Hinduism in India traces its source to the Vedas, ancient hymns composed and recited in Punjab as early as 1500 B.C. Three main collections of the Vedas--the Rig, Sama, and Yajur--consist of chants that were originally recited by priests while offering plant and animal sacrifices in sacred fires. A fourth collection, the Atharva Veda, contains a number of formulas for requirements as varied as medical cures and love magic. The majority of modern Hindus revere these hymns as sacred sounds passed down to humanity from the greatest antiquity and as the source of Hindu tradition.
The vast majority of Vedic hymns are addressed to a pantheon of deities who are attracted, generated, and nourished by the offerings into the sacred flames and the precisely chanted mantras (mystical formulas of invocation) based on the hymns. Each of these deities may appear to be the supreme god in his or her own hymns, but some gods stand out as most significant. Indra, god of the firmament and lord of the weather, is the supreme deity of the Vedas. Indra also is a god of war who, accompanied by a host of storm gods, uses thunderbolts as weapons to slay the serpent demon Vritra (the name means storm cloud), thus releasing the rains for the earth. Agni, the god of fire, accepts the sacrificial offerings and transmits them to all the gods. Varuna passes judgment, lays down the law, and protects the cosmic order. Yama, the god of death, sends earthly dwellers signs of old age, sickness, and approaching mortality as exhortations to lead a moral life. Surya is the sun god, Chandra the moon god, Vayu the wind god, and Usha the dawn goddess.
Vedas :
Some of the later hymns of the Rig Veda contain speculations that form the basis for much of Indian religious and philosophical thought. From one perspective, the universe originates through the evolution of an impersonal force manifested as male and female principles. Other hymns describe a personal creator, Prajapati, the Lord of creatures, from whom came the heavens and the earth and all the other gods. One hymn describes the universe as emerging from the sacrifice of a cosmic man (purusha ) who was the source of all things but who was in turn offered into the fire by gods. Within the Vedic accounts of the origin of things, there is a tension between visions of the highest reality as an impersonal force, or as a creator god, or as a group of gods with different jobs to do in the universe. Much of Hinduism tends to accept all these visions simultaneously, claiming that they are all valid as different facets of a single truth, or ranks them as explanations with different levels of sophistication. It is possible, however, to follow only one of these explanations, such as believing in a single personal god while rejecting all others, and still claim to be following the Vedas. In sum, Hinduism does not exist as a single belief system with one textual explanation of the origin of the universe or the nature of God, and a wide range of philosophies and practices can trace their beginnings somewhere in the hymns of the Vedas.
By the sixth century B.C., the Vedic gods were in decline among the people, and few people care much for Indra, Agni, or Varuna in contemporary India. These gods might appear as background characters in myths and stories about more important deities, such as Shiva or Vishnu; in some Hindu temples, there also are small statues of Vedic deities. Sacrificial fire, which once accompanied major political activities, such as the crowning of kings or the conquest of territory, still forms the heart of household rituals for many Hindus, and some Brahman (see Glossary) families pass down the skill of memorizing the hymns and make a living as professional reciters of the Vedas. One of the main legacies of Brahmanical sacrifice, seen even among traditions that later denied its usefulness, was a concentration on precise ritual actions and a belief in sacred sound as a powerful tool for manifesting the sacred in daily life.
Vedas page
data 1995
Friday, February 19, 2010
coin appraisal and coin worth
HomeCoinsContact UsDisclaimer.9
Sep
Coin Appraisal and Coin Worth
Posted by Sagar in Coin Collection | Comments Off
One of the most common question when anyone finds a coin which looks rare and old is ‘how much is its worth? Or how much is this coin collection worth?’
Sounds like a very simple question, but in reality it isn’t. A coin value depends on demand from the public, supply from the dealers, from which mint was issued etc.
The date is the easiest to gauge as it is usually mentioned on the obverse (heads side) of the coin. A casual look at a coin from India or any country for that matter will tell you in which year the coin was minted in. There are certain coins which end up being real popular and become collector items. The only way you will be a 100% sure that you are getting value for your coin, is to have it appraised by a professional.
The value of most coins depends on various factors such as age, condition, metal content, rarity, country, personal preference, and market value. Every coin must be in very good condition for it to have some market value. Coins containing gold and silver will definitely have greater market value over coins containing copper, nickel and zinc. However a very rare copper coin can be worth more than even a gold or silver coin.
The rarity of a coin is the singular most important trait for any coin collector. If there is a mistake on a coin, it becomes very valuable once it gets circulated and becomes a limited copy. World coins are a lot of fun to collect. US coins are pretty common but owning a 1 naya paisa coin from India is rare indeed. Just like clothes couture, coins go in and out of fashion depending on their demand and supply. It takes an expert to judge the coin appraisal and worth in a volatile market.
Grading is another important factor to be kept in mind and is a technical study. With most of us saying a coin looks ‘pretty good’, the correct terms are – Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, Fine, Very Fine, Extremely Fine, Almost Uncirculated, Uncirculated, Mint State.
So the next time you are out to fetch a coin use this information to know the worth and how to appraise the coin.
Sep
Coin Appraisal and Coin Worth
Posted by Sagar in Coin Collection | Comments Off
One of the most common question when anyone finds a coin which looks rare and old is ‘how much is its worth? Or how much is this coin collection worth?’
Sounds like a very simple question, but in reality it isn’t. A coin value depends on demand from the public, supply from the dealers, from which mint was issued etc.
The date is the easiest to gauge as it is usually mentioned on the obverse (heads side) of the coin. A casual look at a coin from India or any country for that matter will tell you in which year the coin was minted in. There are certain coins which end up being real popular and become collector items. The only way you will be a 100% sure that you are getting value for your coin, is to have it appraised by a professional.
The value of most coins depends on various factors such as age, condition, metal content, rarity, country, personal preference, and market value. Every coin must be in very good condition for it to have some market value. Coins containing gold and silver will definitely have greater market value over coins containing copper, nickel and zinc. However a very rare copper coin can be worth more than even a gold or silver coin.
The rarity of a coin is the singular most important trait for any coin collector. If there is a mistake on a coin, it becomes very valuable once it gets circulated and becomes a limited copy. World coins are a lot of fun to collect. US coins are pretty common but owning a 1 naya paisa coin from India is rare indeed. Just like clothes couture, coins go in and out of fashion depending on their demand and supply. It takes an expert to judge the coin appraisal and worth in a volatile market.
Grading is another important factor to be kept in mind and is a technical study. With most of us saying a coin looks ‘pretty good’, the correct terms are – Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, Fine, Very Fine, Extremely Fine, Almost Uncirculated, Uncirculated, Mint State.
So the next time you are out to fetch a coin use this information to know the worth and how to appraise the coin.
old coin value
Curious about the value of that 3rd century coin of India that you own? And you’re a first time coin collector too? Then firstly it’s important for you to understand coins and their history. As the value of the coin market is ever changing, it’s important to keep a track of these events. Old books can give you a good idea about how valuable your coin is. Many dealers opine that coins found in change are not usually in great demand by collectors, so they are unlikely to be valuable.
It is a necessity to know an old coin value. Is it worth anything or not. However finding out a coins face value is not a difficult task. There are many factors and reasons behind determining the price and value of an old coin. If you have come across an old coin, you should look up a coin price catalogue to gauge its current value. But even before finding out the value of the old coin it is important to grade it first, using the grading guide available in the market and on the net.
Many collectors and dealers have come across coins from time to time wondering if they hold something valuable in their hands. Scarcity or rarity of the edition of that coin is a great determinant to the value of the coin. The rarer an old coin, the more it will be worth. The demand for a particular old coin by dealers or how many collectors want it, will also greatly influence coin values.
If the coin is in a good condition with clear markings on it, higher will be its assigned grade and the more it will be worth. It is also important to note that just because a coin does not have a significant monetary value today does not mean it isn’t interesting or that it might not have monetary value in the future. It could be an essential part of your collection. So hold on to it.
It is a necessity to know an old coin value. Is it worth anything or not. However finding out a coins face value is not a difficult task. There are many factors and reasons behind determining the price and value of an old coin. If you have come across an old coin, you should look up a coin price catalogue to gauge its current value. But even before finding out the value of the old coin it is important to grade it first, using the grading guide available in the market and on the net.
Many collectors and dealers have come across coins from time to time wondering if they hold something valuable in their hands. Scarcity or rarity of the edition of that coin is a great determinant to the value of the coin. The rarer an old coin, the more it will be worth. The demand for a particular old coin by dealers or how many collectors want it, will also greatly influence coin values.
If the coin is in a good condition with clear markings on it, higher will be its assigned grade and the more it will be worth. It is also important to note that just because a coin does not have a significant monetary value today does not mean it isn’t interesting or that it might not have monetary value in the future. It could be an essential part of your collection. So hold on to it.
old coin value
Curious about the value of that 3rd century coin of India that you own? And you’re a first time coin collector too? Then firstly it’s important for you to understand coins and their history. As the value of the coin market is ever changing, it’s important to keep a track of these events. Old books can give you a good idea about how valuable your coin is. Many dealers opine that coins found in change are not usually in great demand by collectors, so they are unlikely to be valuable.
It is a necessity to know an old coin value. Is it worth anything or not. However finding out a coins face value is not a difficult task. There are many factors and reasons behind determining the price and value of an old coin. If you have come across an old coin, you should look up a coin price catalogue to gauge its current value. But even before finding out the value of the old coin it is important to grade it first, using the grading guide available in the market and on the net.
Many collectors and dealers have come across coins from time to time wondering if they hold something valuable in their hands. Scarcity or rarity of the edition of that coin is a great determinant to the value of the coin. The rarer an old coin, the more it will be worth. The demand for a particular old coin by dealers or how many collectors want it, will also greatly influence coin values.
If the coin is in a good condition with clear markings on it, higher will be its assigned grade and the more it will be worth. It is also important to note that just because a coin does not have a significant monetary value today does not mean it isn’t interesting or that it might not have monetary value in the future. It could be an essential part of your collection. So hold on to it.
It is a necessity to know an old coin value. Is it worth anything or not. However finding out a coins face value is not a difficult task. There are many factors and reasons behind determining the price and value of an old coin. If you have come across an old coin, you should look up a coin price catalogue to gauge its current value. But even before finding out the value of the old coin it is important to grade it first, using the grading guide available in the market and on the net.
Many collectors and dealers have come across coins from time to time wondering if they hold something valuable in their hands. Scarcity or rarity of the edition of that coin is a great determinant to the value of the coin. The rarer an old coin, the more it will be worth. The demand for a particular old coin by dealers or how many collectors want it, will also greatly influence coin values.
If the coin is in a good condition with clear markings on it, higher will be its assigned grade and the more it will be worth. It is also important to note that just because a coin does not have a significant monetary value today does not mean it isn’t interesting or that it might not have monetary value in the future. It could be an essential part of your collection. So hold on to it.
coin price guide
A price guide is a reference book that contains information and substantial details about the prices of coins. For example, coins, stamps, artefacts, sports cards, or other collectibles items. In a coin price guide things that will be featured are information, mintages, specifications, grading details, where they were struck, etc. There are some which have accurate approximations of coin prices, while some have goals of helping dealers sell their coins at attractive rates. The price of a coin is very crucial information. For e.g. a coin collector from India would like to buy a coin, or sell a coin, or maybe just browse and appreciate coins in general, hence its important for the information to be as accurate as possible.
Information on the prices of coins are freely available both on the internet and in books which are available in the market. There are some guide books which are much more reliable than others. However no single guidebook is accurate in its matter as they are just approximations of the market value and price of the coins. Your best online option would include, e-Bay and other online auction sites like Heritage, Teletrade, Stacks, and Classical Numismatic Group (for ancient coins). Another good source would be local coin shops or a well stocked book shop.
A very good example of a coin guide price book is ‘A Guide Book of United States Coins,’ by Richard (R. S.) Yeoman. A strong contender on the internet would be The PCGS Price Guide. The PCGS Price Guide provides up-to-date retail prices for all your coins and also follows a 1-70 grading system for coins, where 70 represents a perfect specimen and 1 represents a coin barely identifiable to its type. However they do not guarantee a profit or loss for any coin. Buying and selling of coins is done at your own risk.
A coin price guide is compiled from various sources including dealer ads in trade papers, dealer fixed price lists, significant auctions, and activities at major coin shows. Other popular sites include, ICG (Independent Coin Grading), Coin Club has directories of dealers, clubs, and links; a reference library, books, software, prices, upcoming events, message/chat, and more. ICG (Independent Coin Grading) Numismatic is a springboard to many other sites- articles, stories, FAQs, reviews, references, trivia, tips, and more
Information on the prices of coins are freely available both on the internet and in books which are available in the market. There are some guide books which are much more reliable than others. However no single guidebook is accurate in its matter as they are just approximations of the market value and price of the coins. Your best online option would include, e-Bay and other online auction sites like Heritage, Teletrade, Stacks, and Classical Numismatic Group (for ancient coins). Another good source would be local coin shops or a well stocked book shop.
A very good example of a coin guide price book is ‘A Guide Book of United States Coins,’ by Richard (R. S.) Yeoman. A strong contender on the internet would be The PCGS Price Guide. The PCGS Price Guide provides up-to-date retail prices for all your coins and also follows a 1-70 grading system for coins, where 70 represents a perfect specimen and 1 represents a coin barely identifiable to its type. However they do not guarantee a profit or loss for any coin. Buying and selling of coins is done at your own risk.
A coin price guide is compiled from various sources including dealer ads in trade papers, dealer fixed price lists, significant auctions, and activities at major coin shows. Other popular sites include, ICG (Independent Coin Grading), Coin Club has directories of dealers, clubs, and links; a reference library, books, software, prices, upcoming events, message/chat, and more. ICG (Independent Coin Grading) Numismatic is a springboard to many other sites- articles, stories, FAQs, reviews, references, trivia, tips, and more
rare indian coins
Indian coins, though not nearly as sought-after as the Greek and Roman coins, have a definite demand in the numismatic world. India was one of the pioneering countries to create coins. One of the first Indian coins, consisted of no more than a flat piece of metal with punch marks to specify the weight of the metal used.
This coin was called the Karshapana, but because of its simplicity, it does not have much worth in the antique world. Some of the coins that were minted during the British Raj in India, however, have a high demand.
A copper 1 paisa coin with the symbol of a leaf minted between 1828 and 1847 is one such coin as is unusually shaped fifty-paise from the late 1950s. Exceedingly rare Indian coins, such as the Nazaranas, which had been minted by Jaipur royalty, are considered very valuable finds today.
Among the most popular and valuable rare United States’ Coins is the ‘Liberty double-eagle’, but this, predictably, is a not just a rare but also a gold coin. However, rare United States’ coins, that are not gold, also yield a good value, provided they are part of a limited edition. For instance, one could get over $1,500 for an 1847 Hawaiian cent, and almost $2,000 for a 1923 Buffalo Nickel. But, naturally, the price of rare gold coins is unparalleled. Although that much holds true for ancient coins from any part of the world, coins from some parts of the globe always have a greater demand – a fact you would appreciate when it came down to selling.
When you want to sell rare coins, you may find it easier to sell coins that belong to certain areas. Greek, Roman, Persian, Egyptian and Asian are easier to sell and consequently have greater value than coins from the Far East.
The condition of the coin is another important factor as coins that wear a worn-out look will have few takers. Also, the price of such coins will be greatly impacted by their appearance. You would probably get a better deal by selling your coin to an ancient coin dealer than you would by offering it up to a regular coin dealer. You could also auction your coin on the internet or at a local antique store.
Related posts:
This coin was called the Karshapana, but because of its simplicity, it does not have much worth in the antique world. Some of the coins that were minted during the British Raj in India, however, have a high demand.
A copper 1 paisa coin with the symbol of a leaf minted between 1828 and 1847 is one such coin as is unusually shaped fifty-paise from the late 1950s. Exceedingly rare Indian coins, such as the Nazaranas, which had been minted by Jaipur royalty, are considered very valuable finds today.
Among the most popular and valuable rare United States’ Coins is the ‘Liberty double-eagle’, but this, predictably, is a not just a rare but also a gold coin. However, rare United States’ coins, that are not gold, also yield a good value, provided they are part of a limited edition. For instance, one could get over $1,500 for an 1847 Hawaiian cent, and almost $2,000 for a 1923 Buffalo Nickel. But, naturally, the price of rare gold coins is unparalleled. Although that much holds true for ancient coins from any part of the world, coins from some parts of the globe always have a greater demand – a fact you would appreciate when it came down to selling.
When you want to sell rare coins, you may find it easier to sell coins that belong to certain areas. Greek, Roman, Persian, Egyptian and Asian are easier to sell and consequently have greater value than coins from the Far East.
The condition of the coin is another important factor as coins that wear a worn-out look will have few takers. Also, the price of such coins will be greatly impacted by their appearance. You would probably get a better deal by selling your coin to an ancient coin dealer than you would by offering it up to a regular coin dealer. You could also auction your coin on the internet or at a local antique store.
Related posts:
indian paper currency
The History of Indian paper currency
Some of the first notes to go into circulation in the Indian market were issued by the Bank of Hindustan, The Bengal Bank and other such institutions. This was somewhere in the eighteenth century. It was only as late as 1935, when the Reserve bank of India started issuing currency notes in India.
In the notes issued by the Bank of Bengal, the denomination of the currency was written in three languages, and in an effort to make forging difficult if not impossible, the note was multi-coloured and decorated with a complicated design. At some point, there were even, ‘Bank of Bombay’ notes in circulation.
The first set of British India notes were only printed on one side, unlike their predecessors. It may seem unbelievable today, but such notes were often mailed to the receiver in two packages, each containing one half. This was done as a measure of security, in those days. Notes carrying the British monarch’s portrait were released in the early 1920s. New notes, today, carry portraits of M K Gandhi, India’s most celebrated freedom fighter and leader.
Price guide for paper currency
Just like with coins, there are books and publications which list price guidelines, catalogue paper currency and present a fair idea of paper currency values. You can refer to these when you attend auctions or shows or visit a paper money dealer.
The Internet has valuable information on old paper currency, but don’t be too quick to trust an online vendor of such notes. Always check with the vendor’s precious clientele. The best way to maintain a good collection is by establishing your contacts with a reputable dealer. Once the dealer knows exactly what you are looking for, he or she can help you dispose of and acquire the right paper currency for your collection.
Storing paper currency
Once you have found what you are looking for and made a purchase, you must think about how you plan to store your acquisition. It is worth investing in an expensive top-of-the-range paper money holder to ensure that your note does not get damaged.
Related posts:
Some of the first notes to go into circulation in the Indian market were issued by the Bank of Hindustan, The Bengal Bank and other such institutions. This was somewhere in the eighteenth century. It was only as late as 1935, when the Reserve bank of India started issuing currency notes in India.
In the notes issued by the Bank of Bengal, the denomination of the currency was written in three languages, and in an effort to make forging difficult if not impossible, the note was multi-coloured and decorated with a complicated design. At some point, there were even, ‘Bank of Bombay’ notes in circulation.
The first set of British India notes were only printed on one side, unlike their predecessors. It may seem unbelievable today, but such notes were often mailed to the receiver in two packages, each containing one half. This was done as a measure of security, in those days. Notes carrying the British monarch’s portrait were released in the early 1920s. New notes, today, carry portraits of M K Gandhi, India’s most celebrated freedom fighter and leader.
Price guide for paper currency
Just like with coins, there are books and publications which list price guidelines, catalogue paper currency and present a fair idea of paper currency values. You can refer to these when you attend auctions or shows or visit a paper money dealer.
The Internet has valuable information on old paper currency, but don’t be too quick to trust an online vendor of such notes. Always check with the vendor’s precious clientele. The best way to maintain a good collection is by establishing your contacts with a reputable dealer. Once the dealer knows exactly what you are looking for, he or she can help you dispose of and acquire the right paper currency for your collection.
Storing paper currency
Once you have found what you are looking for and made a purchase, you must think about how you plan to store your acquisition. It is worth investing in an expensive top-of-the-range paper money holder to ensure that your note does not get damaged.
Related posts:
indian coins
India’s history is vast and extensive and it is impossible to talk about Indian coinage without delving into its history. India’s historic coinage can be dated back to some 2600 odd years. A trail of India’s intricate coins can be seen with the coming of rulers like Alexander the Great, the Dutch, the Portuguese and the British. It is important to note, that old Indian coins are not just odd pieces of metal, they are our links to the past which help us understand our rich culture and heritage better. A hint at the multi-cultural forces that shaped this country is witnessed from coins dating back to Kanishka, featuring Iranian goddesses and Zoroastrian ideas.
Indian 25 paisa coin
Most kings and dynasties which ruled over India would otherwise be totally unknown, are today made famous and given a place in history only because they have been inscribed on their coins. A very apt example is the Indo-Greeks and other nomadic kingdoms and dynasties, which existed in Afghanistan and North-West India (the Pakistan today). Paradoxically, this has made the study of Indian history and coinage a very interesting and challenging proposition.
Ever since Mohen-jo-daro and Harappa have been discovered, more than 500 seals have been exposed with fine representation of animal figures and pictorial writing which has not yet been deciphered. Trade between Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Harappa is evident with the finding of two seals. With the coming of the British East India Company, minting of coins began from mid 17th century.
India became independent on 15th August, 1947 and left a legacy of non-decimal coinage. In 1982 a 2 Rupee coin was introduced as an experiment to replace the 2 rupee note. The note ceased circulation till 1990 after which it was minted every year. India has issued several types of coins commemorating great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sri Aurobindo, Chittaranjan Das, Chhatrapati Shivaji and many others. The coins circulating today are the 25 paise, 50 paise, Rs. 1, Rs. 2, and Rs. 5.
Related posts:
Indian 25 paisa coin
Most kings and dynasties which ruled over India would otherwise be totally unknown, are today made famous and given a place in history only because they have been inscribed on their coins. A very apt example is the Indo-Greeks and other nomadic kingdoms and dynasties, which existed in Afghanistan and North-West India (the Pakistan today). Paradoxically, this has made the study of Indian history and coinage a very interesting and challenging proposition.
Ever since Mohen-jo-daro and Harappa have been discovered, more than 500 seals have been exposed with fine representation of animal figures and pictorial writing which has not yet been deciphered. Trade between Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Harappa is evident with the finding of two seals. With the coming of the British East India Company, minting of coins began from mid 17th century.
India became independent on 15th August, 1947 and left a legacy of non-decimal coinage. In 1982 a 2 Rupee coin was introduced as an experiment to replace the 2 rupee note. The note ceased circulation till 1990 after which it was minted every year. India has issued several types of coins commemorating great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sri Aurobindo, Chittaranjan Das, Chhatrapati Shivaji and many others. The coins circulating today are the 25 paise, 50 paise, Rs. 1, Rs. 2, and Rs. 5.
