bajwa@nacho.DEC (BAJ DTN 381-2851) (12/20/85)
Here is an interesting article by Kothari that I received from
a friend:
In an article titled THE GREAT DIVIDE by a known
political scientist Dr. Rajni Kothari, founder of
~~Lokayan as well as the President of the People Union
for Civil Liberties(PUCL). The article noted the changes
that Indian polity has undergone, role of the electoral
politics and the use of communalism and casteism in
manipulating the voters. It warns of a possible
emergence of fascism in India because of deterioriation
and subversion of democratic institutions in India,
especially Indian polity entering into a new era of "end
of the ideology" under Rajiv Gandhi. It also criticized
India's developmental path because it has been
pauperizing the poor and depriving tribal and
underprevileged people of traditional means
oflivelihood, and causing considerable ecological harm.
I thought some of you may be interested in it.
---------------------------------------------------
(SUBHEADINGS HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED TO IMPROVE THE
READABILITY.)
THE GREAT DIVIDE
RAJNI KOTHARI
New Kind of Communalism
"Like many other phenomena on the Indian scene,
communalism needs to be reexamined. For, we are
witnesses to a new version of communalism, a new phase
may be, but it is more than just a phase. It is
comunalism that does not even wear the same face any
more.
"Crucial to understanding this new face ofcommunalism
are two aspects. First, it is not an aberration but
something that is part of the system. Second, this is
not so in any passive way, where the system has fallen
prey to forces beyond its control. Rather, it is a
direct outcome of its inherent logic, and one in which
its key actors play a role.
India's Development Path
"... on the economic front, it has now become fairly
clear that by the late sixties, a sizable infrastructure
(backed by the green revolution) had been created which
was sufficient to look after the consumer needs and
lifestyles of the upper classes. Thereafter, as the
pressure for re-distributive policies grew, the belief
in a positive state which had earlier produced the
infrastructure was gradually given up, and with the
policy of liberalisation on the one hand, and the rising
power of local coalitions between businessmen,
administrators, contractors, and politicians on the
other, the development process was directed in such a
manner that kept large sections of the people out of it.
This did not contribute to a kind of prosperity in
national GNP terms, a kind of prosperity that is
associated with the building of a hard, strong state
whcih indeed was the driving ideology of the elite. Such
a development strategy necessarily led to massive
ecological erosions and undermined the great physical
and natural dievrsity that had characterized the
traditional economy. This in turn eroded the diversities
and autonomies of a social and cultural kind.
"For, with the sharpening of conflict between the
dominant classes eager to retain and indeed enhance
their living standards and the poor and dispossessed
eager to find their place udner the sun, the sense of
complementarity and coexistence of diverse communities
gave place to confrontations at the social level also.
Phase of Populist Slogans
"Now, this process was greatly fuelled by aparticular
episode in dealing with the problem of poverty. Indira
Gandhi's primary challenge to the older leadership of
her party was articulated around her charges that the
problem of poverty had been ignored. This created an
instant echo in the hearts of the poor and proved to be
the smartest stroke that the ruling classes could
have conceived; it consolidated her personal and the
party's hold on the masses for a long time. As it was
not followed up, not meant to be followed up, by any
genuine structural or institutional revamping, what one
got was a radicalization of aspirations and a lot of
rhetoric without any commensuate changes in the economic
structure. So that what looked like a promise turned out
to be deceit. Since then we have been living in a
politics of continuous illusions as well as deceit, no
party being free from it. As this has fashioned party
politics and the whole process of communicating with the
people, two consequences have followed. "One was
conception of poltiics essentially as an electoral game.
And the other was conception of cutting through
intermediary organziations and institutions of the
state, appealing directly to the massses, in the process
cutting out all those who sought to mediate between the
state and civil society. This was done in the name of
the most affectd masses and in the name of progress
and the end of poverty.
Undercutting Institutions
"One of this emerged after 1969, the much talked about
electoral coalition of the Congress, the coalition of
Muslims, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, some
depressed castes, and the Brahmins to which was added
some regional equations in the South. Equally well-known
was the nature of charisma that was used basically by
both undermining institutions and undercutting
leaders which happened to have a mass base of their own.
