld a territorially truncated country characterized by enormous diversity into a single unified nation state. It is against this backdrop that Indian leaders drafted the Constitution and de­ bated the distribution of federal power for their heterogeneous nation.They decided to load the

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H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

constitutional frame in favour of a central state. The centre was to be the principal bulwark against India’s disintegrative tendencies. The founding fathers of independent India, assembled at the Constituent Assembly, gave the country a federal, parliamentary, demo­ cratic constitution on 26 January 1950. The nature of this document has long been a subject of scholarly debate. Some have characterized the Constitution as ‘quasi-federal’and unitary in design (joshi 1954: 32) others have stressed that the Constitution establishes a dual polity with the Union at the center and the states at the periphery, each endowed with sovereign powers to be exercised in the fields assigned to them respectively by the constitution (Gol 1950: 31). Granville Austin (1966), the fore­ most contemporary scholar ofthe Indian consti­ tution, describes it as a design for ‘Cooperative Federalism’. Most Indian scholars, however, stress the fact that the Indian Constitution intended the central state to have paramount powers, especially in the event of an emergency. These powers have been spelled out in Articles 352, 356, and 360 of the Constitution. They permit the centre to dissolve state assemblies and impose governor’s or president’s rule in the provinces (Bomwall 1967: 14). According to Articles 256 and 257, the union government can demand that a state comply with union laws. Non-compliance can lead to dismissal under Article 360. Article 249 allows the Rajya Sabha, the second chamber of Parliament, to give the lower house, the Lok Sabha, powers to enact legislation on subjects reserved on the state list. The Constitution divided govern­ mental powers and responsibilities into three distinct lists: the first exclusively under the jurisdiction of the central state, the second largely under the jurisdiction of provincestates, and the third, a concurrent list, meant to be shared by the central and provincial govern­ ments (ibid.: 14). This distribution formula

was meant to accommodate diversity within the broad arch of a strong central government. The Constitution, therefore, envisaged the creation of a layered territorial and adminis­ trative order but said little about the kind of federal units the Indian union was to have or the basis on which they would be created, that is, geography, demography, administra­ tive convenience, language, or culture. That decision was left entirely to the wisdom of Parliament. Nor did the Constitution envisage the province-states to have their own separate constitutions as, for example, in the USA. India had a centralized judicial system and bureaucracy. Although there was a separated list of subjects over which province-states had primary jurisdiction, the central government prevailed on almost all matters in the event of an emergency—which was likely to be all too frequent—in a heterogeneous society trying to forge a modern nation state. Nowhere was the unitary intent ofthe found­ ing fathers more evident than in the provisions that endowed Parliament with the powers to create new states and alter existing ones. Article 2 of the Constitution decreed that ‘Parliament may by law admit into the Union, or establish new states on such terms and conditions as it thinks fit’. Article 3 states that Parliament ‘may by law form a new state by separation of territory from any state or by uniting two or more States or parts of states’. Additionally, it may ‘increase the area of any state; diminish the area of any state, alter the boundaries of any state’; and ‘alter the name of any state’ (Chanda 1965:47). The Constituent Assembly had vigorously debated the question of where such demands for creating or altering states should originate. The final document had clearly opted for the central state to act as the ultimate arbiter. Why had Indian leaders invested the central government with so much power? As pointed

Integration th ro ug h Inte rn al R eorganization

out earlier, they had inherited a crazy quilt of a country made up of distinctive sovereign enti­ ties: independent princely states (listed as the B category states) and areas that were under direct British rule (the nine A category states in 1950). The Constituent Assembly had then two choices: it could take upon itself the task of unifying the constituent units, or alternately, empower the central authority created under the Constitution to do so at a later date. It wisely chose the latter course. To have made the ter­ ritorial unification contingent on the consent of the princely states would have postponed indefinitely the day when India could call itself a nation state. It is not difficult, then, to under­ stand why the founding fathers dropped the amendment that would have required propos­ als for internal territorial changes to originate in the affected state or states. This explains why Article 3 of the Constitution bears the form it does, that is, shorn of the provision of consent by affected province-states. The Constitution put no stringent conditions for creating new states. The restraints were that the President would recommend it, a majority in Parliament would agree to it, and the states affected by the changes would be consulted before a new state unit was created. The consent of the latter was not required. This meant that the central state could dismember recalcitrant states and give over their parts to more compliant units. The latitude provided by Articles 2 and 3 in combination with other provisions gave formi­ dable powers to the central government, which could use them to build a modern nation state or misuse them to deny self-rule to ethnic and religious minorities. In itself, the unitary character of the Indian Constitution was not undemocratic. Indeed, democracies have flourished under unitary con­ stitutions. What made the provision dangerous were the political conditions prevailing during the first 40 years after independence in India:

59

the dominance of the Congress party during the first four decades, and its assured legislative majorities in both the parliamentary and state elections in the first 20 years after 1947. Even after that, the Congress continued to dominate the political scene. As a national movement, and subsequently as the dominant party, the Congress was a federalized organization that in­ cluded a broad spectrum of ethnic and regional leaders and their followers (Schwartzberg 1985: 157). Its pan-India spread was based on accommodation of diverse interests. But if it was unwilling to do so with regards to a particu­ lar ethnic group or region, the constitutional provisions of Articles 2 and 3 could in its hand become an instrument of hegemonic control and coercion. T H E F IR S T R E O R G A N IZ A T I O N

History tells us that the events of 1947-8 had drowned out claims for state rights by Tamils (the Dravidian autonomy movement that has been active since the 1930s), Sikhs (represented by the Shiromani Akali Dal that had suggested a three-way partition of Punjab in 1946), and the Muslim community, whose acquiescence was critical to India’s future stability (Chadda 1997; Devanandan 1960; Narang 1983; Singh 1953). Within three years from the grant of the Constitution, India faced its first serious federal crisis. The natural tensions between the parts and the whole—ethnic, caste-based, and reli­ gious communities—surfaced with renewed vigour. The floodgates oflinguilism had opened, challenging the unitary intent of the founding leaders. In December 1952, Potti Sriramulu fasted unto death over the issue of a separate state for Telugu-speaking people (Palmer 1961: 106). Bowing to popular pressures, the Congress government created a separate state for Telugu people—Andhra Pradesh (AP). Andhra’s victory boosted demands in other provinces. Prime Minister Nehru appointed a

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H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

three-men States Reorganization Commission (SRC) charged with preservation ... of unity and security of India’. In its findings, the SRC railed against excessive deference to “narrow loyalties” and recommended a division of India based on dominance and geographical con­ centration of ethno-linguistic communities’ (Gol 1955: 45, 229-37). After much debate, Parliament called for an organization of India into 14 states, based on the criteria laid down by the SRC. At that time, the SRC refrained from dividing the provinces of Bombay (now Mumbai) and Punjab as no neat divisions could be made along linguistic lines in these two provinces (Schwartzberg 1985:165-6). In Punjab, the central government faced different issues from those in Bombay. The demand for a separate province of Punjabi Suba was based on religious distinctions between Hindus and Sikhs. This was anathema to a leadership deter­ mined not to permit another division of India on the basis of religion. Any tampering with Punjab, a border state, immediately endangered India’s security interests. And Nehru had not forgotten that a faction of the Sikh leadership had demanded a separate Sikhistan in the1940s (Verma 1987: 269). Nehru’s response, then, was not to separate but instead to add areas and expand the state of Punjab. At the same time, Congress’ support among the Sikhs was con­ solidated by appointing Karan Singh, a popular Sikh, as the Congress’ leader in the state. The purpose was to dilute Sikh presence and to marginalize separatists within the province. Gurharpal Singh’s (1995: 483) interpretation of Nehru’s strategy as one of hegemonic control is difficult to sustain in view of the fact that the majority of Sikhs in Punjab .were voting for Congress in open and fair elections. It would be hegemonically oppressive, as Singh suggests, only if we insist that the Sikhs, regardless of how they vote, are a separate nation deserving a separate state. Nonetheless, it is true that the

central government, supported by legislative majorities, had the power to change perimeters within which such contests were held. There is another problem with Gurharpal Singh’s interpretation. It assumes that the process of state formation is possible without accumulation of power at the political centre. Nowhere have states been formed without an accumulation of authority in the hands of a po­ litical class. Had the Indian state pursued strate­ gies deployed by its counterparts in European history, there might have been many more insurgent Punjabs all over India. Singh does note the negative role of Sikh leadership, but for the most part slides over the self-destructive manoeuvres of Sikh leaders which prolonged and made the conflict in Punjab violent. However, once the principle of linguis­ tic states had been accepted in 1956, the separation of Gujarati- and Marathi-speaking communities in Bombay and Punjabi- and Hindi-speaking people in Punjab was only a matter of time. Bombay was divided inl960, and the division of Punjab followed six years later. The latter was made possible when the Sikh leadership abandoned religious rhetoric and couched its demands in ethnolinguistic arguments. The first federal revolution thus discarded the design of administrative divisions that Nehru had favoured for independent India, a design which did not recognize the need for congruence between ethnic identity and ter­ ritorial homelands. The first reorganization did precisely the opposite: it legally acknowledged India as a federation of ethnic subunits. In a sense, Nehru and India had returned to the ethnic fault line conceded by the Congress movement during the struggle for national independence. Congress had demanded that the British grant autonomy to linguistically defined provinces. The British had resisted, but Congress leaders couldriot follow suit, having championed the cause of ethnic autonomy

