‘Democracy in India not easy, but successful in the Nehru years’

 

‘Democracy in India not easy, but successful in the Nehru years’

Democracy as a political system is the best possible system of governance that guarantees civil and political rights to people by ensuring the rule of law: but it faces many practical problems and formidable challenges in a backward multi-religious-cultural-ethnic-linguistic society, due to mutually exclusive conflicting claims by various communities and interest groups. That is why, democracy failed in many newly independent Afro-Asan- Latin American countries, once the leaders who led the freedom struggle in those countries died, for want of enlightened and benevolent political leadership.

 

Taylor Sherman of London School of Economics and Political Science in her book Nehru’s India: A History in Seven Myths, brings a provocative set of new interpretations to the history of early independent India. She argues that the notion of Nehu as the architect of independent India, as well as the ideas, polices and institutions associated with his premiership- non-alignment, secularism, socialism, democracy, the strong state, and high modernism- have lost their explanatory power. They have become myths.

 

She explains, however, why the democracy as a system was successful in the Nehru years:

 

The primary norm in the democratic mode of being was respect for the person, even if one disagreed with his or her ideas. Opponents were to be won over by rational argument rather than trampled underfoot.  Nehru’s penchant for institutions had fostered the status of the Lok Sabha as the central deliberative body of government. As Prime Minister, he attended regular question-and-answer sessions, and took debates seriously.  

 

According to the Election Commission of India Report on the First General Elections, the ‘democracy in India was not easy, but it was made successful particularly in the Nehru years.’  The story of the success of India’s democracy begins with the introduction of universal adult franchise in the first general elections when India had an electorate of 176 million, most of whom could not read and write. The decision to introduce universal franchise was an ‘act of faith- faith in the common man of India and in his practical common sense’. It was a gamble that paid off.  And Indians elected Nehru and his Congress Party in three consecutive elections, providing stability for India’s central government. The stability of the early Nehru years of parliamentary democracy has only been given greater credence by the sense of disequilibrium pervading the decades that have followed. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the decline of the Congress Party, and setback to democracy during the Emergency of 1975-77. And ‘since the 1990s, the ascent of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to hold power in government, coupled since 2015 with the assault on the free press, universities, courts and other institutions, has bolstered the sense that the healthy years of India’s democracy may just be behind it’.  

 

During the Nehru years, democratic politics worked well, conforming to the standard expectations. Democracy as a political system is made possible by everyday attitude and mode of working and is dependent upon the working of a wider range of institutions, particularly the constitution, the legislatures, the press and political parties.

 

Democracy is more than elections. India’s founders built democracy on lofty ideals of persuading others ‘by the force of logic and not the force of arms’ and accepting that ‘we can have changes of government without breaking heads’, as Dr.S. Radhakrishnan put it.  To him, democracy is a ‘habit of mind’.   And this habit of mind had to be cultivated in the population and that elections were the means to educate Indians to become democrats. The process of electing representatives and participating in public debates was expected to inculcate in the public democratic sensibilities. The experience of democracy was expected to release Indians from parochial influences, especially caste, and make them a unified nation.

 

Nehru was opposed to reservation. He not only ‘stayed the course on reservation, but also doubled down on the efforts to stop candidates talking about caste (or race, religion, community or language) during elections. He warned that India could not achieve its goals if its people remained ‘in little circles of community… and looking at things in a narrow way’. The Representation of the People Act (RPA)and the Indian Penal Code outlawed appeals to voters on the basis of community and made it illegal to promote feelings of enmity between communities during elections. The RPA was amended in 1961, making it an electoral offence to promote feelings of enmity on the grounds of religion, race, caste, community or language during election campaigns.  However, the laws prohibiting appeals to caste, religion or language or promoting of enmity between communities and the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) are not enforced effectively to combat the practice. This took democracy in a direction diametrically opposed to what Nehru had intended. Just as elections were being commandeered to serve caste interests, they were also being worked in such a way as to harness democracy to money and its corrupting influences.

