India must safeguard its plurality

Shyam Saran

Former Foreign Secretary and Honorary Fellow, CPR

AZADI Ka Amrit Mahotsav, the year-long celebration of the 75th anniversary of Independence, will conclude today. But we shall still be in Amrit Kaal, which will take us to 2047, marking the centenary of Independence. This maps India’s anticipated journey to the front ranks of the global economy and to a ‘developed country’ status in all respects. Projections estimate India’s GDP in 2047 at a level that would make it the second-ranking economy in the world, a position that China occupies today. This is plausible even with a modest 6 per cent annual GDP growth. India’s advantages are its still relatively favourable demographic profile, the size of its market, the rising pool of increasingly educated and skilled personnel, the steady improvement of its infrastructure and the continuing dynamism of its entrepreneurial class. One should add political stability, which is the happy outcome of its resilient democratic dispensation. Not that we have not faltered on occasion, but have, each time, drawn back from the precipice and resumed our journey towards the transformation of India. One could cite the disastrous 1962 India-China war; the declaration of the Emergency by then PM Indira Gandhi in 1975; the assault on the Golden Temple and the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, followed by the shameful anti-Sikh riots in the capital; the violent demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, and, in its wake, the widespread communal riots. Communal and sectarian embers continue to smoulder and there are dangerous eruptions like what we are witnessing in Haryana and Manipur. Perhaps this too shall pass as it has in the past, but nothing should be taken for granted. We must not be complacent.

The Indian state, by and large, has been successful in creating an environment which is conducive to enhancing its security and economic prospects.

We have managed a most challenging and constantly shifting external environment since Independence with a deftness and sophistication that is under-appreciated. Adversarial and sometimes openly hostile relations with China and Pakistan have been a fixity. They have been managed with a combination of deterrence and engagement, not allowing security compulsions to overwhelm the pursuit of economic and social development. There has been a tacit understanding that, in the long run, India’s security against its adversaries is best served through the steady accumulation of its economic capabilities, that guns and butter complement each other in this longer perspective. India has maintained its agency on matters that are of vital interest to the country. It navigated the Cold War with a combination of judicious partnerships and multilateralism, leveraging the constituency of emerging and developing countries. Not many people realise the enormity of the ‘polycrisis’ that India confronted at the end of the Cold War and the swift disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. I was in the Prime Minister’s Office under Chandra Shekhar in 1991 and witnessed first-hand the bankruptcy that loomed over the Indian state. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union and, with that, the 30-year old strategic partnership with Moscow, which played such an important role in enhancing India’s security through a privileged defence relationship and preferential economic and trade relations. The emergent unipolar world dominated by the US made India exceptionally vulnerable in its parlous economic state. And yet within a couple of years, India had dealt with the imminent bankruptcy through the adoption of far-reaching economic reforms and liberalisation. It sensed the change in US-China relations in the wake of the violent Tiananmen incident of 1989. With the Soviet threat having evaporated, China emerged increasingly in US crosshairs as the potential adversary. India began to be seen as a potential counter-weight to this rising power. This created space for India to emerge as a full-fledged nuclear weapon state and build a new, more positive relationship with the US. The remarkable conclusion of the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement in 2008 marked the successful culmination of a strategy to replacing the Indo-Soviet strategic partnership with an Indo-US strategic partnership.

What does this show? That the Indian state, by and large, has been successful in creating an external environment which is conducive to enhancing its security and economic prospects. This is successful Indian foreign policymaking and diplomacy. The dynamism in India’s foreign policy continues to manifest itself under PM Modi’s leadership, but continuities are more significant than apparent departures.

It is this stubborn resilience, both in domestic and external domains, that makes one optimistic about India’s future. But it is worth pondering over what may derail the India story.

A most precious asset nurtured by the people of India for centuries has been its incredible ability to manage immense diversity of religions, ethnicities and languages in its age-old concept of common humanity; in the recognition that there are multiple paths to the realisation of one’s destiny; that cultures and traditions are for sharing and not merely for showing. This is a country where plurality is a matter of celebration rather than a threat to national unity. It is this asset which is being eroded through growing communalisation and a hankering after conformism and ephemeral uniformity. It is plurality, too, which underlies India’s federal polity; indeed, its democratic dispensation. But under the surface lurk ancient fault-lines which sometimes erupt or are cynically stoked to achieve political power and privilege. These fault-lines must be understood and not allowed to overwhelm the Indian state. Any step towards reconciling different persuasions in different domains must be taken only after open debate and consensus-building. The concept of a Uniform Civil Code, currently under consideration, cannot be coercively imposed on a diverse demography.

India’s unity and its march towards Amrit Kaal are integrally linked to its continuing adherence to democracy, respect for diversity and the dignity of each individual citizen. The India of Amrit Kaal must not merely be a developed economy but a just and egalitarian society, a society at ease with itself. If there is a lesson which India could teach to the world, it is its innate ability to manage plurality. In a crowded world confronting multiple challenges, it is this quality which could generate international solidarity and a sense of common humanity which are indispensable to their resolution.

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