In te g ratio n th ro u g h In te rn al R eorganization

in independent India’s formative years. Nor could they resist the temptation of linguism to garner support. Culture had then trumped over the idea of a homogenous nation state and the prototype of the European model which had so deeply influenced the first generation of Indian leaders. More importantly, the first reorganization created a unique design for governance, one that could withstand the pull of heterogeneity. This design has been deconstructed at length elsewhere. It will be enough to focus on its key features here (Chadda 1997: 1-26). Briefly, the design for governance was based on two connected quests of Indian leaders: relational control and interlocking balances. The first quest guided India’s regional policy. The sec­ ond guided its domestic politics. The objec­ tive of relational control was to protect India from the fallout of events beyond its borders, whether from shifts in political orientation in neighbouring states or from the mobilization of overlapping nationalities that India shared with other South Asian states (that is, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal). It meant acquiring capabilities to structure interstate relations between South Asian countries. In other words, relational control permitted India to forge a nation state (with recognized fixed boundaries) and gave it the leverage to arrange regional affairs to its advantage. The second quest was to secure interlocking balances among its diverse subnationalities. What was the objective, we might ask, in secur­ ing this balance? To make its nation congruent with its state is the short answer. India included several nations or would-be-nations within its borders. Therefore, the objective was to create a series of interlocking balances between proxi­ mate cultural communities (that is, between Punjabi- and Hindi-speaking communities in Punjab, between Marathi- and Gujarati­ speaking communities in undivided Bombay,

61

and between Bengali- and Assami-speaking people in Assam), the homelands of such com­ munities and the central state (that is, Punjab and the central government; the state ofjammu and Kashmir and the central government), and between the central state and its adversar­ ies with whom it shared ethnic and religious minorities (India and Pakistan; India and Sri Lanka; and India and Bangladesh). At least three conditions were necessary for the interlocking balances to work well. The first was the creation of an overarching authority based on ‘universal’ order that would be impar­ tial between India’s heterogeneous segments. The centra] state had to gain a sufficient degree of autonomy to act as an impartial pan-Indian agency. The Constitution had provided the centre with such powers. These constitutional powers were reinforced by the dominance of the Congress party and its espousal of what can be called overarching ideological order for the Indian political universe, that is, secular­ ism, non-alignment, democracy, and social welfare. The second condition was the creation of a layered order that accommodated ethnic nationalities. The separate lists of powers for the constituting units—for the centre, the states, and the latter divided for administrative convenience into districts, cluster of districts (zilla), and village assemblies—constituted such a layered order. The third condition was regional autonomy. The central government was forced to yield linguistic states that would thereafter organize politics on the basis of their distinctive cultural and political identity. The linguistic reorganization of 1955-6 was an antidote to the unitary tendencies embedded in the Constitution. To sum up, the universal order gave moral and political authority to the central state. Layered order acknowledged the prior claims of culture and regional auton­ omy permitted ethnolinguistic communities to comfortably nest within the overarching order.

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H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

The first reorganization embodied this model of governance. The reorganization of India along linguistic identities had, however, raised serious worries that autonomy would lead to separatism and, further, to the disintegration of India. These fears abated as the new federation hound the parts more closely to the whole. That this was indeed in accordance with the popular will was amply evident in the thumping majority the Congress party received in the 1957 elec­ tions. Many policy analysts, however, contin­ ued to debate whether the reorganization had weakened or strengthened the central state (Harrison 1985: 300-8). While most believe that the first reorganization had strengthened both the state and democracy in India, they also agree that it unleashed a force that required the central state to renew repeatedly the pact India had made with its own diversity. T H E S E C O N D F E D E R A L R E O R G A N IZ A T I O N (1 9 7 1 -8 7 )

The second reorganization focused on the division of the state of Assam in Northeast India. Representing a different set of issues for Indian leaders, this region had been left largely untouched by the SRC (Chadda 2000: 16472). To begin with, it was a patchwork of tribal and mixed linguistic communities (Miri 2007: 3-4). No neat divisions along the lines of the earlier reorganization were possible. The colo­ nial legacy had created a special set ofproblems. The Northeast was the least integrated region in the territorial and administrative sphere of British India. The British had followed a policy of neglect and seclusion that had left the region resentful and suspicious of all governments that had sought to control the Northeast from New Delhi. Decades of missionary conversions among the tribal population had enlarged the gulf between people residing in the plains and those residing in the hills. The overlapping of

the Naga and Mizo tribes across Burma and the Indo-Chinese border closely linked the issue of ethnic autonomy to national security and territorial control (Lai 1984: 201-5). The Indian state, thus, had to integrate within its federal union a vastly diverse and underdevel­ oped Northeast. This task was made more dif­ ficult because China claimed parts of this area (Arunachal Pradesh). Indian leaders were faced with the task of reconciling the conflicting goals of democratic accommodation and security re­ quirements. The answer was found in dividing Assam into seven separate province states. The Nehru government created the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution, which divided the Northeast into three broad areas with spe­ cial arrangements of power-sharing for each: the hill areas included the tribal homelands where tribal nationalities controlled their own affairs; the frontier tracts were the responsibil­ ity of the state government of Assam; and the tribal areas in the plains were protected under provisions for representation and inalienable rights to tribal lands (Kumar 1996: 16-21). The Sixth Schedule created district councils, yet another administrative innovation, which provided local communities with wide-ranging powers over local economy, culture, religion, and customs. While these accommodations were institutionalized, the Nehru government also used force to weaken and eliminate insur­ gencies among the Naga tribes. The objective was not to annihilate the Nagas but to split the movement—by separating the moderates from the militants—and forging an agreement with the latter to integrate them within the Indian union. In 1963, one large faction of Nagas was willing to sign a peace agreement in exchange for autonomy and statehood, which became the basis for the new state of Nagaland in 1963 (Acharya 1993: 223-30). The rest of the tribal nationalities in the Northeast could not be denied a state once

Integration th ro ug h Inte rn al R eorganization

Nagaland was a fact. In 1971, by an Act of Parliament, the government of Indira Gandhi carved out several states from the former state of undivided Assam. The passage of these parts from being rump communities to separate states occurred in stages. Tripura and Manipur, which were originally parts of Assam, became union territories in 1956 and then separate states in 1972. Meghalaya became an autono­ mous state within Assam and then a full-fledged state in 1972. While Manipur and Tripura had seen widespread agitation, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya had not been convulsed with popular demands for separate statehood. Their creation was meant to pre-empt China from making claims to these border territories.2 There were also electoral and political consid­ erations behind the division (Baruah 1999: 91-115). Granting of statehood created a support base for the ruling party and gave it an advantage in state elections. The main benefi­ ciary of the breakup ofAssam was the Congress party ofIndia and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The Lok Sabha elections of 1972 and the state elections in 1973 gave Indira Gandhi a solid majority in Parliament and state assemblies. The early 1970s, thus, were benchmark years for the triumph of the governance model evolved in previous decades: interlocking balance and relational control based on layered order and local autonomy within an overarching ideologi­ cal architecture of the Indian nation state. Any respite from conflict was however temporary. Peace could endure only as long as New Delhi responded by granting greater autonomy and renegotiating pacts in response to changes within society and the economy. The Indira Gandhi era is not identified with the spirit of accommodation and compromise. In fact, it is viewed as a period of arbitrary cen­ tralization impelled by a desire to protect, even impose, Congress party’s legislative majorities through underhanded means (Wariawalla 1988:

63

248). But most observers would also agree that the Congress ‘system’ itself had changed. The expansion of economy and democracy since independence had broadened the demands for regional and ethnic autonomy. It was no longer sufficient to merely grant separate statehood to ethnically compact regions within the Union. The ethnic and caste parties that now governed the newly created states had leapt to the next stage of democratic demands. They wanted real power, more financial control, and the promise of non-interference from New Delhi. Nehru 'did not have to cope with regional opposition with a popular support base because until 1967, the Congress party continued to win majorities in both state assemblies and at the centre. What is more, opposition to the Congress had nested largely within the party. This was no longer the case in the 1970s and 1980s. In these decades, ethnic leaders had moved forward to form opposition parties that competed with the Congress in assembly elections (Sharma 1988: 89-112). It is then not difficult to understand why the Indira Gandhi era is identified with centralization, and why the debate over central­ ization and decentralization dominated public discourse. This was conducted against the re­ volts in India’s geographic periphery—Punjab, Kashmir, and Assam (Chadda 1997: Chapters 4, 5, and 6). The leading proponents of the over cen­ tralization equals strength’ thesis are two prominent experts on India: Ayesha Jalal and Atul Kohli (Jalal 1995; Kohli 1990). Both believe that a quest for ‘monolithic national­ ism’ led to the ethnic conflicts in the 1980s. But they are both mistaken for two reasons. First, they fail to differentiate between the rhetoric that exalted unified India:—a regular staple of all political speeches—and the real­ ity of pluralistic assertions in the 1980s. India’s heterogeneity could not, and did not, allow imposition of a monolithic nationalism even if

