Pages 28-47 from Southern Asia; a seminar sponsored by Duke University and the Southern Regional Education Board,
May 5-9, 1968, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Edited by Robert I. Crane.
Atlanta, Southern Regional Education Board, 1968, p. 165.

India is a complex society, and the complexities of her social and cultural life carry over into and are reflected in her political life. One way of unraveling these complexities is by identifying the apparently conflicting dichotomies one finds in Indian life and thought, and tracing the reactions which the encounter between them produces.

There is in Indian life a kind of dialectic-for every theme or characteristic there is a counter-theme or counter-characteristics. In the broadest sense there is the relationship between elements of unity and diversity, with which we are all familiar, of which Jawaharlal Nehru spoke and wrote so profoundly, and which Philip Mason has analyzed so brilliantly in a recent essay. ⁽¹⁾ A related and crucial dichotomy at the present point in time is the relationship between the traditional and the modern elements in Indian life, and in this context one might consider the relationship between the democratic processes which India has adopted and her hierarchical social values, or between violence and non-violence, and many others in a similar vein.

Mason's analysis incorporates many of these dichotomies. He examines five areas of diversity in Indian society and then

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asks to what extent these diversities are likely to affect political stability and unity. To what extent do they concern society and to what extent do they concern the State? This distinction is an important one for it implies, as Mason suggests, not only that the reconciling and unifying characteristics of the traditional and social milieu can affect and indeed be duplicated in the political sphere, but that the diversities of the traditional milieu may also affect the political sphere.

It is with this traditionalizing effect in Indian politics and what I take to be its new tendencies and consequences that I want to concern myself in this paper. I will elaborate Mason's socio-political model on the basis of what has happened in India since 1966 when Mason and his colleagues wrote.

The five areas of diversity Mason describes are religion, language, region, tribe, and caste, and the divisions between the educated, middle-class elite and the mass of India's peasant population. Mason assesses the diversities each of these factors brings to Indian society. By and large he finds in all of them modifying, unifying tendencies rather than divisive tendencies. To quote Mason: "There are plenty of dangers which affect both [society and the State] and they have strong quasi-racial elements, but the overwhelming impression conveyed to me by the essays in this book is that the tough network of fibres binding Indian society into a whole will continue to hold. The divisive forces which simulate racial barriers are in retreat".⁽²⁾ Similarly, in politics Mason notes that "the choice between extremes has so far been refused", ⁽³⁾ the mediating influence here being the Congress Party which represents many diverse groups and interests but which, like the Hindu tradition, is tolerant and compromising of these variant interests. In this sense, Mason argues, a stable society is linked with the State through the political machine that is the Congress Party. This machine bears many resemblances

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to the society in which it operates and this, as Mason says again, is a source of strength. But it may also be a source of weakness as I have indicated above, in that politics may at some point come to absorb the divisive characteristics of the society. Mason's term is that the "recipe for a stable society may not be the recipe for a stable state".⁽⁴⁾

Crises require action and not compromise and when the political system does not produce responsible action at appropriate times it is susceptible to change. For two years India has had a very grave crisis, focussed on the problem of supplying the basic food needs of a growing population, now numbering in the vicinity of 515 million persons. Though the critical food shortages of 1966 and 1967 have been relieved with bumper crops in late 1967 and early 1968, and food grain purchases from abroad, particularly the United States, significant stresses in the social fabric are apparent, with pressures that have resulted in a re-orientation of economic planning and development, and the emergence of new political patterns. The disruptions of many of the state governments in India in 1967 and 1968 involving the failure of Congress, and non-Congress coalition governments, suggests that if basic needs are not met, new alternatives will be sought. In this situation tensions latent in the traditional society may come to the surface -- the point with which Mason concludes his essay.5 I am now suggesting that the traditionalizing influences of religion, language and caste in the modern democratic processes of India have always been in the conservative direction of the traditional, hierarchical, rural society in which they have operated; in other words, to the right end of the political spectrum. Morris-Jones makes the same point when he says: "the traditional way tends to point to the right and certainly points away from the centre.⁽⁵⁾ I am further suggesting that when a crisis of scarcity leads to political instability, frustra-

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ion, violence and agitation, the traditional conservative tendencies of Indian society will move to support increasingly right, authoritarian groups who exploit traditional loyalties in highly nationalistic terms.

