Organizer: Kanchan Chandra, Harvard University
Chair: Paul R. Brass, University of Washington
Discussants: Atul Kohli, Princeton University; Ashutosh Varshney, Columbia University
At independence in 1947, the Indian state faced two major challenges: managing enormous cultural diversity within the framework of a single state; and acting as an agent of economic development. Five decades later, it has had more success in meeting the first than the second. Although conflict between cultural groups has escalated, it has been prevented from fulfilling its disintegrative potential: the separatist agitation in Punjab has been accommodated; the violence in Kashmir is at its lowest ebb; and with the moderate position assumed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, one of the biggest threats to the multi-ethnic character of the state seems to have been domesticated. However, its performance in fulfilling the most minimal responsibilities of a developmental state—protecting its citizens from violence, providing basic amenities including water, sanitation and health care, and establishing a system of universal primary education—has been poor and patchy. The post-colonial Indian state, as one essayist puts it, has enabled its people to live together but not live well.1
Why has the Indian state been relatively successful in accommodating cultural conflict? Why has it not done more for the general well-being of the population? To what extent is success in the first area connected to failure in the second? This panel focuses attention on the performance of the Indian state in both areas, and the relationship between the two. In addressing these questions, the panel draws substantially on new sources of data, including the 1996 nationwide survey of the Indian electorate (the only such study done in the past twenty-five years), and ethnographic fieldwork in three Indian states.
1. Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1997, 10.
Secularism Out of Its Place
Paul R. Brass, University of Washington, Seattle
A major source of the problems in recent discussions of the continued relevance to contemporary Indian political life of the secular state and the practices associated with secularism lies in the heavy burden that has been placed upon these terms. Secularism, properly speaking, is an orientation and a set of practices. However, in India, it has become an ideology seen as contesting with both Hindu communalism by those who uphold it and as contesting against the faith of the Indian peoples by those who lately stand against it. Secularism as an orientation and a set of practices is indispensable to India’s future as a multi-ethnic democracy. However, it loses its force as a binding principle of Indian unity if it is transformed into an ideology.
Subordinate Caste Politics and State Performance
Kanchan Chandra, Harvard University
The central thesis of most political parties representing subordinate castes in Indian politics is that the failure of the state to address basic issues of poverty, illiteracy and land distribution stem from the capture of the state by upper-caste groups. A state dominated by upper-caste interests, according to them, cannot be expected to safeguard their interests. According to this argument, the ascendance of subordinate caste groups in legislatures and bureaucracies should result in a rehabilitated state, more responsive to the needs of the majority of its population.
This paper argues that the reasons for the weak performance of the Indian state run deeper than the cultural identity of those in power. Drawing on theories of state and class developed in the scholarship on post-colonial Africa, and on fieldwork conducted in India over 1996–98, the paper identifies structural factors underlying the failure of the state in India that are not likely to be addressed by the ascendance of subordinate castes in Indian politics. These factors explain the otherwise puzzling observation that the rise to power of subordinate caste parties in two of the most populous states of India (Uttar Pradesh and Bihar) has not, as we might have expected, been accompanied by initiatives to reform the education system or to affect fundamental changes in the redistribution of land and income.
The State, Democracy, and the Challenge of Identity in India
Subrata Kumar Mitra, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg
The Indian state at fifty presents a picture of considerable strength fringed with traces of fragility. Nevertheless the authority of the state is far from secure. The Congress party, long an effective institution based on consensus, drawing its strength from its ability to intervene between conflicting primordial identities, has left centre stage. It has been replaced by a coalition of over a dozen political parties. At the centre of this ruling coalition is the Bharatiya Janata Party, which argues that its interpretation of Bharatiya Sanskriti (Indian culture) should be the foundation of the Indian state. Many students of India see the proliferation of parties, and the direct entry of social ritual into the political arena, as an assault on the stability of the state.
Consensus-building is a prime concern, and has always been the dominant norm in Indian politics. Even in the absence of the Congress ‘umbrella,’ however, the existence of the electoral option acts as an incentive to the parties to concede, compromise and come to a consensus. The pursuit of power canalised through the political system permits continued consensus-building. This is the dynamics behind the political integration of the country. The paper develops these arguments by drawing on the results of a nationwide survey of the Indian electorate, carried out shortly after the parliamentary elections of 1996.