Ruptured & ruined lives

M Rajivlochan

The liberals among the British lost no chance to divide the people of India in the name of democracy. In the face of tremendous resistance by Indians, these self-appointed improvers of society insisted that religion was the all-defining characteristic of Indians. Political equal opportunity for Indians needed to be judged along the axis of religion and then the liberals set up ‘separate electorates’. Basically, laying the seeds of the two-nation theory in 1909. That theory created the worst human disasters in human history in the form of the Partition of India in 1947.

Despite that horrific start to democracy, Indians decided to opt for a democratic government, crafted one of the most verbose of Constitutions for themselves and became the butt of jokes across the world. ‘How can democracy be like this!’, the wise critics wondered. As the world sat around eagerly to witness the collapse of democracy in India, Indians decided to empower themselves. Inclusion became the big idea even when the thought itself would be created only at the end of the century.

By the 1960s, it was clear that Indians had developed a stake in keeping democracy functional and healthy in the country. Far too many people, especially the poor and downtrodden, had developed a stake as well. The result: Almost as if by magic, democracy continued to grow stronger in India, while it faltered and died in many other places of the world. It is this story that Matthews tells with great verve. Very aptly, he calls it, The Great Indian Rope Trick, in which the audience stands spellbound while a rope stands up without any visible support.

The one lacunae in India was the absence of a vibrant system of political parties. For much of India’s history, the Congress seemed to be the only viable political party. The rest went through so many iterations that they might as well not have existed. Over two decades of experience of ‘coalition politics’ seems to have sorted out that issue too.

Today, with Modi at the helm, the Bharatiya Janata Party emerged as a political party that just might mark the beginnings of a new kind of politics. It can be said that the Constitution that Indians gave to themselves is superior to all sectional interests within the nation.

Matthews becomes one of the few commentators on India who examine the history of India not as a standalone phenomenon but in comparison with other similarly placed societies. His comparisons, though, are high on political correctness. Pakistan, for example, he refuses to call a basket case. He says that Pakistan has ‘an indistinct political relationship to Islam and regional diversity’ (Pg 191).

The fact remains that Pakistan, since the 1980s, has identified itself as an ‘Islamic’ republic. It took a while for the Islamic states to discover that the authorities of the state, including the ISIS were paying a lip service to Islamism. Taliban and its clones provided them with the necessary wherewithal to frog march the rest of Pakistani society towards Islam. Today that country has been reduced to its own caricature.

The most attractive feature of this book, apart from its dust jacket, is its multi-layered texture, its ability to make bold and yet fair comparisons between ideas of democracy and their implementation in the lands of South Asia.

India remains its focus; other countries provide a foil for making better sense of all that is going on in India. To make it easier for the reader, Matthews even provides a timeline that becomes increasingly detailed as one reaches recent times.