Related posts:
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
freedom fighters of India
Today as we freely move around in our country without anyone questioning or imposing any kinds of restrictions on us we feel satisfied and contended. But this satisfaction is due to the efforts taken by our freedom fighters to free our country from the British rule. Its because of our freedom fighters that today we are enjoying are freedom. Their satyagrahas, sacrifices, and tortures have resulted in the freedom that we enjoy today in our motherland India. Jawaharlal Nehru is one of the most important people in the list of Indian freedom fighters. After independence, Jawaharlal Nehru became the first prime minister of free India. He was also the author of the famous book “panchsheela” Nehru was extremely fond of children. They simply loved and adored him. With his death, India lost a peerless leader of outstanding merits, rare gifts and great qualities of head and heart.
Mahatma Gandhi – the leader of all Indian leaders was born at porbander in Gujarat on 2nd October. He gave the people the weapon of non-violent struggle to fight injustice. He won freedom for India on 15th august 1947. He died on 30th January 1948. He is rightly known as the father of the nation. His full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. His father was a dewan of a princely state and his mother, a god fearing pious lady. Gandhiji is respected all over the world today. He shall never be forgotten.
Another famous Indian freedom fighter is Bal Gangadhar Tilak (Lokmanya Tilak) who was born in ratnagiri, a port in Maharashtra. His father was a teacher and a scholar. He was a brave boy and always fought for freedom, swarajya and self-rule. He also started two newspapers “Maratha” and “Kesari” due to which he was sent into prison. He wanted to spread the message of swarajya through his newspaper. He said, “swaraj is my birth right and I shall have it”. He died on 1st august. People loved him and accepted him as their leaders and so he was called Lokmanya Tilak.
Who could forget Acharya Vinoba Bhave when reminded of freedom fighters? He was born on 11th September 1895 in raigad district. His mothers name was rukmini and his fathers name was narhari bhave. He knew 22 languages. He died on 15th November at the age of 87 that was a great loss to the nation.
Mahatma Gandhi – the leader of all Indian leaders was born at porbander in Gujarat on 2nd October. He gave the people the weapon of non-violent struggle to fight injustice. He won freedom for India on 15th august 1947. He died on 30th January 1948. He is rightly known as the father of the nation. His full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. His father was a dewan of a princely state and his mother, a god fearing pious lady. Gandhiji is respected all over the world today. He shall never be forgotten.
Another famous Indian freedom fighter is Bal Gangadhar Tilak (Lokmanya Tilak) who was born in ratnagiri, a port in Maharashtra. His father was a teacher and a scholar. He was a brave boy and always fought for freedom, swarajya and self-rule. He also started two newspapers “Maratha” and “Kesari” due to which he was sent into prison. He wanted to spread the message of swarajya through his newspaper. He said, “swaraj is my birth right and I shall have it”. He died on 1st august. People loved him and accepted him as their leaders and so he was called Lokmanya Tilak.
Who could forget Acharya Vinoba Bhave when reminded of freedom fighters? He was born on 11th September 1895 in raigad district. His mothers name was rukmini and his fathers name was narhari bhave. He knew 22 languages. He died on 15th November at the age of 87 that was a great loss to the nation.
Presidents of India
Dr. Rajendra Prasad Jan. 26,1950 - May 13, 1962
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan May 13, 1962 - May 13, 1967
Dr. Zakir Hussain May 13, 1967 - August 24, 1969
Shri Varahagiri Venkata Giri August 24, 1969 - August 24, 1974
Shri Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed August 24, 1974 - February 11, 1977
Shri Neelam Sanjiva Reddy July 25, 1977 - July 25, 1982
Shri Giani Zail Singh July 25, 1982--July 25, 1987
Shri R. Venkataraman July 25, 1987- July 25, 1992
Dr.S.D. Sharma July 25, 1992 - July 25, 1997
Shri K R Narayanan July 25, 1997 - 2002
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan May 13, 1962 - May 13, 1967
Dr. Zakir Hussain May 13, 1967 - August 24, 1969
Shri Varahagiri Venkata Giri August 24, 1969 - August 24, 1974
Shri Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed August 24, 1974 - February 11, 1977
Shri Neelam Sanjiva Reddy July 25, 1977 - July 25, 1982
Shri Giani Zail Singh July 25, 1982--July 25, 1987
Shri R. Venkataraman July 25, 1987- July 25, 1992
Dr.S.D. Sharma July 25, 1992 - July 25, 1997
Shri K R Narayanan July 25, 1997 - 2002
Prime Ministers of India
Shri Jawaharlal Nehru August 15, 1947 - May 27, 1964
Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri June 9, 1964 - January 11, 1966
Shrimati Indira Gandhi January 24, 1966 - March 24, 1977
Shri Morarji Desai March 24, 1977 - July 28, 1979
Shri Charan Singh July 28, 1979 - January 14, 1980
Shrimati Indira Gandhi January 14, 1980 - October 31, 1984
Shri Rajiv Gandhi October 31, 1984 - December 1, 1989
Shri Vishwanath Pratap Singh Dec. 2, 1989 - November 10, 1990
Shri Chandra Shekhar November 10, 1990 - June 21, 1991
Shri P.V. Narasimha Rao June 21, 1991 - May 16, 1996
Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee May 16, 1996 - 1 June 1996
Shri H. D. Deve Gowda 1 June 1996 - 12 April 1997
Shri Inder Kumar Gujral 21 April 1997 - 19 Mar 1998
Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee 19 Mar 1998
Dr Manmohan Singh 2004
Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri June 9, 1964 - January 11, 1966
Shrimati Indira Gandhi January 24, 1966 - March 24, 1977
Shri Morarji Desai March 24, 1977 - July 28, 1979
Shri Charan Singh July 28, 1979 - January 14, 1980
Shrimati Indira Gandhi January 14, 1980 - October 31, 1984
Shri Rajiv Gandhi October 31, 1984 - December 1, 1989
Shri Vishwanath Pratap Singh Dec. 2, 1989 - November 10, 1990
Shri Chandra Shekhar November 10, 1990 - June 21, 1991
Shri P.V. Narasimha Rao June 21, 1991 - May 16, 1996
Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee May 16, 1996 - 1 June 1996
Shri H. D. Deve Gowda 1 June 1996 - 12 April 1997
Shri Inder Kumar Gujral 21 April 1997 - 19 Mar 1998
Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee 19 Mar 1998
Dr Manmohan Singh 2004
INDEPENDANCE OF INDIA
One of the most important days for each Indian citizen is 15th August. A day that is celebrated with pride and patriotism by each Indian national, no matter what the age. What is special about this day? It was on this date that India was declared a free and independent nation in 1947.
What preceded Indian Independence Day – 15th August 1947? The Indian independence movement… This movement was a diffusion of nationwide campaigns against British rule over India. There were innumerable freedom fighters - males, females; youth, middle age, senior citizens. They all worked and walked their way to freeing India from the British domination.
No matter how much violence the British soldiers inflicted on the Indian warriors, they relentlessly marched towards freeing their beloved motherland non-violently. They bore the brunt of whips and long tenures in jail. Finally, the British sovereign was left with no choice but to declare India a free nation.
And, as the clock struck 12 am, and a new day began – 15th August 1947 – India stepped into her independent status. This celebration was preceded by a speech made by the first Prime Minister of free India – Jawaharlal Nehru. Below is a famous extract from his speech titled ‘Tryst with Destiny’…
At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance... We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again.
More about Indian Independence day.
Mahatma Gandhi
What preceded Indian Independence Day – 15th August 1947? The Indian independence movement… This movement was a diffusion of nationwide campaigns against British rule over India. There were innumerable freedom fighters - males, females; youth, middle age, senior citizens. They all worked and walked their way to freeing India from the British domination.
No matter how much violence the British soldiers inflicted on the Indian warriors, they relentlessly marched towards freeing their beloved motherland non-violently. They bore the brunt of whips and long tenures in jail. Finally, the British sovereign was left with no choice but to declare India a free nation.
And, as the clock struck 12 am, and a new day began – 15th August 1947 – India stepped into her independent status. This celebration was preceded by a speech made by the first Prime Minister of free India – Jawaharlal Nehru. Below is a famous extract from his speech titled ‘Tryst with Destiny’…
At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance... We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again.
More about Indian Independence day.
Mahatma Gandhi
RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY
India as a country has been bestowed with several nomenclatures. Right from unity in diversity to birthplace of Hinduism and Sanskrit, the land has always been admired and revered for its rich cultural legacy and variety that it offers. India is a story, a legend, folklore and an anecdote in itself. It needs no introduction, no specific mention. It has continued to thrive for centuries and there are bright chances of it being the next super power. The country has always nourished numerous cultures, traditions and religions. All the major religions thrive in India and none of them have ever felt insecure or unprotected. That’s the beauty of the land.
Go to any part of rich India and you will find numerous temple and shrines and all of them contain their own unique stories. We have always believed in beautiful and fascinating description of Indian Gods and Goddesses. Many stories have been told and retold in different fashions about how particular God originated in a particular place. All the descriptions of deities are believable and they convey just one message of Good winning over the evil. Gods in Indian religion have always fought monsters and even taken human forms to conquer evils in convincing manner. Right from north India to southern and western states, everywhere one can find plenty of amazing tales about our religion and sustenance over the centuries. The essence remains the same, the versions differ.
Indian mythology has always been popular among masses. Its effect can be seen from different religious functions and tales told to the kids by their grandma. The virtues have always been exemplified by the conduct of the Gods. Many present day symbols have been born from our mythology and religious beliefs. For example, Om or Swastika or Trishul etc have always been revered. Religious beliefs are in tune with our traditional way of living and we as staunch believers still believe in following the rules and customs. When you hear of stories about our mythological characters like Ram, Sita, Hanuman, Ravana, Ganesha, Krishna and Bhima etc you get to know about what the essence of India is made of. These characters are now being used in animation movies that will be further helpful in making new generation aware of India’s famous religions and mythology. Religion and mythology is no less than precious treasure that must be respected and preserved.
India is a story in itself. There have been civilizations and archaeological facts that are constantly being researched about the birth place of Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Though many times there are fake inventions, there seems a lot of history in the shrines and temples in India. Each depiction of God and villains seems appropriate with the truth winning over the evil. Each time and place has the new emergence of a Hindu God who takes care of the three worlds and slays the evil. A swastika or an Om is a revered sign and mentioned as prosperity. There are many symbols like the Trishul or the Trident which is not displayed everywhere as it is considered aggressive. It is customary to smear ash or sandalwood powder in the forehead as it cools the mind. These are beliefs turned to tradition and most of us follow the rules and codes.The latest generation is quite inquisitive about facts yet totally appreciates the quests of Lord Rama, the slaying of the ten headed Ravana, the piousness of Sita and the loyalty of Hanuman. Animation flicks are being created showing characters like Gathotkach the son of Bhima, Hanuman and Ganesha. Though these are kid specials, this would be the best way to teach them about Gods and religion. Dashavatar is a wonderful combination of story and the magnanimous nature of Lord Vishnu. Each avatar or creation has a set nature and character. It is mind blowing to see the story narration and is well received by the all of us. Our art and culture have direct relation with the mythology. The Shravan month is a holy time where people get religiously and maintain fasting. This is also the time for the beginning of all festivals.Magic or splendor is what we see at the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in India. The Durga Puja is another feat. South traditions relate to Lord Muruga( Karthik) or Lord Ayyappa. The shrine of Vaishnodevi in Jammu involves climbing a steep mountain of 14 kilometers bent and the mission seems accomplished once we see the holy pind. People hold allegiance and complete belief in miracles when life challenges them. Mythology is the treasure of Indian religion and must be given to our progeny.
Go to any part of rich India and you will find numerous temple and shrines and all of them contain their own unique stories. We have always believed in beautiful and fascinating description of Indian Gods and Goddesses. Many stories have been told and retold in different fashions about how particular God originated in a particular place. All the descriptions of deities are believable and they convey just one message of Good winning over the evil. Gods in Indian religion have always fought monsters and even taken human forms to conquer evils in convincing manner. Right from north India to southern and western states, everywhere one can find plenty of amazing tales about our religion and sustenance over the centuries. The essence remains the same, the versions differ.
Indian mythology has always been popular among masses. Its effect can be seen from different religious functions and tales told to the kids by their grandma. The virtues have always been exemplified by the conduct of the Gods. Many present day symbols have been born from our mythology and religious beliefs. For example, Om or Swastika or Trishul etc have always been revered. Religious beliefs are in tune with our traditional way of living and we as staunch believers still believe in following the rules and customs. When you hear of stories about our mythological characters like Ram, Sita, Hanuman, Ravana, Ganesha, Krishna and Bhima etc you get to know about what the essence of India is made of. These characters are now being used in animation movies that will be further helpful in making new generation aware of India’s famous religions and mythology. Religion and mythology is no less than precious treasure that must be respected and preserved.
India is a story in itself. There have been civilizations and archaeological facts that are constantly being researched about the birth place of Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Though many times there are fake inventions, there seems a lot of history in the shrines and temples in India. Each depiction of God and villains seems appropriate with the truth winning over the evil. Each time and place has the new emergence of a Hindu God who takes care of the three worlds and slays the evil. A swastika or an Om is a revered sign and mentioned as prosperity. There are many symbols like the Trishul or the Trident which is not displayed everywhere as it is considered aggressive. It is customary to smear ash or sandalwood powder in the forehead as it cools the mind. These are beliefs turned to tradition and most of us follow the rules and codes.The latest generation is quite inquisitive about facts yet totally appreciates the quests of Lord Rama, the slaying of the ten headed Ravana, the piousness of Sita and the loyalty of Hanuman. Animation flicks are being created showing characters like Gathotkach the son of Bhima, Hanuman and Ganesha. Though these are kid specials, this would be the best way to teach them about Gods and religion. Dashavatar is a wonderful combination of story and the magnanimous nature of Lord Vishnu. Each avatar or creation has a set nature and character. It is mind blowing to see the story narration and is well received by the all of us. Our art and culture have direct relation with the mythology. The Shravan month is a holy time where people get religiously and maintain fasting. This is also the time for the beginning of all festivals.Magic or splendor is what we see at the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in India. The Durga Puja is another feat. South traditions relate to Lord Muruga( Karthik) or Lord Ayyappa. The shrine of Vaishnodevi in Jammu involves climbing a steep mountain of 14 kilometers bent and the mission seems accomplished once we see the holy pind. People hold allegiance and complete belief in miracles when life challenges them. Mythology is the treasure of Indian religion and must be given to our progeny.
Southern Dynasties India
Southern Dynasties in India : The sultans' failure to hold securely the Deccan and South India resulted in the rise of competing southern dynasties: the Muslim Bahmani Sultanate (1347-1527) and the Hindu Vijayanagar Empire (1336-1565). Zafar Khan, a former provincial governor under the Tughluqs, revolted against his Turkic overlord and proclaimed himself sultan, taking the title Ala-ud-Din Bahman Shah in 1347. The Bahmani Sultanate, located in the northern Deccan, lasted for almost two centuries, until it fragmented into five smaller states in 1527. The Bahmani Sultanate adopted the patterns established by the Delhi overlords in tax collection and administration, but its downfall was caused in large measure by the competition and hatred between deccani (domiciled Muslim immigrants and local converts) and paradesi (foreigners or officials in temporary service). The Bahmani Sultanate initiated a process of cultural synthesis visible in Hyderabad, where cultural flowering is still expressed in vigorous schools of deccani architecture and painting.
Southern Dynasties in India :
Founded in 1336, the empire of Vijayanagar (named for its capital Vijayanagar, "City of Victory," in present-day Karnataka) expanded rapidly toward Madurai in the south and Goa in the west and exerted intermittent control over the east coast and the extreme southwest. Vijayanagar rulers closely followed Chola precedents, especially in collecting agricultural and trade revenues, in giving encouragement to commercial guilds, and in honoring temples with lavish endowments. Added revenue needed for waging war against the Bahmani sultans was raised by introducing a set of taxes on commercial enterprises, professions, and industries. Political rivalry between the Bahmani and the Vijayanagar rulers involved control over the Krishna-Tunghabadhra river basin, which shifted hands depending on whose military was superior at any given time. The Vijayanagar rulers' capacity for gaining victory over their enemies was contingent on ensuring a constant supply of horses--initially through Arab traders but later through the Portuguese--and maintaining internal roads and communication networks. Merchant guilds enjoyed a wide sphere of operation and were able to offset the power of landlords and Brahmans in court politics. Commerce and shipping eventually passed largely into the hands of foreigners, and special facilities and tax concessions were provided for them by the ruler. Arabs and Portuguese competed for influence and control of west coast ports, and, in 1510, Goa passed into Portuguese possession.
The city of Vijayanagar itself contained numerous temples with rich ornamentation, especially the gateways, and a cluster of shrines for the deities. Most prominent among the temples was the one dedicated to Virupaksha, a manifestation of Shiva, the patron-deity of the Vijayanagar rulers. Temples continued to be the nuclei of diverse cultural and intellectual activities, but these activities were based more on tradition than on contemporary political realities. (However, the first Vijayanagar ruler--Harihara I--was a Hindu who converted to Islam and then reconverted to Hinduism for political expediency.) The temples sponsored no intellectual exchange with Islamic theologians because Muslims were generally assigned to an "impure" status and were thus excluded from entering temples. When the five rulers of what was once the Bahmani Sultanate combined their forces and attacked Vijayanagar in 1565, the empire crumbled at the Battle of Talikot.
Southern Dynasties in India page
Data as of September 1995
Southern Dynasties in India :
Founded in 1336, the empire of Vijayanagar (named for its capital Vijayanagar, "City of Victory," in present-day Karnataka) expanded rapidly toward Madurai in the south and Goa in the west and exerted intermittent control over the east coast and the extreme southwest. Vijayanagar rulers closely followed Chola precedents, especially in collecting agricultural and trade revenues, in giving encouragement to commercial guilds, and in honoring temples with lavish endowments. Added revenue needed for waging war against the Bahmani sultans was raised by introducing a set of taxes on commercial enterprises, professions, and industries. Political rivalry between the Bahmani and the Vijayanagar rulers involved control over the Krishna-Tunghabadhra river basin, which shifted hands depending on whose military was superior at any given time. The Vijayanagar rulers' capacity for gaining victory over their enemies was contingent on ensuring a constant supply of horses--initially through Arab traders but later through the Portuguese--and maintaining internal roads and communication networks. Merchant guilds enjoyed a wide sphere of operation and were able to offset the power of landlords and Brahmans in court politics. Commerce and shipping eventually passed largely into the hands of foreigners, and special facilities and tax concessions were provided for them by the ruler. Arabs and Portuguese competed for influence and control of west coast ports, and, in 1510, Goa passed into Portuguese possession.
The city of Vijayanagar itself contained numerous temples with rich ornamentation, especially the gateways, and a cluster of shrines for the deities. Most prominent among the temples was the one dedicated to Virupaksha, a manifestation of Shiva, the patron-deity of the Vijayanagar rulers. Temples continued to be the nuclei of diverse cultural and intellectual activities, but these activities were based more on tradition than on contemporary political realities. (However, the first Vijayanagar ruler--Harihara I--was a Hindu who converted to Islam and then reconverted to Hinduism for political expediency.) The temples sponsored no intellectual exchange with Islamic theologians because Muslims were generally assigned to an "impure" status and were thus excluded from entering temples. When the five rulers of what was once the Bahmani Sultanate combined their forces and attacked Vijayanagar in 1565, the empire crumbled at the Battle of Talikot.
Southern Dynasties in India page
Data as of September 1995
India- Gupta and Harsha The classical Age
Gupta age - The Classical Age refers to the period when most of North India was reunited under the Gupta Empire (ca. A.D. 320-550). Because of the relative peace, law and order, and extensive cultural achievements during this period, it has been described as a "golden age" that crystallized the elements of what is generally known as Hindu culture with all its variety, contradiction, and synthesis. The golden age was confined to the north, and the classical patterns began to spread south only after the Gupta Empire had vanished from the historical scene.
The military exploits of the first three rulers--Chandragupta I (ca. 319-335), Samudragupta (ca. 335-376), and Chandragupta II (ca. 376-415)--brought all of North India under their leadership. From Pataliputra, their capital, they sought to retain political preeminence as much by pragmatism and judicious marriage alliances as by military strength.
Despite their self-conferred titles, their overlordship was threatened and by 500 ultimately ruined by the Hunas (a branch of the White Huns emanating from Central Asia), who were yet another group in the long succession of ethnically and culturally different outsiders drawn into India and then woven into the hybrid Indian fabric.
Under Harsha Vardhana (or Harsha, r. 606-47), North India was reunited briefly, but neither the Gupta Empire nor Harsha controlled a centralized state, and their administrative styles rested on the collaboration of regional and local officials for administering their rule rather than on centrally appointed personnel. The Gupta period marked a watershed of Indian culture: the Guptas performed Vedic sacrifices to legitimize their rule, but they also patronized Buddhism, which continued to provide an alternative to Brahmanical orthodoxy.
The most significant achievements of this period, however, were in religion, education, mathematics, art, and Sanskrit literature and drama.
The religion that later developed into modern Hinduism witnessed a crystallization of its components: major sectarian deities, image worship, devotionalism, and the importance of the temple.
Education included grammar, composition, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. These subjects became highly specialized and reached an advanced level. The Indian numeral system--sometimes erroneously attributed to the Arabs, who took it from India to Europe where it replaced the Roman system--and the decimal system are Indian inventions of this period. Aryabhatta's expositions on astronomy in 499, moreover, gave calculations of the solar year and the shape and movement of astral bodies with remarkable accuracy. In medicine, Charaka and Sushruta wrote about a fully evolved system, resembling those of Hippocrates and Galen in Greece. Although progress in physiology and biology was hindered by religious injunctions against contact with dead bodies, which discouraged dissection and anatomy, Indian physicians excelled in pharmacopoeia, caesarean section, bone setting, and skin grafting (see Science and Technology, ch. 6).
The Southern Rivals
When Gupta disintegration was complete, the classical patterns of civilization continued to thrive not only in the middle Ganga Valley and the kingdoms that emerged on the heels of Gupta demise but also in the Deccan and in South India, which acquired a more prominent place in history. In fact, from the mid-seventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries, regionalism was the dominant theme of political or dynastic history of South Asia. Three features, as political scientist Radha Champakalakshmi has noted, commonly characterize the sociopolitical realities of this period. First, the spread of Brahmanical religions was a two-way process of Sanskritization of local cults and localization of Brahmanical social order. Second was the ascendancy of the Brahman priestly and landowning groups that later dominated regional institutions and political developments. Third, because of the seesawing of numerous dynasties that had a remarkable ability to survive perennial military attacks, regional kingdoms faced frequent defeats but seldom total annihilation.