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H a n d b o o k o f Politics in Indian States

India’s leaders had so desired. And the constant effort to accommodate—visible in the three waves of reorganization—suggests that the leaders were aware of the gap between what they aspired for, and what, in fact, they could have. Second, Kohli and Jalal measure power of the state by its coercive capacities instead of political capacity. Political capacity consists of institutionalized means to resolve conflicts. The use of coercion underscored the inability to forge interlocking balances between proxi­ mate ethnic communities (that is, Hindus and Sikhs in Punjab), between them and the central state, and in the third arena of interlocking bal­ ance, that is, the Indian state and neighbouring states. Pakistan could destabilize interlocking balances in Punjab and the state ofJammu and Kashmir. India’s military and coercive capa­ bilities had expanded, but the quantum of real power measured in terms of ability to resolve conflicts had declined precipitously. Wielding the stick and failing to negotiate did indeed look as if the Indian state had grown strong and authoritarian. However, in the absence of the ability to resolve conflicts, decentralization cannot strengthen democracy and coercion does not equal strength. The Indian state was at its weakest since it wás established in 1947, in other words, the twin goals of democracy and federalism need a strong centre and an equally strong province-state authority committed to the federal bargain. Nothing could have better demonstrated the misleading characterization of India as an authoritarian democracy than the elections of 1989 and the events that have occurred since then: the decline of the Congress, rise of coalition politics, and shift of power to the regions. As VS. Naipaul (1990) has aptly described, India was a ‘land ofa million mutinies’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Even though the Congress party led by Narasimha Rao

formed a government in 1991, it had to operate with a very slim majority in that Parliament. Most importantly, the Rao government had to contend with the rising appeal of the Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The latter had wrested away a substantial portion of the middle-class urban vote from the Congress. In addition, Prime Minister Rao had to defer to the agendas of powerful regional opposition leaders in electorally important states, such as, Bihar, UP, AP, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Gujarat. Although Rao performed well as an economic reformer, he could not, or chose not to, confront the rising forces of Hindu chauvinism from defying the courts, laws, and even the Constitution of India. The curious inaction in preventing Hindu mobs from destroying the sixteenth-century mosque in Ayodhya in 1992 underscored Congress’weakness. Throughout the 1980s, Congress was thus in a state of secular decline. Its assured legisla­ tive majorities—an important element of the governance model of relational control and interlocking balances—appeared to have come to an end. Indeed, one might argue that Indira Gandhi had been frying to protect Congress’ legislative dominance precisely when it was rapidly slipping from her grasp. Learning from the mistakes of his predecessor, Rajiv Gandhi sought to recapture the original governance model based on accommodation and negotia­ tion, but the compulsions of political survival persuaded him to abandon that effort in 1987. It is therefore ironic that scholars have continued to excoriate the Indian state for concentrating power at the centre. Jalal’s volume was pub­ lished in 1995 and Kohli edited the Journal of Asian Studies with a lead article about the evils of centralization in 1997, although the central state was weakening and real power had moved away from the centre.

Integration th ro ug h Inte rn al R eorganization

T H E T H I R D F E D E R A L R E O R G A N IZ A T I O N ( 1 9 9 9 )

The trends that had become visible in the 1980s—the decline of the Congress, the rise of Hindu nationalist forces, the emergence of coalition governments, the regionalization of politics, and the de facto dispersion of power it brought about—accelerated in the 1990s. The third federal reorganization, this time in the Hindi-Hindu heartland of India, should be viewed against the backdrop of these changes. Shifts were also evident in the intellectual and ideological arenas in response to the end of the Cold War and the ‘Third Wave’ of democratiza­ tion based on market economy. Three arenas of policy were immediately affected by these shifts: the economy, foreign policy, and public debate. India acceded to the global changes by initiating economic reforms. Liberalization of the economy had unshackled new centres of political interest and influence. A retreat by the central state meant greater latitude for the state and local-level constituencies and a shift in the locus of decision-making to the regions. In foreign policy, it meant re-alignments in the region. In the 1990s, a new reactive connection had emerged between rising Islamic and Hindu extremism, Indo-Pakistan relations, and the conflict over Kashmir (Chadda 1999). A weak and unstable Pakistan was even more dangerous to India’s control over its borders in the north and the west than an aggressive Pakistan, driven by resurgent Islam. While these shifts altered the context of anxiety over border states, the rise of Hindu nationalism led by the BJP and of powerful ethnic and caste parties in politically important states within India altered the basis of domestic politics. The era of coalition gov­ ernment had arrived, and that of the Congress with its easy majorities at the centre had ended. What did these changes mean to the federal equation and to the governance model that had operated under the earlier era of Congress’

65

dominance? In the post Nehru-Gandhi years, the contest for power involved three national level actors, the resurgent BJP, a congeries of regional parties representing a coalition third force, and the Congress. The latter was weak but was able to still cobble enough seats in Parliament to influence who could or could not form a government in New Delhi. This was then the decade of unstable coalition rule and frequent elections in which all three actors formed successions of governments in India: the Congress between 1991 and 1995, the coalition of regional parties in 1996-8, the BJP for thirteen days in 1998 and then again in 1999, but this time in coalition with regional parties willing to support it in exchange for dropping its ‘Hindutva’ agenda. One may characterize the 1990s as a decade when ethnic and caste-based regional parties became more closely integrated into the central government with corresponding influence to dictate the course of policy. India’s province-states were no longer preoccupied with the question of autonomy from the centre but were exerting power within and over the centre3 (Pal 1993: 135-53, 181-97). The armed rebellion in Punjab had given way to elections in 1992. New Delhi’s relations with Assam did not remain confined to securing autonomy, instead, they had moved on to questions of retaining major­ ity for the Assamese nationalists [represented in the Asom Gano Parishad (AGP)] and to managing subnationalism within its borders. The triumph of the AGP had ushered in an era of local control and defused, at least tem­ porarily, confrontations with New Delhi. The battles had therefore moved inward within the province-state and among different parties that spoke for the local tribal nations within Assam. This is not to suggest that ethnic conflict came to an end, hut that it had abated in response to a new equation between the centre and its

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H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

regions. The conflict in the state ofJammu and Kashmir that involved Islamic groups operating from Pakistan, however, remained intractable. It is this sea change in Indian politics that explains the ease with which the BJP was able to create the three states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Uttaranchal. Jharkhand has had a history of agitation going hack to 1800, but the demand for a separate state became evident largely in the 1950s when linguistic agitation swept through India4 (Khan 1997: 246). In its report, the SRC had cited economic non-viability of the residual state and disrup­ tion to the boundaries of the four affected states as grounds to reject the demand for Jharkhand state (Gol 1955: 169). In addition, a merger between the locally dominant Jharkhand party and the Congress party in 1963 kept the demand for a separate state at bay. Local parties that opposed the merger had however continued to agitate. In 1992, a fraction of the opposition turned militant and established the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), a militant organization comprising largely of younger and less patient elements (Narayan 1992; Sengupta 1982). The leaders of the separate Jharkhand movement argued that as long as the region re­ mained ‘divided into four states, and centers of decision making remain [ed] in Patna, Calcutta, Bhubaneswar, etc., the people of Jharkhand region will continue to be victims of cultural suppression and economic exploitation. The efforts ... of the government for a balanced development have utterly failed ... and the people are not ready to wait any longer’ (Khan 1997: 147). The central government accepted the proposal to form an Autonomous Council modelled on the pattern of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (with limited executive and legislative powers), but the three affected states—Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa (now Odisha)—rejected the formation of

Jharkhand from parts of their territories. Only Bihar passed a bill to form a separate Jharkhand Area Autonomous Council in 1994 (Prakash 2001). Once the bill was passed, the emergence of a separate state from within Bihar was a fore­ gone conclusion. But no other state boundaries had been altered. The timing of the new state had however depended on the configuration of politics in New Delhi and Patna. No one doubted that the call for a Jharkhand would be popular so long as its boundaries affected only Bihar, which had already approved the creation of the new state. Weak local parties that supported or opposed a separate Jharkhand could use the cause to widen their popularity and enter into coalition with stronger parties that lacked a local base in the Jharkhand movement. National political parties were equally keen to gain from the Jharkhand agitation. The BJP hoped to consolidate its base in Bihar, or at least weaken that of its opponent’s by appeal­ ing to the ethnic sentiment. The BJP s rival, the Congress party, was equally anxious to leverage itself into a more advantageous posi­ tion in Bihar and north India. It too supported the creation of the new state. And the regional parties, especially the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) under the leadership of Rabri Devi and Lalu Prasad Yadav, were not unhappy to forego the Jharkhand constituencies over which they had uncertain control. An article in Frontline reports that ‘[t]he ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal agreed to the formation of Jharkhand though a large chunk of Bihar’s revenues will go to the new State ... because the party will have a ma­ jority of its own in the Bihar Assembly after the bifurcation of the State’ (Chaudhuri 2000). In the newly altered Bihar, the RJD would rule with less interference from the Congress because in Bihar it was the Jharkhand area that tended to elect Congress representatives to the provincial assembly.