There is a strong authoritarian strand in Indian life and experience. Indeed, the line between the democratic political institutions which have been sustained by a traditional, essentially rural society, and the authoritarian institutions which could well be sustained by such a society, is a very fine one.

I think therefore that what we are seeing is the beginning of a major shift in Indian politics in the direction of growing strength on the communal right. If under these circumstances the Congress Party is able to maintain its influence in those states to which it has been reduced, a strong two-party situation could emerge. An equally plausible prospect would be a polarization around political extremes in which the chief beneficiaries of any reaction to the communal right would be the Communist parties on the left. But this is in the realm of conjecture and beyond the concern of this paper. I turn now to the traditionalizing process in Indian politics.

Modern vs. Traditional

It is perhaps going too far to suggest that we are dealing here with what Gabriel Almond called a conflict between two political cultures. I prefer Morris-Jones' description of the encounter between the political system and the social structure as a contrast between the modern and traditional "languages" or "idioms" of politics." ⁽⁶⁾ When we speak of the modern language of politics in India we mean those institutions operated by, and in part developed by, a relatively small, Westernized, educated elite: Parliament, the constitution, a well-established judicial system, a civil service able in the administration of government and development, the press, and the top leadership of the political parties. This small educated elite group has been committed to the idea of a democratic,

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secular, national welfare state, with everything this means in the Indian context, and has used the modern institutions at its disposal as a means of persuading Indian society as a whole that these modern values and institutions are in India's best interest. This modern idiom has in fact been communicated widely in Indian society, and widely accepted. The development of a viable party system with an able leadership, the widespread acceptance of electoral politics, and indeed the use of these modern institutions, parties, elections and legislatures, by the traditional communal parties themselves for their own ends, indicates how extensive and important a part of Indian life the modern language of politics has become. It should be interjected here too, that its influence has been essentially a stabilizing one.

Historically it has been through the Congress Party and its top leadership that the secular, democratic, modernizing conceptions of the modern political idiom have been diffused most widely in Indian society. But it is within the Congress Party that the traditional and the modem idioms have been most significantly mixed providing, as I have indicated above, both strengths and weaknesses to the party. The Congress was returned with heavy majorities at the Center and in all states in the first three general elections. The only exception was the state of Kerala in South India which elected a Communist government in 1957. These successes reflected the Congress position as legatee of the nationalist movement with a strong leadership cadre at all levels, a systematic national organization and a planned program of national growth and development. Another reason for Congress Party success was that it made its appeal to all elements in Indian society in economic and social terms that were understandable. It is at this point that the traditional and the modern idioms came together in the Party. It was in a sense all things to all people, and in more ways than one has been described as an umbrella under which all class, caste, religious and ideological interests might find a home. This has been true, and within a dominant political party these various interests have tended to develop

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factions and, especially at the state level, provide the political system with built-in opposition groups. In some instances this process of accommodation of different interests has worked to the advantage of the Congress Party and strengthened it, as we indicated above, while in other cases the factionalizing process became an end in itself in the effort to achieve and hold power. In those cases the Congress has been weakened and its ability to cope with the problems of internal development and national growth also weakened, with results that have been disastrous.

