India After Independence: 1947-2000 (32 page)

But Nehru failed to help create any institutions or structures or agents through which the people or even the lower-level cadres of his own party could be mobilized and activized and politically educated. The only form of mobilization was his extensive tours through which he communicated
with the people, educated them and created popular support for his policies. Before 1947, the political harvest of his tours had been gathered by the local Congress committees and the nationalist cadres. But after 1947, in the absence of any popular level organization to follow-up the outcome of his tours, the political and organizational benefits were more often than not reaped by the party bosses from the local to the state level.

The Nehruvian period, it is noteworthy, did not witness greater participation by the people in the political processes except in the form of elections. Actually, there was gradual demobilization of the people and the weakening over time of the link between politics from below and the national leadership in power as also between politics and social and constructive work; at least in the medium run—to be calculated in decades—electoral politics strengthened the hold of the local economic and political elite.

Nehru also failed to build institutions and organizational structures to implement his vision or policies or to mobilize the people behind them; he created no social instruments and this led to a general weakness in execution of his policies and ideas, and was a major reason for the shortcomings in the implementation of the land reforms, the execution of the Community Development project and the management of the public sector.

The Congress party could have played the role of organizing secular and nationalist forces to back Nehru’s policies and to popularize and to mobilize the people behind them. But Nehru also neglected party-building, even after he acquired complete control over it in 1951. He had never been a builder or organizer of the party before independence. But this weakness became a serious flaw after Gandhiji and Sardar Patel, stalwart organizers of the party before 1947, left the scene and Nehru became its sole leader. One result of this was that Congress was increasingly weakened as an organization and began to lose its role as an instrument for social change or the implementation of government policies or even education in the party ideology. Instead, it gradually veered towards machine politics.

The consequence was that Nehru increasingly started relying on government administration and bureaucracy for implementing his policies. Even the Community Development programme and the Panchayati Raj, the two great efforts to involve the people in their own development, ended up under bureaucratic control; and the village level social worker, the kingpin in rural reconstruction, became a cog in the bureaucratic machine and spent as little time as possible in the village. Furthermore, the administrative structure and the bureaucracy remained unreformed and unreconstructed and as distant from the people as before.

Nehru also did not vigorously attack through mass mobilization and mass educational campaigns those aspects of the social structure, such as the caste system, male domination, kinship networks, economic dependence of the rural poor on the rural rich and growing corruption, which were bolstering the existing socio-economic system. He also went too far in
stressing the role of consent and conversion of the dominant social classes. He had inherited this belief from Gandhiji. But, then, Gandhiji had also believed in organizing active political and ideological struggles against the current targets of his politics whether they were the British, the princes or the orthodox among the upper castes. A major part of Gandhiji’s strategy had been to ‘convert’ them by isolating them from public opinion. Nehru did not pursue this part of his mentor’s strategy.

Nehru could set goals and objectives, he could formulate people’s desires, he could inspire people with a vision, he was also a skilful politician, but he lacked the capacity to design a strategic framework and to devise tactical measures to achieve the goals he set. This proved to be a failing for Nehru as a nation-builder. While strongly opposed to political opportunism and manipulation, he could replace these only with
ad hoc
political and administrative measures. This often left the field open to the manipulators. This weakness was heightened by the fact that he was a poor judge of men and women. To his credit, Nehru could see the process of the political manoeuvres taking over, but could do little to counter it. And so, acting as his own leader of the Opposition, he observed and denounced the corruption, careerism, bureaucratization, and the many other emerging ills of a developing ex-colonial society, but was unable, apart from exhortations, to take the necessary concrete steps to control them. We may point to some of the large areas of neglect which have today assumed monstrous proportions: the entire educational system was left untouched and unreformed, and failed to reach the majority of the population; no worthwhile political and ideological mass struggle was waged against communalism as an ideology; the tardy and inadequate implementation of land reforms left a legacy of economic inequality, social oppression and political violence in rural India; the inadequate steps taken to curb corruption in its initial stages, led later to its assuming shocking dimensions and pervading almost every area of life, administration and politics.

To conclude, as the first prime minister of independent India, Nehru was faced with daunting tasks. In spite of this, measured by any historical standards his achievements were of gigantic proportions. He rooted certain values, approaches, objectives, goals and an outlook and made them an integral part of the ethos of the Indian people. As one of his biographers, Geoffrey Tyson has said, ‘If Nehru had been a different kind of man, India would have become a different kind of country.’
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Nehru and the Nehru era have receded into historical memory—only those above fifty years would remember him as a person. Most Indians—even those who during his life-time were his harsh critics—hark back to the Nehru era, identify with him, and draw inspiration from his life and work, his social vision, and the values he sustained in the endeavour to build a happier and healthier society in which class, caste and gender oppression would cease to exist. The legacy he left behind is in many respects a sheet-anchor for the Indian people who are today buffeted about in a sea of despair. What more could a people ask from a leader? Has any society, any people, the right to ask a leader, however great, to solve all its problems once for all?