Integration th ro ug h Intern al R eorganization

While the backward caste tribal element was critical in the politics that created the separate states ofJharkhand and Chhattisgarh, the con­ stituency for the new state of Uttaranchal was distinctly upper caste. The state of UP is very large and many have argued for its break-up into more manageable administrative units (Khan 1997: 261). The BJP had very strong support in the upper-caste Hindu voters of the hill areas that make up Uttaranchal. Political calcula­ tions became the catalyst in the decision to create Uttaranchal. That this strategy favoured the BJP, at least for a while, is evident in the comments of local political leaders and party functionaries during the February 2002 state level elections: ‘We rejected Congress in favor of the BJP in 1989 because the Congress stand on the creation of a new state was ambiguous. We whole heartedly supported the BJP.’5 The Congress had been trying hard since 1990 to cobble together an alliance of backward castes, Muslims and tribals in UP in the hope that this would give it a popular base to capture the state assembly. It had no hopes ofwinning the Hindu upper-caste vote which the BJP had cornered in the late 1990s. The Congress’reluctance to sup­ port the creation of Uttaranchal was based on a fear of weakening its position in the undivided state. But the BJP’s popularity did not last long either. In the February 2002 elections, disap­ pointed voters were asking: ‘What have we got in return (for supporting the BJP) ? Only prom­ ises that have not been fulfilled.’6The Congress swept the 2002 Uttaranchal assembly polls. The March assembly elections in the rest of the UP were, however, far less decisive and pro­ duced a hung assembly instead. Grant of a sepa­ rate Uttaranchal had nevertheless redirected ethnic protests into regular electoral channels of formal politics. One might, however, argue that the new states might not have been created had the political scene not changed so drastically in

67

the 1990s (to become a three-way contest between the BJP, the Janata-led coalition, and the Congress) and had real political power not passed into the hands of regional political parties with leverage and even a veto over the life of national governments. It might not have occurred had the national leaders been genu­ inely fearful and worried about maintaining India’s territorial unity. Ethnic communities in the three new states were unconnected with foreign enemies or cross-border nationalities, unlike in Punjab, Kashmir, and Assam. Despite serious limitations and glaring flaws, India’s fed­ eralism had finally forged a nation state from a vast array of diverse and divided ethnic entities. The central state had failed to implement that design in Punjab, Assam, and the province-state ofJammu and Kashmir, but in the end, central governments were also the source of effective solutions in Punjab, and, to some extent, in the Northeast. Political will and not constitutional provisions had determined whether the cre­ ation of new states would defuse ethnic conflict or lead to ethnic discontent. This is why the recent debate over the federal question in India is so misleading. It is possible to identify broadly three separate strands of arguments in this debate. There are those who point to the penetration of global forces, worry over the weakening of the central state, and would like to see the state shield India from global markets. Ironically, these same scholars also excoriate the state for aggrandizement of power and denial of autonomy to the regions. The second set of observers support economic liberalization and would like to see India fully integrated into the world economy. They are less worried about the implications for economic sovereignty. They advocate that each provincestate should be free to independently mine the international financial markets for investments. There is a third view, more popular among the ranks of postmodernists and scholars of

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H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

subaltern studies. According to them, the first two sets of arguments are excessively biased in favour of the state. The proponents of this view attacknot only the centralizing tendencies ofthe Indian state, but also the institution of the state itself. In their view, the state is little more than an instrument of mass oppression and exploita­ tion. They advocate recognition of sub-national communities not within the pan-Indian nation­ building project, but within a frame of ‘dual but complementarypolitical identities’ (Baruah 1999: 201). Their objective is not simply to modify the centre-state equation by ensuring greater provincial autonomy, but to make units equal to the centre by reconstituting India as an ‘aggregate of politically organized territories’ (ibid.). They would like to see India’s territo­ rial units endowed with shared sovereignty and law-making prerogatives. Inspired by Gandhian philosophy, a fraction within the third perspec­ tive wants to see power devolve further to the next layer of political order, to the grass-roots and village bodies (Nandy 1992: 37-8). The proponents of the third perspective argue that empowering the people will make India a true democracy. In a recently published book on the evolu­ tion of ethnic conflict in Assam, Sanjib Baruah traces violence and separatism in the Northeast to the excessive centralization of power implicit in the statist perspectives of Indian leaders. Assam, he says, succumbed to violence because it was so ruthlessly divided to serve Congress party’s narrow electoral objectives, that is, garnering legislative majorities (Baruah 1999: 202-5). While Baruah is correct about electoral motives, they alone do not tell the whole story of conflict in Assam. He has largely ignored the separatist tribal insurgencies and the presence of China in the Northeast. China had aided and abetted insurgencies. Naga insurgents had found safe haven across the border in their war against Indian security forces. The creation

of seven states in the Northeast was meant to grant self-rule to tribal nations on the disputed border with China, and thereby tie them more closely to India. A majority in these states did not wish to be under the jurisdiction of the state government in Assam. There was a certain risk involved in this strategy. It might be argued that the reorganization of the Northeast was an act of courage and imagination on Indira Gandhi’s part, though it would never be seen as such by those who argue for sovereign rights for rump ethnic nationalities. What could the government of Indira Gandhi have done differently? Should it have ignored the role of hostile powers in fomenting insurgencies? Could it have accommodated their demands hut let the political leaders in Guwahati—the seat of state government in Assam, which was deeply resented by the tribal nations within that state—decide their fate? In any event, that prerogative did not rest with the province-state. According to the Constitution, the state needs to be consulted but does not exert a veto over the definition of its own or any other state’s borders. Even if the central government were to allow Assam such powers, how differently would it have responded to the demands for a separate Mizoram, Tripura, and Manipur? These ethnic communities refused to be included in the province-state of Assam. The Assam govern­ ment’s failure to resolve the conflict over Bodoland in the 1990s show the limits of what state governments can do about ethnic conflict within their borders. Besides, if Assam was granted such a privilege, why not Maharashtra, AP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab? There is no evidence that state governments are more democratic, ethical, or fair. The parties that rule the state are likely to be as corrupt and anxious to protect their majorities in the assembly as their counterparts are likely to be in national politics.

Integ ratio n th ro ug h Inte rn al R eorganization

What kind of policies would leaders pursue if India were to be an aggregate of politically organized territories’?Baruah cites Malaysia as a model for the kind ofimmigration policyAssam might follow. Malaysia had banned immigration to preserve its demographic balance. In Assam, this would mean stopping the migration of poor Bangladeshis from across the border and deporting all those who have migrated since 1972. There is no untainted record available of the numbers of residents who would have to be deported under this rule. What is more, according to Baruah, had the state of Assam been given jurisdiction over immigration policy (which meant forfeiting New Delhi’s right to exercise control over international borders), the local government would have frozen migration into Assam, and that would have prevented ethnic violence. There are two problems with this proposition. First, until the 1970s, Congress governments were elected by popular vote in Assam. Later, when its mandate eroded, and the AGP won the elections, it disappointed the Assamese by pursuing more or less the same policies as the previous Congress governments. In fact, the AGP-led government in Assam faced the same charges that the AGP itself had levelled against New Delhi in its own fight for autonomy—that of ignoring the problem of migration and denying autonomy to ethnically defined nations such as the Bodos. There is then no ideal solution to the cascading effect that granting ethnic self-determination might produce. A weak government is likely to generate endless demands for statehood. Second, regional leaders can be as oppressive and self-seeking as their counterparts at the centre. Proponents of subaltern studies are on the mark in their criticism about the oppressive nature of the state, but they do not tell us how we are to construct a true democracy without borders, and without a state.

69

The critics of Indian policies in Punjab echo many arguments espoused by Baruah. Gurharpal Singh (1995: 281) characterizing India as an ethnic democracy where the state is dominated by one ethnic group, argues that Sikh nationalism as a claim to parallel sovereignty deserves explicit recognition, and views Indian nationalism as a disguised Hindu revivalism. India’s democracy rests on privileging ethnic pluralism, but India’s central government is not a monopoly of any single ethnic group as Singh suggests. Although the Sikh community wants equal status and freedom for cultural expression, the majority among them do not want an independent Khalistan. He is also mistaken in arguing that Indian nationalism is identical with Hindu revivalism. The former consists of many voices, secular and syncretic. In any event, Gurharpal Singh’s arguments apply more to the late 1980s than to the early years of independence under Nehru, or even to the first term of Indira Gandhi. The advocacy of a confederal India implicit in Singh’s arguments must be approached with caution in view of what Rotimi has to say about the Nigerian experience. Cameron Ross, on the other hand, warns us ofthe dangers ofresting too much faith in autonomy at the state and provincial level. Ross concludes that autonomy can replicate in local level authoritarian rule with many ‘mini’ presidents. Ethnic hegemony, rule by a single ethnic group is a difficult, if not an impossible, proposition in an ethnically plural India. A S S E S S IN G T H E C R E A T IO N O F N E W S T A T E S

In conclusion, it might be useful to return to the questions raised in the introduction. Was there a grand design in the provisions that governed the creation of new states? Were these federal reorganizations motivated largely by electoral calculations or for immediate gain? And did they aggravate or mitigate ethnic conflicts?