"Since then many developments took place which led to a
gradual decline of the role of institutions, of
infrastures, of popular discussion of the media and
generally of the broad framework of participation and
citizen involvement - and substitution of it all by the
steamroller of winning elections. Sicne then politics
has meant a constant struggle for survival, survival
through the numbers game. "With this, the notion of
party as an insrtument of mass transformation gave plce
to one of party as a mechanical contrivance which keeps
you in power. Once this happened, the notion of
pluralism in democracy got perverted into communalism by
emphasising the numerical power of majorities versus
minorities. In a sense those who say that communalism is
a direct child of secular politics are right. It is
secular politics reduced of all normative content (which
is how often secularism is often conceived).
Electoral Politics: Numbers Game
"Elections have become ends in themselves, instruments
of the status quo and of self-perpetuation rather than
change. This has happened in other countries also. In a
number of third world countries, elections do take place
but they take place essentially for perpetuating
whosoever happens to be in power (often a religious or
linguistic community or a tribe). In a sense this has
happened in the West also, above all in the US and UK.
In all these countries, elections have become a
legitimising process for highly authoritarian politics.
And in all of them, what you are really getting, without
always noticing it, is the substitution of a political
process based on competition of programmes and
policies,and a debate on those policies by a mere
numbers game. This is clearly what has taken place in
India over the last 10 years or so.
"Now, the communal implications of the numbers game in
our kind of a plural society were not immediately
apparent. One still thought of numbers in terms of
caste, regions and so forth. And yet, if you examine
carefully, the numbers game does seem to have given rise
to an ethnic calculus and ultimately to communal
politics...
Numbers Game Leads to Communalism
"Such an ethnic orientation of the numbers game has two
prominent features. One is the rise of new political
organizations that are sometimes blatantly and sometimes
not so blatantly communal. This happens at the local
level or starts at the level and then moves up. Shiv
Sena is an excellent example of this but there are many
other examples too. Secondly, there takes place a
capture of specifically political organizations like
parties by cultural and sectarian organizations. What
started as a non-political organization takes on a
political role. RSS is an excellent example of this. So
is the Jamaat-e-Islam. Such organizations declare that
they have nothing to do with politics, but they go on
spreading their tentacles. So that in course of time,
political organizations like parties and trade unions
and professional associations like those of students and
teachers become increasingly dependent upon on sectarian
and communal organizations which are not supposed to
be political.
"Now this kind of ethnic-based, communal
organization-based poltiics has had far-reaching
consequences. For it begins to affect hitherto
unaffected areas, e.g., the working class, the students,
the youth generally. We know from the reports of
Bombay-Bhiwandi, Ahmedabad and other riots that a lot of
participants in these riots tend to be rather young
people who have had no experience of partition or of the
kind of prejudicies or hurt feelings that their parents
had nursed. It is participation that is largely
apolitical. And it spreads in both time and space. These
riots go on for weeks, sometimes months, they recur
after having stopped and they stop only to regroup and
strat again. They begin to permeate the rural areas
which was not the case earlier. They affect the media
(like the press in Gujarat during anti-reservation
riots) and the larger climate of opinion. They affect
the law and order establishment, the police and
paramilitary forces. And the next thing you hear is that
the Shiv Sena has captured power in Bombay city and the
anti-reservationists have had a field day observing
strike in Gujarat with Madhavsinh Solanki giving in on
every count.
"So this is one major change that has taken place as a
result of reducing democratic politics to electoral
politics. To which, of course, the growing sense of
insecurity and uncertainty among politicians makes a
very great contribution. I think the next change comes
when we move from indirect and masked use of communalism
and communal appeals in politics to a more open and
self-conscious calculation on communal lines. This is
more recent, of course, but it follows the same logic of
numbers. I think, this is the most dangerous phase that
we have entered. It happened in Assam to begin with and
then though in an opposite direction, in Kashmir and
Punjab and Delhi and after the assassination, all over
the country...
"What is happening at present in certain areas is that a
particular dominant caste or even a linguistic group,
faced by challenge from the lower classes, takes on a
chavinist character. This is found in states like
Maharashtra where the chauvinism of a dominant caste
like the Marathas becomes an important factor in the
growth of communalism. Maratha politics which was for so
long, despite the long domination of the Congress party
(in a way because of that), permeated by factionalism of
all kinds, has of late entered a phase of closing ranks
against the non-Marathas and has taken on an anti-Dalit,
anti-Muslim, anti-lower caste form. It is a short step
from this to think of the Marathas as the guardians of
the Hinduism. The same tendency is at work in Andhra
Pradesh, UP, Harayana, and Gujarat. This is a very
significant shift from a pattern of domination based on
faction-based alliances between castes to one based on a
more exclusive view of caste domination. With this,
caste takes on a communal character.