Peninsular India was involved in an eighth-century tripartite power struggle among the Chalukyas (556-757) of Vatapi, the Pallavas (300-888) of Kanchipuram, and the Pandyas (seventh through the tenth centuries) of Madurai. The Chalukya rulers were overthrown by their subordinates, the Rashtrakutas, who ruled from 753 to 973. Although both the Pallava and Pandya kingdoms were enemies, the real struggle for political domination was between the Pallava and Chalukya realms.
Despite interregional conflicts, local autonomy was preserved to a far greater degree in the south where it had prevailed for centuries. The absence of a highly centralized government was associated with a corresponding local autonomy in the administration of villages and districts. Extensive and well-documented overland and maritime trade flourished with the Arabs on the west coast and with Southeast Asia. Trade facilitated cultural diffusion in Southeast Asia, where local elites selectively but willingly adopted Indian art, architecture, literature, and social customs.
The interdynastic rivalry and seasonal raids into each other's territory notwithstanding, the rulers in the Deccan and South India patronized all three religions--Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. The religions vied with each other for royal favor, expressed in land grants but more importantly in the creation of monumental temples, which remain architectural wonders. The cave temples of Elephanta Island (near Bombay, or Mumbai in Marathi), Ajanta, and Ellora (in Maharashtra), and structural temples of Kanchipuram (in Tamil Nadu) are enduring legacies of otherwise warring regional rulers. By the mid-seventh century, Buddhism and Jainism began to decline as sectarian Hindu devotional cults of Shiva and Vishnu vigorously competed for popular support.
Although Sanskrit was the language of learning and theology in South India, as it was in the north, the growth of the bhakti (devotional) movements enhanced the crystallization of vernacular literature in all four major Dravidian languages: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada; they often borrowed themes and vocabulary from Sanskrit but preserved much local cultural lore. Examples of Tamil literature include two major poems, Cilappatikaram (The Jewelled Anklet) and Manimekalai (The Jewelled Belt); the body of devotional literature of Shaivism and Vaishnavism--Hindu devotional movements; and the reworking of the Ramayana by Kamban in the twelfth century. A nationwide cultural synthesis had taken place with a minimum of common characteristics in the various regions of South Asia, but the process of cultural infusion and assimilation would continue to shape and influence India's history through the centuries. Gupta Empire page. Data as of September 1995
The military exploits of the first three rulers--Chandragupta I (ca. 319-335), Samudragupta (ca. 335-376), and Chandragupta II (ca. 376-415)--brought all of North India under their leadership. From Pataliputra, their capital, they sought to retain political preeminence as much by pragmatism and judicious marriage alliances as by military strength.
Despite their self-conferred titles, their overlordship was threatened and by 500 ultimately ruined by the Hunas (a branch of the White Huns emanating from Central Asia), who were yet another group in the long succession of ethnically and culturally different outsiders drawn into India and then woven into the hybrid Indian fabric.
Under Harsha Vardhana (or Harsha, r. 606-47), North India was reunited briefly, but neither the Gupta Empire nor Harsha controlled a centralized state, and their administrative styles rested on the collaboration of regional and local officials for administering their rule rather than on centrally appointed personnel. The Gupta period marked a watershed of Indian culture: the Guptas performed Vedic sacrifices to legitimize their rule, but they also patronized Buddhism, which continued to provide an alternative to Brahmanical orthodoxy.
The most significant achievements of this period, however, were in religion, education, mathematics, art, and Sanskrit literature and drama.
The religion that later developed into modern Hinduism witnessed a crystallization of its components: major sectarian deities, image worship, devotionalism, and the importance of the temple.
Education included grammar, composition, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. These subjects became highly specialized and reached an advanced level. The Indian numeral system--sometimes erroneously attributed to the Arabs, who took it from India to Europe where it replaced the Roman system--and the decimal system are Indian inventions of this period. Aryabhatta's expositions on astronomy in 499, moreover, gave calculations of the solar year and the shape and movement of astral bodies with remarkable accuracy. In medicine, Charaka and Sushruta wrote about a fully evolved system, resembling those of Hippocrates and Galen in Greece. Although progress in physiology and biology was hindered by religious injunctions against contact with dead bodies, which discouraged dissection and anatomy, Indian physicians excelled in pharmacopoeia, caesarean section, bone setting, and skin grafting (see Science and Technology, ch. 6).
The Southern Rivals
When Gupta disintegration was complete, the classical patterns of civilization continued to thrive not only in the middle Ganga Valley and the kingdoms that emerged on the heels of Gupta demise but also in the Deccan and in South India, which acquired a more prominent place in history. In fact, from the mid-seventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries, regionalism was the dominant theme of political or dynastic history of South Asia. Three features, as political scientist Radha Champakalakshmi has noted, commonly characterize the sociopolitical realities of this period. First, the spread of Brahmanical religions was a two-way process of Sanskritization of local cults and localization of Brahmanical social order. Second was the ascendancy of the Brahman priestly and landowning groups that later dominated regional institutions and political developments. Third, because of the seesawing of numerous dynasties that had a remarkable ability to survive perennial military attacks, regional kingdoms faced frequent defeats but seldom total annihilation.
Peninsular India was involved in an eighth-century tripartite power struggle among the Chalukyas (556-757) of Vatapi, the Pallavas (300-888) of Kanchipuram, and the Pandyas (seventh through the tenth centuries) of Madurai. The Chalukya rulers were overthrown by their subordinates, the Rashtrakutas, who ruled from 753 to 973. Although both the Pallava and Pandya kingdoms were enemies, the real struggle for political domination was between the Pallava and Chalukya realms.
Despite interregional conflicts, local autonomy was preserved to a far greater degree in the south where it had prevailed for centuries. The absence of a highly centralized government was associated with a corresponding local autonomy in the administration of villages and districts. Extensive and well-documented overland and maritime trade flourished with the Arabs on the west coast and with Southeast Asia. Trade facilitated cultural diffusion in Southeast Asia, where local elites selectively but willingly adopted Indian art, architecture, literature, and social customs.
The interdynastic rivalry and seasonal raids into each other's territory notwithstanding, the rulers in the Deccan and South India patronized all three religions--Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. The religions vied with each other for royal favor, expressed in land grants but more importantly in the creation of monumental temples, which remain architectural wonders. The cave temples of Elephanta Island (near Bombay, or Mumbai in Marathi), Ajanta, and Ellora (in Maharashtra), and structural temples of Kanchipuram (in Tamil Nadu) are enduring legacies of otherwise warring regional rulers. By the mid-seventh century, Buddhism and Jainism began to decline as sectarian Hindu devotional cults of Shiva and Vishnu vigorously competed for popular support.
Although Sanskrit was the language of learning and theology in South India, as it was in the north, the growth of the bhakti (devotional) movements enhanced the crystallization of vernacular literature in all four major Dravidian languages: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada; they often borrowed themes and vocabulary from Sanskrit but preserved much local cultural lore. Examples of Tamil literature include two major poems, Cilappatikaram (The Jewelled Anklet) and Manimekalai (The Jewelled Belt); the body of devotional literature of Shaivism and Vaishnavism--Hindu devotional movements; and the reworking of the Ramayana by Kamban in the twelfth century. A nationwide cultural synthesis had taken place with a minimum of common characteristics in the various regions of South Asia, but the process of cultural infusion and assimilation would continue to shape and influence India's history through the centuries. Gupta Empire page. Data as of September 1995
Deccan and South Indian Kingdoms
Deccan Indian Kingdoms : During the Kushana Dynasty, an indigenous power, the Satavahana Kingdom (first century B.C.-third century A.D.), rose in the Deccan in southern India. The Satavahana, or Andhra, Kingdom was considerably influenced by the Mauryan political model, although power was decentralized in the hands of local chieftains, who used the symbols of Vedic religion and upheld the varnashramadharma . The rulers, however, were eclectic and patronized Buddhist monuments, such as those in Ellora (Maharashtra) and Amaravati (Andhra Pradesh). Thus, the Deccan served as a bridge through which politics, trade, and religious ideas could spread from the north to the south.
Farther south were three ancient Tamil kingdoms--Chera (on the west), Chola (on the east), and Pandya (in the south)--frequently involved in internecine warfare to gain regional supremacy. They are mentioned in Greek and Ashokan sources as lying at the fringes of the Mauryan Empire. A corpus of ancient Tamil literature, known as Sangam (academy) works, including Tolkappiam , a manual of Tamil grammar by Tolkappiyar, provides much useful information about their social life from 300 B.C. to A.D. 200. There is clear evidence of encroachment by Aryan traditions from the north into a predominantly indigenous Dravidian culture in transition.
Dravidian social order was based on different ecoregions rather than on the Aryan varna paradigm, although the Brahmans had a high status at a very early stage. Segments of society were characterized by matriarchy and matrilineal succession--which survived well into the nineteenth century--cross-cousin marriage, and strong regional identity. Tribal chieftains emerged as "kings" just as people moved from pastoralism toward agriculture, sustained by irrigation based on rivers, small-scale tanks (as man-made ponds are called in India) and wells, and brisk maritime trade with Rome and Southeast Asia.
Discoveries of Roman gold coins in various sites attest to extensive South Indian links with the outside world. As with Pataliputra in the northeast and Taxila in the northwest (in modern Pakistan), the city of Madurai, the Pandyan capital (in modern Tamil Nadu), was the center of intellectual and literary activities. Poets and bards assembled there under royal patronage at successive concourses and composed anthologies of poems, most of which have been lost. By the end of the first century B.C., South Asia was crisscrossed by overland trade routes, which facilitated the movements of Buddhist and Jain missionaries and other travelers and opened the area to a synthesis of many cultures (see Jainism, ch. 3). The Classical Age : Data 1995. Courtesy Library of Congress
Farther south were three ancient Tamil kingdoms--Chera (on the west), Chola (on the east), and Pandya (in the south)--frequently involved in internecine warfare to gain regional supremacy. They are mentioned in Greek and Ashokan sources as lying at the fringes of the Mauryan Empire. A corpus of ancient Tamil literature, known as Sangam (academy) works, including Tolkappiam , a manual of Tamil grammar by Tolkappiyar, provides much useful information about their social life from 300 B.C. to A.D. 200. There is clear evidence of encroachment by Aryan traditions from the north into a predominantly indigenous Dravidian culture in transition.
Dravidian social order was based on different ecoregions rather than on the Aryan varna paradigm, although the Brahmans had a high status at a very early stage. Segments of society were characterized by matriarchy and matrilineal succession--which survived well into the nineteenth century--cross-cousin marriage, and strong regional identity. Tribal chieftains emerged as "kings" just as people moved from pastoralism toward agriculture, sustained by irrigation based on rivers, small-scale tanks (as man-made ponds are called in India) and wells, and brisk maritime trade with Rome and Southeast Asia.
Discoveries of Roman gold coins in various sites attest to extensive South Indian links with the outside world. As with Pataliputra in the northeast and Taxila in the northwest (in modern Pakistan), the city of Madurai, the Pandyan capital (in modern Tamil Nadu), was the center of intellectual and literary activities. Poets and bards assembled there under royal patronage at successive concourses and composed anthologies of poems, most of which have been lost. By the end of the first century B.C., South Asia was crisscrossed by overland trade routes, which facilitated the movements of Buddhist and Jain missionaries and other travelers and opened the area to a synthesis of many cultures (see Jainism, ch. 3). The Classical Age : Data 1995. Courtesy Library of Congress
The Mauryan Empire :
Although Indian accounts to a large extent ignored Alexander the Great's Indus campaign in 326 B.C., Greek writers recorded their impressions of the general conditions prevailing in South Asia during this period. Thus, the year 326 B.C. provides the first clear and historically verifiable date in Indian history. A two-way cultural fusion between several Indo-Greek elements--especially in art, architecture, and coinage--occurred in the next several hundred years. North India's political landscape was transformed by the emergence of Magadha in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain. In 322 B.C., Magadha, under the rule of Chandragupta Maurya, began to assert its hegemony over neighboring areas. Chandragupta, who ruled from 324 to 301 B.C., was the architect of the first Indian imperial power--the Mauryan Empire (326-184 B.C.)--whose capital was Pataliputra, near modern-day Patna, in Bihar.
Situated on rich alluvial soil and near mineral deposits, especially iron, Magadha was at the center of bustling commerce and trade. The capital was a city of magnificent palaces, temples, a university, a library, gardens, and parks, as reported by Megasthenes, the third-century B.C. Greek historian and ambassador to the Mauryan court. Legend states that Chandragupta's success was due in large measure to his adviser Kautilya, the Brahman author of the Arthashastra (Science of Material Gain), a textbook that outlined governmental administration and political strategy. There was a highly centralized and hierarchical government with a large staff, which regulated tax collection, trade and commerce, industrial arts, mining, vital statistics, welfare of foreigners, maintenance of public places including markets and temples, and prostitutes. A large standing army and a well-developed espionage system were maintained. The empire was divided into provinces, districts, and villages governed by a host of centrally appointed local officials, who replicated the functions of the central administration.
Ashoka, grandson of Chandragupta, ruled from 269 to 232 B.C. and was one of India's most illustrious rulers. Ashoka's inscriptions chiseled on rocks and stone pillars located at strategic locations throughout his empire--such as Lampaka (Laghman in modern Afghanistan), Mahastan (in modern Bangladesh), and Brahmagiri (in Karnataka)--constitute the second set of datable historical records. According to some of the inscriptions, in the aftermath of the carnage resulting from his campaign against the powerful kingdom of Kalinga (modern Orissa), Ashoka renounced bloodshed and pursued a policy of nonviolence or ahimsa, espousing a theory of rule by righteousness. His toleration for different religious beliefs and languages reflected the realities of India's regional pluralism although he personally seems to have followed Buddhism (see Buddhism, ch. 3). Early Buddhist stories assert that he convened a Buddhist council at his capital, regularly undertook tours within his realm, and sent Buddhist missionary ambassadors to Sri Lanka.
Contacts established with the Hellenistic world in The Mauryan Empire the reign of Ashoka's predecessors served him well. He sent diplomatic-cum-religious missions to the rulers of Syria, Macedonia, and Epirus, who learned about India's religious traditions, especially Buddhism. India's northwest retained many Persian cultural elements, which might explain Ashoka's rock inscriptions--such inscriptions were commonly associated with Persian rulers. Ashoka's Greek and Aramaic inscriptions found in Kandahar in Afghanistan may also reveal his desire to maintain ties with people outside of India.
Situated on rich alluvial soil and near mineral deposits, especially iron, Magadha was at the center of bustling commerce and trade. The capital was a city of magnificent palaces, temples, a university, a library, gardens, and parks, as reported by Megasthenes, the third-century B.C. Greek historian and ambassador to the Mauryan court. Legend states that Chandragupta's success was due in large measure to his adviser Kautilya, the Brahman author of the Arthashastra (Science of Material Gain), a textbook that outlined governmental administration and political strategy. There was a highly centralized and hierarchical government with a large staff, which regulated tax collection, trade and commerce, industrial arts, mining, vital statistics, welfare of foreigners, maintenance of public places including markets and temples, and prostitutes. A large standing army and a well-developed espionage system were maintained. The empire was divided into provinces, districts, and villages governed by a host of centrally appointed local officials, who replicated the functions of the central administration.
Ashoka, grandson of Chandragupta, ruled from 269 to 232 B.C. and was one of India's most illustrious rulers. Ashoka's inscriptions chiseled on rocks and stone pillars located at strategic locations throughout his empire--such as Lampaka (Laghman in modern Afghanistan), Mahastan (in modern Bangladesh), and Brahmagiri (in Karnataka)--constitute the second set of datable historical records. According to some of the inscriptions, in the aftermath of the carnage resulting from his campaign against the powerful kingdom of Kalinga (modern Orissa), Ashoka renounced bloodshed and pursued a policy of nonviolence or ahimsa, espousing a theory of rule by righteousness. His toleration for different religious beliefs and languages reflected the realities of India's regional pluralism although he personally seems to have followed Buddhism (see Buddhism, ch. 3). Early Buddhist stories assert that he convened a Buddhist council at his capital, regularly undertook tours within his realm, and sent Buddhist missionary ambassadors to Sri Lanka.
Contacts established with the Hellenistic world in The Mauryan Empire the reign of Ashoka's predecessors served him well. He sent diplomatic-cum-religious missions to the rulers of Syria, Macedonia, and Epirus, who learned about India's religious traditions, especially Buddhism. India's northwest retained many Persian cultural elements, which might explain Ashoka's rock inscriptions--such inscriptions were commonly associated with Persian rulers. Ashoka's Greek and Aramaic inscriptions found in Kandahar in Afghanistan may also reveal his desire to maintain ties with people outside of India.
Indian Kingdoms, Indian Empires
From their original settlements in the Punjab region, the Aryans gradually began to penetrate eastward, clearing dense forests and establishing "tribal" settlements along the Ganga & Yamuna ( Jamuna ) plains between 1500 and ca. 800 B.C. By around 500 B.C., most of northern India was inhabited and had been brought under cultivation, facilitating the increasing knowledge of the use of iron implements, including ox-drawn plows, and spurred by the growing population that provided voluntary and forced labor.
As riverine and inland trade flourished, many towns along the Ganga became centers of trade, culture, and luxurious living. Increasing population and surplus production provided the bases for the emergence of independent states with fluid territorial boundaries over which disputes frequently arose.
The rudimentary administrative system headed by tribal chieftains was transformed by a number of regional republics or hereditary monarchies that devised ways to appropriate revenue and to conscript labor for expanding the areas of settlement and agriculture farther east and south, beyond the Narmada River. These emergent states collected revenue through officials, maintained armies, and built new cities and highways. By 600 B.C., sixteen such territorial powers--including the Magadha, Kosala, Kuru, and Gandhara--stretched across the North India plains from modern-day Afghanistan to Bangladesh. The right of a king to his throne, no matter how it was gained, was usually legitimized through elaborate sacrifice rituals and genealogies concocted by priests who ascribed to the king divine or superhuman origins.
The victory of good over evil is epitomized in the epic Ramayana (The Travels of Rama, or Ram in the preferred modern form), while another epic, Mahabharata (Great Battle of the Descendants of Bharata), spells out the concept of dharma and duty. More than 2,500 years later, Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi, the father of modern India, used these concepts in the fight for independence (see Mahatma Gandhi, this ch.).
The Mahabharata records the feud between Aryan cousins that culminated in an epic battle in which both gods and mortals from many lands allegedly fought to the death, and the Ramayana recounts the kidnapping of Sita, Rama's wife, by Ravana, a demonic king of Lanka (Sri Lanka), her rescue by her husband (aided by his animal allies), and Rama's coronation, leading to a period of prosperity and justice.
In the late twentieth century, these epics remain dear to the hearts of Hindus and are commonly read and enacted in many settings. In the 1980s and 1990s, Ram's story has been exploited by Hindu militants and politicians to gain power, and the much disputed Ramjanmabhumi, the birth site of Ram, has become an extremely sensitive communal issue, potentially pitting Hindu majority against Muslim minority (see Public Worship, ch. 3; Political Issues, ch. 8). Indian Kingdom page.Library of congress 1995
As riverine and inland trade flourished, many towns along the Ganga became centers of trade, culture, and luxurious living. Increasing population and surplus production provided the bases for the emergence of independent states with fluid territorial boundaries over which disputes frequently arose.
The rudimentary administrative system headed by tribal chieftains was transformed by a number of regional republics or hereditary monarchies that devised ways to appropriate revenue and to conscript labor for expanding the areas of settlement and agriculture farther east and south, beyond the Narmada River. These emergent states collected revenue through officials, maintained armies, and built new cities and highways. By 600 B.C., sixteen such territorial powers--including the Magadha, Kosala, Kuru, and Gandhara--stretched across the North India plains from modern-day Afghanistan to Bangladesh. The right of a king to his throne, no matter how it was gained, was usually legitimized through elaborate sacrifice rituals and genealogies concocted by priests who ascribed to the king divine or superhuman origins.
The victory of good over evil is epitomized in the epic Ramayana (The Travels of Rama, or Ram in the preferred modern form), while another epic, Mahabharata (Great Battle of the Descendants of Bharata), spells out the concept of dharma and duty. More than 2,500 years later, Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi, the father of modern India, used these concepts in the fight for independence (see Mahatma Gandhi, this ch.).
The Mahabharata records the feud between Aryan cousins that culminated in an epic battle in which both gods and mortals from many lands allegedly fought to the death, and the Ramayana recounts the kidnapping of Sita, Rama's wife, by Ravana, a demonic king of Lanka (Sri Lanka), her rescue by her husband (aided by his animal allies), and Rama's coronation, leading to a period of prosperity and justice.
In the late twentieth century, these epics remain dear to the hearts of Hindus and are commonly read and enacted in many settings. In the 1980s and 1990s, Ram's story has been exploited by Hindu militants and politicians to gain power, and the much disputed Ramjanmabhumi, the birth site of Ram, has become an extremely sensitive communal issue, potentially pitting Hindu majority against Muslim minority (see Public Worship, ch. 3; Political Issues, ch. 8). Indian Kingdom page.Library of congress 1995
Modern History of India
By the twentieth century, most such tribal (see Glossary) groups, although constituting a substantial minority within India, lived in restricted areas under severe pressure from the caste-based agricultural and trading societies pressing from the plains. Because this evolution took place over more than forty centuries and encompassed a wide range of ecological niches and peoples, the resulting social pattern is extremely complicated and alters constantly.
India had its share of conquerors who moved in from the northwest and overran the north or central parts of the country. These migrations began with the Aryan peoples of the second millennium B.C. and culminated in the unification of the entire country for the first time in the seventeenth century under the Mughals. Mostly these conquerors were nomadic or seminomadic people who adopted or expanded the agricultural economy and contributed new cultural forms or religions, such as Islam.
The Europeans, primarily the English, arrived in force in the early seventeenth century and by the eighteenth century had made a profound impact on India. India was forced, for the first time, into a subordinate role within a world system based on industrial production rather than agriculture. Many of the dynamic craft or cottage industries that had long attracted foreigners to India suffered extensively under competition with new modes of mass production fostered by the British. Modern institutions, such as universities, and technologies, such as railroads and mass communication, broke with Indian intellectual traditions and served British, rather than Indian, economic interests. A country that in the eighteenth century was a magnet for trade was, by the twentieth century, an underdeveloped and overpopulated land groaning under alien domination. Even at the end of the twentieth century, with the period of colonialism well in the past, Indians remain sensitive to foreign domination and are determined to prevent the country from coming under such domination again.