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H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

The first reorganization had undoubtedly extended the democratic dispensation by creat­ ing many new centres of regional power with autonomous jurisdiction. It corrected the embedded pro-centre bias of the Indian con­ stitution. The first reorganization was based on accommodation of ethnolinguistic and cultural communities, which have since then occupied a pre-eminent place in Indian politics and in the Indian model of governance. This model was more suited to an empire-state than a modern nation state. But that was the only way India could integrate its diversity within a demo­ cratic design. While the first reorganization affected the Indian nation as a whole, the sec­ ond effort at federal reorganization focused on one region, that is, the Northeast. The first was guided by the need to federalize the union on an identifiable basis. The second was moti­ vated by concerns over national and territorial security in the Northeast. Electoral calculations were no doubt important in the 1970s, but they were not the only reasons for the division of Assam. While the first reorganization breathed life into the governance model of relational control and interlocking balances, the second reorganization sought to protect that design by giving new states a stake in India’s territorial integrity. We might ask if such a strategy was com­ patible with India’s avowed commitment to democracy. The answer would have to be a con­ ditional affirmative. Commitment to a federal democracy did not prevail over the imperatives of territorial unity. In fact, the latter became the touchstone for granting provincial autonomy in border states. In the rest of India, as the third reorganization shows, grant of autonomy was less controversial and turned on the calcula­ tions of party competition and elections. Could India have evolved a different model of federalism than the one it actually followed? Many have argued that India could have

avoided separatist violence and challenges to its territorial integrity, had it been an ‘aggregate of politically organized territories’. While the moral argument behind this advocacy is sound, we are not told how India could have become such an entity. There would have been no India had it been conceived as an aggregate of quasi­ sovereign states. India was exactly such an aggregate of princely states and directly ruled provinces in 1947. Should it have continued in that vein? Would such an India have been more democratic and respecting of human rights? History does not provide an answer to this question. The founding leaders of India thought it necessary to carry forward with what Mahmood Ayoob has described as the ‘primitive accumulation of power’, which all societies are required to carry out if they are to form a state. The coercive character of the state cannot be denied. By the same token, if there is no state, there can be no democracy. This is not meant to minimize the deleteri­ ous impact of centralization evident during the 1970s and 1980s in India. Nor is this meant to justify state oppression. The attempt here is to understand, not absolve leaders of the kind of choices they made. The Congress governments under Indira and Rajiv Gandhi did much that was grossly wrong. It is important nevertheless to avoid the trap of simple dichotomies, that is, oppression versus human rights, big govern­ ment versus small government, centralization versus decentralization, and nation versus state. For countries that are simultaneously pursuing democracy, development, and territorial unity, choices are hardly ever between neat pairs of opposites. They are more than likely to be between: more or less democracy, more or less development, and more or less autonomy. Each trade-off demands a price in terms of compromise with some other, equally desirable goal. Debates about the creation of new states have been erroneously conducted within the

71

Integration th ro ug h Inte rn al R eorganization

misleading, polarized perspective of centraliza­ tion and decentralization. Centralization needs to come first because we do not know how to build a democracy without a state. Moreover, these polarized perspectives ignore the syn­ cretic model of governance India had created in the mid-1950s, combining autonomy to re­ gions and layered order, within an overarching political universe. Whether led by Congress, Janata, or the BJP, all governments in India have had to return to this model—or forfeit the right to govern. The creation of new states was a key element in the success of this model. NOTES

1. See Rajashri Chakrabarti and Joydeep Roy, ‘Gains from Redrawing Political Boundaries: Evidence from State Reorganization in India’, available at http://1293.20.41/eps/othr/papers/0512/0512002. pdf (accessed on 19 July 2012). 2. Several critics claim that the division of Assam was entirely a top-down process and that there had been no serious popular mobilization to warrant carv­ ing up the state. Others point to the Naga and Mizo, not to mention separatist insurgencies in Manipur and Tripura, to explain the division. 3. State proposals concerning greater state responsi­ bilities were outlined in the West Bengal document of 1 December 1977, the Rajamannar Committee Report from Tamil Nadu, the controversial Anandpur Sahib Resolution of 1973, the Sarkaria Commission Report 1983. Each new report underscores the escalating de­ mand for greater autonomy. 4. Between 1800 and 1930s, there were several agrarian movements—the Tamar revolt in 1801 and 1820, the Kol insurrection in 1831, the Sardari agita­ tion in 1858-9, the Bisra insurrection in 1900, and Bhagat movement in 1914. 5. Frontline, 2002, available at www.hundunnet. com/fline/fll904/19040330.html. 6. Ibid.

REFERENCES

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Austin, Granville

(1966)

The

Constitution

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India: Cornerstone o f a N ation. Oxford: Oxford

University Press. Baruah, Sanjib (1999) India against Itself: A ssam and the Politics o f N ationality. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bomwall, K.R. (1967) The Foundation o f Indian Federalism. Bombay: Asia Publishing House. Brass, Paul (1991 ) E thnicity and N ationalism : Theory an d Comparison. California: Sage Publications. Chadda, Maya (1997) Ethnicity, Security and Separatism in India. New York: Columbia University Press. ------- ----- (1999) ‘Talibanization of Pakistan’s Democracy ’, W orld Affairs, New Delhi, 3(3): 98-116. -------------(2000) Building D em ocracy in South A sia: India, N epal, Pakistan. Boulder, CO: Lynne ' Rienner. Chanda, Asok (1965) Federalism in India: A Study o f Union-State Relations. London: George Allen & Unwin. Chaudhuri, Kalyan (2000) ‘Jharkhand at Last’, Frontline, 17(17, 19 August-1 September), available at http://www.frontlineonnet. com /fll717/17170390.htm (accessed on 19 November 2012). Devanandan, P.D. (i9 6 0 ) T h eD ravidaK azh agam : A R evolt against Brahminism. Bangalore: Christian Institute for the Study o f Religion and Society. Ganguly, Sumit (1997) The Crisis in K ashm ir: Portents o f War, H opes and Peace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gol (Government of India) (1950) Constituent A ssem bly Debates, VII, I. New Delhi: Gol. ------------ (1955) Report of the State Reorgani­ zation Commission. New Delhi: Gol. Harrison, Selig (1985) ‘A n Overview, Region and Nation in India’, in Wallace Paul (ed.), Region and N ation. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Co., pp. 300-8. Hasan, Mushirul (1997) Legacy o f a D ivided N ation. India's M uslim s since Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jalal, Ayesha (1995) D em ocracy an d A uthoritarianism in South A sia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Joshi, G.N. (1954) The Constitution o f India, 3rd edition. London: Macmillan. Kapur, Rajiv (1986) Sikh Separatism : The Politics o f Faith. London: Allen & Unwin. Khan, Rasheeduddin (1997) Rethinking Indian Federalism. Shimla: Inter-university Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences. Kohli, Atul (1990) D em ocracy an d Discontent: India's G rowing Crisis ofG overnability. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kumar, B.B. (1996) Reorganization o f N ortheast: Facts and Documents. New Delhi: Omsons Publications. Lai, Mohan (1984) ‘Harmony among Peoples of the Northeastern Region and between it and the Rest of India’, in B.L. Abbi (ed.), N orth east Region: Problem s and Prospects o f Developm ent.

Chandigarh: Center for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, pp. 202-15. Menon, VP. (1956) The Story o f the Integration o f the Indian States. New York: Macmillan. Miri, Mrinal (2007) ‘Two Views of the NorthEast’, in B.B. Kumar (ed.), Problem s o f E thnicity in the N orth E ast India. Delhi: A.K. Mittal, pp. 3-8. Naipaul, VS. (1990) India, A L a n d o f M illion M utinies N ow . London: Heineman. Nandy, Ashis (1992) ‘Federalism, The Ideology o f the State and Cultural Pluralism’, in Nirmal Mukherji and Balveer Arora (eds), Federalism in India: Origins and D evelopm ent. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, pp. 27-40. Narang, A.S. (1983) Storm over Satlaj. New Delhi: Gitanjli. Narayan, S. (ed.) (1992) Jharkhand M ovem ent: Origin and Evolution. NewDelhi: Inter-India. Pal, Kiran (1993) Tension A reas in Center-State Relations. New Delhi: Surid Publications. Palmer, Norman (1961) The Indian Political System. Boston: Hughton Mifflin.

