INDIA AND INERTIA
How to Get the Country Moving
By
M.L. Sondhi
The Statesman, January 23, 1990
Many Western-oriented scholars are inclined to see Indian
democracy as a result of two dichotomous forces: first, the
divisive nature of Indian society and social forces, and
secondly, the integrative process of the Western
parliamentary system which tries to overcome the
contradictions of traditional India.
There is little need here to quote examples
of how such scholars who predicted “dangerous decades” for
India have been proved false prophets. The integrative
process of Indian culture has through the ages produced
excellent examples of democratic political practice. If on
account of historical circumstances, India’s democratic
identity has been curbed by alien influences, the resulting
social and political breakdown should cause no surprise.
VALUES
An essential prerequisite for the success of the democratic
experiment in India is to remove disruptive foreign
influences and the authoritarian, dogmatic and hierarchical
values that have crept in along with them. The age-old
techniques of political accommodation and social tolerance
should be given full scope in shaping the identity of our
political society. The collective identity of India must be
rooted in economic and political freedom. At the same time,
India cannot have a nationalist attitude which is imitative
of European nationalisms, but must reach out to the
emergence of new civilizational imperatives for the coming
millennium.
There is still too much cultural
discrimination and bigotry in the world and India cannot
compete on this basis. The question of “How to get India
moving” can only be answered if the political leadership
captures the imagination of the millions with the kind of
national image that is worth defending in terms of our
civilizational heritage. There is a genuine lack of
appreciation for the Indian values of tolerance and
pluralism in certain cultures which do not cherish
democratic values and civil liberties.
By transmitting the values of such
unidimensional cultures into the political process, we
cannot generate a truly national vision. The collective
identity of India must be clearly connected to the maturing
of the democratic process in a world society, through
politics based on reason, tolerance and human compassion.
The inertia of the Indian scene is the
result of the lack of faith of our decision-makers in the
traditional democratic values of Indian culture and their
abject failure to educate and shape public opinion. Instead
of lauding and emulating the achievements of cultures which
have plunged the world in violence and bloodshed, the Indian
goal must consist in breaking the chains of dogma and
showing the way to world unity without destroying the
individuality of other nations.
Most Indians wish for an open society where
there would be ample space for individuals, families, social
groups and social movements to enrich the cultural life of
the nation. Unfortunately, till now, the rulers of India
have regarded such a society as a threat to their
existence. During the four decades after the transfer of
power, the ruling establishment has failed to make any
fundamental changes in the socio-institutional structures
left behind by the imperialist rulers.
The environmental crisis which India is now
facing in both its urban and rural life is the direct result
of the bureaucratic state created by Jawaharlal Nehru in the
name of socialism, and his failure to initiate democratic
participatory development. He and his advisers had an
obsessive interest in the models of development provided by
the European experience, especially that of Britain. Nehru
did not realize that the political imagination for building
a self-reliant India could not come through the imitation of
the West or of Soviet Russia.
The failure of politicians trained in the
playgrounds of Eton and Harrow, or in the corridors of the
London School of Economics, to bring about a political
transformation of India need surprise no one. With the
advent of freedom they could only build nationwide
bureaucratic institutions but remained singularly
unresponsive to local needs. They may have known how to use
May’s Parliamentary Practice, but they did not know how to
help decentralized small-scale production and how to build
local political structures.
It is the indifference to local needs that
results in exaggerating the importance of “national”
institutions which have been imported from Western political
culture. In fact, the inter-spaces between our major
political institutions are the areas where national
self-expression and self-rule (swarajya) have prevented
outright distortion of national activities by imported
institutions. It is in the inter-spaces that much hopeful
activity will be possible in the future.
In the outside world little is known about
the grassroots democracy of India, and attention mostly is
focused on the Westminster model of parliament. It is easy,
therefore, for the world Press to project a misleading
picture of traditional elements which wish to obliterate the
legacy of British modernization. Movements such as the Cow
Protection Movement are castigated as obscurantist rather
than valued for their ecological potential. Similarly, the
credit for maintaining democratic rule when other Third
World states have come under military rule is wrongly
attributed to those elements who have not hesitated to make
inroads into the Fundamental Rights.
The real resistance to arbitrary rule in
India lies in the political will of hundreds of
traditionally based opinion groups throughout the country.
Nehru’s pet themes of “secularism”, “socialism” and
“non-alignment” could not provide the language of self
expression which Indian civilization needs in the
contemporary era. If Nehru had lived longer he would have
realized that he was losing his hold on the people not
because there was a traditional backlash against his
modernization programme, but because he was no longer able
to express the political and social profile of the nation in
its tryst with destiny.
His successor in office, Lal Bahadur
Shastri, proved many political prophets wrong because he
grasped the essential fact that Indian democracy required
traditional methods of accommodation and conciliation.
In discussing the need to modify the
political process to meet new challenges, a suggestion is
often made to change from the British parliamentary type to
the American-type presidential system. This approach
ignores the nature of the basic changes which are required
to meet the legitimate participatory demands of the people.
The formal procedures of government are not sufficiently
expressive of the real political dialogue that is needed to
revitalize the Indian political system and political
processes.
The presidential system will prove even more
unsuitable if it is imposed from above. The Americans
adopted such a system for a nation of immigrants who did not
share a common history, tradition or culture. In India, not
only do we have the consciousness developed during the
struggle for freedom from imperialism, we also have the
unique features of a common classical antiquity, a
continuous history and traditions received from a rich and
chequered past.
TRUTH
The truth, unfortunately, that is not generally understood
is that India can make the best of its opportunities by
strengthening its political mind with the traditional ethos
of Indian civilization.
It is, therefore, necessary to create as
many links as possible between Parliament and the local
political structures of the country, so that the
parliamentary system can foster democratic participatory
development at the grassroots level instead of imposing the
apparatus of a centralized bureaucracy. Such a public
philosophy will strengthen national unity, foster democracy
and promote humane values in the service of peace and
harmony. |