Through India's history, religion has been the carrier and preserver of culture. One distinctive aspect of the evolution of civilization in India has been the importance of hereditary priesthoods, often Brahmans (see Glossary), who have functioned as intellectual elites. The heritage preserved by these groups had its origin in the Vedas and allied bodies of literature in the Sanskrit language, which evolved in North India during the second millennium B.C. This tradition always accepted a wide range of paths to ultimate truth, and thus encompassed numerous rituals and forms of divinity within a polytheistic system. Generally, Brahmans supported the phenomenon known as Sanskritization, or the inclusion of local or regional traditions within Sanskrit literary models and pan-Indian cultural motifs. In this way, there has been a steady spread of North Indian cultural and linguistic forms throughout the country.
This process has not gone unopposed. Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) and Mahavira (founder of Jainism) in the fifth century B.C. represented alternative methods for truth-seekers; they renounced the importance of priesthoods in favor of monastic orders without reference to birth. The largest challenge came from Islam, which rests on Arabic rather than Sanskritic cultural traditions, and has served, especially since the eleventh century, as an important alternative religious path. The interaction of Brahmanical religious forms with local variations and with separate religions creates another level of complexity in Indian social life.
Closely allied with religious belief, and deeply rooted in history of India, caste remains an important feature of Indian society. Caste in many Indian languages is jati , or birth--a system of classifying and separating people from birth within thousands of different groups labeled by occupation, ritual status, social etiquette, and language. Scholars have long debated the origins of this system, and have suggested as the origin religious concepts of reincarnation, the incorporation of many ethnic groups within agricultural systems over the millennia, or occupational stratification within emerging class societies. What is certain is that nineteenth-century British administrators, in their drive to classify and regulate the many social groups they encountered in everyday administration, established lists or schedules of different caste groups. At that time, it seemed that the rules against intermarriage and interdining that defined caste boundaries tended to freeze these groups within unchanging little societies, a view that fit well with imperialistic models imposed on India as a whole. Experience during the twentieth century has demonstrated that the caste system is capable of radical change and adaptation.
Modernization and urbanization have led to a decline in the outward display of caste exclusiveness, so that issues of caste may never emerge directly on public transit or in the workplace. Entire castes have changed their status, claiming higher positions as they shed their traditional occupations or accumulate money and power. In many villages, however, the segregation of castes by neighborhood and through daily behavior still exists at the end of the twentieth century. In the cities, segregation takes more subtle forms, emerging directly at times of marriage but existing more often as an undercurrent of discrimination in educational opportunities, hiring, and promotion. The British schedules of different castes, especially those of very low or Untouchable (Dalit--see Glossary) groups, later became the basis for affirmative-action programs in independent India that allowed some members of the most oppressed caste groups access to good education and high-paying jobs. The reservation of positions for Backward Classes (see Glossary) has remained a sore point with higher-ranked groups and has contributed to numerous political confrontations. Meanwhile, attempts by low-ranking (and desperately poor) castes to organize and agitate against discrimination have been met with violence in most Indian states and territories. Caste, therefore, is a very live issue.
Religious, caste, and regional diversity exist in India against a background of poverty. At independence in 1947, the British left India in terrible condition. The country emerged from World War II with a rudimentary scientific and industrial base and a rapidly expanding population that lived primarily in villages and was divided by gross inequalities in status and wealth. Under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister (1947-64), India addressed its economic crisis through a combination of socialist planning and free enterprise. During the 1950s and 1960s, large government investments made India as a whole into one of the most industrialized nations in the world. Considerable expenditure on irrigation facilities and fertilizer plants, combined with the introduction of high-yield variety seeds in the 1960s, allowed the Green Revolution to banish famine. The abolition of princely states and large land holdings, combined with (mostly ineffective) land redistribution schemes, also eliminated some of the most glaring inequalities in the countryside and in some areas, such as Punjab, stimulated the growth of middle-sized entrepreneurial farms. Building on the education system bequeathed by the British, India established an infrastructure of universities, basic research institutes, and applied research facilities that trained one of the world's largest scientific and technical establishments.
The socialist model of development remained dominant in India through the 1970s, under the leadership of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter. Government-owned firms controlled iron and steel, mining, electronics, cement, chemicals, and other major industries. Telecommunications media, railroads, and eventually the banking industry were nationalized. Import-substitution policies, designed to encourage Indian firms and push out multinational corporations, included strict and time-consuming procedures for obtaining licenses and laws that prohibited firms from operating in India without majority ownership by Indian citizens or corporations. These rules were instrumental, for example, in driving IBM from India in the 1970s, leading to the growth of an indigenous Indian computer industry. By the late 1980s, however, after Mrs. Gandhi's 1984 assassination, the disadvantages of the centrally planned economy began to outweigh its benefits. Inefficiency in public-sector firms, lack of entrepreneurial innovation, excessive bureaucracy, and the inability of the Indian scientific and technical apparatus to transfer technology to marketable goods kept many Indian firms from being competitive in international markets.
Under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his successors, the national and state-level (states, union territories, and the national capital territory) governments liberalized licensing requirements and eventually rescinded rules on foreign ownership, while taking steps to scale down government market share in a number of high-technology markets. Multinational firms began to reenter India in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, as the government encouraged private enterprise and international sales in its search for foreign exchange. India began to open its economy to the world.
Indian-style socialism was probably necessary in the years after independence to protect the nation from foreign economic domination, but its biggest problem was that it did not eliminate poverty. The vast majority of India's population continued to live in small agricultural villages with few public amenities. A significant minority of the population in the 1990s live below the Indian definition of the poverty line, surviving at subsistence level, unemployed or underemployed, with little education or opportunity for training, and suffering from a variety of curable health problems. There are also some 200 million people who live above the official poverty line, but whose lives remain precariously balanced on the border of destitution. The per capita income of India as a whole remains among the lowest in the world. One of the biggest issues facing India as its economy has changed direction is that free-market capitalism offers little help for this large mass of people, who lack the skills or opportunity to participate in the new economy.
The big social story of India in the 1980s and the 1990s is the emergence of the middle class. This group includes members of prosperous farming families, as well as the primarily urban-based professional, administrative, and business elites who benefited from forty years of government protection and training. By the mid-1990s, the drive toward modernization had transformed 26.1 percent of the country into urban areas, where, amid masses of impoverished citizens, a sizable class of consumers has arisen. The members of this increasingly vocal middle class chafe under the older, regulated economy and demand a loosening of economic controls to make consumer goods available on the free market. They want education for their children that prepares them for technical and professional careers, increasingly in the private sector instead of the traditional sinecures in government offices. They build their well-appointed brick houses in exclusive suburban neighborhoods or surround their lots with high walls amid urban squalor, driving their scooters or automobiles to work while their children attend private schools.
The result of these processes over the course of fifty years is a dynamic, modernizing India with major class cleavages. The upper 1 or 2 percent of the population includes some of the wealthiest people in the world, who can be seen at the racetrack in the latest fashions from Paris or Tokyo, who travel extensively outside India for business, pleasure, or advanced medical care, and whose children attend the most exclusive English-language schools within India and abroad. For the middle class, which makes up between 15 and 25 percent of the population, the end of the twentieth century is a time of relative prosperity: incomes generally keep pace with inflation and jobs may still be obtained through family connections. The increase in consumer goods, such as washing machines and electric kitchen appliances, makes life easier and reduces dependence on lower-class (and low-caste) servants. For the industrial working class, the 1990s are a period of transition as dynamic new industries grow, mostly in the private sector, while many large government-sponsored plants are in jeopardy. The trade union movement, closely connected in some states with communist parties, finds itself under considerable pressure during a period of structural change in the economy. For large numbers of peasants and dwellers in urban slums, a way out of poverty remains as elusive as it had seemed for their grandparents at independence.
The political system responsible for these gigantic successes and failures has been democratic; India has called itself "the world's largest democracy." Paradoxically, it was the autocratic rule of the British that gave birth to the rule of the people. Democratization started when a group of concerned British citizens in India and well-to-do Indian professionals gathered in Bombay in 1885 to form a political debating society, the Indian National Congress (Congress--see Glossary). Originally conceived as a lobbying group, the Congress after 1900 became radicalized and took the forefront in a drive for home rule that encompassed elected assemblies and parliamentary procedure. In the face of British intransigence, the Congress soon became the leading organization within a broad-based freedom struggle that finally forced the British out in 1947. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (the Mahatma or Great Soul) was a central figure in this struggle because he was able to turn the Congress from an elite pressure group into a mass movement that mobilized hundreds of millions of people against the immorality of a foreign, nondemocratic system.
Gandhi perfected nonviolent techniques for general strikes and civil disobedience, and coordinated demonstrations with mass publicity; the techniques that he popularized have played a part in later Indian and world politics (including the United States civil rights movement).
He evolved a philosophy of political involvement as sacrifice for the good of the world and played the role of a holy man who was also a cagey politician--an image that remained important for Indian political figures after independence.
In a move to undercut British industrial superiority, Gandhi encouraged a return to a communal, rustic life and village handicrafts as the most humane way of life
Finally, he railed against the segregation of the caste system and religious bigotry that reduced large minorities within India to second-class citizenship. Gandhi was thus able to unite European humanistic and democratic ideas with Indian concepts of an interdependent, responsible community to create a unique political philosophy complete with action plan. In the last years before his assassination in 1948, Gandhi's idiosyncratic program fell out of step with the modernization paradigm of Nehru and the leadership of an independent India, and his ideas became a background theme within Indian political economy. On a regular basis, however, Indian leaders continue to hearken back to his message and employ his organizational and media tactics on the independent Indian political scene.
The Congress remained the most important political organization in India after independence. Except for brief periods in the late 1970s and late 1980s and until the mid-1990s, the Congress always controlled Parliament and chose the prime minister. The political dynasty of Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-64), his daughter Indira Gandhi (1965-77, 1980-84), and her son Rajiv Gandhi (1984-89) was crucial in keeping the Congress in power and also providing continuity in leadership for the country. The party was able to appeal to a wide segment of the poor (including low castes and Muslims) through its ideology of social equality and welfare programs, while appealing to the more prosperous voters--usually from upper castes--by preserving private property and supporting village community leadership. Because it stayed in power so long, the Congress was able to dispense government benefits to a wide range of constituencies, which prompted charges of corruption and led to Congress reversals in the late 1980s. Because it affected a type of socialist policy, the Congress diffused or incorporated left-wing political rhetoric and prevented the growth of a communist-led insurrection that might have been expected under the difficult social conditions existing in India.
Although a vibrant communist movement remains a force in Indian politics, it manifests itself at the state level of government rather than in national political power or large-scale revolutionary turmoil. Challenges from the right were small as well until the early 1990s, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP--Indian People's Party) emerged as a serious contender for national leadership. The BJP advocated a blend of Hindu nationalism that inserted religious issues into the heart of national political debates, unlike the secular ideology that officially dominated Indian political thought after independence. In the early 1990s, however, the Congress, after having entered its second century of dominance over the Indian political landscape, continued to hold on to power with a middle-of-the-road message and smaller majorities.
The federal structure of India, embodied in the constitution of 1951, attempts to strike a balance between a strong central government and the autonomous governments of the nation-sized states, each with a distinct culture and deep historical roots, that make up the union. A formidable array of powers at the center makes it possible for the central government to intervene in state issues; these powers include control over the military, the presence of an appointed governor to monitor affairs within each state, and the ability of the president to suspend state-level legislatures in times of internal disorder and declare direct President's Rule. In theory, these powers should come into play rarely because the regular administration of the states resides with elected assemblies and chief ministers appointed through parliamentary procedures. State governments have extensive powers over almost all of their internal affairs. The framers of the national constitution constructed a series of checks and balances among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches at the center, and between the center and the states, designed to provide national security while allowing a maximum of state autonomy within the diversified union.
The Indian political system has proven to be flexible and durable, but major internal conflicts have threatened the constitution. In practice, the elected office of the nation's president has gravitated toward the formal and ritual aspects of executive power, while the office of the prime minister, backed up by a majority in Parliament, the cabinet, national security forces, and the bureaucracy of the Indian Administrative Service, has wielded the actual power. The national Parliament has not developed an independent committee structure and critical tradition that could stand against the force of the executive branch. The judiciary, while remaining independent and at times crucial in determining national policy, has stayed in the background and is subject to future change through constitutional amendments. The constitution itself has been subject to numerous amendments since its adoption in 1950. By August 1996, the constitution had been amended eighty times.
National politics have become contests to set up the appointment of the prime minister, who then has considerable power to interfere directly or through a cooperative president in all aspects of national life. The most drastic example of this power occurred in 1975, when Indira Gandhi implemented the constitutional provision for a declaration of Emergency, suspending civil rights for eighteen months, using Parliament as a tool for eliminating opposition, and ruling with the aid of a small circle of advisers. The more common form of executive interference has been the suspension of state legislatures under a variety of pretexts and the implementation of President's Rule. This typically has occurred when opposition parties have captured state legislatures and set in motion policies unfavorable to the prime minister's party. After Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984, her successors engaged in such overt acts of interference less often.
The main opposition to the national executive comes from the states, in a variety of legal and extralegal struggles for regional autonomy. Most of the states have developed specific political identities based on forms of ethnicity that claim a long historical past. The most common identifying characteristic is language. Agitation in what became the state of Andhra Pradesh led the way in the 1950s, resulting in the reorganization of state boundaries along linguistic lines. Agitations in the state of Tamil Nadu in the 1960s resulted in domination of the state by parties dedicated officially to Tamil nationalism.
In the northeast, regional struggles have coalesced around tribal identities, leading to the formation of a number of small states based on dominant tribal groupings. Farther south, in Kerala and West Bengal, communist parties have upheld the banner of regionalism by capturing state assemblies and implementing radical socialist programs against the wishes of the central government.
The regional movements most threatening to national integration have occurred in the northwest. The state of Punjab was divided by the Indian government twice after independence--Haryana and Himachal Pradesh were sliced off--before it achieved a Sikh majority population in what remained of Punjab. That majority allowed the Sikh-led Akali Dal (Eternal Party) to capture the state assembly in the early 1980s. By then radical separatist elements were determined to fight for an independent Sikh Punjab. The result was an army attack on Sikh militants occupying the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Indira Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards, both in 1984, and a ten-year internal security struggle that has killed thousands. In India's state of Jammu and Kashmir (often referred to as Kashmir), where Muslims constitute the majority of the population, regional struggle takes a different religious form and has created intense security problems that keep bilateral relations with Pakistan, which also lays claim to Kashmir, in a tense mode.
The central government usually has been able to defuse regional agitations by agreeing to redefinition of state boundaries or by guaranteeing differing degrees of regional autonomy, including acquiescence in the control of the state government by regional political parties. This strategy defused the original linguistic agitations through the 1970s, and led to the resolution of the destructive political and ethnic crises in Assam in the mid-1980s. When national security interests came into play, however, as in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, the central government did not hesitate to use force.
In the mid-1990s, India remains a strong unified nation, with a long history of constitutional government and democracy, but at any moment there are half a dozen regional political agitations underway and a dozen guerrilla movements in different parts of the country advocating various types of official recognition or outright independence based on ethnic affiliation. The unity of the country as a whole has never been seriously threatened by these movements. Because the benefits of union within India have outweighed the advantages of independence for most people within each state, there have always been moderate elements within the states willing to make deals with the central government, and security forces have proven capable of repressing any armed struggle at the regional level. In addition, state-level opposition, whether in the legislatures or in the streets, has been an effective means of preventing massive interference from New Delhi in the day-to-day lives of citizens, and thus has provided a crucial check that has preserved the democratic system and the constitution.
One of the most serious challenges to India's internal security and democratic traditions has come from so-called communal disorders, or riots, based on ethnic cleavages. The most typical form is a religious riot, mostly between Hindus and Muslims, although some of these disturbances also occur between different castes or linguistic groups. Most of these struggles start with neighborhood squabbles of little significance, but rapidly escalate into mob looting and burning, street fighting, and violent intervention by the police or paramilitary forces.
Religious ideology has played only a small part in these events. Instead, the pressures of urban life in overcrowded, poorer neighborhoods, combined with competition for limited economic opportunities, create an environment in which ethnic differences become convenient labels for defining enemies, and criminal behavior becomes commonplace. Whether ignited by a street accident or a major political event, passions in these areas may be directed into mob action. However, after the catastrophe of independence (when hundreds of thousands in North India died during the partition of India and Pakistan and at least 12 million became refugees), and because the pattern of rioting has continued annually in various cities, a culture of distrust has grown up among a sizable minority of Hindus and Muslims. This distrust has manifested itself in the nationwide agitations fomented by elements of the BJP and communal Hindu parties in the early 1990s. It reached a peak in December 1992 with the dramatic destruction of the Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya (in Uttar Pradesh), and communal riots and bombings in major cities throughout India in early 1993. In this manner, the frictions of daily life in an overcrowded, poor nation have had a major impact on the national political agenda.
The internal conflict between Hindus and Muslims has received some of its stimulus since 1947 from the international conflict between India and Pakistan. One of the great tragedies of the freedom struggle was the relentless polarization of opinion between the Congress, which came to represent mostly Hindus, and the All-India Muslim League (Muslim League--see Glossary), which eventually stood behind a demand for a separate homeland for a Muslim majority. This division, encouraged under British rule by provisions for separate electorates for Muslims, led to the partition of Pakistan from India and the outbreak of hostilities over Kashmir. Warfare between India and Pakistan occurred in 1947, 1965, and 1971; the last conflict led to the independence of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) and a major strategic victory by India.
The perception of Pakistan as an enemy nation has overshadowed all other Indian foreign policy considerations because neither country has relinquished claims over Kashmir, and a series of border irritations continue to bedevil attempts at rapprochement. In the late 1980s, tensions over large-scale military maneuvers almost led to war, and regular fighting over glacial wastelands in Kashmir continues to keep the pressure high. An added dimension emerged in 1987 when Pakistan publicly admitted that it possessed nuclear weapons capability, matching Indian nuclear capabilities demonstrated in 1974. In the mid-1990s, both nations continue to devote a large percentage of their military budgets to developing or to purchasing advanced weaponry, which is mostly aimed at each other--a serious drain of resources needed for economic growth.
Nehru and the early leadership of independent India had envisioned a nation at peace with the rest of the world, in keeping with Gandhian ideals and socialist goals. Under Nehru's guidance, India distanced itself from Cold War politics and played a major part in the Nonaligned Movement (see Glossary). Until the early 1960s, India spent relatively little on national defense and enjoyed an excellent relationship with the United States, a relationship that peaked in John F. Kennedy's presidency. India's strategic position changed after China defeated the Indian army in the border war of 1962 and war with Pakistan occurred in 1965. During this period, the situation became more precarious because India had opponents on two fronts. In addition, Pakistan began to receive substantial amounts of military assistance from the United States, ostensibly to support anticommunism, but it was no secret that most of the weapons purchased with United States aid were a deterrent projected against India. Under these circumstances, India began to move closer to the Soviet Union, purchasing outright large amounts of military hardware or making agreements to produce it indigenously.
Relations between the United States and India reached a low point in 1971 during the Bangladesh war of independence, when a United States naval force entered the Bay of Bengal to show support for Pakistan although doing nothing to forestall its defeat. This display of force, which could not be opposed by India or the Soviet Union, served only to strain the relationship between India and the United States and heightened Cold War tensions in South Asia. During the 1970s, as the United States and China improved relations and China became closer in turn to Pakistan, India's strategic position became more entwined with Cold War issues, and the Soviet connection became even more important. These international postures contrasted dramatically with the increasing importance to India of American scientific and economic links, which were strengthened by the increasing emigration of Indian citizens to North America. The overall result, however, was India's weaker international situation in the view of some Americans.
During the 1980s, then, India was still officially a nonaligned nation but in fact found itself deeply embedded in Cold War strategy. India's reaction to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was a disquieting feature of Indian foreign policy, in that India decried the Soviet military presence but did nothing against it. Continued United States support for Pakistan, plus the buildup of United States strike forces on the small island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, heightened tensions. It was no coincidence, therefore, that the 1980s witnessed a major expansion of Indian naval forces, with the addition of two aircraft carriers, a submarine fleet, and major surface ships, including transport craft. But although the Indian buildup made the United States unhappy, India's technological capacities remained inferior to those of the United States Navy, and the Indian navy was never a large threat to United States interests. Instead, the growth of the Indian navy had major implications for the regional balance of power within South Asia. The Indian navy could potentially create a second front against Pakistan should major hostilities recur.
India's military buildup allowed it to intervene in low-intensity conflicts throughout South Asia. From 1987 to 1990, the Indian Peace Keeping Force of more than 60,000 personnel was active in Sri Lanka and became embroiled in a fruitless war against Tamil separatist guerrillas. And, in 1988 Indian forces briefly intervened in Maldives to prevent a coup. Regular border problems with Bangladesh after 1971, the Indian annexation of Sikkim in 1975, and the 1989 closure of the border with Nepal over economic disagreements all added up to the picture of a big country bullying its smaller neighbors, a vision Indian leaders took great pains to dispel. Thus, even though the country officially remained at peace during the 1980s, India's growing military power and the intersecting problems of regional dominance and Cold War ambivalence drove an ambitious foreign policy.
The Indian strategic position changed dramatically in the early 1990s. The end of the Cold War, and then the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself, deprived India of a great ally but also put a stop to many of the worldwide tensions that had relentlessly pulled India into global alignments. When the United States cut off military aid to Pakistan in 1990, it defused one of the most intractable barriers to good relations with India. Then, in 1992, the Persian Gulf War against Iraq brought India grudgingly into an alignment with both Pakistan and the United States, a connection strengthened in 1994 when troops from all three nations cooperated in Somalia under the aegis of the United Nations.
The possession of nuclear weapons by Pakistan and India immersed them in a familiar scenario of mutually assured destruction and made it more problematic for India, despite its military superiority, to overrun Pakistan. Thus, in the mid-1990s, despite continuing hostility over Kashmir, which intensified as the internal situation there disintegrated in the 1990s, the long-term possibilities for official peace between the two countries remained good. Threats from other South Asian nations were negligible. Issues with China were unresolved but not very significant. No other country in the world presented a strategic threat. As budgetary problems beset the government in the mid-1990s, therefore, the Indian military began cutbacks. The military also expanded contacts with a variety of other nations, including Russia and the United States. India hence has entered a period of relative security and multilateral contacts quite different from its twenty-five-year Cold War immersion.
India is a complex geographic, historical, religious, social, economic, and political entity. India is one of the oldest human civilizations and yet displays no cultural features common to all its members. It is one of the richest nations in history, but most of its people are among the poorest in the world. Its ideology rests on some of the most sublime concepts of humanism and nonviolence, but deep-seated discrimination and violent responses are daily news. It has one of the world's most stable political structures, but that structure is constantly in crisis. The nation is seeking a type of great power status, but no one is sure what that involves. India, in the end, defies easy analysis.
