India After Independence: 1947-2000 (31 page)

Nehru believed that democracy and civil liberties had to be basic constituents of socialism, and were inseparable from it.

On the basis of his experience of the national movement, Nehru came to the view that basic social change can be, and should be, brought about only through a broad societal consensus or the consent of the overwhelming majority of the people. As he told Tibor Mende in 1956: ‘One has to carry people with one.’ They must be willing to ‘accept changes.’ Parliament could, of course, legislate, but it was far more important that ‘a very large section of the people must also accept it—or, at any rate, actively or passively, be ready to accept it.’
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On another occasion he told the presidents of the Provincial Congress Committees that he was convinced of the importance of ‘carrying our people along the line of progress. We are not a sectarian body consisting of the elect. We are fellow-travellers with the people of India.’
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There were several major corollaries of this approach. First, the process of social transformation might have to be slowed down, for the process of reconciling different views inside and outside the Congress party and of winning the active or passive consent of the people was a time-consuming one. Nehru was willing to slow down the pace of socialist development in order to persuade and carry the people and his colleagues with him rather than to ride roughshod over their opinions or to ignore and show disrespect to the autonomy of the various institutions of the state. Besides, to endure and strike deep roots, socialism required popular acceptance and a democratic approach.

Learning from the experience of the rise of fascism in the thirties, Nehru argued that in the absence of a broad societal consensus, any radical steps towards socialism would invite the danger of fascism. ‘An attempt at premature leftism’, he wrote to Jayaprakash Narayan in 1948, ‘may well lead to reaction or disruption.’
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Nehru was aware of the social presence of the powerful landed elements with their social prestige and economic power and numerical strength. He was also conscious of the fact that his party had, despite his charisma and personal popularity, secured less than 50 per cent of the votes cast in the 1952 and 1957 elections. On the other hand, the different rightist political elements had together secured more than 25 per cent of the popular vote for the Lok Sabha elections in these years; and this was apart from the right-wing strength inside the Congress itself. Above all he felt that the middle strata, urban as well as rural, had to be handled with care and caution for they constituted a very large section of the people—and it was the middle strata which had formed the backbone of fascism in Germany. Any frontal attack on the propertied classes was likely to push them and the middle strata to taking a fascist position. Any effort at making a minority revolution or when the overwhelming majority of the people had not been won over was more likely to result in counter-revolution and the overthrow of democracy than in the coming of socialist revolution. Even apart from fascism, such an effort would divide the Indian people when their unity was both essential and fragile.

India of the Nehru era was quite often criticized for being a soft state and Nehru was accused of being a weak ruler. But Nehru did not agree, for he was aware of the danger of authoritarianism posed by too strong a state and too strong a ruler. Just before his death, he said in 1964: ‘One should not mistake gentleness and civility of character for weakness. They criticize me for my weakness, but this is too large a country with too many legitimate diversities to permit any so-called “strong man” to trample over people and their ideas.’
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One reason Nehru adopted an open-ended approach towards socialism was because of his belief that it was not possible to mobilize a large majority around a clear-cut, structured, ideological definition of socialism. A large majority could be mobilized only by uniting diverse interests and multiple views and ideological strands around a common socialist vision or broad framework.

Over time Nehru came to believe that a socialist society could be achieved through peaceful and non-violent means. While recognizing the existence and significance of the class struggle he believed that it could be resolved through non-violent means and the rule of law.

One other aspect of Nehru’s approach to politics and socialism deserves to be stressed. With the passage of time he came very close to Gandhiji in emphasizing that in building a socialist India as much importance should be attached to the means as to the ends. Wrong means, he said, would not lead to right results. His belief in the inseparability of the means and the ends was another reason why he increasingly condemned all recourse to violence even for a worthy objective like that of socialism.

Nehru looked upon rapid economic development as basic for India’s independence and unity and for the removal of poverty and implementation of his social welfarist policies. In the chapter on ‘Objectives of Planned Development’ which he wrote for the Third Five Year Plan he observed: ‘A high rate of economic growth sustained over a long period is the essential condition for achieving a rising level of living for all citizens, and especially for those in low income groups or lacking the opportunity to work.’
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And he told the Avadi session of the Congress: ‘We cannot have a Welfare State in India with all the socialism or even communism in the world unless our national income goes up greatly. Socialism or communism might help you to divide your existing wealth, if you like, but in India there is no existing wealth for you to divide; there is only poverty to divide . . . How can we have a Welfare State without wealth?’
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In other words, production was essential whatever the nature of society—socialist or capitalist.

The three pillars of Nehru’s development strategy, representing ‘a fairly widespread intellectual consensus of the time,’
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were planning for rapid industrial and agricultural growth, a public sector to develop
strategic industries and a mixed economy. Nehru popularized the concept of planning and made it a part of Indian consciousness. India was to have a mixed economy as a transitional stage, with the private sector functioning for a long time to come though within the framework of planning. In the long run, the state was to occupy the commanding heights of the economy, owning or controlling all basic industries and strategic sectors of the economy. The public sector was not to be based only on state-run enterprises. Nehru was very clear that the cooperative principle should be encouraged and cooperatives in trade, industry and agriculture should play an increasingly larger role.