Move towards Fascism
"There are four other points which are related to this
change in the uses of diversity and plural identities.
One is the de-ideologization of politics and the
inreasing preoccupation with mere survival in office
which in turn has led to an ethnicisation of politics in
which the manipulation of numbers on a communal or
religious basis. Seond, there is a clear backlash
against people's movements and mass upsurges. Those in
position of power have seen that a lot of mass unrest is
growing, that organizations are being formed at
grass-roots level, that action is being planned by them,
that it often succeeds and even when it does not
succeed, it still gives rise to a radical challenge from
the bottom. Very often an attack against a party or a
group in the name of national unity is essentially an
attack meant to curb popular upsurge which are backing
such parties or groups. The planned destabilization of
the Akali Dal in Punjab, or the ouster of Farooq
Abdullah government or of the Telugu Desam through sheer
fraud and nothing else, were crude but striking examples
of this, examples of parties that had come up as a
result of fairly masssive popular upsurge. But I am not
thinking of merely this kind of mass support behind a
party or a leader. I am also thinking of the backlash
against the people who would take up the cause of the
poor, of the dalits, of the tribals, or of bonded labor,
and try to organize them. A lot of this backlash in fact
comes from commuanlly oriented parties, including the
Congress party, in which the latter usually succeeds in
undermining genuine mass organizations.
"The third important development is the lumpenisation of
politics at the lower levels. Sanjay Gandhi seems to
have contributed the most to it since 1975 but it has
been growing over a longer period. It consists in the
displacement of the regular secular party organizations
and the regular experienced politicians who had come up
from the grass roots, so to say, from the village level
to the state level by mafia kind of organizations based
on dens of liquor, gambling, and drugs and manned
usually by people with a criminal record, equipped with
strong-arms and available at short notices to do a job,
whether at the time of elections or for carrying out
other tasks such as fixing an opponent or a minority
community.
"And fourth, we are witness to a new phase of
capitalism, which is of course a result of the kind of
development path that we have pursued, necessairly
contracting in terms of limiting itself to a particular
class, and therefore, necessairly both anti-people and
anti-development. Ours is not one of those revolutionary
bourgeoisie which in fact radicalizes the whole
development process, expands the internal market,
exploits the working classes but also incorporates them
into the market and so on. It is primarily and almost
exclusively middle-class based, and to that extent not
just exploitative of but hostile to the masses. Another
feature of the capitalist phase we are in now is that is
externally oriented, both economically in terms of
integration into a world market and politically in terms
of integeration into a global strategic community that
also entails a global technological community. Yet
another and important feature of the kind of capitalism
is that it has increasingly got rooted in corruption and
generation of black money, the proceeds from smuggling
and other major rackets including international ones and
of course, the profits from a whole array of illegal
operations in the informal sector of trade and traffic
in formally prohibited items. With this also takes plae
a greater and greater integration between this kind
of bastard capitalism and the state. And as this
happens, a repressive state apparatus becomes necessary
for a ruthless capitalist exploitation for both of which
there is need for still greater criminalization of the
polity.
"At a much broaders level such a capitalist ethos also
works closely with two other large macro developments,
militarization of the economy on the one hand and a
robotization of the productive process on the other. In
short, whether you look at the the new liberalization
and tax reform policies, or at the gradual undermining
of the role of the working class in the productive
process (as well as a gradual reduction in the
production of those goods which are meant to fulfil the
basic needs of the lower classes), and the consequent
process of pauperization, those are integral parts of
the economic development profile of the stage of
capitalism in which we are moving or have already moved.
Such a prognosis is now even openly discussed by middle
class professionals and business tycoons. If only we did
not have the poor, if only we did not have to bother
about this lower 40 to 60%, how fast we could have
moved? We would become a strong and prosperous nation,
one of the great powers. In other words, the whole
doctrine of the dispensation of the poor, of triage, is
emerging as an inherent feature of the capitalist ethos
in which we find ourselves.
"Now these four shifts in our larger environment may not
look like being directly relevant to the political
process, but in fact they are. For they are contributing
to the kind of political culture that I am trying to
unravel. One is the backlash agains tthe popular
organizations, the other is the lumpen phenomenon and
the rise of criminality and third is the new phase of
capitalism, inherent in which is the pauperization, and
all this in the general context of "the end of
ideology." All of this is affecting the mass base of the
polity. And, it is in this situation that conflicts take
on a more and more communal and less and less economic
character. The base may still be economic but the
expression is communal....