* * *
The most notable event that occurred in the history of India after the manuscript for this book was completed in the summer of 1995 was the nationwide general elections for the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, held in April and May 1996. The elections were held in the wake of a US$18 million bribery scandal and resignations involving seven cabinet members and numerous others. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, leader of the ruling Congress (I), was accused of accepting substantial bribes. Lal Krishna Advani, head of the BJP, the leading opposition party, was arrested for his alleged acceptance of bribes. For many voters, this scandal was the culmination of scandals and corruption associated for years with old-guard politicians.
The world's largest democracy went to the polls, except in Jammu and Kashmir, over three days between April 27 and May 7 with nearly 14,700 candidates from 522 parties running for 543 of the 545 Lok Sabha seats (the other two seats are filled with Anglo-Indians appointed by the president). Some 16,900 others vied for 914 seats in six state and union territory assembly elections. The candidates were as diverse as ever, with a plethora of Backward Class candidates rising to challenge high-caste hopefuls. Prominent among them was Janata Dal Party candidate Laloo Prasad Yadev, the chief minister of Bihar, who ran on an anti-Brahman caste platform. Phoolan Devi, a former convicted outlaw, who became world-famous as India's "Bandit Queen," also successfully ran for office. One highly favored potential candidate who decided not to run was Sonia Gandhi, widow of Rajiv Gandhi, daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, and granddaughter-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru. She resisted the honor amidst tensions between herself and Rao and, in the minds of some observers, ended the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty while sealing the fate of the Congress (I).
Some 60 percent of India's 590 million voters turned out, but failed to elect a majority government. The BJP, which had tried to tone down its Hindu nationalist rhetoric, won with its allies 194, or 37 percent, of the seats announced on May 10. The Congress (I) won 136, or 25 percent, of the seats. The National Front-Left Front won 110 seats (21 percent), with the remaining ninety-four seats (17 percent) going to unaligned regional parties, independents, and others. The Congress, which had held national power for all but four years since 1947, received the lowest votes ever as many of its traditional Muslim and low-caste constituents defected to other parties and high-caste voters sided with the BJP.
After thirteen days in office as the head of a BJP minority government, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee resigned on May 28, three days before a vote of no confidence would have brought down his government. He was succeeded as India's eleventh prime minister by the chief minister of Karnataka, the Janata Dal's Haradanahalli (H.D.) Deve Gowda, who headed a minority coalition with thirteen parties--the United Front--made up of some members of the National Front, the Left Front, and regional parties. Deve Gowda, a sixty-three-year-old civil engineer of middle-class, lower-caste farmer background, proclaimed the United Front as representative of India's great diversity and reaffirmed his commitment to modern India's secular heritage.
Although the Congress is not part of the left-center coalition, the United Front is dependent on it for survival. The United Front sought Congress and bipartisan support by declaring that the economic reforms started by the Congress were "irreversible" and committing itself to continued reforms and attracting foreign investment. Despite the Congress's electoral debacle, the party continued to be an important behind-the-scenes force in the new government. Former Prime Minister Rao's legal problems led him to resign as president of the Congress in September 1996. His successor, Sitaram Kesri, pledged to continue backing the coalition.
Because of continuing unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, long-awaited special elections for six Lok Sabha seats were held under tight security between May 7 and 30. The central government's Election Commission proclaimed that the elections were "relatively free and fair" despite the efforts of militants and separatists to sabotage them. There were widespread reports, however, that Indian security forces had coerced people into voting. In September state-level elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time in nine years. Farooq Abdullah's National Conference party won the violence-prone contest.
In foreign affairs, India and Pakistan continued to seek ways to reduce tensions between the two nations. Deve Gowda offered conciliatory signs to Benazir Bhutto, his counterpart in Islamabad, as the two sides moved toward high-level talks. Despite the opposition of the United States and the withdrawal of technical support from Russia, in April 1996 India completed its own design of a 7.5-ton cryogenic engine capable of launching rockets with 2,500-kilogram payloads. Such a development was a major technological advance for Indian science and gave India the potential to move into the company of the other space-exploring nations. India continued to maintain its stand in regard to nuclear weapons proliferation and in August 1996 refused to ratify the United Nations-sponsored Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty unless the treaty required the destruction of the world's existing nuclear weapons within a prescribed period. To concur with the treaty as it stood, some Indian observers felt, would limit the country's sovereignty. Meanwhile, several senior active-duty and retired military and foreign servicers proposed that India should formally declare itself a nuclear-weapons state and give a "no-first-use" assurance.
October 1, 1996
James Heitzman and Robert L. Worden. Data as of September 95-96
India had its share of conquerors who moved in from the northwest and overran the north or central parts of the country. These migrations began with the Aryan peoples of the second millennium B.C. and culminated in the unification of the entire country for the first time in the seventeenth century under the Mughals. Mostly these conquerors were nomadic or seminomadic people who adopted or expanded the agricultural economy and contributed new cultural forms or religions, such as Islam.
The Europeans, primarily the English, arrived in force in the early seventeenth century and by the eighteenth century had made a profound impact on India. India was forced, for the first time, into a subordinate role within a world system based on industrial production rather than agriculture. Many of the dynamic craft or cottage industries that had long attracted foreigners to India suffered extensively under competition with new modes of mass production fostered by the British. Modern institutions, such as universities, and technologies, such as railroads and mass communication, broke with Indian intellectual traditions and served British, rather than Indian, economic interests. A country that in the eighteenth century was a magnet for trade was, by the twentieth century, an underdeveloped and overpopulated land groaning under alien domination. Even at the end of the twentieth century, with the period of colonialism well in the past, Indians remain sensitive to foreign domination and are determined to prevent the country from coming under such domination again.
Through India's history, religion has been the carrier and preserver of culture. One distinctive aspect of the evolution of civilization in India has been the importance of hereditary priesthoods, often Brahmans (see Glossary), who have functioned as intellectual elites. The heritage preserved by these groups had its origin in the Vedas and allied bodies of literature in the Sanskrit language, which evolved in North India during the second millennium B.C. This tradition always accepted a wide range of paths to ultimate truth, and thus encompassed numerous rituals and forms of divinity within a polytheistic system. Generally, Brahmans supported the phenomenon known as Sanskritization, or the inclusion of local or regional traditions within Sanskrit literary models and pan-Indian cultural motifs. In this way, there has been a steady spread of North Indian cultural and linguistic forms throughout the country.
This process has not gone unopposed. Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) and Mahavira (founder of Jainism) in the fifth century B.C. represented alternative methods for truth-seekers; they renounced the importance of priesthoods in favor of monastic orders without reference to birth. The largest challenge came from Islam, which rests on Arabic rather than Sanskritic cultural traditions, and has served, especially since the eleventh century, as an important alternative religious path. The interaction of Brahmanical religious forms with local variations and with separate religions creates another level of complexity in Indian social life.
Closely allied with religious belief, and deeply rooted in history of India, caste remains an important feature of Indian society. Caste in many Indian languages is jati , or birth--a system of classifying and separating people from birth within thousands of different groups labeled by occupation, ritual status, social etiquette, and language. Scholars have long debated the origins of this system, and have suggested as the origin religious concepts of reincarnation, the incorporation of many ethnic groups within agricultural systems over the millennia, or occupational stratification within emerging class societies. What is certain is that nineteenth-century British administrators, in their drive to classify and regulate the many social groups they encountered in everyday administration, established lists or schedules of different caste groups. At that time, it seemed that the rules against intermarriage and interdining that defined caste boundaries tended to freeze these groups within unchanging little societies, a view that fit well with imperialistic models imposed on India as a whole. Experience during the twentieth century has demonstrated that the caste system is capable of radical change and adaptation.
Modernization and urbanization have led to a decline in the outward display of caste exclusiveness, so that issues of caste may never emerge directly on public transit or in the workplace. Entire castes have changed their status, claiming higher positions as they shed their traditional occupations or accumulate money and power. In many villages, however, the segregation of castes by neighborhood and through daily behavior still exists at the end of the twentieth century. In the cities, segregation takes more subtle forms, emerging directly at times of marriage but existing more often as an undercurrent of discrimination in educational opportunities, hiring, and promotion. The British schedules of different castes, especially those of very low or Untouchable (Dalit--see Glossary) groups, later became the basis for affirmative-action programs in independent India that allowed some members of the most oppressed caste groups access to good education and high-paying jobs. The reservation of positions for Backward Classes (see Glossary) has remained a sore point with higher-ranked groups and has contributed to numerous political confrontations. Meanwhile, attempts by low-ranking (and desperately poor) castes to organize and agitate against discrimination have been met with violence in most Indian states and territories. Caste, therefore, is a very live issue.
Religious, caste, and regional diversity exist in India against a background of poverty. At independence in 1947, the British left India in terrible condition. The country emerged from World War II with a rudimentary scientific and industrial base and a rapidly expanding population that lived primarily in villages and was divided by gross inequalities in status and wealth. Under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister (1947-64), India addressed its economic crisis through a combination of socialist planning and free enterprise. During the 1950s and 1960s, large government investments made India as a whole into one of the most industrialized nations in the world. Considerable expenditure on irrigation facilities and fertilizer plants, combined with the introduction of high-yield variety seeds in the 1960s, allowed the Green Revolution to banish famine. The abolition of princely states and large land holdings, combined with (mostly ineffective) land redistribution schemes, also eliminated some of the most glaring inequalities in the countryside and in some areas, such as Punjab, stimulated the growth of middle-sized entrepreneurial farms. Building on the education system bequeathed by the British, India established an infrastructure of universities, basic research institutes, and applied research facilities that trained one of the world's largest scientific and technical establishments.
The socialist model of development remained dominant in India through the 1970s, under the leadership of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter. Government-owned firms controlled iron and steel, mining, electronics, cement, chemicals, and other major industries. Telecommunications media, railroads, and eventually the banking industry were nationalized. Import-substitution policies, designed to encourage Indian firms and push out multinational corporations, included strict and time-consuming procedures for obtaining licenses and laws that prohibited firms from operating in India without majority ownership by Indian citizens or corporations. These rules were instrumental, for example, in driving IBM from India in the 1970s, leading to the growth of an indigenous Indian computer industry. By the late 1980s, however, after Mrs. Gandhi's 1984 assassination, the disadvantages of the centrally planned economy began to outweigh its benefits. Inefficiency in public-sector firms, lack of entrepreneurial innovation, excessive bureaucracy, and the inability of the Indian scientific and technical apparatus to transfer technology to marketable goods kept many Indian firms from being competitive in international markets.
Under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his successors, the national and state-level (states, union territories, and the national capital territory) governments liberalized licensing requirements and eventually rescinded rules on foreign ownership, while taking steps to scale down government market share in a number of high-technology markets. Multinational firms began to reenter India in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, as the government encouraged private enterprise and international sales in its search for foreign exchange. India began to open its economy to the world.
Indian-style socialism was probably necessary in the years after independence to protect the nation from foreign economic domination, but its biggest problem was that it did not eliminate poverty. The vast majority of India's population continued to live in small agricultural villages with few public amenities. A significant minority of the population in the 1990s live below the Indian definition of the poverty line, surviving at subsistence level, unemployed or underemployed, with little education or opportunity for training, and suffering from a variety of curable health problems. There are also some 200 million people who live above the official poverty line, but whose lives remain precariously balanced on the border of destitution. The per capita income of India as a whole remains among the lowest in the world. One of the biggest issues facing India as its economy has changed direction is that free-market capitalism offers little help for this large mass of people, who lack the skills or opportunity to participate in the new economy.
The big social story of India in the 1980s and the 1990s is the emergence of the middle class. This group includes members of prosperous farming families, as well as the primarily urban-based professional, administrative, and business elites who benefited from forty years of government protection and training. By the mid-1990s, the drive toward modernization had transformed 26.1 percent of the country into urban areas, where, amid masses of impoverished citizens, a sizable class of consumers has arisen. The members of this increasingly vocal middle class chafe under the older, regulated economy and demand a loosening of economic controls to make consumer goods available on the free market. They want education for their children that prepares them for technical and professional careers, increasingly in the private sector instead of the traditional sinecures in government offices. They build their well-appointed brick houses in exclusive suburban neighborhoods or surround their lots with high walls amid urban squalor, driving their scooters or automobiles to work while their children attend private schools.
The result of these processes over the course of fifty years is a dynamic, modernizing India with major class cleavages. The upper 1 or 2 percent of the population includes some of the wealthiest people in the world, who can be seen at the racetrack in the latest fashions from Paris or Tokyo, who travel extensively outside India for business, pleasure, or advanced medical care, and whose children attend the most exclusive English-language schools within India and abroad. For the middle class, which makes up between 15 and 25 percent of the population, the end of the twentieth century is a time of relative prosperity: incomes generally keep pace with inflation and jobs may still be obtained through family connections. The increase in consumer goods, such as washing machines and electric kitchen appliances, makes life easier and reduces dependence on lower-class (and low-caste) servants. For the industrial working class, the 1990s are a period of transition as dynamic new industries grow, mostly in the private sector, while many large government-sponsored plants are in jeopardy. The trade union movement, closely connected in some states with communist parties, finds itself under considerable pressure during a period of structural change in the economy. For large numbers of peasants and dwellers in urban slums, a way out of poverty remains as elusive as it had seemed for their grandparents at independence.
The political system responsible for these gigantic successes and failures has been democratic; India has called itself "the world's largest democracy." Paradoxically, it was the autocratic rule of the British that gave birth to the rule of the people. Democratization started when a group of concerned British citizens in India and well-to-do Indian professionals gathered in Bombay in 1885 to form a political debating society, the Indian National Congress (Congress--see Glossary). Originally conceived as a lobbying group, the Congress after 1900 became radicalized and took the forefront in a drive for home rule that encompassed elected assemblies and parliamentary procedure. In the face of British intransigence, the Congress soon became the leading organization within a broad-based freedom struggle that finally forced the British out in 1947. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (the Mahatma or Great Soul) was a central figure in this struggle because he was able to turn the Congress from an elite pressure group into a mass movement that mobilized hundreds of millions of people against the immorality of a foreign, nondemocratic system.
Gandhi perfected nonviolent techniques for general strikes and civil disobedience, and coordinated demonstrations with mass publicity; the techniques that he popularized have played a part in later Indian and world politics (including the United States civil rights movement).
He evolved a philosophy of political involvement as sacrifice for the good of the world and played the role of a holy man who was also a cagey politician--an image that remained important for Indian political figures after independence.
In a move to undercut British industrial superiority, Gandhi encouraged a return to a communal, rustic life and village handicrafts as the most humane way of life
Finally, he railed against the segregation of the caste system and religious bigotry that reduced large minorities within India to second-class citizenship. Gandhi was thus able to unite European humanistic and democratic ideas with Indian concepts of an interdependent, responsible community to create a unique political philosophy complete with action plan. In the last years before his assassination in 1948, Gandhi's idiosyncratic program fell out of step with the modernization paradigm of Nehru and the leadership of an independent India, and his ideas became a background theme within Indian political economy. On a regular basis, however, Indian leaders continue to hearken back to his message and employ his organizational and media tactics on the independent Indian political scene.
The Congress remained the most important political organization in India after independence. Except for brief periods in the late 1970s and late 1980s and until the mid-1990s, the Congress always controlled Parliament and chose the prime minister. The political dynasty of Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-64), his daughter Indira Gandhi (1965-77, 1980-84), and her son Rajiv Gandhi (1984-89) was crucial in keeping the Congress in power and also providing continuity in leadership for the country. The party was able to appeal to a wide segment of the poor (including low castes and Muslims) through its ideology of social equality and welfare programs, while appealing to the more prosperous voters--usually from upper castes--by preserving private property and supporting village community leadership. Because it stayed in power so long, the Congress was able to dispense government benefits to a wide range of constituencies, which prompted charges of corruption and led to Congress reversals in the late 1980s. Because it affected a type of socialist policy, the Congress diffused or incorporated left-wing political rhetoric and prevented the growth of a communist-led insurrection that might have been expected under the difficult social conditions existing in India.
Although a vibrant communist movement remains a force in Indian politics, it manifests itself at the state level of government rather than in national political power or large-scale revolutionary turmoil. Challenges from the right were small as well until the early 1990s, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP--Indian People's Party) emerged as a serious contender for national leadership. The BJP advocated a blend of Hindu nationalism that inserted religious issues into the heart of national political debates, unlike the secular ideology that officially dominated Indian political thought after independence. In the early 1990s, however, the Congress, after having entered its second century of dominance over the Indian political landscape, continued to hold on to power with a middle-of-the-road message and smaller majorities.
The federal structure of India, embodied in the constitution of 1951, attempts to strike a balance between a strong central government and the autonomous governments of the nation-sized states, each with a distinct culture and deep historical roots, that make up the union. A formidable array of powers at the center makes it possible for the central government to intervene in state issues; these powers include control over the military, the presence of an appointed governor to monitor affairs within each state, and the ability of the president to suspend state-level legislatures in times of internal disorder and declare direct President's Rule. In theory, these powers should come into play rarely because the regular administration of the states resides with elected assemblies and chief ministers appointed through parliamentary procedures. State governments have extensive powers over almost all of their internal affairs. The framers of the national constitution constructed a series of checks and balances among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches at the center, and between the center and the states, designed to provide national security while allowing a maximum of state autonomy within the diversified union.
The Indian political system has proven to be flexible and durable, but major internal conflicts have threatened the constitution. In practice, the elected office of the nation's president has gravitated toward the formal and ritual aspects of executive power, while the office of the prime minister, backed up by a majority in Parliament, the cabinet, national security forces, and the bureaucracy of the Indian Administrative Service, has wielded the actual power. The national Parliament has not developed an independent committee structure and critical tradition that could stand against the force of the executive branch. The judiciary, while remaining independent and at times crucial in determining national policy, has stayed in the background and is subject to future change through constitutional amendments. The constitution itself has been subject to numerous amendments since its adoption in 1950. By August 1996, the constitution had been amended eighty times.
National politics have become contests to set up the appointment of the prime minister, who then has considerable power to interfere directly or through a cooperative president in all aspects of national life. The most drastic example of this power occurred in 1975, when Indira Gandhi implemented the constitutional provision for a declaration of Emergency, suspending civil rights for eighteen months, using Parliament as a tool for eliminating opposition, and ruling with the aid of a small circle of advisers. The more common form of executive interference has been the suspension of state legislatures under a variety of pretexts and the implementation of President's Rule. This typically has occurred when opposition parties have captured state legislatures and set in motion policies unfavorable to the prime minister's party. After Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984, her successors engaged in such overt acts of interference less often.
The main opposition to the national executive comes from the states, in a variety of legal and extralegal struggles for regional autonomy. Most of the states have developed specific political identities based on forms of ethnicity that claim a long historical past. The most common identifying characteristic is language. Agitation in what became the state of Andhra Pradesh led the way in the 1950s, resulting in the reorganization of state boundaries along linguistic lines. Agitations in the state of Tamil Nadu in the 1960s resulted in domination of the state by parties dedicated officially to Tamil nationalism.
In the northeast, regional struggles have coalesced around tribal identities, leading to the formation of a number of small states based on dominant tribal groupings. Farther south, in Kerala and West Bengal, communist parties have upheld the banner of regionalism by capturing state assemblies and implementing radical socialist programs against the wishes of the central government.
The regional movements most threatening to national integration have occurred in the northwest. The state of Punjab was divided by the Indian government twice after independence--Haryana and Himachal Pradesh were sliced off--before it achieved a Sikh majority population in what remained of Punjab. That majority allowed the Sikh-led Akali Dal (Eternal Party) to capture the state assembly in the early 1980s. By then radical separatist elements were determined to fight for an independent Sikh Punjab. The result was an army attack on Sikh militants occupying the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Indira Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards, both in 1984, and a ten-year internal security struggle that has killed thousands. In India's state of Jammu and Kashmir (often referred to as Kashmir), where Muslims constitute the majority of the population, regional struggle takes a different religious form and has created intense security problems that keep bilateral relations with Pakistan, which also lays claim to Kashmir, in a tense mode.
The central government usually has been able to defuse regional agitations by agreeing to redefinition of state boundaries or by guaranteeing differing degrees of regional autonomy, including acquiescence in the control of the state government by regional political parties. This strategy defused the original linguistic agitations through the 1970s, and led to the resolution of the destructive political and ethnic crises in Assam in the mid-1980s. When national security interests came into play, however, as in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, the central government did not hesitate to use force.
In the mid-1990s, India remains a strong unified nation, with a long history of constitutional government and democracy, but at any moment there are half a dozen regional political agitations underway and a dozen guerrilla movements in different parts of the country advocating various types of official recognition or outright independence based on ethnic affiliation. The unity of the country as a whole has never been seriously threatened by these movements. Because the benefits of union within India have outweighed the advantages of independence for most people within each state, there have always been moderate elements within the states willing to make deals with the central government, and security forces have proven capable of repressing any armed struggle at the regional level. In addition, state-level opposition, whether in the legislatures or in the streets, has been an effective means of preventing massive interference from New Delhi in the day-to-day lives of citizens, and thus has provided a crucial check that has preserved the democratic system and the constitution.
One of the most serious challenges to India's internal security and democratic traditions has come from so-called communal disorders, or riots, based on ethnic cleavages. The most typical form is a religious riot, mostly between Hindus and Muslims, although some of these disturbances also occur between different castes or linguistic groups. Most of these struggles start with neighborhood squabbles of little significance, but rapidly escalate into mob looting and burning, street fighting, and violent intervention by the police or paramilitary forces.
Religious ideology has played only a small part in these events. Instead, the pressures of urban life in overcrowded, poorer neighborhoods, combined with competition for limited economic opportunities, create an environment in which ethnic differences become convenient labels for defining enemies, and criminal behavior becomes commonplace. Whether ignited by a street accident or a major political event, passions in these areas may be directed into mob action. However, after the catastrophe of independence (when hundreds of thousands in North India died during the partition of India and Pakistan and at least 12 million became refugees), and because the pattern of rioting has continued annually in various cities, a culture of distrust has grown up among a sizable minority of Hindus and Muslims. This distrust has manifested itself in the nationwide agitations fomented by elements of the BJP and communal Hindu parties in the early 1990s. It reached a peak in December 1992 with the dramatic destruction of the Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya (in Uttar Pradesh), and communal riots and bombings in major cities throughout India in early 1993. In this manner, the frictions of daily life in an overcrowded, poor nation have had a major impact on the national political agenda.
