Trajectories of the Indian Republic: At 75, the story still remains extremely dynamic

Salil Misra

Where does the Indian Republic stand at 75? What have been the major milestones in the journey of Independent India since 1947? And what does the future look like from the vantage point of today?

Around the turn of Independence, India inherited a set of contradictions, which did cast their shadow on the journey of the Republic. By most yardsticks, India was easily one of the most backward countries, economically speaking. The average life expectancy of an Indian stood at 32 years. India’s literacy rate was around 14 per cent. For women, it was much lower, at around 9 per cent. Famines were not a rare occurrence. A famine in Bengal, during the Second World War, killed three million people. People died of disease but also of starvation, caused by the shortage of food. Quite clearly, India was a large country, the second largest after China, but a small economy. Two centuries of colonial rule had drained India’s resources and destroyed the potential for economic growth.

But India also had certain advantages compared to some of the other colonies. At the time of Independence, it had an independent capitalist class, not tied to British imperialism. India also had an adequate infrastructure in the form of banks, other financial institutions, road and rail networks, needed for economic development.

Above all, the great Indian advantage lay in its rich intellectual and philosophical traditions. The people of India had offered a most disciplined and enlightened mass struggle against the mighty British imperialism. The depth of India’s intellectual capital showed up, above all, in the Constitution, which was adopted in 1949 through an elected Constituent Assembly and came into force on January 26, 1950 — designated as Republic Day. The Indian Constitution was both representative and emancipatory. It represented the aspirations of Indian people. It also contained the blueprint for India’s transformation along modern lines, while retaining the positive elements of its traditions. With this baggage of contradictions, what was the nature of the Indian journey into the future?

An overview of the Indian Republic indicates multiple trajectories — oscillations, continuities and mutations. All in all, it is the story not of a static but of an extremely dynamic social order. Motion has clearly been a greater force than inertia. It is another matter that the dynamism has not always been in the desirable direction. On the whole, it would be true to say that the political trajectory of the Republic has been marked by discontinuities; the economic trajectory has displayed continuities; and the development of the ‘nation’ has faced mutations.

Politically, Independent India initiated its transformation under the auspices of the representative state of the Indian people. This was also a period of consensus in which there was a broad agreement on the major goals to be achieved. Nehru was clearly the leader of this consensus. This was also a phase of political centralisation with very little opposition to Nehru’s leadership. It used to be argued that Prime Minister Nehru was also the biggest leader of the Opposition. This centralisation carried with it the germs of authoritarianism. But the Indian polity did not go on the path of authoritarianism partly because of the hangover of the national movement, Nehru’s enlightened leadership, the plural character of the Congress party, an overall consensual ecosystem, and a firm focus on diversity.

Cracks began to appear in this model from the late Sixties. Consensus was the first variable that disappeared. Persistence of centralisation even in the absence of consensus created openings for authoritarianism. The disenchantment with it was manifested in the JP movement, the reaction to which was declaration of the Emergency.

Centralisation without consensus had its own contradictions and could not be sustained for long. The pendulum of Indian polity swung very decisively in the opposite direction. Excessive centralisation was followed by excessive federalisation, particularly during the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. This was also the time when the Congress had begun to steadily decline but the BJP — its putative all-India alternative — had not yet reached its potential. There was a clear weakening of all-India parties. The functioning of governments — either of the NDA or the UPA variety — depended on the small regional parties which could go to the extent of blackmailing the all-India parties.

Soon there was disenchantment with this model too and there was a second swing of the pendulum towards centralisation in the second decade of the 21st century. The oscillation back to centralisation happened under vastly different circumstances and was fundamentally different from the first centralisation of the 1950s. The great Congress decline continued and appeared to be irreversible. The Left had ceased to be a serious contender for the pan-Indian polity. Indian society’s preference for a centralised polity was also accompanied by a craving for a strong leader. The global economic crisis, like all big economic crises of the past, had already created openings for a right-wing takeover. In addition, the cultural energies and aspirations had begun to tilt towards majoritarianism. All this inevitably resulted in the BJP coming to power. However, it may not be entirely correct to see the BJP as the mere beneficiary of the new realities. The relationship between the two was a dialectical one. The BJP benefitted by the new realities. But it had also played its role in creating the new realities. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the 1980s and ’90s was only partially aimed at building of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Substantively, it was aimed at creating a pan-Indian political constituency of Hindus, and thus bringing majoritarianism to the centre of Indian politics.

