India After Gandhi (104 page)

The writers quoted in this section were all Indians in their late fifties or early sixties, who had grown up in the warm glow of the Nehru years and remembered the hopes with which the new nation was forged. Their sentiments were no doubt coloured by nostalgia, at least some of which was merited. For the politicians of Nehru’s day had worked to contain social cleavages rather than deepen or further them for their own interests. But in other ways the nostalgia was perhaps misplaced. The churning – violent and costly though it undoubtedly was – could be more sympathetically read as a growing decentralization of the Indian polity, away from the hegemony of a single region (the north),a single party (the Congress), a single family (the Gandhis).

One must reserve final comment on whether the gloom was really justified. For as the very many forecasts previously quoted in this book have shown, every decade since Independence had been designated the
‘most dangerous’ thus far. If there was a novelty about these latest predictions, it was merely that they came from Indians rather than foreigners.

With the end of the present chapter, this book moves from ‘history’ to what might instead be called ‘historically informed journalism’. Part Five, which follows, deals with the events of the last two decades, that is, with processes still unfolding. Given our closeness to what is being written about, it adopts a thematic rather than chronological approach. To ground the narrative, however, each chapter starts with a prediction from the past that in some way anticipated the future.

The author of a study of the Assam movement published in 1983 remarked that the book was ‘almost contemporary history and contemporary history will not have the logic, the neatness in understanding, the conformity to patterns, that the passage of years gives to things’.
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The author of a book on Operation Bluestar published in 1994 argued that a decade or so is perhaps the right amount of time to have elapsed before attempting to document contemporary history. It is also the time when one can indulge in the luxury of introspection because events have ceased to colour one’s judgement emotionally’.
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Most official archives around the world follow a ‘thirty-year’ rule, keeping closed documents written during the past three decades. That seems just about right, for once thirty years have passed any new ‘disclosures’ are unlikely materially to affect the lives of those still living.

In my experience, to write about events as a historian one also needs a generation’s distance. That much time must elapse before one can place those events in a pattern, to see them away and apart from the din and clamour of the present. Once roughly three decades have gone by, much more material is at hand – not just archives that are now open, but also memoirs, biographies and analytical works that have since been published.

When writing about the very recent past one lacks the primary sources available for earlier periods. Besides, the historian is here writing about times that are close to him as well as his readers. He, and they, often have strong opinions about the politicians and policies of the day. In the chapters that follow I have tried to keep my own biases out of the narrative, but my success in this respect may be limited – or at any rate, more limited than in other parts of the book. For these decades have been as rich in incident and controversy as any other time in the history of independent India.

In India you do not cast your vote; you vote your caste.

V. N. GADGiL, Congress politician, 1995

I
N
THE
SECOND
WEEK
of January 1957 India’s leading anthropologist addressed the annual Science Congress in Calcutta on the subject of ‘Caste in Modern India’. ‘My main aim in this address’, began M. N. Srinivas,

is to marshal evidence before you to prove that in the last century or more, caste has become much more powerful in certain respects, than it ever was in pre-British times. Universal adult franchise and the provision of safeguards for backward groups in our Constitution have strengthened caste appreciably. The recent strengthening of caste contrasts with the aim of bringing about a ‘caste and classless society’ which most political parties, including the Indian National Congress, profess.

Srinivas then went on to show how Indian politics was shot through with caste rivalries. In the state of Andhra Pradesh, one major peasant caste, the Kammas, usually supported the Communist Party of India (prompting the witticism that the party’s ideology was really ‘Kammanist’), whereas its rival Reddy caste backed the Congress. In neighbouring Mysore, where the Congress was in power, the Lingayats and Okkaligas fought for control of the party. In Maharashtra and Madras, the main axis of political conflict was Brahmin versus non-Brahmin. In Bihar, the landowning castes, Bhumihars and Rajputs, battled with the literate Kayasths for the top jobs in the Congress organization. In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, where the lower castes were better organized, ‘the tussle
between the Rajputs and Chamars for political power is likely to get keener in the near future’.

While the constitution of India pledged itself to a casteless society, said Srinivas, in fact ‘the power and activity of caste has increased in proportion as political power passed increasingly to the people from the rulers’. Thus caste was ‘everywhere the unit of social action’. There were, however, some regional variations. It was ‘not unlikely that the absence of powerful Brahmin groups in the North has prevented the rising of an anti-Brahmin movement and this has probably led to the popular impression that caste is more powerful south of the Vindhyas than to the north’. But, as Srinivas continued, ‘there are signs, however, that caste is becoming stronger in the North. Whether caste conflict will ever become as strong as it is in the South today, remains to be seen.’
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Srinivas’s talk was delivered in absentia, since the anthropologist himself was away in the United States. Withal, it attracted a stream of excited commentary in the English-language press. For the second general election was just round the corner. Would voters exercise their franchise according to their individual preference, as democratic theory urged them to do? Or would they instead validate the anthropologist by simply voting according to their caste?
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The subsequent decades were to provide resounding confirmation of M. N. Srinivas’s thesis. Far from disappearing with democracy and modernization, caste continued to have a determining influence in (and on) Indian society. In town or village, at leisure or at work, most Indians were defined by the endogamous group into which they were born.