In the long run, the role of the market forces and profit motive was to become less significant. At the same time, Nehru was quite clear that over time the public sector must generate additional sources. According to the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956, which he helped draft, the public sector was expected to ‘augment the revenues of the state and provide resources for further development in fresh fields.’ Taking a pragmatic view of the question, he also held that where public sector performed well, it should remain, and where it did not, it was to be replaced.

Above all Nehru wanted to build an independent self-reliant economy, for independence depended on economic strength and the capacity to resist economic and political domination. Emphasis on rapid industrialization and agricultural self-sufficiency, planning, public sector and heavy, capital goods industry, minimal use of foreign capital and aid, science, technology and technical modernization, the training of a large technical and scientific cadre, and atomic energy was seen by Nehru as necessary parts of the effort at independent economic development. In achieving this, there is hardly any doubt that he was eminently successful. India did make the transition from a colonial to an independent economy, though a capitalist economy. Whatever the weaknesses that emerged later, Nehru’s economic policy did prove to be the right one for India and as a result her economic achievement was quite substantial.

Nehru’s commitment to secularism was unsurpassed and all-pervasive. Communalism went against his grain, and he fought it vigorously throughout his life. He helped secularism acquire deep roots among the Indian people; and he prevented the burgeoning forth of communalism when conditions were favourable for it. Though on almost all issues he believed in consensus and compromise, communalism was the exception, for as he said in 1950, any compromise on communalism ‘can only mean a surrender of our principles and a betrayal of the cause of India’s freedom.’
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Keeping in view India’s specific situation, Nehru defined secularism in the dual sense of keeping the state, politics and education separate from
religion, making religion a private matter for the individual, and of showing equal respect for all faiths and providing equal opportunities for their followers. He defined communalism as the ideology which treated Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or Christians as homogeneous groups in regard to political and economic matters, as ‘politics under some religious garb, one religious group being incited to hate another religious group.’
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Nehru was one of the first to try to understand the socio-economic roots of communalism, and he came to believe that it was primarily a weapon of reaction, even though its social base was formed by the middle classes. He also most perceptibly described communalism as the Indian form of fascism. In contrast, he regarded secularism as an essential condition for democracy.

He also did not distinguish between Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian communalisms. They were, he said, different forms of the same ideology and had, therefore, to be opposed simultaneously. While he was very clear that secularism meant giving full protection to the minorities and removing their fears, at the same time, he was as opposed to minority communalisms as to the communalism of the religious majority. He also argued most convincingly that secularism had to be the sole basis for national unity in a multi-religious society and that communalism was, therefore, clearly a danger to national unity and was anti-national.

There was, however, a major lacuna in Nehru’s approach to the problem of communalism, which can be seen as a certain economistic, deterministic and reductionist bias. Believing that planning and economic development and the spread of education, science and technology would automatically weaken communal thinking and help form a secular consciousness, he ignored the need for struggle against communalism as an ideology. As a result he paid little attention to the content of education or to the spread of science and scientific approach among the people. While very active himself, he failed to use the Congress as an organization to take his own brilliant understanding of communalism to the people. He also compromised with his own stand when he permitted the Congress in Kerala to enter into an alliance with the Muslim League and Christian communal groups in 1960. Further, he was unable to persuade the state governments to take strong administrative steps against the instigators or perpetrators of communal violence. Sadly, sorrow over the large-scale communal violence marked the last years of his life.

Nehru did not devote much time and effort to social reform in the narrow sense of the term. But he was opposed to social conservatism; and, realizing that men and women do not live by bread alone, he regularly emphasized the necessity of bringing about changes in the social sphere along with economic and political changes. One of his greatest achievements as prime minister was the passage of the Hindu Code Bills. Another was
the care with which he promoted education among girls and public employment of middle-class women.

As brought out in chapter 12 above, Nehru’s foreign policy was a many splendoured phenomenon. Nehru used foreign policy as an instrument to defend and strengthen India’s newly won independence and to safeguard India’s national interests and to develop the self-reliance, self-confidence and the pride of the Indian people, even while serving the cause of world peace and anti-colonialism. It is significant that successive prime ministers after Nehru, till today, have continued to follow the broad framework of his foreign policy.

Nehru’s place in history should rightly take into account his political weaknesses. This in no way diminishes him for he still emerges as a person who towered over his contemporaries.

A critical weakness of Nehru’s strategy of consolidation of the Indian nation, economic development and social transformation flowed from his non-adherence to the Gandhian strategy of non-violent struggle in one crucial aspect—its emphasis on the mobilization of the people. Nehru did see the necessity of involving a large number of people in nation building. But he had an overpowering belief in spontaneity, in the poor mobilizing on their own; he believed in the reductionist notion that the exercise of franchise would gradually educate the masses to vote in their own interest. He also harboured the nineteenth-century liberal notion that his speeches or those of other right type leaders would by themselves arouse and activize the masses.

There is no doubt that Nehru felt deeply and passionately for the people; his sway over the masses was immense as was his capacity to communicate with them, to sense their feelings and to win their love, affection and trust. But an active involvement of the people in politics and their own social liberation required organization and mobilization, a party, however loosely structured, cadres, however democratically organized, and a minimum of ideology, however broad, non-dogmatic and open-ended. In fact, Nehru’s own model of development and social transformation depended on active pressure from below by the deprived, the exploited and the dominated. Such active popular participation in politics alone would enable parliamentary democracy to serve as an instrument of nation building, social change and equity.