Phadnis, Urmila (1989) Ethnicity and N ation ­ building in South A sia. N ew Delhi: Sage Publications. Prakash, Amit (2001) Jharkhand: Politics o f Identity an d Developm ent. Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Puri, Balraj (1981) Jamm u and K ashm ir: Trium ph and Tragedy o f Indian Federalism. New Delhi: Sterling. Ross, Cameron (2000) ‘Federalism and Dem o­ cratization in Russia’, Com m unist and PostCom m unist Studies, 3(4): 403-20. Rotimi, Suberu (2001) Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in N igeria. Washington, DC: United States Institute ofPeace Press. Schwartzberg, Joseph (1985) ‘Factors in the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States’, in Paul Wallace (ed.), Region an d N ation in India. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Co., pp. 155-82. Sengupta, Nirmal (ed.) (1982) Fourth W orld D ynam ics: Jharkhand. New Delhi: Author’s Guild Publication. Sharma, B.A.V (1 9 8 8 ) ‘Congress and the Federal Balance’, in Ram Joshi and R.K. Hebsur (eds), Congress in Indian Politics. Riverdale, Maryland: Riverdale Publishing Company, pp. 89-122. Singh, Gurharpal (1995) ‘The Punjab Crisis Since 1984: A Reassessment’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 18(3): 476-93. Singh, Khushwant (1953) The Sikhs. London: Allen & Unwin. Verma, P.S. (1987) Akali Dal: History, Electoral Performance and Leadership Profile’, in Gopal Singh (ed.), Punjab Today. New Delhi: Intellectual Publishing House, pp. 257-84. Wariawalla, Bharat (1988) ‘Personality, Domestic Political Institutions and Foreign Policy’, in Ram Joshi and R.K. Hebsur (eds), Congress in Indian Politics. Riverdale: Riverdale Publishing Company, pp. 245-70.

The Continuing Struggle for India’s Jharkhand Democracy\ Decentralization, and the Politics of Names and Numbers*

S t u a r t C o r b r id g e

At first blush, the formation of the states of Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, and Chhattisgarh in November 2000 would seem to signal the ‘suc­ cess of India’s democracy’ (to borrow a recent phrase from Atul Kohli 2001). And in key respects this is the case. The ability of the central state in India to manage centre-state relations has consistently upset the views of those observers, like Selig Harrison at the cusp of the 1960s, who believed that the for­ mation of ‘language states’would pave the way for a future of‘feuding regional ministries’, and even anarchy or fascism (Harrison I960: 249). AsJames Manor (2001: 8 5 -6 ) has pointed out, Prime Minister Nehru was pleasantly * Originally published as ‘The Continuing Struggle for India’s Jharkhand’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 40(3,2002): 55-71.

surprised by the way in which tensions in south India were relieved by an agreement to form the state ofAndhra Pradesh (AP) in 1953. This, along with the later creation of the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Gujarat, and the division o f‘greater Punjab’ in 1966, has surely strengthened—not weakened—democracy in India. Atul Kohli has suggested that: ‘Within the framework of a centralized but accommo­ dating state, democracy has enabled regional forces to successfully press their demands. These successes were manifest early in the area of identity politics, namely in the reorganiza­ tion of India along linguistic fines, and over the last three decades in the struggle to share economic resources between the national and state governments’ (Kohli 2001: ll). And James Manor, too, echoing this argu­ ment, has suggested that the decentring of the

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H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

nation in India has paved the way for ‘political regeneration (Manor 2001: 80). More so than Kohli, perhaps, he accepts that the centre has been able to manage the states because of the fluidity of identities and demands within the states, but he also pays homage to the skills of those political activists and ‘fixers’who ‘remain capable of making the politics of bargaining work’ (ibid.: 82). In his view, it is the very plu­ rality of contests for power within India, and not least since the revamping of panchayati raj institutions, which ensures that ‘parties and politicians ... remain engaged with the politics of elections and bargaining, even when they suffer defeats in some contests’ (Kohli 2001). As the old saw has it, diversity ensures unity. But is this really the case, and what are the costs of these engagements? One of the weak­ nesses of the pluralist account of the ‘success’ of India’s polity is that it is focused more on the institutionalization of democracy than on its substantial accomplishments [a point that is acknowledged by Kohli (ibid.: 3)]. It is true that secessionist movements have heen thin on the ground in India, and have been notably unsuccessful, but the continuing struggles in the northeast (which are properly recognized by Manor), and the often brutal containment of the struggles for an indepen­ dent Kashmir or even Khalistan, are hardly testimony to the institutional strength of India’s democracy They are evidence rather of the military strength of what remains a strongly centralized power. And while it can he argued that the formation of three new states in 2000 was a victory for commonsense in Uttaranchal (the state of Uttar Pradesh or UP being too large and too populous to govern effectively; Mawdsley 2002), and for economic justice in the case of Jharkhand (the new state for too long serving as an internal colony for Bihar), it cannot be denied that the formation of these states had more to do with political bargains

between a restricted number of elite actors than with the pressures from below acknowl­ edged in official statements at the time. I want to suggest here that, while the forma­ tion of a state ofJharkhand is to be welcomed, and while there are some early signs that the government of Babulal Marandi will enjoy some success in attracting foreign capital (in­ cluding increased loans from the Wforld Bank), the state has been formed with little regard for the adivasi communities so long in the van­ guard of the Jharkhand movement. The story I wish to tell is intended not as a rebuttal of the pluralist thesis but as a corrective. By focusing first on the formation of the demand for a Jharkhand state, and then on the changing economic geography of the region, I show how difficult it is to make an argument for a specifi­ cally ‘tribal’ state, a point not lost on the rul­ ing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. At the same time, I show how New Delhi and Patna have been active in the production of Jharkhand as a ‘detribalizing territory’, and how they have ignored the more pressing demands voiced by poorer households in Jharkhand for improved land rights. It is thus no coincidence that the successful decentring of the nation engineered in 2000 has been accompanied by a rising tide of Naxalism in Jharkhand, and by a turn to non-parliamentary popular movements. From the point of view of many adivasi (and non-adivasi) house­ holds, the substantial accomplishments of India’s democracy have been hard to discern. T H E M O V E M E N T F O R A J H A R K H A N D STATE

When Chief Minister Bahulal Marandi as­ sumed power in Ranchi city, the capital of the new state ofJharkhand, he did so at the behest of his masters in the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in New Delhi. Marandi came back to Jharkhand from his position as Union Minister of State

T he C ontinuing Struggle fo r India's Jharkhand

for Forests and Environment. Perhaps more importantly, he was a ‘tribal’ (adivasi) politician who enjoyed the support of leading figures in the BJP in Patna, the capital city of the state of Bihar from whichJharkhand was being cleaved. Unlike Shibu Soren (the long-time leader of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and key figure in the Jharkhand Area Autonomous Council set up in 1993), or even Karia Munda [another BJP Member of Parliament (MP), and long-time member for Khunti constituency in Ranchi district], Marandi had not been known for his activism in the Jharkhand movement. Marandi, indeed, was one of a group of politicians who had pressed the BJP in the 1990s to set up a separate state of \fmanchal (land of forests in Hindi) rather than a state of Jharkhand. The BJP ran with this idea for several years, in con­ tented recognition of the fact that Jharkhand, or at least those districts of ‘Jharkhand’ inside Bihar, was no longer an area dominated by adivasis, either numerically or economically. Although the BJP did come to win the. votes of adivasis loyal to politicians who moved over to the party—including Marandi and Karia Munda—its support base was rooted in those communities which the adivasis have tradition­ ally styled as ‘dikus’ (rapacious outsiders) or sadans (long-settled and mainly agricultural communities of non-tribal origin). And when the BJP did finally embrace the call for a state of Jharkhand, it did so with the blessing of the region’s manufacturing and trading classes (and, we can presume, the Tata group, on which more below), and with the intention of weak­ ening Lalu 3hdav and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar. As the BJP rightly calculated, the separation ofJharkhand from Bihar would deprive the latter not just of substantial sales and excise revenues, but also of subsidized electricity provision. The break-up of Bihar, of course, is hardly a matter of concern for activists within the

75

Jharkhand movement, and it is a reasonable bet that some of them will have been encour­ aged by the crackdown on corruption initi­ ated by Marandi early in 2002. It might also be the case that some adivasi communities will benefit from the significant expansion of World Bank funding planned for the forestry sector, or from an increase in jobs in manufac­ turing as and when foreign capital is attracted to the state. It is a disservice to these commu­ nities to maintain, as some in the cultural wing of the Jharkhand movement do, that they can­ not benefit from improved governance or from sustained economic growth. Nevertheless, for long-standing observers of the region it was ominous, to say the least, that eight adivasis were shot dead by the police in Tapkara village in the Koel-Karo region on 2 February 2001, less than three months after the formation of the new state. The adivasis were killed when a large number of them protested at a police action that had, on the previous day torn down a barricade which had been erected near Derang village as part of a campaign to keep contractors away from the site of a proposed dam on the Koel-Karo river system. The violent suppression of supporters of the KoelKaro Jan Sanghatan brought to mind the no­ torious police firing on a demonstration called by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) at Gua township in western Singhbhum district in September 1980 to protest against ‘police terror and state employment policies’ in the iron ore mining heartland of Jharkhand. The killing on that occasion of eight adivasis was followed by a police reign of terror in surround­ ing villages, and must be seen in the context of a wider struggle around the region’s mineral and timber resources. More generally this fir­ ing and the one at Tapkara need to be under­ stood against the backdrop of a longstanding struggle not just for the territory ofJharkhand, but also for the integrity of the cultural and

