Fifty Years of Independence - Fifty Years of Divisions


Raj Mishra

 

The golden jubilee of India's independence (as well as that of Pakistan and other countries of South Asia) has been in the headlines not just in India but around the world. It would almost seem that there is more interest in this anniversary than there was for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of the second world war and the defeat of Nazism.


In particular, young people of Indian origin are showing a desire in familiarising themselves with India. Many are participating in the functions being organised this year, in order to get a feel for what India and their Indian-ness is all about. This response is only natural because Indians in this society are facing very definite problems in the form of their marginalisation. They find themselves ill-equipped to fight this marginalisation, and this is one of the reasons for the identity crisis.


The developments in India make no sense to them. They want to understand the contradictory faces of India: the glittering upper-class life in the cities and the grinding urban and rural poverty; the elections and non-violent transfers of power juxtaposed with the bloody riots and massacres; the rule of law on one hand with extra-judicial killings and torture on the other; the multi-party political system and governments that lurch from one crisis to another; the appointment of a Muslim, a Sikh, a dalit or a woman as President or Prime Minister, coupled with the worst atrocities committed against these respective collectives. The desire to come to grips with these contradictions is to deal with this identity crisis. It is a desire to establish a standard to identify with, because official India is unable to provide a standard consistent with the highest ideals of humanity at this time.


It is a quest to establish the highest ideals of our times by which we can live and work in the societies where we reside. There is an objective basis for us to activise ourselves - it is to affirm ourselves as people of Indian origin, it is to affirm our vision consistent with the highest ideals of civilisation and it is to work for the realisation of those ideals in the societies that we reside as well as in the societies that we come from. It is a liberating force to participate on the side of history that is marching into the future, inscribing on it equal rights in place of discrimination, prosperity of all in place of grinding poverty, liberation in place of domination and oppression. It is a recognition of the collective interest and a rejection of narrow and selfish individualism.


Must We Take Sides?


In the last fifty years, there have been eleven national elections in India. Eleven Prime Ministers have come and gone, some more than once. It is also true that in India you will see computers and CD's in store shelves, pizzas and hamburgers in restaurants, Pepsi and corn flakes on kitchen shelves and neon signs and discos in city-centres. India possesses satellites and cellular phones, Agni and Prithvi missiles, nuclear reactors and cryogenic rockets. Being a country that emerged from colonial bondage only fifty years ago, you are bound to meet the Indian who will be proud of these achievements, because to him or her, under-development was the legacy of colonialism while technology and modern goods - both military and civilian - are not only the mark of a hard-working and talented people but are the vehicles to go forth into the future.


What is a mistake is to view at these achievements in the spirit of a colonialist, an empire builder, in the way that a liberated slave in ancient times himself aspired to be a slave-owner some day. The colonial legacy actually appeals to many minds in India who view India's developments in this manner, so that the production of modern goods, services, technology and so on become primary while the role they play, the services they render and the conditions they preserve and create become secondary.


In plain terms, the welfare of the people as the barometer of the progress of India appears as an after-thought in such discourse, which has since turned to the "trickle-down" theories of a Margaret Thatcher or a Ronald Reagan with which to defend itself. That is a sorry rendering indeed of the accomplishments of past fifty years. It should rightly be called the "neutron bomb outlook" - one which silently wipes away people, while leaving buildings and structures standing.


It is futile to discuss the accomplishments of India in terms of how many things there are. Similarly, it is futile to discuss India in terms of how many consumers it has, how many scientists and engineers it has, how many are literate and so on. For argument's sake, it will be better to ask how many are not consumers, how many are not literate, or how many are malnourished? For if any of these numbers is higher than zero, it means there is work to be done. When you look at the actual numbers - that there are potentially 250 million consumers and 700 million non-consumers, you will be modest and say, we are far from deserving a "pat on the back"!


Who can be satisfied with the status of Indian women today and point to few dozen MP's or judges, some state chief ministers, a host of civil service officials as the proof of their liberation - unless you yourself happen to be one benefiting from or are seeking such a privilege? Sadly, this is the view presented by the official circles.


What is to be highlighted is that as soon as you look at the developments in India with the outlook of a divided society, you will find things to justify one or the other interpretation. These days, Indian newspapers are asking in their editorials - "what went wrong?" - as if it can be set right, and as if these opinion makers even want to set it right! And someone may ask, why do you ask what went wrong when we have done so well! Look, when a dalit is the President of India, a humble farmer became Prime Minister, a house-wife is Chief Minister of Bihar, so many people have crores of rupees, how can you say something went wrong? In other words, we can have a debate between those who ask "what went wrong" and those who say we need to "pat ourselves on the back" for all the achievements.


None of these will contribute to the solution of the problems of India. Instead, it will be the basis for people to take sides and divide one more time. Such polarisation is a trap, it is meant to give a definition to some policies to "set things right" in the most narrow way. In such a scheme, there is no room for the interests of all the people to be taken into account, or to call upon them to solve whatever problems exist.