Though the literacy rate in India is only 30 per cent, the Indian electorate has reacted to this situation with great sophistication. In the 1967 elections, in the midst of the food crisis of 1966 and 1967, the Congress Party majority was significantly reduced at the Center and it retained control of only seven of the sixteen state legislatures. In several states the Party is in process of dissolution. Several states, including the large and important South Indian state of Madras, are under opposition control, and in the others the past year has been one of instability and political chaos. Fourteen state ministries have fallen, shaky coalitions of all political groups have come and gone, and in those states where parliamentary procedures have broken down completely, President's Rule-control by the Central government, preceding new elections or a new ministry-has been imposed. West Bengal, for example, rejected the Congress in the February, 1967, elections and a coalition of fourteen parties, primarily Socialist and Communist groups and some dissident Congressmen, came into power. The government tolerated, and some of its members induced, a series of strikes that crippled industrial production, which in turn caused wide-spread unemployment, agitation and rioting in Calcutta. In early 1968 President's Rule was imposed and new elections have been set for November of this year. One can say that the voters are equally disenchanted with the opposition parties as they were with the Congress. Neither fulfilled its promises.

The pattern of one-party dominance and the stability

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which it has brought India is changing rapidly. This is in a very real sense a time of transition. There will be more opposition to the Congress Party and to any government in power and more options open to the voters who are looking not for the "good things of life" but for an indication that some of their those needs that will succeed. From the point of view of the Congress, it should be said here that once the process of political upheaval in the political system begins, as it already has, shifts in the economic fortunes of the country will not stop the process. They may affect the process, but they will not stop it. Accordingly, the changes we have indicated and the factors affecting them will continue to operate, the new food situation notwithstanding.

In discussing the political system thus far I have suggested that there are important elements in both modern and traditional institutions that contribute to stability and unity, and elements in the traditional order that may have a disjunctive effect on the existing political scheme of things. In a traditional society, cultural and social loyalties do impinge profoundly on the political system. These traditional loyalties, I would argue, are particularly important in a democratic society and in an a society of scarcity. Before Independence political leaders thought and worked in broad national terms: after Independence they continued to think in such terms, but they were also susceptible to a mass electorate, and this meant responding to its demands and in significant respects adopting its traditional complexion. We may refer to this process as the "traditionalizing" or the "Indianizing" of politics. Its influences in the political life of the nation have been profound.

The Impact of Religion

First among the traditional loyalties, in their long-term impact on the political life of South Asia, is religion. Albeit a secular state, with wide religious representation among its

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people and a deep secular outlook among its top leadership (the President of India is a Muslim), India is nevertheless essentially a Hindu society. The problems of religious division in the moves of South Asia to independence have left deep emotional scars close to the surface and large religious minorities in both India and Pakistan. I cite two developments from among many to indicate the growing importance of religious loyalties in the political life of India.

There are a number of communal political parties and quasi-political groups at work in India today. The Jan Sangh (People's Party) is the chief party of the communal, or religious right. The party bases its appeal on the Hindu-ness of India vis-a-vis Muslim Pakistan and the 50 million Muslim minority in India itself. It has both an internal and an external bogey-man. It has helped create and it has certainly exploited the vigorous nationalist sentiments now apparent in India in relation to most of its neighbors. The party was founded in 1951 and has gradually gained strength, initially with the support of small town business men, but increasingly in rural, municipal and state elections, primarily in northern India. But the party is well-organized, with a dedicated cadre of workers active in many parts of India, including the South where in the past it has had limited appeal. In the recent Bombay municipal elections it jumped from one to four seats, but it ran thirty-five candidates. It is this increase in activity and its spread beyond its traditional northern base that is important. What importance the mysterious death of Deen Dayal Upadhyay, one of the party's moderate leaders, has had in these developments is difficult to say. There is, however, strong evidence in the election results of 1967, and in party activity since, that the Jan Sangh as a political force appealing to elementary and traditionally Indian sentiments will become much stronger in the years ahead. It would appear that the communal right will be one of the chief beneficiaries of the confusion left by the Congress and the coalition governments in many states since 1967. This will be a long-term process, but I feel the evidence points in that direction. The party has

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not only shown strength in the urban areas, but, for example, in rural Bihar where it was virtually non-existent, it has now shown surprising vitality.