State Becoming More Communal and Repressive
"Let me now draw the import of these different
dimensions of conflict for the basic theme of this
article: how an elite, so embroiled in the politics of
survival, deals with mass discontent and unrest. Instead
of responding to popular discontent and demands, attempt
is made to foist another set of issues by invoking
sentiments and feelings that engender communal
attitudes. It is in a situation of growing instability,
erosion of institutions and a deepening crisis of
leadership that communal politics finds fertile ground.
"What is relatively though not wholly new about
the present phase is that the ruling party and the state
itself are playing a direct role in communalizing the
political process. Recent developments in
Bombay-Bhiwandi, in Punjab and in Delhi, Bokaro, Kanpur,
and elsewhere following the assassination, - as earlier
in Assam - have highlighted the role of the government
and the ruling party in spreading terrorism, inciting
and even engineering communal violence, permitting
the growth of chaos and vandalism, and then making use
of it all for arousing chauvinistic sentiments among
large sections of the people.
Terrorizing Opponents Accused as Anti-national
"Paradoxically, this is happening in the name of
achieving national unity and national integration. Each
time a divide and rule policy is used vis-a-vis another
community or region, it is done in the name of the
national unity. This is an altogether a new genre of
politics- of frightening and intimidating and unnerving
the middle class, of delegitimizing dissent, of
terorizing the mainstream public opinion and of muzzling
the press, the judiciary and the intelligencia. We are
always told that the Akalis and Farooq Abdullah and all
those who take up the cause of the Sikhs or the Muslims
- or of Assam or of North-East- are dividing the
country. Anybody who supports any of these, or for that
matter dissident intellectuals and organizations as
such, are out to divide the country. Many of them are
accused of being associated with foreign powers, one is
never told on what basis, and that make them ipso facto
people who are out to divide the country, unpatriotic as
they are out to sell the country. What we need (we are
told) is a united country and the only party that can
ensure that is the ruling party...
Outcome of Electoral Politics Devoid of Democratic
Politics
"What I have tried to do in this article is to show how
electoral compulsions and the growing preoccupation with
survival in office, are responsible for a gradual shift
from an open democratic political process committed to
social change to a techno-bureaucratic-military order
committed to the status quo and against any challenges
from the bottom, and how this has undermined the
pluralism of the kind we used to cherish and without
which, I think, unity is not possible in this hightly
diverse country. With this shift has also gone the
concept of a positive and purposive state in economic
and social transformation, the relative autonomy of
the state in this transforamtion and the role of the
state in fashioning a just social order. Instead, what
you are getting is a state in which on the one hand
oppression is on the increase, and on the other hand,
key issues of public policy are being increasingly taken
out of the political arena, and treated as essentially
technical.
Whither India?
"The key question, really is, where will the
technological and apolitical model of the state take us?
Will it reinforce the processes I talked of earlier,
namely, the dispensability of the poor, asking them to
stew in their own juices, and immunising the rich from
them? Allow more deaths and disease to take place and
feel less and less concerned with droughts and natural
disasters, themselves a result of aggressive capitalist
policies? The second question is, if it is a
technological model of the state, how will it manage the
masses? Through mass political organizations and popular
movements or through the virus of communalism engulfing
them? Through the growth of the role of religion in
daily life? Through entertainment? Through a geometrical
increase in violence and terror - of the state and
against it- becoming the new currency of settling
matter , the new language of politics?
"My basic thesis is what I have said is there is a close
interrelationship between an increasingly desperate and
repressive state apparatus and the growth in rapidity
and virility of the communal spirit and of communal
violence. We are entering a period of growing
disintegration caused by a party which may espouse
national unity but has in fact permitted so much
violence in so many regions as a result of the backlash
from local elites over the people over such a long
time.
"With all this can the secular Indian state survive?
That is really the key question we have to ask. For the
Indian state having taken the decision of moving from an
agenda of structural transformation to an agenda of
technological transformation which would make the state
strong in aggressive terms, competitive in the
interational arena and hegemonical in the region, can it
really respond to people's aspirations or will it be
forced to manipulate the electorate through essentially
communal appeals?
Elections and Democracy
"And the key operational issue of course is something we
as intellectuals have so far shied away from, namely the
relationship between elections and democracy: does
electroal democracy incite chauvinist sentiments and
encourage communalism? Increasingly, it appears that the
whole deomcratic space is being taken up by the
compulsion of the electoral process, in fact the
compulsions of the party in power, the compulsions of a
party that wants perpetual power. In such a view of
democracy, there is no role of the people as such, only
of them as voters whose heads are to be counted, or
forced to be counted in a certain direction. The name of
the game is to have a majority of them with you.