Trustees and Beneficiaries


When you begin from the premise that India belongs to all people, then you will view things and do things very differently than when you view India as a divided society - one divided between benefactors and beneficiaries. You may have the best intentions and the best recipe for solving some problems, but to leave people out of that solution is the exact opposite of what India needs. This is how a trustee works. It looks at the trust divested from the beneficiary of the trust.


The trustee makes decisions on behalf of the trust, in the best interest of the trust, but not in the interest of the beneficiary. If the trust is to benefit from the sale of a house which it may be holding, then the trustee will be justified in selling this house even though the beneficiary may be living in that house and will be homeless as a result of the sale!


These things happen. For instance, the Calcutta Golf Course is held by a trust to benefit the heirs of Tipu Sultan - while the descendants of Tipu Sultan themselves live in abject poverty? In fact, one of them is a rickshaw-puller in Calcutta itself!


This is how trusteeship works and this is how India works. Its power acts as a trustee, and declares that everything it does is in the interest of the trust. The problem is that the trustees of the Calcutta Golf Course live in comfort while the beneficiaries live in misery. The trustees of India have it good. It is a different story for the vast majority.


This trust, India, according to the foundations on which it is based, is divided - divided between the trustee and the beneficiary. The trustee has all the rights and the beneficiary has none. The laws and institutions are all organised to keep this fundamental division in place. You can analyse any and every institution in India and see how this process is at work. Whether you speak of judicial activism or electoral reform, you can see how the theory of trusteeship manifests itself in every instance.


So we have this contradiction - does India belongs to all its people, or is it a trust? Are its institutions and systems based on the foundation that it has to fulfil the needs of all the people or is it based on the theory of trusteeship? If India, from its very foundations exists for its people, then its Constitution will be written by its own people - irrespective of what their level of development. Instead, the framers of our constitution themselves say that they have borrowed from all the best constitutions around the world. As a result, they have given us a voluminous constitution that has needed amendment after amendment.


For example, if the Irish people had a provision in their constitution to respond to some conditions they faced or to safeguard what they had won through their struggles, how will that provision help Indians? What about when these provisions themselves become anachronistic in the countries where they originated because of changed circumstances? This is not a hypothetical question. This is the reality.

The party system of government, the first-past-the-post system, is becoming discredited in more than one country. The problem that has arisen in those countries is that people want to have a role in governance. They consider the political parties as gatekeepers to power, as middlemen who keep people away from power. We, in India know very well what happens when people do not need a mediator between themselves and what they aspire for - we have the Buddhist and Jain movements as well as the Bhakti and Sufi movements that aimed to remove priests from their role of intermediation between devotee and deity.


In modern times, Indians are slowly coming to that conclusion as well, if you look at what has happened to the political parties in recent elections. As far as constitutional questions go, it is only when you have an institutionalised division, that you have the kinds of things the Indian Constitution has done. The laws of other lands have been borrowed precisely to defend the narrow interests of the trustees, while the only Indian input has been the amendments. The extraordinarily large number of amendments to the Indian Constitution actually shows how the laws of other countries do not work in India even if it is to defend the same interests of capital and wealth.


The Economy and the Cult of Division


If one begins from the premise that our economy must serve the needs of all, then you will see people particularly the workers who produce goods in industry and agriculture, being called upon to actively participate. First, you will have a decision making process that will actually involve all people, not just the chambers of commerce, the bankers, land-owners and mill owners. Agriculture and industry will be developed harmoniously - with industry making goods to modernise agriculture and agriculture developing to satisfy the needs of industry for raw material and food grains for workers. You will see the development of machinery, fertilisers, irrigation and so on to help develop agriculture. Industry likewise will harness the agricultural strength and develop transport and communications to meet consumer needs as well as the needs of the future.


Instead, today you find the most uneven development, both in different sectors of the economy and in different parts of the country. This is most evident in the demands made in different agitations in India - Punjab complains of a lack of industry even though its agriculture is developed. The north-east complains about the exploitation of its resources. Orissa and Bihar are rich in resources but are undeveloped in every way. This uneven development also has created a division between mental and manual labour. The balance between the service sector of the economy and the manufacturing sector is skewed. And above all, you see the development of a defence sector which is justified not just in terms of the defence needs of the country but also for the export of weaponry!


It takes only a little reflection to conclude that Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalese and Sri Lankans are the closest of peoples, and they have the least need to militarise. These divisions and animosities that exist have an official ring in all the countries, and translate more often than not, into lucrative business opportunities for those associated with the defence sectors.


The point to ponder is that the main reason that there is uneven development in the economy is because this is most profitable for the trustees of India - the ruling elite. The corollary of this is that all divisions that exist today or that will come to the fore-front in the future are products of this narrow scope of India's economic and political system. This is the legacy of 1947.