Bihar has also been the scene of some of the most violent communal rioting in India since independence. Evidence in this area is extremely difficult to come by, and it is quite understandably a highly sensitive problem in India. I am suggesting here, and this matter would have to be further pursued before firm assertions could be made, that there is a growing tendency to communalism in Indian life, Hindu against Muslim and vice versa, though the "minority community" is always disadvantaged in such a situation, and this will inevitably be reflected in political terms. Press reports indicated 103 "communal" incidents in 1966, 237 incidents in 1967, and an increasing number in 1968. The recent call for the creation of an impartial, non-political commission to look into the problem, by a number of respected academic and non-party political figures, suggests that a serious situation does exist. Acharya Kripalani, one of the persons making this appeal, has also called for a National Coalition Government in the interests of unity, order, and development. His credentials in the political life of the nation are very great indeed.

The Language Question

Perhaps even more critical, in terms of the divisions it creates in Indian society and the potential it has for divisiveness in politics, is the question of language. There have been a number of state re-organization schemes since independence which have essentially reflected existing patterns of linguistic regionalism in the country. With the partition of the Punjab in November, 1966, into the Punjabi speaking and Hindispeaking states of Punjab and Haryana it seems that this process has now run its course. This has been an entirely natural process and there is some indication that with its conclusion linguistic pressures will be relieved.

There is another dimension to the problem, however. This involves the reactions of extremists to the adoption of Hindi,

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spoken by 40 per cent of India's population, concentrated in the north, as the official language of the country. In the South, Hindi is considered culturally inferior and a symbol of northern dominance. In December, 1967, Parliament passed a law preserving English as an official national language until all states indicated their acceptance of Hindi as the official language, which in practical terms meant in the remote future, if ever. English, spoken by only 2 per cent of the population by the chief means of official communication at the national level and between the states, is viewed in the North as a foreign language, and the December measure was widely and violently opposed in the northern Hindi belt, particularly by the Jan Sangh and the Samyukta (United) Socialist Party. (This apparent aberration on the part of a socialist party indicates the non-ideological, practical appeal for votes in traditional terms by India's most successful democratic "socialist" party. This is what Weiner would call the appeal of the "unsuccessful" Western-oriented party in the Indian context.) In the attempt to quiet this opposition a resolution was adopted making English optional for Hindi-speaking candidates of the civil service, and this resolution in turn set off a bitter reaction in the South, where non-Hindi, Dravidian languages are spoken. There were flag burnings, student rioting, and demands for secession, from a small but vocal English and a second Indian language, but in practical terms this measure has little likelihood of success. The greatest hope for a solution to the problem is that political parties, out of concern for wider support beyond language regions, will restrain their opposition. There is, in fact, some indication of this approach in the widening efforts of the Jan Sangh, described above.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK), or Progressive Dravidian Association, is now the most important of the regional parties with its astonishing electoral victory in the South Indian state of Madras in the 1967 elections. The DMK's primary issue in the past has been the cultural and

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political autonomy of the Dravidian South vis-a-vis the dominant Hindi North. This argument has most often been expressed in anti-Hindi pro-English (English is seen as a happy by-product of British rule enabling India-wide communication) agitations, but it is perhaps significant to note that as government this aspect of the platform has been somewhat moderated, as it was indeed, even in certain respects before the election. But that the election was won because of the South vs. North anti-Hindi issue is clear. The force of these arguments can be appreciated when it is understood that the Madras Congress government had been one of the most effective in all of India.

The Effects of Caste

Another feature of Indian society that cuts across politics and affects it as profoundly, if perhaps more subtly than language, is caste. This is especially true in the local rural areas, in electoral constituencies and in the political relationships found in many states. It must also be understood that there is great variation from one part of the country to another in terms of how caste operates. This depends on a number of factors, including the size of caste groups, the ritual and social distance between them and the dominance characteristics of involved castes, and the conceived self and public images of politically active caste groups and their history and degree of involvement in the public life of their region.