India is virtually the only post-colonial nation to sustain a system of parliamentary government for over fifty years after independence. It is, of course, true that throughout the Nehru years Congress was dominant politically and retained power at the Centre and in almost all the states. But, simultaneously, a multi-party system based on free competition among parties and strong parliamentary institutions also developed from the beginning. The nature and working of the party system in place at the time of independence with several political parties—the Congress, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party and the Bharatiya Jan Sangh—functioning actively and successfully in 1951-52 was crucial to the development of parliamentary democracy in India.

All the major political parties were national or all-India in character, in their structure, organization, programmes and policies, even when their political bases were limited to specific areas or classes and sections of society. They had national objectives, took up significant all-India issues, sustained an all-India leadership and put forward programmes concerned with the social, economic and political development of the country as a whole.

Though the opposition parties remained individually quite weak compared to Congress in terms of mass support as also seats in the parliament and the state legislatures, they were quite active and politically did not play just a peripheral role. They vigorously campaigned for alternative sets of economic and political policies. More significantly, non-Congress candidates polled more votes than the Congress in the general elections of 1951-52, 1957, and 1962; and, despite the first-past-the-poll electoral system, they captured 26 per cent of the Lok Sabha seats in 1952, 25 per cent in 1957 and 28 per cent in 1962. They fared even better in the state assemblies where their strength was 32 per cent of the seats in 1952, 35 per cent in 1957, and 40 per cent in 1962. What is even more important, they put considerable pressure on the government and the ruling party and subjected them to consistent criticism. In practice, they also wielded a great deal of influence on public policies, in fact, quite out of proportion to their size.

One reason why the opposition parties remained weak in this period was because of their inability to unite. They found they had more in common with one or the other wing of Congress than with each other. This was not accidental because except for the communal and casteist parties all the other opposition parties had before 1947 been part of the national movement and the Congress. It was only when the left and right parties could unite, formally or informally, that they could defeat the Congress in 1977 and 1989.

The Indian National Congress was then the most important political organization in India at independence and, in fact, throughout the Nehru era. There was no alternative to it on the horizon. It enjoyed immense prestige and legitimacy as the leader and heir of the national movement. Its reach was national; it covered the entire sub-continent. Its social base extended from the metropolitan cities to the remotest of villages and from the big capitalists to the rural poor. Congress gave the country a stable government; it was a major instrument of the political stability India enjoyed for several decades.

It is axiomatic among historians and political scientists that after independence Congress was transformed from a movement into a party. But this is a half-truth, for no real break occurred immediately after 15 August 1947. In fact, this was the problem that Congress faced. In the changed circumstances it could no longer be the leader of a mass movement; but could it become a modern party for forming a government, and yet retain the character of a broad coalition for the purposes of nation-building? As a party, it had to have a certain organizational cohesion; this it secured by introducing, at Sardar Patel’s initiative, a provision that no person belonging to any other political party or group, which had its own constitution and organizational structure, could be its member. (It had permitted this before 1947 when the Congress Socialists and the Communists were its members, even while forming their own parties.) But it retained its ideological and programmatic diversity and openness as also a certain organizational looseness.

The Congress Socialists misunderstood the emerging character of Congress and assumed, especially after the Patel amendment, that it was no longer to be broad-based and was being transformed into a right-wing bourgeois party with a definite ideological and programmatic commitment to the capitalist path of development. Given these perceived differences, the Socialists decided to leave Congress. This was certainly a blow to the broad-based character of the party.

Jawaharlal Nehru, on the other hand, was convinced that it was both possible and necessary to retain the all-embracing consensual character of Congress and that without its leadership the country would neither be politically stable, nor capable of economic and social development. He was therefore unwilling to divide the party along left-right lines and stayed with Congress as did a large number of the Congress Socialists who saw Congress and Nehru as more effective instruments of socialism and social change. However, realizing that the departure of the Socialists would
adversely affect the socialist aspirations of Congress, he made, as we shall see, several attempts to bring them back into the party or at least to get their cooperation in his nation-building efforts. He also constantly strove to reform Congress and give it a left-turn, however arduous the task. He also adopted a reconciliatory approach towards political opponents other than the communalists.

Congress did, of course, become after 1947 a distinct political party, competing with other parties for political power but it did not become a monolithic party. It retained its amorphous and national consensual character with a great deal of ideological flexibility and vagueness. Though the party observed a certain degree of discipline, its functioning and decision-making remained democratic and open. There was still a great deal of debate within it as also tolerance of different viewpoints, tendencies and open dissent. The views of the party members got reflected in the All India Congress Committee and the annual sessions of the party. The district and provincial party organizational structures also functioned effectively and conveyed to the leadership the different points of view prevailing in the party. Important in this respect was the role of Nehru who functioned as a democrat inside the party as also in relation to the opposition parties.

Congress also remained sensitive to, and functioned as the medium for the reconciliation, accommodation and adjustment of diverse and divergent class, sectional and regional interests, as it had done during the period of the anti-imperialist struggle. It also had the capacity to contain, compromise and reconcile different and competing points of view within the party. While placating the propertied and socially dominant groups, it was simultaneously able to appeal to the poor and the deprived. It was also able to accommodate new social and political forces as they gradually emerged and entered the political arena, especially as the left parties failed to represent and mobilize them.