True, the caste system was by no means unaffected by the economic and social changes unleashed by Independence. Inter-dining, once strictly prohibited, was quite common in the cities, and among the professional classes there were now many marriages contracted between members of different castes. The association between caste and occupation, once so rigid, was also weakening.
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Set against this was the growing salience of caste and caste identity in the modern domain of electoral politics. The most striking feature of Indian politics in the 1960s and 70s was the rise of the ‘backward castes’, of those groups intermediate between the Scheduled Castes at the
bottom and the Brahmins and Rajputs at the top. Yadavs in UP and Bihar, Jats in Punjab and Haryana, Marathas in Maharashtra, Vokkaligas in Karnataka and Gounders in Tamil Nadu – these were, in Srinivas’s phrase, the ‘dominant caste’ in their localities: large in numbers, well organized, exercising economic and social power. At election time – to use another of the anthropologist’s concepts – they acted as a ‘vote bank’, lining up solidly behind a politician of their caste.

In Indian law these groups are known as the Other Backward Castes (or Classes), to distinguish them from the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes. It was these OBCs who formed the social base and provided the leadership of the parties that were successfully to challenge the dominance of the Congress Party. The DMK, which came to power in Madras after the 1967 elections, as well as the SVD governments of the states in the north, were in essence OBC parties. Ten years later, these backward castes asserted themselves emphatically on the national stage. At least two of the four components of the Janata collective – the Lok Dal and the Socialist Party – were also, in essence, OBC parties.
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Economic power had come to the OBCs through land reforms and the Green Revolution; political power through the ballot box. What was lacking was administrative power. It was thus that the Janata government had appointed the Backward Classes Commission, known then, and ever after, as the Mandal Commission after its proactive chairman. The Commission concluded that caste was still the main indicator of ‘backwardness’. It identified, on the basis of state surveys, as many as 3,743 specific castes which were still backward. These, it estimated, collectively constituted in excess of 50 per cent of the Indian population. Yet these castes were very poorly represented in the administration, especially at the higher levels. By the Commission’s calculations, circa 1980 OBCs filled only 12.55 per cent of all posts in central government, and a mere 4.83 per cent of Class I jobs.

To redress this anomaly the Mandal Commission recommended that 27 per cent of all posts in central government be reserved for these castes, to add to the 22.5 per cent already set apart for Scheduled Castes and Tribes. For, said the Commission,

we must recognise that an essential part of the battle against social backwardness is to be fought in the minds of the backward people. In India Government service has always been looked upon as a symbol of prestige and power. By increasing the representation of
OBCs in Government services, we give them an immediate feeling of participation in the governance of this country. When a backward caste candidate becomes a Collector or Superintendent of Police, the material benefits accruing from his position are limited to the members of his family only. But the psychological spin-off of this phenomenon is tremendous; the entire community of that backward class candidate feels elevated. Even when no tangible benefits flow to the community at large, the feeling that now it has its ‘own man’ in the ‘corridors of power’ acts as morale booster.
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By the time the Mandal Commission submitted its report the Janata government had fallen. The Congress regimes that followed, headed by Indira and Rajiv Gandhi respectively, sought to give it a quiet burial. But when a National Front government came to power after the general election of 1989 the report was disinterred. The new prime minister, V. P. Singh, was sensible of the rising political power of the OBCs, and of his less-than-solid position as head of a minority coalition. Thus on 13 August was issued a four-paragraph government order implementing the basic recommendation of the Mandal Report. Henceforth, 27 per cent of all vacancies in the government of India would be reserved for candidates from the ‘socially and educationally backward classes identified by the Commission.

The order sparked a lively debate in intellectual circles. Some scholars argued that the criteria for job reservation should be family income, rather than membership of a particular caste. Others deplored the extension of affirmative action in the first place; by allocating one job in two on considerations other than merit, the efficacy and reliability of public institutions was being put at risk. However, there were also scholars who welcomed the implementation of the Mandal recommendations as a corrective to the dominance of upper castes, and especially Brahmins, in the public services. They pointed to the states of south India, where more than two-thirds of government jobs were allocated on the basis of caste, without (it was argued) affecting the efficiency of the administration.
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In September 1990 a case was brought before the Supreme Court of India, contesting the constitutional validity of the Mandal Commission’s recommendations. Three principal arguments were made by the petitioner: that the extension of reservation violated the constitutional guarantee of equality of opportunity; that caste was not a reliable indicator of
backwardness; and that the efficiency of public institutions was at risk. While it deliberated on the case, the bench issued a stay of execution on the government order of 13 August.

As is so often the case in India, arguments about public policy were conducted in newspapers and courts, and also spilled over into the streets. On 19 September a Delhi University student named Rajiv Goswami set himself on fire in protest against the acceptance of the Mandal Commission report. He was badly burnt, but survived. Other students were inspired to follow his example. These self-immolators were all upper-caste Indians whose own hopes for obtaining a government job were now being undermined. Altogether, there were nearly 200 suicide attempts – of these, sixty-two were successful.

Other protests were collective. Across northern India groups of students organized rallies and demonstrations, shut down schools, colleges and shops, attacked government buildings and engaged in battle with the police. The guardians of the law sought to defend themselves, sometimes to deadly effect. Incidents of police firing were reported from six states of the Union, these claiming more than fifty lives.
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The conflicts sparked by the Mandal Commission recommendations were far more intense in northern India. For one thing, affirmative action programmes had long been in existence in the south. For another, that region also had a thriving industrial sector; thus educated young men were no longer as dependent on government employment. Again, while in the south the upper castes constituted less than 10 per cent of the population, the figure in the north was in excess of 20 per cent. Since there was more at stake all round, the battles, naturally, were fiercer.