Democracy becomes majoritarianism and with a growing
polarization of society, such majoriatianism gets
embroiled in the clash between majorities and minorities
at the community level. The result is communal politics.
Need of the Hour
More Democratization through Grass-roots Organizations
"Unless such an understanding of democracy is forcefully
countered, the communal orientation of politics cannot
be forcefully countered. What needs to be emphasized is
that mere electoral democracy is a very partial
democracy and can in fact, coexist extremely reactionary
elements, whereas inherent in a true democracy is the
notion of a large and extensive infrastructure of
pepole's organizations, not what Americans call
"pressure groups" which are lobbies near the corridors,
but at all leverls, and especially at the ground level.
If we donot do this, I think there is no escape from the
disaster we are facing. Because electoral and
legislative compulsions have undermined the mass role of
even mass parties so that instead of using the
limited arena of electoral politics for strengthening
and widening the mass base, it is the mass base that is
being rendered a limited arena and used simply for
engaging in electoral politics.
"This then is the key issue facing parties and non-party
organizations that really believe in true democratic
transforamtion. As we forget that, the larger issues of
nationality, decentralization, class organizations fo
the poor will also be forgotten, largely because of this
exclusive preoccupation with electoral and legislative
politics and with the mere struggle for survival. And as
these matters recede from our attention, our capacity to
deal with communalization of politics will also recede.
Communalization of politics must thus be seen as a
necessary concomitant of the decline of the
infrastructure of democracy. And its defeat rests
essentially on the rejuvenation of the infrastructure.
Minorities Must Join Hands
"Such a rejuvenation entails sustained response on the
part of the truly affected strata - in this case the
minorities themselves, and not just the religious
minorities, but the whole panorama of social minorities,
ranging from the dalits and adivasis to the backwards
consisting of historically disadvantaged communities to
the forset and migrant populations. This may sound a
disparate bunch and so it is, except that they all
happen to be victims of the same techno-economic and
social processes of wanton marginalization.
"With is more, in India it is possible to aggregate
minorities. In fact, as a land, and a people, India is a
panorama of minorities and draws its richenss from the
fact that every grouping is a minority and acquires
potency and resilience by working in consort with other
minorities. That is why there was no communalism in the
pre-colonial period, it being an essentially modern
phenomenon, and its worst manifestation being essentialy
an outgrowth of undermining the pluralist
multi-minoritiesconception of India and imposing on it a
majoritarian, homogenising, universalizing conception.
It is upto the minorities to restore to India its
essential plurality by acting jointly in a common
struggle for citizenship from which they are presentlky
being debarred.
Need for Grass-root Initiatives and Timely Intervention
"This, inturn, entails active and sustained citizen
intiatives to intervene in the political process
whenever it goes off the rail and become prone to
violence and repression, terror and terrorism. This is
an area of immense crative potential in which ordinary
people can participate in their myriad ways in shaping
the present and the future of the country. There is so
much that needs to be done, so little by way of
available organizations and leadership, so large the
scope for new experiences through experimetnation. The
fact that it was not until almost four months after the
anti-reservation riots began in Ahmedabad that some sort
of a citizen action group Nagrik Sangathan got formed
bears enough testimony to the growing polarization
everywhere which does not permit rapid and effective
intervention. The contrast with the formation of the
Nagrik Ekta Manch in Delhi immediately after the
November 1984 massacre and the preparation of the
PUDR-PUCL report WHO ARE THE GUILTY? so soon thereafter
is striking. Since then, becasue of these
initiatives, a number of journalistic, civil liberties,
women's and other citizens groups have decided to focus
on combating communalism in Delhi and elsewhere. And
yet, in Gujarat, the presumed forte of voluntary effort,
no significant citizen effort that could transcend
caste and communal barriers have emerged. In between the
two are situations like Hyderabad where a major
initiative like Hyderabad Ekta has tried to mediate in
an atmosphere of growing polarization and hostility.
"All this adds up to one conclusion: communalism in
India, especially of recent vintage, is a direct outcome
of the decline in democratic politics, in participation,
in effective citizen action. It is only by rejuvenating
citizen initiative and forcing the state to concede to
the just demands of the minorities that a long-term
strategy of combatting communalism can evolve.
--------