H a nd b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

76

ethnic identities mobilized as part of that battle (Devalle 1992). For proponents of a greater Jharkhand state—a state combining the Chota Nagpur and Santhal Parganas regions from erstwhile Bihar with tribal-dominated districts in neighbouring Orissa (now Odisha), Madhya Pradesh (as was), and West Bengal, much as was proposed to the States Reorganization Commission (SRC) in the 1950s (see Figure 4.1)—the struggle goes back to ‘heroes of the Jharkhand movement like Konta Munda (1820); Singrai-Bindrai Manki (1831); Tilka Majhi, Sidhu, Kanu, Chand, Bhairav (1856); Biswanath, Sahdey Ganpat Rai, Sheik Bhikari,

Figure 4.1

Kurban Ali, Nilambar, Pitanbar (1857); Birsa Munda, Bharmi Munda (1900); [and] Jatra Bhagat (1915)’.1 Its modern institu­ tional history begins with the founding of the Chotanagpur Adivasi Mahasabha in 1930, and of the Jharkhand Party itself in 1950. Under the leadership of Jaipal Singh, the Jharkhand Party was to establish itself as the principal opposition to Congress in Bihar in the general elections of 1952 and 1957, and it was en­ couraged to press its demand for a separate Jharkhand state to the SRC. The bases of this demand are worth re­ hearsing, for they show both the strengths and limitations of a discourse centred upon ideas

The Demand for Greater Jharkhand, c. 1950

T h e C ontinuing Struggle fo r India's Jharkhand

of culture and ethnicity and more recently of environment. The submission to the SRC stated that the tribal communities of greater Jharkhand had long been in a majority in the region, and had been dealt with by the British on that basis. The British, indeed, had ruled most of the region, or those parts of it not falling under the sway of native princes, on the assumption (or pretext) that the ‘indigenous communities’ (those described as Aboriginal and Semi-Aboriginal Tribes in the Census of 1872) should be dealt with directly by an officer of the colonial state. This person enjoyed discretionary powers under the pro­ visions setting up Excluded and Partially Excluded Areas, and he was required to keep the peace by dealing with the leaders of various tribal communities—the Mankis and Mundas. Failure to do so, the British supposed, would be akin to handing these communities over to the self-interested (and, later, ‘politically motivated’) big men of the Hindu communi­ ties who preyed upon their less well-educated countrymen. In time, of course, as we shall see, the willingness of some Jharkhandi activists to define their communities as victims of Hindu outsiders, or as noble lords of the forest, would limit the possibilities for building a less ethni­ cally restricted movement. But in the mid1950s it seemingly made sense to present an argument for a specifically ‘tribal’ Jharkhand, and to ally this to a revanchist politics seek­ ing to reclaim lost territory in the name of the true ‘sons [and daughters] of the soil’ (Weiner 1978). The submission to the SRC made the further arguments, then (again using government constructions of what it was to be ‘tribal’), that the integrity of the adivasi cultures of Gondwanaland would be lost if the tribaldominated areas were administered from Patna or Calcutta (now Kolkata), and if scant regard was paid to the distinctiveness of their

77

music, religions, literatures, and languages.2 Finally the Jharkhand Party made the claim, which has long been at the' centre of tribal politics in the region, that adivasi livelihoods were under threat from outside interests and Dikus. Away of life that was in tune with nature was being undermined by timber contractors and mining capital, and by those recent im­ migrants who refused entry to adivasis in the shops and hotels ofRanchi city J H A R K H A N D U N D E R M IN E D

To write in these terms, of course, is to oversim­ plify some key moments in the construction of Jharkhandi subnationalism. The discourse developed by the Jharkhand Party involved a delicate and sometimes unsustainable com­ promise between a primordialist account of the rights of India’s original people’, and references both to the wit and wisdom of these people (and their ability to deal with non-tribal popu­ lations) and to the need for special protective measures on their behalf (including job res­ ervations and the continuation of the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act of 1908). These tensions came to the fore during the debates of the Constituent Assembly when Jaipal Singh refused to join the Muslim and Christian com­ munities in giving up a claim upon reserved seats in the legislature—‘Adivasis are not giv­ ing up anything because they have never had anything’ (Gol 1946-9: 651)—even as he sought to remind members that: Adibasi society is the most democratic element in this country.... In Adibasi society all are equal, rich or poor Everyone has equal opportunity and I do not wish that people should get away with the idea that by writing this constitution and operating it we are trying to put a new idea into the Adibasi society. What we are actually doing is you are learning and taking something, (ibid.: 653—4)

The demand for a separate Jharkhand state was also prosecuted, at least until the

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H a n d b o o k o f Politics in Indian States

and that they are not equipped to deal with communities which are better versed in the law or the use of money. The noted Indian com­ mentator B.D. Sharma suggested the following in the late 1970s: ‘There is no functional differ­ entiation in the tribal community as yet even in relation to such basic aspects like the religious, social, economic and political. The tribal is not yet used to the sectoralised approach which is the distinguishing characteristic of modern advanced communities. For example, he cannot distinguish between a loan for consumption or for production purposes’ (1978: 531). And in the report of the (Dhebar) Commission on Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), we are told that ‘[i]It is difficult in the dry pages of an official report to convey to the reader the zest for life expressed in tribal poetry and dancing, the instinct for colour and pattern ... [nevertheless] above all things, the tribal people are intensely lovable and have fascinated most of those who have had anything to do with them’ (Gol 1962: 20). This perspective has the effect of consti­ tuting the adivasi communities as radically ‘Other’ to mainstream (caste) society, and of concentrating debate on the pros and cons of this Otherness. For some members of the Constituent Assembly the production of tribal identities was itself a function of British rule, and of the colonial power’s attempts to rule India by enforced divisions. According T h e Id e o lo g y o f T r ib a l E c o n o m y a n d S o c ie ty At the heart of tribal policy and politics in India to G.S. Ghurye, one of India’s leading so­ for the past 100 years has been an ‘ideology ciologists, the ‘so-called Scheduled Tribes’ of tribal economy and society’ (Corbridge were ‘degraded Hindus’ who needed to be 1988). Roughly summarized, this is the view assimilated back into the mainstream of Indian that ‘tribal’ societies are different: that they life—a view incidentally which informs some are organized according to a principle of of the activities of the BJP and the Rashtriya equality not hierarchy (in gender as well as Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) inJharkhand today in class terms); that they are geared to the (Ghurye 1980). For others, including Jawaharlal production of use values in remote and often Nehru, the Otherness of the tribes had to be forested areas of central or northeastern India; protected in much the same manner, and by that they maintain animistic forms of religion; roughly the same means, as the British had

emergence of the JMM in the 1970s, by educat­ ed members of an emerging tribal elite (itself heavily urbanized), and particularly by those who had been to mission schools and who en­ joyed support from the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches (Lai 1983). Its leadership came disproportionately from the Munda and Santhal communities, although a stinging Memorandum on ‘the adivasi problems in the central tribal belt of India’ was circulated in 1968 by the prominent Oraon leader (later Bishop), Nirmal Minz (see Minz 1968). For our purposes, however, the history of the Jharkhand movement matters rather less than developments within the historical geography of the region itself, and the ways in which key actors in the postcolonial state came to seize on these developments—and actively to pro­ duce others—in order to discount the claims of Jaipal Singh and his co-workers and successors. Some of these developments formed part of the case that was developed against the demand for a Jharkhand state in the report of the SRC (that tribals were no longer in a majority in Jharkhand, and lacked a link language), while other developments, including shifts in the economic geography of the region, had the effect of undermining the unity’ of tribal society which Jaipal Singh and others took for granted.