The internal conflict between Hindus and Muslims has received some of its stimulus since 1947 from the international conflict between India and Pakistan. One of the great tragedies of the freedom struggle was the relentless polarization of opinion between the Congress, which came to represent mostly Hindus, and the All-India Muslim League (Muslim League--see Glossary), which eventually stood behind a demand for a separate homeland for a Muslim majority. This division, encouraged under British rule by provisions for separate electorates for Muslims, led to the partition of Pakistan from India and the outbreak of hostilities over Kashmir. Warfare between India and Pakistan occurred in 1947, 1965, and 1971; the last conflict led to the independence of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) and a major strategic victory by India.
The perception of Pakistan as an enemy nation has overshadowed all other Indian foreign policy considerations because neither country has relinquished claims over Kashmir, and a series of border irritations continue to bedevil attempts at rapprochement. In the late 1980s, tensions over large-scale military maneuvers almost led to war, and regular fighting over glacial wastelands in Kashmir continues to keep the pressure high. An added dimension emerged in 1987 when Pakistan publicly admitted that it possessed nuclear weapons capability, matching Indian nuclear capabilities demonstrated in 1974. In the mid-1990s, both nations continue to devote a large percentage of their military budgets to developing or to purchasing advanced weaponry, which is mostly aimed at each other--a serious drain of resources needed for economic growth.
Nehru and the early leadership of independent India had envisioned a nation at peace with the rest of the world, in keeping with Gandhian ideals and socialist goals. Under Nehru's guidance, India distanced itself from Cold War politics and played a major part in the Nonaligned Movement (see Glossary). Until the early 1960s, India spent relatively little on national defense and enjoyed an excellent relationship with the United States, a relationship that peaked in John F. Kennedy's presidency. India's strategic position changed after China defeated the Indian army in the border war of 1962 and war with Pakistan occurred in 1965. During this period, the situation became more precarious because India had opponents on two fronts. In addition, Pakistan began to receive substantial amounts of military assistance from the United States, ostensibly to support anticommunism, but it was no secret that most of the weapons purchased with United States aid were a deterrent projected against India. Under these circumstances, India began to move closer to the Soviet Union, purchasing outright large amounts of military hardware or making agreements to produce it indigenously.
Relations between the United States and India reached a low point in 1971 during the Bangladesh war of independence, when a United States naval force entered the Bay of Bengal to show support for Pakistan although doing nothing to forestall its defeat. This display of force, which could not be opposed by India or the Soviet Union, served only to strain the relationship between India and the United States and heightened Cold War tensions in South Asia. During the 1970s, as the United States and China improved relations and China became closer in turn to Pakistan, India's strategic position became more entwined with Cold War issues, and the Soviet connection became even more important. These international postures contrasted dramatically with the increasing importance to India of American scientific and economic links, which were strengthened by the increasing emigration of Indian citizens to North America. The overall result, however, was India's weaker international situation in the view of some Americans.
During the 1980s, then, India was still officially a nonaligned nation but in fact found itself deeply embedded in Cold War strategy. India's reaction to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was a disquieting feature of Indian foreign policy, in that India decried the Soviet military presence but did nothing against it. Continued United States support for Pakistan, plus the buildup of United States strike forces on the small island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, heightened tensions. It was no coincidence, therefore, that the 1980s witnessed a major expansion of Indian naval forces, with the addition of two aircraft carriers, a submarine fleet, and major surface ships, including transport craft. But although the Indian buildup made the United States unhappy, India's technological capacities remained inferior to those of the United States Navy, and the Indian navy was never a large threat to United States interests. Instead, the growth of the Indian navy had major implications for the regional balance of power within South Asia. The Indian navy could potentially create a second front against Pakistan should major hostilities recur.
India's military buildup allowed it to intervene in low-intensity conflicts throughout South Asia. From 1987 to 1990, the Indian Peace Keeping Force of more than 60,000 personnel was active in Sri Lanka and became embroiled in a fruitless war against Tamil separatist guerrillas. And, in 1988 Indian forces briefly intervened in Maldives to prevent a coup. Regular border problems with Bangladesh after 1971, the Indian annexation of Sikkim in 1975, and the 1989 closure of the border with Nepal over economic disagreements all added up to the picture of a big country bullying its smaller neighbors, a vision Indian leaders took great pains to dispel. Thus, even though the country officially remained at peace during the 1980s, India's growing military power and the intersecting problems of regional dominance and Cold War ambivalence drove an ambitious foreign policy.
The Indian strategic position changed dramatically in the early 1990s. The end of the Cold War, and then the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself, deprived India of a great ally but also put a stop to many of the worldwide tensions that had relentlessly pulled India into global alignments. When the United States cut off military aid to Pakistan in 1990, it defused one of the most intractable barriers to good relations with India. Then, in 1992, the Persian Gulf War against Iraq brought India grudgingly into an alignment with both Pakistan and the United States, a connection strengthened in 1994 when troops from all three nations cooperated in Somalia under the aegis of the United Nations.
The possession of nuclear weapons by Pakistan and India immersed them in a familiar scenario of mutually assured destruction and made it more problematic for India, despite its military superiority, to overrun Pakistan. Thus, in the mid-1990s, despite continuing hostility over Kashmir, which intensified as the internal situation there disintegrated in the 1990s, the long-term possibilities for official peace between the two countries remained good. Threats from other South Asian nations were negligible. Issues with China were unresolved but not very significant. No other country in the world presented a strategic threat. As budgetary problems beset the government in the mid-1990s, therefore, the Indian military began cutbacks. The military also expanded contacts with a variety of other nations, including Russia and the United States. India hence has entered a period of relative security and multilateral contacts quite different from its twenty-five-year Cold War immersion.
India is a complex geographic, historical, religious, social, economic, and political entity. India is one of the oldest human civilizations and yet displays no cultural features common to all its members. It is one of the richest nations in history, but most of its people are among the poorest in the world. Its ideology rests on some of the most sublime concepts of humanism and nonviolence, but deep-seated discrimination and violent responses are daily news. It has one of the world's most stable political structures, but that structure is constantly in crisis. The nation is seeking a type of great power status, but no one is sure what that involves. India, in the end, defies easy analysis.
* * *
The most notable event that occurred in the history of India after the manuscript for this book was completed in the summer of 1995 was the nationwide general elections for the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, held in April and May 1996. The elections were held in the wake of a US$18 million bribery scandal and resignations involving seven cabinet members and numerous others. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, leader of the ruling Congress (I), was accused of accepting substantial bribes. Lal Krishna Advani, head of the BJP, the leading opposition party, was arrested for his alleged acceptance of bribes. For many voters, this scandal was the culmination of scandals and corruption associated for years with old-guard politicians.
The world's largest democracy went to the polls, except in Jammu and Kashmir, over three days between April 27 and May 7 with nearly 14,700 candidates from 522 parties running for 543 of the 545 Lok Sabha seats (the other two seats are filled with Anglo-Indians appointed by the president). Some 16,900 others vied for 914 seats in six state and union territory assembly elections. The candidates were as diverse as ever, with a plethora of Backward Class candidates rising to challenge high-caste hopefuls. Prominent among them was Janata Dal Party candidate Laloo Prasad Yadev, the chief minister of Bihar, who ran on an anti-Brahman caste platform. Phoolan Devi, a former convicted outlaw, who became world-famous as India's "Bandit Queen," also successfully ran for office. One highly favored potential candidate who decided not to run was Sonia Gandhi, widow of Rajiv Gandhi, daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, and granddaughter-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru. She resisted the honor amidst tensions between herself and Rao and, in the minds of some observers, ended the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty while sealing the fate of the Congress (I).
Some 60 percent of India's 590 million voters turned out, but failed to elect a majority government. The BJP, which had tried to tone down its Hindu nationalist rhetoric, won with its allies 194, or 37 percent, of the seats announced on May 10. The Congress (I) won 136, or 25 percent, of the seats. The National Front-Left Front won 110 seats (21 percent), with the remaining ninety-four seats (17 percent) going to unaligned regional parties, independents, and others. The Congress, which had held national power for all but four years since 1947, received the lowest votes ever as many of its traditional Muslim and low-caste constituents defected to other parties and high-caste voters sided with the BJP.
After thirteen days in office as the head of a BJP minority government, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee resigned on May 28, three days before a vote of no confidence would have brought down his government. He was succeeded as India's eleventh prime minister by the chief minister of Karnataka, the Janata Dal's Haradanahalli (H.D.) Deve Gowda, who headed a minority coalition with thirteen parties--the United Front--made up of some members of the National Front, the Left Front, and regional parties. Deve Gowda, a sixty-three-year-old civil engineer of middle-class, lower-caste farmer background, proclaimed the United Front as representative of India's great diversity and reaffirmed his commitment to modern India's secular heritage.
Although the Congress is not part of the left-center coalition, the United Front is dependent on it for survival. The United Front sought Congress and bipartisan support by declaring that the economic reforms started by the Congress were "irreversible" and committing itself to continued reforms and attracting foreign investment. Despite the Congress's electoral debacle, the party continued to be an important behind-the-scenes force in the new government. Former Prime Minister Rao's legal problems led him to resign as president of the Congress in September 1996. His successor, Sitaram Kesri, pledged to continue backing the coalition.
Because of continuing unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, long-awaited special elections for six Lok Sabha seats were held under tight security between May 7 and 30. The central government's Election Commission proclaimed that the elections were "relatively free and fair" despite the efforts of militants and separatists to sabotage them. There were widespread reports, however, that Indian security forces had coerced people into voting. In September state-level elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time in nine years. Farooq Abdullah's National Conference party won the violence-prone contest.
In foreign affairs, India and Pakistan continued to seek ways to reduce tensions between the two nations. Deve Gowda offered conciliatory signs to Benazir Bhutto, his counterpart in Islamabad, as the two sides moved toward high-level talks. Despite the opposition of the United States and the withdrawal of technical support from Russia, in April 1996 India completed its own design of a 7.5-ton cryogenic engine capable of launching rockets with 2,500-kilogram payloads. Such a development was a major technological advance for Indian science and gave India the potential to move into the company of the other space-exploring nations. India continued to maintain its stand in regard to nuclear weapons proliferation and in August 1996 refused to ratify the United Nations-sponsored Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty unless the treaty required the destruction of the world's existing nuclear weapons within a prescribed period. To concur with the treaty as it stood, some Indian observers felt, would limit the country's sovereignty. Meanwhile, several senior active-duty and retired military and foreign servicers proposed that India should formally declare itself a nuclear-weapons state and give a "no-first-use" assurance.
October 1, 1996
James Heitzman and Robert L. Worden. Data as of September 95-96
History of india
INDIA IS A LAND of ancient civilization, with cities and villages, cultivated fields, and great works of art dating back 4,000 years. India's high population density and variety of social, economic, and cultural configurations are the products of a long process of regional expansion.
In the last decade of the twentieth century, such expansion has led to the rapid erosion of India's forest and wilderness areas in the face of ever-increasing demands for resources and gigantic population pressures--India's population is projected to exceed 1 billion by the 21st century.Such problems are a relatively recent phenomenon. Rhinoceros inhabited the North Indian plains as late as the sixteenth century. Historical records and literature of earlier periods reveal the motif of the forest everywhere. Stories of merchant caravans typically included travel through long stretches of jungle inhabited by wild beasts and strange people; royal adventures usually included a hunting expedition and meetings with unusual beings. In the Mahabharata and the Ramayana , early epics that reflect life in India before 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C., respectively, the forest begins at the edge of the city, and the heroes regularly spend periods of exile wandering far from civilization before returning to rid the world of evil.
The formulaic rituals of the Vedas also reflect attempts to create a regulated, geometric space from the raw products of nature.
The country's past serves as a reminder that India today, with its overcrowding and scramble for material gain, its poverty and outstanding intellectual accomplishments, is a society in constant change. Human beings, mostly humble folk, have within a period of 200 generations turned the wilderness into one of the most complicated societies in the world. The process began in the northwest in the third millennium B.C., with the Indus Valley, or Harappan, civilization, when an agricultural economy gave rise to extensive urbanization and long-distance trade. The second stage occurred during the first millennium B.C., when the Ganga-Yamuna river basin and several southern river deltas experienced extensive agricultural expansion and population growth, leading to the rebirth of cities, trade, and a sophisticated urban culture.
By the seventh century A.D., a dozen core regions based on access to irrigation-supported kingdoms became tied to a pan-Indian cultural tradition and participated in increasing cross-cultural ties with other parts of Asia and the Middle East. India's inclusion within a global trading economy after the thirteenth century culminated in the arrival of Portuguese explorers, traders, and missionaries, beginning in 1498. Although there were ebbs and flows in the pattern, the overall tendency was for peasant cultivators and their overlords to expand agriculture and animal husbandry into new ecological zones, and to push hunting and gathering societies farther into the hills.
In the last decade of the twentieth century, such expansion has led to the rapid erosion of India's forest and wilderness areas in the face of ever-increasing demands for resources and gigantic population pressures--India's population is projected to exceed 1 billion by the 21st century.Such problems are a relatively recent phenomenon. Rhinoceros inhabited the North Indian plains as late as the sixteenth century. Historical records and literature of earlier periods reveal the motif of the forest everywhere. Stories of merchant caravans typically included travel through long stretches of jungle inhabited by wild beasts and strange people; royal adventures usually included a hunting expedition and meetings with unusual beings. In the Mahabharata and the Ramayana , early epics that reflect life in India before 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C., respectively, the forest begins at the edge of the city, and the heroes regularly spend periods of exile wandering far from civilization before returning to rid the world of evil.
The formulaic rituals of the Vedas also reflect attempts to create a regulated, geometric space from the raw products of nature.
The country's past serves as a reminder that India today, with its overcrowding and scramble for material gain, its poverty and outstanding intellectual accomplishments, is a society in constant change. Human beings, mostly humble folk, have within a period of 200 generations turned the wilderness into one of the most complicated societies in the world. The process began in the northwest in the third millennium B.C., with the Indus Valley, or Harappan, civilization, when an agricultural economy gave rise to extensive urbanization and long-distance trade. The second stage occurred during the first millennium B.C., when the Ganga-Yamuna river basin and several southern river deltas experienced extensive agricultural expansion and population growth, leading to the rebirth of cities, trade, and a sophisticated urban culture.
By the seventh century A.D., a dozen core regions based on access to irrigation-supported kingdoms became tied to a pan-Indian cultural tradition and participated in increasing cross-cultural ties with other parts of Asia and the Middle East. India's inclusion within a global trading economy after the thirteenth century culminated in the arrival of Portuguese explorers, traders, and missionaries, beginning in 1498. Although there were ebbs and flows in the pattern, the overall tendency was for peasant cultivators and their overlords to expand agriculture and animal husbandry into new ecological zones, and to push hunting and gathering societies farther into the hills.
INDIA: LARGE AND SMALL
Affiliations such as nationality are not only matters of
entitlement, they all also involve attachment and responsibility.
In a rapidly changing country, as India certainly is, one of the
duties that we have as Indians is to ask: what kind of a country
this is. This may lead to the further question: what does it
demand of us, at this time? I am very aware that it is rather
reckless to ask grand questions of such apparent naivety. But
since I don't indulge in other dangerous activities, like taming
lions, or being on the trapeze, or standing for parliamentary
elections, perhaps I ought to show some bravery and foolhardiness
here. Hence this lecture.
India is of course a large country, with a huge population.
The relative size of the Indian population is not a new phenomenon,
contrary to the presumption, which seems fairly common in the world
today, that India has become relatively enormous mainly because of
recent population growth. In fact, the share of India in world
population prior to the eighteenth century was very considerably
larger than it is today. In the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, many other parts of the world - Europe in particular -
grew much more rapidly than India and China and the non-Western
world in general, and the share of the so-called West sharply
increased. When that Western growth moderated, in the twentieth
century, while the expansion of the non-Western population.
including that in India, speeded up, there has been some catching
up relative sizes, which according to U . N . projection may be
completed during the first half of this century. All this does
not, of course, diminish the importance of reducing the fertility
rate in India (it is an urgent priority, given its social
consequences) , but it is important not to see the relative
largeness of the Indian population as a brand new phenomenon.
India is a large country not only as a part of humanity, but
also in terms of its diversity, with many languages, cultures and
religions, remarkably distinct pursuits, vastly disparate
convictions, and widely divergent customs. The sheer variety of
things in India has made many observers doubt whether India can at
all be seen as one country. Indeed, when Winston Churchill made
the momentous pronouncement that India was no more a country than
was the Equator, it is evident that his intellectual imagination
was severely strained by the difficulty of seeing how so much
diversity could fit into the conception of one country. The
British belief, which was very common in imperial days and is not
entirely absent now, that it is the Raj that has somehow "created"
India reflects not only a pride in alleged "authorship," but also
some bafflement about the possibility of accommodating so much
heterogeneity within the consistent limits of a coherent county.
And yet general statements about India and Indians can be
found over thousands of years, from the ancient days of Alexander
the Great and Apollonius to the ."medieval" days of Arab and Iranian
visitors, well exemplified by Alberuni's remarkable book, Ta'rikh
al-hind ("the history of India"), written in early eleventh
century.
2
Even though the past and present of India can be seen in many
different perspectives. I would claim that there is a case for
focusing particularly on the long history of the argumentative
tradition in India, and its continuing relevance today. I think
the intellectual largeness of India links closely with the reach of
our argumentative tradition. I will discuss this diagnosis very
briefly here - I have discussed it more fully in a forthcoming
book, called The Argumentative Indian.
That there is a vigorous tradition of arguing in India would
be hard to dispute. I recollect being amused as a young boy by a
Bengali verse - a very serious nineteenth-century poem by Raja
Rammohun Roy - because of the way it explained what is really
dreadful about death:
Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be.
Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to argue
back.
Our argumentative tradition has earned Indians many
distinctions of a somewhat dubious nature. Krishna Menon's record
of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (9 hours
non-stop), established half a century ago (when Menon was leading
the Indian delegation) , has not been equalled by anyone from
anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other
Indians. We do like to speak and argue. Alberuni came close to
saying, in his eleventh-century book that while many things (like
mathematics and astronomy) were admirable in India, nothing
impressed him as much as the Indians' ability to speak eloquently
on subjects on which they knew absolutely nothing.
Speaking a lot is not new habit in India. The ancient
Sanskrit epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. which are frequently
compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, are colossally longer than
the works that the modest Homer could manage. Indeed, Mahabharata
alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put
together. They proceed from stories to stories woven around their
principal tales, and are engagingly full of dialogues, dilemmas and
alternative perspectives. And we encounter masses of arguments and
counterarguments spread over incessant debates and disputations.
Indeed, the most read document of philosophical Hinduism, the
Bhaqavad Gita, which is a part of the large epic Mahabharata, is
essentially one long argument.
Some of the earliest open general meetings aimed specifically
at arguing out the differences between competing points of view
took place in India in the so-called Buddhist "councils," where
adherents of different points of view got together to argue out
their differences. The first of these large councils was held in
Rajagriha shortly after Gautama Buddha's death twenty-five hundred
years ago. The grandest of these councils - the third - occurred,
under the patronage of Emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE, in
the-then capital of India, Pataliputra - now called Patna. Ashoka
also tried to codify and propagate what must have been among the
Page 5
earliest formulations of rules for public arguments - a kind of
ancient version of the nineteenth-century "Robert's Rules of
Order." He demanded, for example, "restraint in regard to speech,
so that there should be no extolment of one' s own sect or
disparagement of other sects on inappropriate occasions, and it
should be moderate even in appropriate occasions." Even when
engaged in arguing, "other sects should be duly honoured in every
way on all occasions."
To take another quick example from a much later period, when
in the 1590s, the great Moghal emperor, Akbar, was making his
pronouncements in India on the need for tolerance, and was busy
arranging organized dialogues between holders of different faiths
(including Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsees, Jains, Jews, and
even - it must be noted - atheists) , the Inquisitions were still
flourishing in Europe. Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake in
Rome, in Campo dei Fiori, for heresy, in 1600, even as Akbar was
holding inter-faith dialogues in Agra.
I have argued elsewhere that not only is public reasoning,
including open public arguments, central to the emergence and
practice of democracy, the history of public reasoning is spread
right widely across the world. India is fortunate in having a very
distinguished heritage in this field.
Even though the argumentative tradition is not uniformly used
by all sections of the people, there is potential here for very
wide use indeed. It is interesting that some of the most telling
questions in the Upanishads come from women interlocutors/ like
Page 6
Gargi and Maitreyi. There are voices raised against the caste
system too. In the Mahabharata, when Bhrigu tells Bharadvaja that
caste divisions relate to differences in physical attributes of
different human beings, reflected in skin colour, Bharadvaja
responds not only by pointing to the considerable variations in
skin colour within every caste ( " i f different colours indicate
different castes, then all castes are mixed ca s te s "} / but also by
the more profound question: "We all seem to be affected by desire,
anger, fear, sorrow, worry, hunger, and labour; how do we have
caste differences then?" There is also a genealogical scepticism
expressed in another ancient document, the Bhavishva Purana: "Since
members of all the four castes are children of God, they all belong
to the same caste. All human beings have the same father, and
children of the same father cannot have different castes." These
doubts do not win the day, but nor are their expressions
obliterated in the classical account of the debates between
different points of view.
To look at a much later period, the tradition of "medieval
mystical poets" which was well established by the fifteenth
century, included exponents who were influenced both by the
egalitarianism of the Hindu Bhakti movement and by that of the
Muslim Sufis, and their far-reaching rejection of social barriers
brings out sharply the reach of arguments across the divisions of
caste and class. Many of these poets came from economically and
socially humble background, and their questioning of social
divisions as well as of the barriers of disparate religions
Page 7
reflected profound attempts to deny the relevance of these
artificial restrictions. It is remarkable how many of the
exponents of these heretical points of views came from the working
class: Kabir, perhaps the greatest poet of them all, was a weaver,
Dadu a cotton-carder, Ravi-das a shoe-maker, Sena a barber/ and so
on. Also, many leading figures in these movements were women,
including of course the famous Mira-bai (whose songs are still very
popular, after four hundred years), but also Andal, Daya-bai,
Sahajo-bai, and Ksema, among others.
3
Not paying adequate attention to the nature and reach of the
argumentative tradition can lead to misinterpretations of our past.