Castes, or more accurately jatis, are highly localized kinship groups. They are a basic social structural feature in Indian life, and at the village level determine a man's economic role in society. In social and ritual terms caste is rigidly hierarchical, relationships between caste groups are precisely defined and are determined by a person's birth as a member of a particular caste group. Theoretically, one does not move outside the caste group in which one is born, though there is mobility within the system as members of caste groups, and at the local level entire caste groups adopt the characteristics of other higher castes. For those of you who are familiar in

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general terms with Indian society, we are not talking about the four-fold varna system of caste in India. Varna is a classical and theoretical formulation of four castes-priests, warriors, merchants, and servants-which has only the most general relationship to the thousands of endogamous jati groups we find in Indian society today. For purposes of this paper any further detail, however important, would be excessive. There are in fact sub-castes and divisions within them that are as important in political terms as the larger jati units. But my point can be made without discussing the problem at that level. The fact is that caste, defined as I have here, is perhaps the most pervasive factor in Indian politics, though I do not mean to suggest by this that it is the most important factor.

Because caste groups are relatively small, locally defined, hierarchical social units, they are also well defined and identifiable units for political purposes. In political terms, therefore, caste is a basis for satisfying particular local interests and allegiances, but because caste is by definition local or regional at most, and is therefore not large enough to form meaningful political units apart from other groups, it also becomes the basis for alliances and factional political associations, much as ethnic groups elsewhere make alliances within parties and seek balanced tickets to win elections and achieve power. Let me emphasize what I have said above; that caste as a political factor varies, the manner in which it operates in a political situation, and the importance it has in that situation, varies from locale to locale, from state to state. In some states, in fact, caste is not a particularly significant consideration. In others it is critical. In some states it has worked to the advantage of political groups and parties, in others-Bihar in the north is a case in point-the factionalizing process has served to break the Congress Party into multiple feuding elements, apparently leading to its disintegration in that state. I will examine the Bihar case in some detail in order to identify more precisely the mechanics of caste as a political factor in the Indian situation. In Bihar, in the traditional Hindu

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heartland of north India, rural and socially conservative, caste considerations have been as profound an influence in politics as anywhere in India.

The Bihar Case

In this state of 53 million persons the basic social structural components of family, lineage and caste are also the basic referents in the competition for political power. The influence of a conservative social order in Bihar politics took several forms, including the organization of caste associations with social and political reform objectives and the use of caste as an identification mechanism in the political arena itself. A related and critical phenomenon that emerges in these circumstances is the factionalizing of politics.

I would suggest that in the politics of twentieth century Bihar the ritually higher and economically more powerful upper castes, as they are identified in this state, took to higher education earlier, and accordingly emerged info public life, the professions, administration and politics earlier; and because of their social and economic power, and despite their numerical weakness, they came to dominate politics, and have confined to do so until very recently. Further, I am suggesting, the upper castes were succeeded in this process of emergence by the ritually lower, economically less well-off, less educated, but numerically more extensive Backward Castes (this is an official Census designation). These later emerging castes duplicated many of the techniques and arguments in public life of the upper castes, but because they were socially and economically disadvantaged they have been politically disadvantaged. Because the factional process and the franchise of the Independence era have given them leadership and votes they are now playing an increasingly important political role.

Let me indicate now the mechanics of this traditionalized political process in specific terms. With constitutional reforms following World War I, Congress Party ministries coming to power, and a strong and powerful party organization, a broad

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range of seats, cabinets posts, organizational positions and other offices became the objects of the competition for power in the 1920's and especially in the 1930's. In other words, as the constitutional changes and political reactions of the twentieth century provided greater opportunities, the Kayasthas (scribes), Rajputs (landholders in Bihar), and Bhumihar Brahmins (also landholders in Bihar), took advantage of them in the traditional, parochial, caste terms of forming associations, alliances among themselves, and pressing their candidates info office. The character of this reaction was fortified by the fact that all the participants were from the rural countryside, bringing with them the values and modes of operation this implied. These developments were true in the politics of the dominant Congress Party and all political groups working within if, as most were. For example, in 1937 when the first Congress ministry under the Government of India Act of 1935 took office, Cabinet assignments were made primarily on the basis of factional caste distribution. All the proper groups had to be taken care of, and were. The position at that time broke down essentially info major factions with Bhumihar Brahmins on the one hand and a combination of Rajputs and Kayasthas, numerically a very small group, on the other.