Thus it was that the pendulum of Indian polity swung from centralisation to federalisation and then swung back to centralisation. But the resemblance between the two centralisations is purely superficial. The centralisation of the 1950s under Nehru was accompanied by a strong commitment to secularism and pluralism. Celebrating plurality was projected as the hallmark of Indian polity. The current phase of centralisation has shown a clear preference for unitarianism as against pluralism. It may be said that all the major conflicts in the Indian society today, beneath the surface, are marked by the basic contest between these two rival visions — pluralism and unitarianism — with scales clearly tilted in favour of unitarianism.

In the economic realm, however, the trajectory is that of continuity and organic growth rather than that of break or oscillation. Around the time of Independence, there was an overwhelming consensus that India had to economically grow through self-reliance and largely on the basis of its own resources. Any possibility of a re-colonisation of the Indian economy was to be firmly ruled out.

The planned model of economy, import substitution strategy and later the Green Revolution were all steps in the same direction. It would be true to say that by the 1980s, any possibility of re-colonisation, or a domination of Indian economy by any of the superpowers, had been effectively nipped in the bud. After acquiring a secure foundation, the Indian economy took the next big step towards participating in the global economy. This had been done successfully by South Korea in the 1960s and China in the 1970s. It was felt that in order to effectively compete in the global market, India also needed to bring about major economic reforms internally. Gradual withdrawal by the government and incentives for private initiatives were steps in the same direction. In a very short span of time, three major monopolies — of Indian Airlines in civil aviation, of Doordarshan in television channels and of VSNL/BSNL in telecommunication — were ended, with long-term consequences. The great focus on economic growth has also enabled the governments to practise welfare. Some of the major welfare schemes — MNREGA, Right to Education and the supply of free ration to crores of Indians during and after Covid — could be possible because rapid economic growth had created resources that could then be utilised for welfare. It was thus that India’s economic experiments replaced the growth versus welfare binary with one in which the two were linked to each other. Growth made welfare possible. The trajectory of Indian economy so far has been that of continuity with an organic growth. The economic reforms, initiated during 1991-92 and continued thereafter, need to be seen not as a reversal of the earlier economic policies, but as their extension, the logical next step.

It is, however, in the basic identity of the Indian nation that major mutations have taken place. A nation of Indian people had started developing since the second half of the 19th century. The mainstream imagination of the Indian nation, as articulated and practised by the leaders of the freedom struggle, was that of civic rather than ethnic entity, territorial rather than religious, plural rather than unitarian, federal rather than centralised, and non-coercive. A struggle against the British and a conception of the unity of all Indian people were to be the two major pillars of Indian nationalism. Great efforts were made to bring religious, cultural and linguistic minorities to the nationalist platform. All minorities were reassured that they would be able to participate in the national life as equal members of the nation. This was in brief the outline of the emerging Indian nation.

Indian nationalism achieved its greatest success when British imperialists were forced to go back in 1947. However, the moment of its greatest success was also one of its biggest failure when the territory and people of India were partitioned into two nation-states of India and Pakistan.

After 1947, anti-imperialism, one big pillar of Indian nationalism, ceased to be a major factor. What would now be the main elements in its ideational fabric? This was the question before Nehru as the leader of the Indian people. He based it on developmentalism, social harmony and a dignified place for India among the major nation-states of the world. He set up a national integration council which consisted of politicians, bureaucrats and academics. The council was to recommend measures to strengthen the Indian nation along lines inherited from the national movement days.

This dominant imagination of Indian nationalism was pulled and pushed in multiple directions in the 1980s. Its legitimacy was questioned by separatist movements in Punjab, Kashmir and parts of the North-East. Attempts were made to reorient it towards a Hindu majoritarian direction by the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. And its internal fault-lines were highlighted — and often exaggerated — by the Dalit assertion in politics. The ideational fabric of Indian nationalism was put to a severe test. The challenges came from multiple directions and with varying degrees of assertiveness. The decade of 1980s inflicted the maximum damage on the original mainstream Indian nationalism, since 1947. It survived but was considerably bruised and damaged. All the possibilities — fragmentation, mutation and appropriation — developed, each capable of altering the basic character of Indian nationalism.

These then have been the three major trajectories of the Indian Republic. The polity has gone through flux and re-flux, much like the pendulum of the clock. The economy has experienced continuous and organic growth instead of any major breaks and ruptures. The biggest question mark, however, is on the basic character and orientation of Indian nationalism. The original idea appears fragile and weakened from within, than ever before.

What about the future? Is it going to be merely an extension of the present, with all its certainties and uncertainties, or are we going to see an enlargement of the range of possible trajectories? Clearly, we do not know. The answer about the future also lies in the future.

— The writer teaches history at Ambedkar University, Delhi

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