Consider the politically charged issue of the role of so-called
"ancient India" in understanding the India of today. In
contemporary politics, the enthusiasm for ancient India has often
come from the Hindutva movement - the promoters of a narrowly Hindu
view of Indian civilization - who have tried to separate out the
period preceding the Muslim conquest of India (from the third
millennium BCE to the beginning of the second millennium ADE) . In
contrast, those who take an integrationist approach to contemporary
India have tended to view the harking back to ancient India with
the greatest of suspicion. For example, the Hindutva activists
like invoking the holy Vedas, composed in the second millennium
BCE, to define India1 s "real heritage. " They are also keen on
summoning the Ramayana, the great epic, for many different
Page 8
purposes, varying from delineating Hindu beliefs and convictions,
to finding alleged justification for forcibly demolishing a mosque
- the Babri masjid - that is situated at the very spot where the
"divine" Rama, it is claimed, was born. The integrationists, in
contrast, have tended to see the Vedas and the Ramayana as
unwelcome intrusions of Hindu beliefs into the contemporary life of
secular India.
The integrationists are not wrong to question the fractional
nature of the choice of so-called "Hindu classics" over other
products of India's long and diverse history. They are also right
to point to the counterproductive role that such partisan selection
can play in the secular, multi-religious life of today’s India.
Even though more than 80 per cent of Indians may be Hindu, the
country has a very large Muslim population (the third largest among
all the countries in the world - larger than the entire British and
French populations put together) , and a great many followers of
other faiths: Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Parsees, and others. The
fact that India currently has a Muslim President, a Sikh Prime
Minister and a Christian head of the dominant party in the ruling
coalition may make India very unlike any other country in the
world, but it need not be seen as particularly strange in India
itself.
However, even after noting the need for integration and for a
multicultural perspective, it must be accepted that ancient India
remains extremely important for India today. These old books and
narratives, many of them dating from ancient India/ have had an
Page 9
enormous influence on Indian culture, literature and thought. They
have deeply influenced intellectual and philosophical writings, on
the one hand, and folk traditions of story telling and critical
dialectics, on the other. The difficult issue does not lie in
judging the importance o f the Vedas or the Ramayana (they are
certainly extremely important), but in understanding with clarity
what kinds of documents they are, and in particular the fact that
they contain a great many arguments and differences of views.
The Vedas may be full of hymns and religious invocations, but
they also tell stories (like the wonderful one about the troubles
of the compulsive gambler), speculate about the world, and - true
to the argumentative propensity already in view - ask difficult
questions. A basic doubt concerns the very creation of the world:
Did someone make it? Was it a spontaneous emergence? Is there a
God who knows what really happened? As it happens, there are
verses in the Riqveda that expresses radical doubts on these
issues:
Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it
produced? Whence is this creation?. . . . Perhaps it formed
itself, or perhaps it did not. The one who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only he knows - or perhaps he does not
know.
These doubts and profound arguments from the second millennium BCE
would recur again and again in India's long argumentative history.
The rich heritage of atheism and agnosticism in India, which can be
traced for well over two thousand years (they were clearly powerful
in Buddha's own time in the sixth century BCE) is also a part of
the ancient Indian culture, which also harboured, as I have
Page 10
discussed elsewhere, a great many unorthodox questions about
epistemology and ethics.
Similarly, the adherents of Hindu politics - especially those
who are given to vandalizing places of worship of other religions -
may take Rama to be divine, but in much of the Ramayana, Rama is
treated primarily as a hero - a great "epic hero" - with many good
qualities and some weaknesses, including a tendency to harbour
suspicions about his wife Sita's faithfulness. A pundit who gets
considerable space in the Ramayana, called Javali, not only does
not treat Rama as God, Javali calls Rama's actions "foolish"
("especially for," as Javali puts it, "a n intelligent and wise
m a n " ) . Before he is persuaded to withdraw his allegations, Javali
gets time enough in the Ramayana to explain in detail that "there
is no after-world, nor any religious practice for attaining th a t , "
and that "the injunctions about the worship of gods, sacrifice,
gifts and penance have been laid down in the Shastras [scriptures]
by clever people, just to rule over [other] people." The problem
with invoking the Ramayana to propagate a reductionist account of
Hindu religiosity lies in the way the epic is deployed for this
purpose - as a document of supernatural veracity, rather than as a
marvellous "parable" (as Rabindranath Tagore describes it) and a
widely enjoyed part of India's cultural heritage.
The roots of scepticism in India go far back, and it would be
hard to understand the history of Indian culture if scepticism were
to be jettisoned. Indeed, the resilient reach of the tradition of
dialectics can be felt throughout Indian history, even as conflicts
Page 11
and wars have led to much violence. Given the simultaneous
presence of dialogic encounters and bloody battles in India's past,
the tendency to concentrate only on the latter would miss out
something of real significance.
It is indeed important to see the long tradition of accepted
heterodoxy in India. In resisting the attempts by the Hindutva
activists to capture ancient India as their home ground (and to see
it as the unique cradle of Indian civilization) , it is not adequate
only to point out that India has many other sources of culture as
well. It is necessary also to see how much heterodoxy there has
been in Indian thoughts and beliefs from very early days. Not only
did Buddhists, Jains, agnostics and atheists compete with each
other and with adherents of what we now call Hinduism (a much later
term) in the India of first millennium BCE, but also the dominant
religion in India was Buddhism for nearly a thousand years. The
Chinese in the first millennium ADE standardly referred to India as
11 the Buddhist kingdom" (the far-reaching effects of the Buddhist
connections between the two largest countries in the world are
discussed in the essay "China and India"). Ancient India cannot be
fitted into the narrow box where the Hindutva activists want to
incarcerate it.
4
An attempt to talk about the culture of a country, or about
its past history or contemporary politics, must inescapably involve
considerable selection. I need not, therefore, belabour the point
Page 12
that the focus on the argumentative tradition in this lecture is a
result of choice and does not reflect a belief on my part that this
is the only reasonable way of thinking about the history or culture
or politics of India. I am very aware that there are other ways of
proceeding.
The selection of focus here is mainly for three distinct
reasons: the long history of the argumentative tradition in India,
its contemporary relevance, and its relative neglect in on-going
cultural discussions. It can, in addition, be claimed that the
simultaneous flourishing of many different convictions and
viewpoints in India has drawn substantially on the acceptance -
explicitly or by implication - of heterodoxy and dialogue. The
reach of Indian heterodoxy is remarkably extensive and ubiquitous/
and it has direct relevance to the roles of democracy and
secularism today, and even to the contemporary economic debates.
The celebration of public arguments has positively helped the
growth of democracy in India. The historical roots of democracy in
India are particularly worth considering, if only because that
connection is often missed, through the temptation to attribute the
Indian commitment to democracy simply to the impact of British
influence (despite the fact that such an influence should have
worked similarly for a hundred other countries that emerged from an
empire on which the sun used not to set). India's unusual record
as a robust, non-Western democracy includes not just its immediate
endorsement, following independence from the British Raj, of the
democratic form of government, but also the tenacious persistence
Page 13
of that system since then, which contrasts with the experiences of
many other countries where democracy has intermittently made cameo
appearances.
The long history of heterodoxy has a bearing not only on the
development and survival of democracy in India, it has also richly
contributed to the emergence of secularism in the form of the
neutrality of the state between different religions. This is not
to deny that there have been kings and rulers in India who have not
followed Ashoka's admonition that "the sects of other people all
deserve reverence for one reason or another," or Akbar's insistence
that "no man should be interfered with on account of religion, and
anyone is to be allowed to go over to a religion that pleases him."
But we have to see how extraordinary have been these codifications
of religious neutrality of the state as and when they have been
enunciated. It is hard to find pronouncements of similar
liberality in Europe until more recent times. The tolerance of
religious diversity is implicitly reflected in India's having
served as a shared home - in the chronology of history - of Hindus,
Buddhists, Jains, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Parsees, Sikhs,
Baha'is, and others.
The role of public reasoning in the practice of democracy and
secularism has been much discussed in contemporary political
philosophy, led particularly by John Rawls and Juergen Habermas.
Even though historians of democracy - as opposed to political
theorists - have tended to concentrate rather exclusively on
balloting and voting, the importance of the argumentative tradition
Page 14
in India for the development of democracy and secularism can be
more fully appreciated. To illustrate, even though the 2300 years
old conversation between the world-conquering Alexander and Jain
philosophers bereft of clothing, as reported by Arrian, has been
much discussed, the conversation has tended to be viewed mainly as
an illustration of exotic customs and speculative viewpoints. It
is, however, important to understand what the content of the
conversation was.
When Alexander asked the Jain philosophers why they were
paying so little attention to the great conqueror, he got the
following - deeply anti-imperial - reply:
King Alexander, every man can possess only so much of the
earth's surface as this we are standing on. You are but human
like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to
no good, travelling so many miles from your home, a nuisance
to yourself and to others!....You will soon be dead, and then
you will own just as much of the earth as will suffice to bury
you.
Alexander responded, we learn from Arrian, to this egalitarian
reproach with the same kind of admiration that he had shown in his
encounter with Diogenes, even though his own conduct remained
altogether unchanged ("the exact opposite of what he then professed
to admire").
5
Before I turn to some specific policy issues, let me make a
brief remark on the distinct roles that arguing plays in the
working of a society. At the risk of oversimplification, I would
like tov distinguish between two distinct functions: ( 1 )
Page 15
affirmation, and (2) critique. Affirmation is associated with
voice, and in particular with enunciation of claims as well as
principles. Critique goes beyond that and insists on scrutinizing
what is being voiced. The functioning of democracy needs both.
Consider the much discussed proposition that famines do not
occur in democracies - only in imperial colonies (as used to happen
in British India), or in military dictatorships (as in Ethiopia,
Sudan, or Somalia, in recent decades), or in one-party states (as
in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, or China during 1958-61, or
Cambodia in the 1970s, or North Korea in the immediate past). It
is easy to affirm in a socially visible way, the duty of a
responsible state to prevent famines and to record the voice of the
potential victims when public expression is not prohibited. And it
is hard for a government to withstand public criticism of a policy
failure when a famine occurs. This is not merely due to the fear
of losing elections, but also connected with facing public censure
when newspapers and the media are independent and uncensored and
when opposition parties are allowed to pester those in office.
Indeed, the proportion of people affected by famines is always
rather small (hardly ever more than 10 percent of the total
population), and for a famine to be an electoral nightmare for the
government, the sharing of information and the generating of public
sympathy through public discussion are quite crucial. This is one
reason, among many others, that the recent moves towards
guaranteeing "the right to information" are full of economic as
well as political and social significance.
Page 16
Even though the working of democracy is easily successful in
preventing conspicuous disasters like large famines, it is often
far less effective in politicizing regular but non-extreme
undernourishment and ill health. India has had no problem in
avoiding famines with timely intervention, but it has been much
harder to generate adequate public interest in less immediate and
less dramatic deprivations, such as the quiet presence of endemic
but non-extreme hunger across the country and the low standard of
basic health care. While democracy is not without success in
India, its achievements are still far short of what public
reasoning can do in a democratic society, if it addresses less
conspicuous deprivations such as endemic hunger. A similar remark
can also be made about the protection of minority rights, which
majority rule may not guarantee until and unless public discussion
gives these rights enough political visibility and status to
produce general public support.
The largeness of India links with its ability to include all
in the domain of public reasoning - not to exclude the underdogs of
society, nor the minorities. Even though the less privileged in
India, linked with class or gender or community, has often been
neglected from the domain of public concern, the general vehicle of
public reasoning is ultimately a large boat - a mahayana in the
literal meaning of that lovely word.
6
Are there positive signs of change right now, and if so, how
Page 17
should we interpret and assess them? I am aware that I am entering
a difficult territory here, but I would argue that there are good
reasons to be optimistic, but also need for more vigorous use of
the argumentative tradition. Let me, then, extend my already
established record of recklessness by commenting a little on some
of the economic and political issues of the day.
I rely on an analysis I have present earlier, jointly with
Jean Dreze (India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity and
India: Development and Participation), that the Indian economy has
suffered from a chronic underactivity of the government in some
fields (particularly in basic education and elementary heath care)
while being overactive in others (in the form in the so-called
"license R a j " in particular). While the 1992 reforms introduced by
Manmohan Singh, then Finance Minister, attempted to address the
latter problem in a visionary way, it did not, we had argued, go
far enough in facing the first problem. There is considerable
evidence that the present Indian government, led by Manmohan
himself, is much more committed to removing that imbalance. The
underinvestment in the social sector is now more fully recognised.
Even though there is a long way to go, both the affirmation of the
principles involved and the critiques that have been presented seem
to have received significantly more attention. As an argumentative
Indian I am ready to offer appreciation here.
What about the Employment Guarantee Bill for rural areas?
Here too there is cause for jubilation as far as affirmation is
concerned. We are dealing here with some of the poorest people in
Page 18
Indian society, and giving them a reliable source of income through
100 days of guaranteed employment can be an enormously important
instrument. India has one of the highest rates of basic
undernourishment in the world, and that deprivation, along with
other consequences of penury, require recognition and response. The
affirmation of the principles involved and acknowledgment of the
problem to be addressed must now be followed up by an adequate
critique and assessment of the provisions and the modalities
involved.
Some of the difficult issues involved have already been well
identified, judging from the discussions I have seen. There are
questions of financing and resources, the division of the burden
between the centre which has to bear much of the costs and the
states which have to take much of the actions, and the big problems
of implementation, including prevention of corruption which has
much potential whenever money changes hand. These issues will no
doubt receive attention as the Bill moves through the parliament.
There are also a few other issues that must be examined.
First, education and health care as well as expansion of physical
infrastructure directly add to the productive capabilities of
people. Employment itself does not do not do this, and hence the
need for effectively channelling the work that would be supported
by employment guarantee is especially strong. The well-understood
case for expansions of basic education and health care drew on the
experience of many countries in the world, for example in China and
East Asia, in which they have been veritable engines of progress.
Page 19
Employment guarantee does not have much past experience to draw on,
except from India itself. The employment guarantee in Maharashtra
- has indeed been a success in preventing hunger (for example, in
averting what almost certainly would have been a famine in 1973,
but in this achievement, transfer of income is itself the primary
vehicle of improvement. If the economic capabilities of the poor
are to be effectively advanced through employment guarantee/ the
focus has to be as much on the nature of the work done as on having
a cast iron guarantee on receiving a wage.
Second, even though the enthusiasm for the employment
guarantee proposal often has tended to come from activists keen on
the social sector, the form of the guarantee is aimed entirely at
securing a private income. Given the fact that India spends a
comparatively small proportion of the GDP on public health care and
public education, compared with other similarly placed countries,
it would be important to make sure that in the enthusiasm for
guaranteeing private income we do not lose any ground on possible
expansion of investment in social public goods that are vitally
needed for reasons that Jean Dreze and I have tried to present in
our last two books. For any commitment of expenditure, the
opportunity costs have to be scrutinized, and employment guarantee
is no exception to this.
Third, precisely because there is reason for jubilation as far
as affirmation is concerned that public discussion and agitation,
initially linked with "the right to food," has brought about a
political climate in which a radical proposal has been introduced
Page 20
in the parliament with a good chance of legislative success, the
penalty of failure, if it were to occur, could be extremely high.
The route of public agitation will continue to have other uses, for
example in pressing for going more strongly ahead in building
schools and hospitals, and also in legislative reform that may be
needed to overcome systematic absenteeism of teachers form schools
and medical personnel in public health centres, where the clientele
comes from the underdogs of society. Agitation is a scarce
resource too, and the argumentative Indian has to expend it well.
To point to the need for serious scrutiny is not, of course,
to suggest that the scrutiny would produce a negative assessment,
but rather to be able to choose modalities in an examined way, so
that the affirmed social principles are best realized.
7
I turn finally to the political issue of minority rights and
secularism, a subject in which there have been many ups and downs
in recent years. The 2002 riots in the state of Gujarat, following
the Godhra incident, in which possibly 2000 Muslims died, were not
prevented by the state government, nor was the BJP-dominated state
government, which had failed to protect minority community, booted
out of office in the December elections that followed. On the
other hand, the BJP-led central government did fall in the general
elections held in May 2004. Any set of election results,
especially in a country as large as India, would tend to carry the
impact of many different types of influences, and there cannot be
Page 21
any single-factor explanation of the electoral outcomes. But
looking through the nature of the electoral reverses of the BJP and
its allies in the recent elections, including the total - or neartotal
- demise of the "secular" parties in alliance with the BJP,
it is difficult to miss a general sense of grievance about the
neglect of secular concerns by parties which were not formally
signed up for the Hindutva agenda. Not only were the voters keen
on bringing down the BJP itself a notch or two (its percentage of
voting support fell from 25% to 22%), but there are reasons to
entertain the hypothesis that the "secular" support that the BJP
allies delivered to the BJP-led alliance was particularly imperiled
by the Hindutva movement's aggressive - and sometimes violent -
undermining of a secular India and the complete failure of the
BJP's allies to resist the extremism of Hindutva.
In particular, the violence in Gujarat did seem to tarnish the
image of BJP and its allies, in addition to the issue of economic
inequality and the back-firing of the boast about "India shining."
The apparent concession by the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, that the Gujarat killings had been a major influence in
the B JP' s defeat ( " I t is very difficult to say what all the reasons
are for the defeat [of BJP] in the elections but one impact of the
violence was we lost the elections") was, I understand, withdrawn
or significantly emended by him later, but no matter who concedes
what that plausible connection would be hard to overlook. It is
important to understand the hold of the sceptical tradition in
India, despite the manifest presence of religions all across the
Page 22
country. In responding to the exploitation of religious demography
in the politics of Hindutva, the defenders of secular politics
often take for granted that the Indian population would want
religious politics in one form or another. This has led to the
political temptation to use "soft Hindutva" as a compromised
response by secularists to the politics of "hard Hindutva." But
that tactical approach, which certainly has not given the anti-BJP
parties any dividend so far, is, I would argue, foundationally
mistaken. It profoundly ignores the strength of scepticism in
India, which links with the argumentative tradition and which
extends to religions as well, particularly in the form of doubting
the relevance of religious beliefs in political and social affairs.
Indeed, despite the bloody history of riots in India, the
tolerance of heterodoxy and acceptance of variations of religious
beliefs and customs are, ultimately, deep rooted in India.
Rabindranath Tagore had put this issue rather more sharply more
than eight decades ago in 1921, in his claim that the "idea of
India" itself militates "against the intense consciousness of the
separateness of one's own people from others." If this is correct,
then it would be right to conclude that through their sectarian use
of religious affiliations, the Hindutva movement has entered into
a confrontation with the idea of India itself. This is nothing
short of a sustained effort to miniaturize the broad idea of a
large India - proud of its heterodox past and its pluralist present
- and to replace it by the stamp of a small India, bundled around
a drastically raw interpretation of Hinduism.
Page 23
In the confrontation between a large and a small India, the
broader understanding can certainly win. But the victory for the
broad idea of India cannot be stable unless those fighting for the
larger conception know what they are fighting for. The reach of
Indian traditions, including heterodoxy and the celebration of
plurality and scepticism, requires a comprehensive recognition.
Cognizance of India’s dialogic traditions is important for an
adequate understanding of the capacious idea of India.
entitlement, they all also involve attachment and responsibility.
In a rapidly changing country, as India certainly is, one of the
duties that we have as Indians is to ask: what kind of a country
this is. This may lead to the further question: what does it
demand of us, at this time? I am very aware that it is rather
reckless to ask grand questions of such apparent naivety. But
since I don't indulge in other dangerous activities, like taming
lions, or being on the trapeze, or standing for parliamentary
elections, perhaps I ought to show some bravery and foolhardiness
here. Hence this lecture.
India is of course a large country, with a huge population.
The relative size of the Indian population is not a new phenomenon,
contrary to the presumption, which seems fairly common in the world
today, that India has become relatively enormous mainly because of
recent population growth. In fact, the share of India in world
population prior to the eighteenth century was very considerably
larger than it is today. In the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, many other parts of the world - Europe in particular -
grew much more rapidly than India and China and the non-Western
world in general, and the share of the so-called West sharply
increased. When that Western growth moderated, in the twentieth
century, while the expansion of the non-Western population.
including that in India, speeded up, there has been some catching
up relative sizes, which according to U . N . projection may be
completed during the first half of this century. All this does
not, of course, diminish the importance of reducing the fertility
rate in India (it is an urgent priority, given its social
consequences) , but it is important not to see the relative
largeness of the Indian population as a brand new phenomenon.
India is a large country not only as a part of humanity, but
also in terms of its diversity, with many languages, cultures and
religions, remarkably distinct pursuits, vastly disparate
convictions, and widely divergent customs. The sheer variety of
things in India has made many observers doubt whether India can at
all be seen as one country. Indeed, when Winston Churchill made
the momentous pronouncement that India was no more a country than
was the Equator, it is evident that his intellectual imagination
was severely strained by the difficulty of seeing how so much
diversity could fit into the conception of one country. The
British belief, which was very common in imperial days and is not
entirely absent now, that it is the Raj that has somehow "created"
India reflects not only a pride in alleged "authorship," but also
some bafflement about the possibility of accommodating so much
heterogeneity within the consistent limits of a coherent county.
And yet general statements about India and Indians can be
found over thousands of years, from the ancient days of Alexander
the Great and Apollonius to the ."medieval" days of Arab and Iranian
visitors, well exemplified by Alberuni's remarkable book, Ta'rikh
al-hind ("the history of India"), written in early eleventh
century.
2
Even though the past and present of India can be seen in many
different perspectives. I would claim that there is a case for
focusing particularly on the long history of the argumentative
tradition in India, and its continuing relevance today. I think
the intellectual largeness of India links closely with the reach of
our argumentative tradition. I will discuss this diagnosis very
briefly here - I have discussed it more fully in a forthcoming
book, called The Argumentative Indian.
That there is a vigorous tradition of arguing in India would
be hard to dispute. I recollect being amused as a young boy by a
Bengali verse - a very serious nineteenth-century poem by Raja
Rammohun Roy - because of the way it explained what is really
dreadful about death:
Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be.
Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to argue
back.
Our argumentative tradition has earned Indians many
distinctions of a somewhat dubious nature. Krishna Menon's record
of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (9 hours
non-stop), established half a century ago (when Menon was leading
the Indian delegation) , has not been equalled by anyone from
anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other
Indians. We do like to speak and argue. Alberuni came close to
saying, in his eleventh-century book that while many things (like
mathematics and astronomy) were admirable in India, nothing
impressed him as much as the Indians' ability to speak eloquently
on subjects on which they knew absolutely nothing.
Speaking a lot is not new habit in India. The ancient
Sanskrit epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. which are frequently
compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, are colossally longer than
the works that the modest Homer could manage. Indeed, Mahabharata
alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put
together. They proceed from stories to stories woven around their
principal tales, and are engagingly full of dialogues, dilemmas and
alternative perspectives. And we encounter masses of arguments and
counterarguments spread over incessant debates and disputations.
Indeed, the most read document of philosophical Hinduism, the
Bhaqavad Gita, which is a part of the large epic Mahabharata, is
essentially one long argument.