 

By the end of the first decade of the Indian Republic, doubts about the way the system of parliamentary democracy was being operated were expressed from several quarters.  In the larger context of Asian politics, there was a sharp turn away from parliamentary democracy. Sukarno had shifted Indonesia to what he called ‘guided democracy’ in 1957. In Pakistan Ayub Khan staged the country’s first coup in October 1958. In the same month, U Nu had requested the military to step in to govern Burma. The following year, S.W.R.D Bandaranaike was assassinated in Ceylon.

 

The most prominent critic of parliamentary democracy was Jayaprakash Narayan (JP)- a friend of the Prime Minister Nehru. Shortly, after the independence, he disavowed politics to pursue Bhoodan and Sarvodaya. However, after the first general elections, ‘he began to wonder out loud whether there might be some other way for India to pursue democracy, beyond the system established by the Constitution’. JP grew deeply cynical about parliamentary democracy.  On the eve of the Second general elections, he wrote to Nehru: ‘whatever their outcome, the verdict is inescapable that the present political system has proved a failure’, and that the first-past-the-post system produced governments that did not represent a majority of voters. And that the caste system was ‘the greatest single impediment to Inda’s progress- the cause of social injustice and inequality’.   

 

Nehru was not keen to upend India’s existing institutions. Replying to JP’s critique, the Prime Minister bluntly wrote: ‘I do not think the present system has failed…of course, the party system has many faults. The parliamentary democracy that we adopted is also full of faults.  We adopted it because it was better than the other possible courses.’ He was worried about the disruptive and reactionary forces, such as religious, caste and linguistic chauvinism, rather than the democratic system India had chosen.

 

There is good reason for large dams to have come to stand as signifiers of India’s modernism. Nehru once told a visiting dignitary as they toured a new dam, ‘These are the new temples of India where I worship.’  At independence, the country had 118 dams of all heights, but during the first and second five-year plans, more than 500 river valley schemes of all kinds, including seventy-four dams over one hundred feet in height were launched. This modernization was intended to improve the lives of ordinary people using modernist techniques. It was an example of how India’s elites integrated themselves into the country’s postcolonial nationalism, redirecting their energies towards every day nation-building.

 

Beyond the developmental projects, there were innumerable areas of life that were touched by modernism, including dance, drama, literature and science. Abul Kalam Azad, as Union Education Minister, established three national academies between 1953 and 1954 – the Sangeet Natak Akademi for music, dance and drama, the Sahitya Akademi for literature, and the Lalit Kala Akademi for the fine arts. Jaya Appasamy, editor of the journal Lalit Kala Contemporary in 1964, had summed up the developments in India’s modern art since1947, ‘Contemporary art is characterized by an immense freedom, and any rules that artists followed were of their own creation.’ In many ways, this captures the nature of modernism in India in the Nehru years. ‘There was an intense energy, and enormous freedom to experiment with ideas, forms and institutions that would do justice to the feeling of newness that hung in the air.’         

 

Nehru wanted to persuade people to join on the voyage he wished to take, but he had no desire to compel anyone to come along. 'Indeed,he cavilled at the more obvous trappings of autocracy: he was uncomfortable with blind devotion and consistently resisted the iconisation that is central to a cult of personality’. He played multiple roles- ‘an architect of independent India, patron, mediator, educator and symbol’- says Taylor Sherman. And ‘the most influential position Nehru set out for himself was to sponsor other intelligent and energetic individuals to work on projects aligned with his principles’.  As patron, Nehru could lend the weight of his stature and his office to a venture. And as mediator, he could use his influence to clear out blockages in Indian bureaucracy, or salve wounded egos to help people work together.

 

The role he relished most was that of educator.  Nehru thought deeply about India and its problems, about the world and its future. He had principles, and he had goals, and he liked to explain them to others. His aim was to bring others on board, not to browbeat them into obedience. In persuading others to join him, he could bring their energies and creativity to bear in the nation-building. His role as symbol was part of this pedagogical project: he allowed his image and his name to be associated with the ideals dear to him.