This all-embracing, inclusive character Congress was able to retain in part because of its inheritance in the national movement but largely because of the Nehruvian notion, brought out in chapter 13, that national consolidation, democracy and social change required the active or passive consent of the overwhelming majority of the people.

During the Nehru era, Congress remained basically a party of the Centre or middle with a left orientation—in other words, a left-of-the-centre party—though it had right and left minorities at its flanks. Broadly, it stood for nationalism, economic development, social justice, redistribution of wealth and equalization of opportunities encompassed by the broad idea of democratic socialism. As a centrist party it had three important features. First, the opposition parties, other than the communal parties, were able to influence it through their mass agitations or through like-minded groups within it, for there always existed inside Congress groups which reflected the positions of the opposition parties. Second, this conciliatory attitude led to the opposition parties being open to absorption. Congress was able to absorb the social base, cadres, programmes and
policies of the opposition parties, and to pacify and coopt popular movements through concessions and conciliation. Third, the opposition parties, both of the left and the right, tended to define themselves in extreme terms in order to prevent their cadres and followers—and even leaders—from being coopted or absorbed by Congress. This happened whenever the socialist and communist parties adopted realistic demands or followed a non-antagonistic approach towards Congress and its policies. But these extreme positions also had negative consequences for the parties concerned—they tended to isolate them further from public opinion and also made them vulnerable to splits.

A major problem that Congress had to decide on as a party at the very outset was what would be the precise relationship between the leadership of the party and that of the government. In November 1946, Nehru joined the interim government and resigned from the party presidentship on the ground that the two roles of the leader of the government and the president of the party could not be combined. His successor as Congress president, J.B. Kripalani, however, demanded that the president of the party and its Working Committee should have a direct role in government policy-making and that all government decisions should be taken in consultation with them.

Nehru and Sardar Patel and other leaders holding government positions did not agree with Kripalani. They said that the proceedings and the papers of the government were secret and could not be divulged to persons outside the government. The party, they argued, should lay down general long-term policies and goals but should not interfere with the specific problems of governance. The government, in their view, was constitutionally accountable to the elected legislature; it could in no case be made accountable to the party. In essence they argued for the autonomy of the parliamentary wing and and even its supremacy over the party in so far as government affairs were concerned.

Kripalani would not agree to this virtual subordination of the party to the government and feeling frustrated by the refusal of the government to consult him on several important issues resigned from the party presidentship in November 1947 without completing his two-year term. Explaining his resignation to the AICC delegates, he said: ‘How is the Congress to give the Government its active and enlightened cooperation unless its highest executive or its popularly chosen head is taken into full confidence on important matters that affect the nation.’
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Kripalani was succeeded in office for one year by Rajendra Prasad and subsequently for two years by B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya. Neither of the two asserted the principle of organizational supremacy or even equality and confined the functions of the party president to organizational affairs. But before the issue could be clinched, the Nehru-Tandon tussle over
organizational control intervened once again and raked up this question among others.

A crisis involving differences over policies, and party and government management broke out in 1950 over the question of Purshottamdas Tandon’s presidentship of the Congress. With the Communists leaving the Congress in 1945 and from the end of 1947 adopting a totally hostile attitude towards Nehru and the government, and the Socialists parting ways with Congress in 1948, the radical forces in Congress were weakened. The conservative forces then decided to assert themselves and to make a bid for control over the party and the policies of the government. But before we take up this crisis, we may very briefly deal with the tension resulting from the Nehru-Patel differences.

Sardar Patel has been much misunderstood and misrepresented. Some have used him to attack the Nehruvian vision and policies; others have made him out to be the archetypal rightist. Both have been wrong. Patel was undoubtedly the main leader of the Congress right wing. But his rightist stance has often been grossly misinterpreted. Like Nehru, he fully shared the basic values of the national movement: commitment to democracy and civil liberties, secularism, independent economic development, social reform and a pro-poor orientation. He stood for the abolition of landlordism but through payment of compensation. A staunch opponent of communalism he was fully committed to secularism. In 1946-47 he took ruthless action against the rioters. In 1950 he declared:

Ours is a secular State. We cannot fashion our policies or shape our conduct in the way Pakistan does it. We must see that our secular ideals are actually realized in practice . . . Here every Muslim should feel that he is an Indian citizen and has equal rights as an Indian citizen. If we cannot make him feel like this, we shall not be worthy of
our heritage and of our country.
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He was also utterly intolerant of nepotism and corruption. Patel’s conservatism, however, found expression with regard to the questions of class and socialism. Before 1947, he had opposed the Socialists and the Communists. After 1947, he argued successfully both for stimulus to private enterprise and the incorporation of the right of property as a fundamental right in the Constitution. Thus, the right-wing stance of Patel was basically a matter of social ideology. But his positive approach to capitalism and the capitalists was combined with total personal integrity and an austere lifestyle. He collected money from the rich for the national movement but none dare offer him a paisa for his own or his family’s use.

In fact, the relationship between Nehru and Patel was highly complex. Historians and political scientists have generally tended to emphasize the differences between the two and overlooked the commonness.