T he C ontinuing Struggle fo r India's Jharkhand

claimed to protect these communities—at least until they were able to look after them­ selves. This view also informed the politics of the Jharkhand Party, which celebrated not only a long line of tribal freedom fighters (including Birsa Munda) but also the republican traditions of adivasi society. The problem that would come to haunt the Jharkhand Party, however, was that these descriptions of tribal society were increas­ ingly at odds with the lived realities of many Jharkhandis. In the first 30 years of the twenti­ eth century, the economy of Chota Nagpur and Santal Parganas was based on a single rain-fed crop of paddy and many tribal (and nontribal) families had to make use of the forests surrounding their villages to make ends meet. A large number of families also had to migrate to the tea gardens of Assam onA permanent or a circular basis. The Census of 1921 recorded 307,000 migrants coming to Santal Parganas and Chota Nagpur, and 947,000 leaving the re­ gion (Singh 1978: 69). By the 1940s, however, there were developments in place that would change the economic geography ofJharkhand. Unlike in some parts of the Northeast, or even the interior areas of modern-day Orissa and AP, many tribal communities in Jharkhand found increased opportunities for work in the mines and factories that were growing up in India’s resource triangle. This was very obvi­ ously the case in Hazaribagh and Manbhum (later Dhanbad) districts, which had been developed from the 1870s as major centres of coal and mica mining, and into which came large numbers of ‘Diku’ families from greater Bengal and the United Provinces (Simmons 1976). Significantly the Interim Report of the Excluded and Partially Excluded Areas (other than Assam) Sub-Committee of the Constituent Assembly concluded in 1947 that these two districts, along with Palamau, should be de-scheduled. Unsurprisingly the

79

recommendation drew a minute of dissent fromJaipal Singh, which protested the ‘demoli­ tion of the economic, geographical and ethnic unity of the Chota Nagpur Division’ (quoted in Prakash 1999: 478), a point to which we will return. More important in the longer run was the induction of large numbers of tribal labourers into the coal mines of Dhanbad and Hazaribagh, and into the iron ore and copper mines of Singhbhum district. Some of these labourers were pushedinto the mines following the loss of their lands under the terms of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. Between 1915 and 1925 close to 100,000 acres of land in southwest Singhbhum passed into the public domain’ for the quarries of the Tata Iron and Steel Company and the Bengal Iron and Steel Company, and for the housing compounds, roads and railway lines that supplied them (Corbridge 1982). But many more were per­ suaded to work in the mines by the relatively high wages paid there. By the late 1940s some 7,600 miners were employed in the Singhbhum iron quarries (including 3,200 females), the vast majority of whom would have been adivasis. And when real wage rates (including dear­ ness allowances, sick pay, and leave allowances) increased significantly in the 1950s, some of these tribals, and many more in the coal mining areas to the north, were able to use their savings to purchase land from other tribal families, as they were permitted to do under the terms of the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act. It was through means such as this, as well as through the acquisition of government jobs reserved for the STs, that a growing number of tribal families were able to forge lifestyles which can be described as ‘middle-class’ (Corbridge 2000). Members of these families are well able to distinguish between loans for production and loans for consumption, and not a few of them have placed siblings in the

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changing ways of being of tribal people might be combined with some recognition of the rights of those who have settled in the region more recently. The JMM and the Jharkhand Coordination Committee (JCC) have moved in this direction, as I explain below. In any case, the point I now wish to develop is the more straightforward one that inconsistencies in the demands and characterizations of the Jharkhand movement have been seized upon by generations of politicians who have not wished to see the creation of a ‘tribal’ state. Some of these politicians, moreover, have emerged from within a ‘tribal community’ that has found it difficult to speak with one voice. We see this well enough when we return to the deliberations of the SRC. On the face of it, one of the more straightforward claims made by the Jharkhand Party to the SRC was the sug­ gestion that Jharkhand was a region in which tribal people were in a majority It was reported to members of the Simon Commission in 1930 that ‘the primitive tribes’ made up 58 per cent of the population of the Chota Nagpur plateau (Prakash 1999: 469), and proponents of a greater Jharkhand state were able to raise this figure to 70 per cent when they added in the populations of the princely states of what became northern Orissa. How, then, could the SRC deny that the adivasis made up a majority of the proposed Jharkhand state? The answer T h e P o l it ic s o f N a m e s a n d N u m b e r s It is important to pause at this point. To suggest is to be found in the ways in which the post­ that tribal identities in Jharkhand are becoming colonial state chose to recognize ‘tribalness’, more fluid is not to suggest that what Pramod or the designation of certain communities Parajuli has called an ‘adivasi cosmovision is as STs. In the Census of 1872 the British authorities provided a list o f‘The Aboriginal unimportant in eastern India (Parajuli 1996). Nor is it to deny that large numbers ofadivasi and Semi-Hinduised Aboriginal Tribes of peoplehavebeenmarginalizedby the processes Chota Nagpur and Santal Parganas, Bihar’. of economic development I have described, Under the Aboriginal Tribes were listed such or have not been its major victims in terms communities as the Asur and the Agaria, as of loss of lands. Nor must we suppose that a well as the Bhuiher, Bhumij, Gond, Kol (Ho), more imaginative Jharkhandi politics cannot Mai, Munda, Naik, Uraon, Sonthal, and Tharu. be conjured up, in which a sensitivity to the Included under the list of Semi-Hinduized administrative, forest or police services, just as middle-class families have done across India. Recent research has also confirmed that significant levels of inequality in the ownership and use of land are common in ‘tribal’ villages removed from the centres of mining capitalism, and that not all communities in Ranchi district listed as STs are recognized as adivasi’by mem­ bers of the Munda and Oraon communities (Kumar 2002; Kumar and Corbridge 2002). Some members of these communities—for example, the Oraon Bhagats—have also been pursuing a strategy of sanskritization that in­ volves the forswearing of meat and alcohol, and the rejection of certain forms of ancestor worship. In short, there are good reasons to believe that the republican and communitarian 'traditions’ which have long been celebrated by (tribal) Jharkhandi politicians, as well as in the official statements of the colonial and postco­ lonial state, are, if not quite invented traditions (Bates 1994), traditions that are under attack. Notwithstanding the efforts of cultural reviv­ alists within the Jharkhand movement, the assumed unity of ‘tribal Jharkhand’ has been eroding at a pace that has only slowly been acknowledged by a political campaign which is reluctant to concede the changing and multi­ form nature of‘tribal’ identities.

T he Continuing Struggle fo r India's Jharkhand

Aboriginal Tribes were the Bagdi, Bathudi, Bhar, Chamar, Dom, Ghatwal, Hari, Kadar, Mahali, Musahar, Pasi, and Rajwar. In all, 31 communities were listed as Aboriginal Tribes in Chota Nagpur, with a further 31 being listed as Semi-Hinduized Aboriginal Tribes (the cor­ responding figures for Santal Parganas were 14 and 25). In the list of STs presented by the state of Bihar following Independence, just 30 communities were recorded. Following the conventions applied in north and central Bihar, communities such as the Chamars and Musahars were now listed as SCs, while other communities joined the ranks of what became the Other Backward Castes (OBCs). Particularly in Hazaribagh and Manbhum districts (or Dhanbad district, after part of Manbhum district was given to West Bengal as Purulia district), the very fact that some aboriginals’ had gained employment in the mining or industrial sectors was taken as evidence of their ‘detribalization. This form of reasoning, which drew upon contemporary work on ‘tribes in transition’ (Majumdar 1937), and which won consider­ able backing from non-tribal members of the Legislative Assembly was not easily countered by members of the Jharkhand Party. However, much Jaipal Singh sought to emphasize that ‘tribal folk’had come out oftheir forest fastness­ es, the rhetoric of his party was overwhelm­ ingly edenic and republican. Meanwhile, in the Constituent Assembly Debates, the ‘dominant nationalist discourse ... undermined any sug­ gestion of a separate-tribal identity’ (Prakash 1999: 484). In response to Jaipal Singh’s suggestion that ‘Adibasis collectively form a single community’, K.M. Munshi charged that: ‘There is nothing common between one tribe and another.... To call them Adibasis and group them together as one community will not only be an untruth in itself but would be absolutely ruinous for the tribes themselves’

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(quoted in ibid.). In any case, under the new definition of ‘tribalness’ the quest for an adivasi majority in Jharkhand, and certainly in the Bihar Jharkhand, was bound to grow more elusive. According to the data and definitions used in the Census of 1951, just 31.15 per cent of the population of Chota Nagpur, and 44.67 per cent of that of Santal Parganas was made up of STs. Had the Census takers adopted the definitions used by the British in 1872, the percentage figures would have been 45.79 per cent and 55.21 per cent, respectively. By the time of the Census of 1971, as Figure 4.2 makes clear, only Ranchi district was recorded as a tribal majority district (53.50 per cent), and the STs made up just 30.94 per cent of the total population in Chota Nagpur and 36.22 per cent of that of Santal Parganas. By this time, too, even the .1872 definitions would not have worked significantly to the advan­ tage of the cause of a tribal Jharkhand: the corresponding figures would have been 61.92 per cent for Ranchi district, 39.24 per cent for Chota Nagpur and 50.60 per cent for Santal Parganas (see Corbridge 1988: Table 6). It would be unwise to argue that the adivasis of Jharkhand were cheated out of their birth­ right by the simple manipulation of names and numbers. The construction o f‘tribalness’ is always a matter of convention, and, as I sug­ gested earlier, it would have been a conceit for Jharkhand Party leaders to claim that members of the dominant Munda, Santhal, Oraon, and Ho communities treated Naiks or Mahlis on an equal basis. In any case, the greater damage was done by the mass migration of non-tribals to the region after Independence, and in the wake of Nehru’s plans for the industrial trans­ formation of Jharkhand. But it would be naive to maintain that the highly circumscribed list of STs produced by the Government of Bihar was not self-serving.: The Government of Bihar brought pressure to bear on the SRC to

H and b oo k o f Politics in Indian States

82

(a ) U s in g 1 8 7 2 D e fin itio n s

(b ) U s in g 1 9 7 1 D e fin itio n s

S a n ta l P a rg a n a s P a la m a u D hanbad

% 'T r ib a l' >50

R a n ch i 4 0 -5 0

3 0 -4 0 S in g h b h u m

2 0 -3 0