Some of the earliest open general meetings aimed specifically
at arguing out the differences between competing points of view
took place in India in the so-called Buddhist "councils," where
adherents of different points of view got together to argue out
their differences. The first of these large councils was held in
Rajagriha shortly after Gautama Buddha's death twenty-five hundred
years ago. The grandest of these councils - the third - occurred,
under the patronage of Emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE, in
the-then capital of India, Pataliputra - now called Patna. Ashoka
also tried to codify and propagate what must have been among the
Page 5
earliest formulations of rules for public arguments - a kind of
ancient version of the nineteenth-century "Robert's Rules of
Order." He demanded, for example, "restraint in regard to speech,
so that there should be no extolment of one' s own sect or
disparagement of other sects on inappropriate occasions, and it
should be moderate even in appropriate occasions." Even when
engaged in arguing, "other sects should be duly honoured in every
way on all occasions."
To take another quick example from a much later period, when
in the 1590s, the great Moghal emperor, Akbar, was making his
pronouncements in India on the need for tolerance, and was busy
arranging organized dialogues between holders of different faiths
(including Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsees, Jains, Jews, and
even - it must be noted - atheists) , the Inquisitions were still
flourishing in Europe. Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake in
Rome, in Campo dei Fiori, for heresy, in 1600, even as Akbar was
holding inter-faith dialogues in Agra.
I have argued elsewhere that not only is public reasoning,
including open public arguments, central to the emergence and
practice of democracy, the history of public reasoning is spread
right widely across the world. India is fortunate in having a very
distinguished heritage in this field.
Even though the argumentative tradition is not uniformly used
by all sections of the people, there is potential here for very
wide use indeed. It is interesting that some of the most telling
questions in the Upanishads come from women interlocutors/ like
Page 6
Gargi and Maitreyi. There are voices raised against the caste
system too. In the Mahabharata, when Bhrigu tells Bharadvaja that
caste divisions relate to differences in physical attributes of
different human beings, reflected in skin colour, Bharadvaja
responds not only by pointing to the considerable variations in
skin colour within every caste ( " i f different colours indicate
different castes, then all castes are mixed ca s te s "} / but also by
the more profound question: "We all seem to be affected by desire,
anger, fear, sorrow, worry, hunger, and labour; how do we have
caste differences then?" There is also a genealogical scepticism
expressed in another ancient document, the Bhavishva Purana: "Since
members of all the four castes are children of God, they all belong
to the same caste. All human beings have the same father, and
children of the same father cannot have different castes." These
doubts do not win the day, but nor are their expressions
obliterated in the classical account of the debates between
different points of view.
To look at a much later period, the tradition of "medieval
mystical poets" which was well established by the fifteenth
century, included exponents who were influenced both by the
egalitarianism of the Hindu Bhakti movement and by that of the
Muslim Sufis, and their far-reaching rejection of social barriers
brings out sharply the reach of arguments across the divisions of
caste and class. Many of these poets came from economically and
socially humble background, and their questioning of social
divisions as well as of the barriers of disparate religions
Page 7
reflected profound attempts to deny the relevance of these
artificial restrictions. It is remarkable how many of the
exponents of these heretical points of views came from the working
class: Kabir, perhaps the greatest poet of them all, was a weaver,
Dadu a cotton-carder, Ravi-das a shoe-maker, Sena a barber/ and so
on. Also, many leading figures in these movements were women,
including of course the famous Mira-bai (whose songs are still very
popular, after four hundred years), but also Andal, Daya-bai,
Sahajo-bai, and Ksema, among others.
3
Not paying adequate attention to the nature and reach of the
argumentative tradition can lead to misinterpretations of our past.
Consider the politically charged issue of the role of so-called
"ancient India" in understanding the India of today. In
contemporary politics, the enthusiasm for ancient India has often
come from the Hindutva movement - the promoters of a narrowly Hindu
view of Indian civilization - who have tried to separate out the
period preceding the Muslim conquest of India (from the third
millennium BCE to the beginning of the second millennium ADE) . In
contrast, those who take an integrationist approach to contemporary
India have tended to view the harking back to ancient India with
the greatest of suspicion. For example, the Hindutva activists
like invoking the holy Vedas, composed in the second millennium
BCE, to define India1 s "real heritage. " They are also keen on
summoning the Ramayana, the great epic, for many different
Page 8
purposes, varying from delineating Hindu beliefs and convictions,
to finding alleged justification for forcibly demolishing a mosque
- the Babri masjid - that is situated at the very spot where the
"divine" Rama, it is claimed, was born. The integrationists, in
contrast, have tended to see the Vedas and the Ramayana as
unwelcome intrusions of Hindu beliefs into the contemporary life of
secular India.
The integrationists are not wrong to question the fractional
nature of the choice of so-called "Hindu classics" over other
products of India's long and diverse history. They are also right
to point to the counterproductive role that such partisan selection
can play in the secular, multi-religious life of today’s India.
Even though more than 80 per cent of Indians may be Hindu, the
country has a very large Muslim population (the third largest among
all the countries in the world - larger than the entire British and
French populations put together) , and a great many followers of
other faiths: Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Parsees, and others. The
fact that India currently has a Muslim President, a Sikh Prime
Minister and a Christian head of the dominant party in the ruling
coalition may make India very unlike any other country in the
world, but it need not be seen as particularly strange in India
itself.
However, even after noting the need for integration and for a
multicultural perspective, it must be accepted that ancient India
remains extremely important for India today. These old books and
narratives, many of them dating from ancient India/ have had an
Page 9
enormous influence on Indian culture, literature and thought. They
have deeply influenced intellectual and philosophical writings, on
the one hand, and folk traditions of story telling and critical
dialectics, on the other. The difficult issue does not lie in
judging the importance o f the Vedas or the Ramayana (they are
certainly extremely important), but in understanding with clarity
what kinds of documents they are, and in particular the fact that
they contain a great many arguments and differences of views.
The Vedas may be full of hymns and religious invocations, but
they also tell stories (like the wonderful one about the troubles
of the compulsive gambler), speculate about the world, and - true
to the argumentative propensity already in view - ask difficult
questions. A basic doubt concerns the very creation of the world:
Did someone make it? Was it a spontaneous emergence? Is there a
God who knows what really happened? As it happens, there are
verses in the Riqveda that expresses radical doubts on these
issues:
Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it
produced? Whence is this creation?. . . . Perhaps it formed
itself, or perhaps it did not. The one who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only he knows - or perhaps he does not
know.
These doubts and profound arguments from the second millennium BCE
would recur again and again in India's long argumentative history.
The rich heritage of atheism and agnosticism in India, which can be
traced for well over two thousand years (they were clearly powerful
in Buddha's own time in the sixth century BCE) is also a part of
the ancient Indian culture, which also harboured, as I have
Page 10
discussed elsewhere, a great many unorthodox questions about
epistemology and ethics.
Similarly, the adherents of Hindu politics - especially those
who are given to vandalizing places of worship of other religions -
may take Rama to be divine, but in much of the Ramayana, Rama is
treated primarily as a hero - a great "epic hero" - with many good
qualities and some weaknesses, including a tendency to harbour
suspicions about his wife Sita's faithfulness. A pundit who gets
considerable space in the Ramayana, called Javali, not only does
not treat Rama as God, Javali calls Rama's actions "foolish"
("especially for," as Javali puts it, "a n intelligent and wise
m a n " ) . Before he is persuaded to withdraw his allegations, Javali
gets time enough in the Ramayana to explain in detail that "there
is no after-world, nor any religious practice for attaining th a t , "
and that "the injunctions about the worship of gods, sacrifice,
gifts and penance have been laid down in the Shastras [scriptures]
by clever people, just to rule over [other] people." The problem
with invoking the Ramayana to propagate a reductionist account of
Hindu religiosity lies in the way the epic is deployed for this
purpose - as a document of supernatural veracity, rather than as a
marvellous "parable" (as Rabindranath Tagore describes it) and a
widely enjoyed part of India's cultural heritage.
The roots of scepticism in India go far back, and it would be
hard to understand the history of Indian culture if scepticism were
to be jettisoned. Indeed, the resilient reach of the tradition of
dialectics can be felt throughout Indian history, even as conflicts
Page 11
and wars have led to much violence. Given the simultaneous
presence of dialogic encounters and bloody battles in India's past,
the tendency to concentrate only on the latter would miss out
something of real significance.
It is indeed important to see the long tradition of accepted
heterodoxy in India. In resisting the attempts by the Hindutva
activists to capture ancient India as their home ground (and to see
it as the unique cradle of Indian civilization) , it is not adequate
only to point out that India has many other sources of culture as
well. It is necessary also to see how much heterodoxy there has
been in Indian thoughts and beliefs from very early days. Not only
did Buddhists, Jains, agnostics and atheists compete with each
other and with adherents of what we now call Hinduism (a much later
term) in the India of first millennium BCE, but also the dominant
religion in India was Buddhism for nearly a thousand years. The
Chinese in the first millennium ADE standardly referred to India as
11 the Buddhist kingdom" (the far-reaching effects of the Buddhist
connections between the two largest countries in the world are
discussed in the essay "China and India"). Ancient India cannot be
fitted into the narrow box where the Hindutva activists want to
incarcerate it.
4
An attempt to talk about the culture of a country, or about
its past history or contemporary politics, must inescapably involve
considerable selection. I need not, therefore, belabour the point
Page 12
that the focus on the argumentative tradition in this lecture is a
result of choice and does not reflect a belief on my part that this
is the only reasonable way of thinking about the history or culture
or politics of India. I am very aware that there are other ways of
proceeding.
The selection of focus here is mainly for three distinct
reasons: the long history of the argumentative tradition in India,
its contemporary relevance, and its relative neglect in on-going
cultural discussions. It can, in addition, be claimed that the
simultaneous flourishing of many different convictions and
viewpoints in India has drawn substantially on the acceptance -
explicitly or by implication - of heterodoxy and dialogue. The
reach of Indian heterodoxy is remarkably extensive and ubiquitous/
and it has direct relevance to the roles of democracy and
secularism today, and even to the contemporary economic debates.
The celebration of public arguments has positively helped the
growth of democracy in India. The historical roots of democracy in
India are particularly worth considering, if only because that
connection is often missed, through the temptation to attribute the
Indian commitment to democracy simply to the impact of British
influence (despite the fact that such an influence should have
worked similarly for a hundred other countries that emerged from an
empire on which the sun used not to set). India's unusual record
as a robust, non-Western democracy includes not just its immediate
endorsement, following independence from the British Raj, of the
democratic form of government, but also the tenacious persistence
Page 13
of that system since then, which contrasts with the experiences of
many other countries where democracy has intermittently made cameo
appearances.
The long history of heterodoxy has a bearing not only on the
development and survival of democracy in India, it has also richly
contributed to the emergence of secularism in the form of the
neutrality of the state between different religions. This is not
to deny that there have been kings and rulers in India who have not
followed Ashoka's admonition that "the sects of other people all
deserve reverence for one reason or another," or Akbar's insistence
that "no man should be interfered with on account of religion, and
anyone is to be allowed to go over to a religion that pleases him."
But we have to see how extraordinary have been these codifications
of religious neutrality of the state as and when they have been
enunciated. It is hard to find pronouncements of similar
liberality in Europe until more recent times. The tolerance of
religious diversity is implicitly reflected in India's having
served as a shared home - in the chronology of history - of Hindus,
Buddhists, Jains, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Parsees, Sikhs,
Baha'is, and others.
The role of public reasoning in the practice of democracy and
secularism has been much discussed in contemporary political
philosophy, led particularly by John Rawls and Juergen Habermas.
Even though historians of democracy - as opposed to political
theorists - have tended to concentrate rather exclusively on
balloting and voting, the importance of the argumentative tradition
Page 14
in India for the development of democracy and secularism can be
more fully appreciated. To illustrate, even though the 2300 years
old conversation between the world-conquering Alexander and Jain
philosophers bereft of clothing, as reported by Arrian, has been
much discussed, the conversation has tended to be viewed mainly as
an illustration of exotic customs and speculative viewpoints. It
is, however, important to understand what the content of the
conversation was.
When Alexander asked the Jain philosophers why they were
paying so little attention to the great conqueror, he got the
following - deeply anti-imperial - reply:
King Alexander, every man can possess only so much of the
earth's surface as this we are standing on. You are but human
like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to
no good, travelling so many miles from your home, a nuisance
to yourself and to others!....You will soon be dead, and then
you will own just as much of the earth as will suffice to bury
you.
Alexander responded, we learn from Arrian, to this egalitarian
reproach with the same kind of admiration that he had shown in his
encounter with Diogenes, even though his own conduct remained
altogether unchanged ("the exact opposite of what he then professed
to admire").
5
Before I turn to some specific policy issues, let me make a
brief remark on the distinct roles that arguing plays in the
working of a society. At the risk of oversimplification, I would
like tov distinguish between two distinct functions: ( 1 )
Page 15
affirmation, and (2) critique. Affirmation is associated with
voice, and in particular with enunciation of claims as well as
principles. Critique goes beyond that and insists on scrutinizing
what is being voiced. The functioning of democracy needs both.
Consider the much discussed proposition that famines do not
occur in democracies - only in imperial colonies (as used to happen
in British India), or in military dictatorships (as in Ethiopia,
Sudan, or Somalia, in recent decades), or in one-party states (as
in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, or China during 1958-61, or
Cambodia in the 1970s, or North Korea in the immediate past). It
is easy to affirm in a socially visible way, the duty of a
responsible state to prevent famines and to record the voice of the
potential victims when public expression is not prohibited. And it
is hard for a government to withstand public criticism of a policy
failure when a famine occurs. This is not merely due to the fear
of losing elections, but also connected with facing public censure
when newspapers and the media are independent and uncensored and
when opposition parties are allowed to pester those in office.
Indeed, the proportion of people affected by famines is always
rather small (hardly ever more than 10 percent of the total
population), and for a famine to be an electoral nightmare for the
government, the sharing of information and the generating of public
sympathy through public discussion are quite crucial. This is one
reason, among many others, that the recent moves towards
guaranteeing "the right to information" are full of economic as
well as political and social significance.
Page 16
Even though the working of democracy is easily successful in
preventing conspicuous disasters like large famines, it is often
far less effective in politicizing regular but non-extreme
undernourishment and ill health. India has had no problem in
avoiding famines with timely intervention, but it has been much
harder to generate adequate public interest in less immediate and
less dramatic deprivations, such as the quiet presence of endemic
but non-extreme hunger across the country and the low standard of
basic health care. While democracy is not without success in
India, its achievements are still far short of what public
reasoning can do in a democratic society, if it addresses less
conspicuous deprivations such as endemic hunger. A similar remark
can also be made about the protection of minority rights, which
majority rule may not guarantee until and unless public discussion
gives these rights enough political visibility and status to
produce general public support.
The largeness of India links with its ability to include all
in the domain of public reasoning - not to exclude the underdogs of
society, nor the minorities. Even though the less privileged in
India, linked with class or gender or community, has often been
neglected from the domain of public concern, the general vehicle of
public reasoning is ultimately a large boat - a mahayana in the
literal meaning of that lovely word.
6
Are there positive signs of change right now, and if so, how
Page 17
should we interpret and assess them? I am aware that I am entering
a difficult territory here, but I would argue that there are good
reasons to be optimistic, but also need for more vigorous use of
the argumentative tradition. Let me, then, extend my already
established record of recklessness by commenting a little on some
of the economic and political issues of the day.
I rely on an analysis I have present earlier, jointly with
Jean Dreze (India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity and
India: Development and Participation), that the Indian economy has
suffered from a chronic underactivity of the government in some
fields (particularly in basic education and elementary heath care)
while being overactive in others (in the form in the so-called
"license R a j " in particular). While the 1992 reforms introduced by
Manmohan Singh, then Finance Minister, attempted to address the
latter problem in a visionary way, it did not, we had argued, go
far enough in facing the first problem. There is considerable
evidence that the present Indian government, led by Manmohan
himself, is much more committed to removing that imbalance. The
underinvestment in the social sector is now more fully recognised.
Even though there is a long way to go, both the affirmation of the
principles involved and the critiques that have been presented seem
to have received significantly more attention. As an argumentative
Indian I am ready to offer appreciation here.
What about the Employment Guarantee Bill for rural areas?
Here too there is cause for jubilation as far as affirmation is
concerned. We are dealing here with some of the poorest people in
Page 18
Indian society, and giving them a reliable source of income through
100 days of guaranteed employment can be an enormously important
instrument. India has one of the highest rates of basic
undernourishment in the world, and that deprivation, along with
other consequences of penury, require recognition and response. The
affirmation of the principles involved and acknowledgment of the
problem to be addressed must now be followed up by an adequate
critique and assessment of the provisions and the modalities
involved.
Some of the difficult issues involved have already been well
identified, judging from the discussions I have seen. There are
questions of financing and resources, the division of the burden
between the centre which has to bear much of the costs and the
states which have to take much of the actions, and the big problems
of implementation, including prevention of corruption which has
much potential whenever money changes hand. These issues will no
doubt receive attention as the Bill moves through the parliament.
There are also a few other issues that must be examined.
First, education and health care as well as expansion of physical
infrastructure directly add to the productive capabilities of
people. Employment itself does not do not do this, and hence the
need for effectively channelling the work that would be supported
by employment guarantee is especially strong. The well-understood
case for expansions of basic education and health care drew on the
experience of many countries in the world, for example in China and
East Asia, in which they have been veritable engines of progress.
Page 19
Employment guarantee does not have much past experience to draw on,
except from India itself. The employment guarantee in Maharashtra
- has indeed been a success in preventing hunger (for example, in
averting what almost certainly would have been a famine in 1973,
but in this achievement, transfer of income is itself the primary
vehicle of improvement. If the economic capabilities of the poor
are to be effectively advanced through employment guarantee/ the
focus has to be as much on the nature of the work done as on having
a cast iron guarantee on receiving a wage.
Second, even though the enthusiasm for the employment
guarantee proposal often has tended to come from activists keen on
the social sector, the form of the guarantee is aimed entirely at
securing a private income. Given the fact that India spends a
comparatively small proportion of the GDP on public health care and
public education, compared with other similarly placed countries,
it would be important to make sure that in the enthusiasm for
guaranteeing private income we do not lose any ground on possible
expansion of investment in social public goods that are vitally
needed for reasons that Jean Dreze and I have tried to present in
our last two books. For any commitment of expenditure, the
opportunity costs have to be scrutinized, and employment guarantee
is no exception to this.
Third, precisely because there is reason for jubilation as far
as affirmation is concerned that public discussion and agitation,
initially linked with "the right to food," has brought about a
political climate in which a radical proposal has been introduced
Page 20
in the parliament with a good chance of legislative success, the
penalty of failure, if it were to occur, could be extremely high.
The route of public agitation will continue to have other uses, for
example in pressing for going more strongly ahead in building
schools and hospitals, and also in legislative reform that may be
needed to overcome systematic absenteeism of teachers form schools
and medical personnel in public health centres, where the clientele
comes from the underdogs of society. Agitation is a scarce
resource too, and the argumentative Indian has to expend it well.
To point to the need for serious scrutiny is not, of course,
to suggest that the scrutiny would produce a negative assessment,
but rather to be able to choose modalities in an examined way, so
that the affirmed social principles are best realized.
7
I turn finally to the political issue of minority rights and
secularism, a subject in which there have been many ups and downs
in recent years. The 2002 riots in the state of Gujarat, following
the Godhra incident, in which possibly 2000 Muslims died, were not
prevented by the state government, nor was the BJP-dominated state
government, which had failed to protect minority community, booted
out of office in the December elections that followed. On the
other hand, the BJP-led central government did fall in the general
elections held in May 2004. Any set of election results,
especially in a country as large as India, would tend to carry the
impact of many different types of influences, and there cannot be
Page 21
any single-factor explanation of the electoral outcomes. But
looking through the nature of the electoral reverses of the BJP and
its allies in the recent elections, including the total - or neartotal
- demise of the "secular" parties in alliance with the BJP,
it is difficult to miss a general sense of grievance about the
neglect of secular concerns by parties which were not formally
signed up for the Hindutva agenda. Not only were the voters keen
on bringing down the BJP itself a notch or two (its percentage of
voting support fell from 25% to 22%), but there are reasons to
entertain the hypothesis that the "secular" support that the BJP
allies delivered to the BJP-led alliance was particularly imperiled
by the Hindutva movement's aggressive - and sometimes violent -
undermining of a secular India and the complete failure of the
BJP's allies to resist the extremism of Hindutva.
In particular, the violence in Gujarat did seem to tarnish the
image of BJP and its allies, in addition to the issue of economic
inequality and the back-firing of the boast about "India shining."
The apparent concession by the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, that the Gujarat killings had been a major influence in
the B JP' s defeat ( " I t is very difficult to say what all the reasons
are for the defeat [of BJP] in the elections but one impact of the
violence was we lost the elections") was, I understand, withdrawn
or significantly emended by him later, but no matter who concedes
what that plausible connection would be hard to overlook. It is
important to understand the hold of the sceptical tradition in
India, despite the manifest presence of religions all across the
Page 22
country. In responding to the exploitation of religious demography
in the politics of Hindutva, the defenders of secular politics
often take for granted that the Indian population would want
religious politics in one form or another. This has led to the
political temptation to use "soft Hindutva" as a compromised
response by secularists to the politics of "hard Hindutva." But
that tactical approach, which certainly has not given the anti-BJP
parties any dividend so far, is, I would argue, foundationally
mistaken. It profoundly ignores the strength of scepticism in
India, which links with the argumentative tradition and which
extends to religions as well, particularly in the form of doubting
the relevance of religious beliefs in political and social affairs.
Indeed, despite the bloody history of riots in India, the
tolerance of heterodoxy and acceptance of variations of religious
beliefs and customs are, ultimately, deep rooted in India.
Rabindranath Tagore had put this issue rather more sharply more
than eight decades ago in 1921, in his claim that the "idea of
India" itself militates "against the intense consciousness of the
separateness of one's own people from others." If this is correct,
then it would be right to conclude that through their sectarian use
of religious affiliations, the Hindutva movement has entered into
a confrontation with the idea of India itself. This is nothing
short of a sustained effort to miniaturize the broad idea of a
large India - proud of its heterodox past and its pluralist present
- and to replace it by the stamp of a small India, bundled around
a drastically raw interpretation of Hinduism.
Page 23
In the confrontation between a large and a small India, the
broader understanding can certainly win. But the victory for the
broad idea of India cannot be stable unless those fighting for the
larger conception know what they are fighting for. The reach of
Indian traditions, including heterodoxy and the celebration of
plurality and scepticism, requires a comprehensive recognition.
Cognizance of India’s dialogic traditions is important for an
adequate understanding of the capacious idea of India.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)