Diversity and Division


The diversity of India is not something that has arisen in the near past. But its divisions are a modern phenomenon. If narrow interests are the rule, if the only policies espoused by state power are the enrichment of the wealthy few, then divisions will be created, multiplied and maintained at every cost, every day. It has nothing to do with diversity of the people.


Society consists of many collectives and collectives in turn are constituted of individuals. There is a living link between the individual, the collective and the society. Diversity is a product of the fact that no two humans are alike and no two collectives have the same aims and pre-occupations. Society exists to look after the general interests of every member and every collective. But when society takes up some other aim, such as that of satisfying the aims of "entrepreneurs" or "workers" or "women" only, then divisions necessarily appear. This division emerges not from below but from the top echelons of society. What more fertile ground is there for divisions to breed than a diverse population mired in ignorance and poverty as is the case in India today? Diversity can become an instrument to harmonise the interests of individuals and their collectives by providing them with proper means, when the society is organised to look after the general interests.

 

The Left - Right Division


There are some other important divisions that need to be examined. The powers of the world maintain these divisions to carry out their rule not just in India but everywhere. One such division lies between the "right" and the "left". This phenomenon has been institutionalised in many countries like the US, Canada, Britain, and France. Within this, the left wing is equally important as the right wing for these systems to continue. Both engage in the same politics but justify it through different policy objectives.


In India, for example, the left-right divide was used to justify the national emergency in 1975. Such a division is also at the heart of the present United Front government and all coalition governments. In India today, the left-right divide takes the form of the division between "secular" and "communal" politics.


These divisions are both a product of the social and economic systems and at the same time, are integral to the continuation of the system. Just as uneven development is intrinsic to the pursuit of the highest return in free market systems, so is the infrastructure to divide, disarm and suppress the people who want to bring this system to an end. The left-right division is a product of the continued attempts of world capital in this century to divide the exploited and the oppressed, and to win a section to their side. Social democracy is a product of it: socialism in words, liberal democracy and market capitalism in deeds. It is the left wing of the world capital. It can flourish only when there is the danger of the right wing.


Bill Clinton or Tony Blair make no sense without Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Similarly, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh need Harkishen Singh Surjeet and Indrajit Gupta, and vice-versa. Once the division is institutionalised at the top, it is then imposed upon the rest of the society. Everyone in society is called upon to take sides, and the electoral mechanism is used to consolidate these divisions and legalise them. If one is to honestly examine the developments in India in the last decades, one must conclude that the "left-right" divide is a curse that Indians have to reject.


National Unity and Territorial Integrity


Any discussion on the subject of the division and unity of India will be incomplete without examining the subject of "national unity and territorial integrity". Contrary to what the slogan appears to be, i.e., one meant to build the unity of the people, it is actually a very divisive weapon. In the early sixties, the constitution was amended to give this notion legal sanction. The North East, Kashmir, Punjab, Tamil Nadu -- all these people have seen this law in action. Everyone is pressured to differentiate on the basis of this law. Why is this the case? National unity and territorial integrity is not a legal question, it is a political question for every country.


Besides, there is no threat to the national unity and territorial integrity of India at this time. Within very definite circumstances this can be a problem for a country, but that is not the case in India today. For example, in the last century, when the king of Portugal was in exile in Brazil which was a colony of Portugal at the time, other European powers tried to dismember Brazil by inciting non-Portuguese settlers in different provinces of Brazil against the Portuguese king. Under those circumstances, Brazil adopted the law to defend its territorial integrity against the foreign interference. Neither when India's constitution was written, nor when this amendment was enacted, and not even today, does India needs to make national unity and territorial integrity a matter of constitutional law.


Under the circumstances, the law has in fact become an instrument to suppress nationalities and tribal people. It has become a part of the arsenal used to suppress rights, and to give privileges to a handful. It is not a coincidence that a similar slogan - "defence of the fatherland" - was used in Germany to suppress those who opposed the war efforts of the German state in the first world war. The social liberation of the German people became the first casualty of that slogan.


Breaking with the Past


The topic of this conference - "Ending the Legacy of Division" can be rephrased as "Breaking with the Past". We are speaking of a past whose methods, whose content, whose form and whose legacy have to be left behind if we are to march into a future of freedom, liberty, and progress. Everything vile has a place and everything repulsive is the norm in today's India. We are speaking of the economic and political system, the institutions and theories behind them, the values and philosophies that bolster them and the end-products they create.


The key thing here is not to wreck but to build. The future can be built from the present and the past will be the foundation. The Indian people have given rise to some of the finest values that human civilisation possesses at this time, and they will do the same in the future. It is the nature of present-day world developments, the colonial legacy and the weight of the big-powers that hinder the growth of this civilisation. The time has come to make a break with this past so that we can build a future.


It can be done, it must be done!