Independence in 1947 initiated a very fluid political process. The Congress had come to power as a movement, but if had now to operate as a party and the implications of this fact for the political competition we are examining here are considerable. The Congress was no longer the antigovernment agitator, if was the government, which had to rely on a new mass voting base for support in carrying out complex programs of development. The clientele making demands and giving support represented all the traditional social and economic diversifies encountered in the pre-Independence period. And these diversifies had in the nature of things to be represented in the organization. At the same time, the Congress as government came to control vast development and patronage funds. The object of the competitive political game became more

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attractive, and the participants became more numerous and came to reflect in extreme form the caste-factional process apparent in 1937. But from 1947 to the present the traditionalized political system of Bihar has not been an arrangement of two factions in competition. In response to the new operating conditions, it broke down into many factions in which old caste lines became increasingly blurred as new emerging castes and their leaders were courted for the mass base they represented and the group support they could offer. This meant new leaders contending for the allegiance of new groups or aligning themselves with existing groups. There was a proliferation of groups in this process to the point where identification of groups became difficult and definition of group membership impossible. In Bihar coalitions shift to achieve power and in doing so seek or give support across caste lines. Caste is the means by which positions of power are strengthened. When an alliance does not achieve this objective it is ended for more favorable alliances.

It becomes apparent that in Bihar caste factions in politics seek support where they can get it. The fact that there are more sources for such support, representing increasingly important social and economic interest groups, means that there are more factions which divide, shift and reform to seek their greatest advantage. The price of support extended by a group or faction is power or political influence. I refer again to the similarity between this situation and ethnic group politics in the United States.

From what I have been saying it can be seen that the traditional elements of society are influenced by the political system, in that they operate within it, and in turn influence the process by which the system itself operates. The traditional society moves in the direction of modernization and the political system becomes traditionalized. In Bihar it is this latter part of the process that is most significant.

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The Backward and Scheduled Castes

A brief description of how it involves the larger Backward and Scheduled (Untouchable) Castes will conclude my remarks on caste in politics. These numerically extensive caste groups have become a very basic component in the dynamics of political competition in recent years and now have moved into a central position. Until recently neither the Backward nor the Scheduled Caste groups determined leadership elections or other major political results. This was true because, as I have indicated, the process of emergence of a caste into public and political life occurs over time, and as the factionalized upper caste groups have competitively sought support in the large, newly emergent castes, there have appeared multiple leaders and groups within individual castes attracted by the prospect of position and influence such associations might bring to an individual leader and to his caste. Accordingly no bloc of caste groups artificially categorized Backward will be cohesive in politics because of the vast numbers and the wide range of economic and social interests involved.

The pressure for reform, education, caste improvement and the removal of the disadvantages of Backwardness and "Untouchableness" as well as the political factors already indicated, have provided these groups with an identity and a consciousness of growing strength and political power. What seems probable in the highly fluid political situation of 1968 is that the numerically extensive Backward and Scheduled Caste groups, or more accurately, elements within them, with an increasingly literate mass base and a more well-educated and experienced leadership, will come to play an increasingly important role, whether in or out of the Congress-probably both. They will associate in positions of power more consistently with the upper castes, or they will exercise it independently. This prospect was anticipated as early as 1964 when one of the leading Bhumihar Brahmin politicians indicated that his fear for the future was not from the other upper castes but from the rising and numerically dominant Back-

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ward and Scheduled Castes. Caste in this respect takes on the complexion of class.

However, it should be noted, significantly, that the first Scheduled Caste chief minister in Bihar's history, Bhola Paswan Shastri, was sworn in as the head of a non-Congress coalition government, with the support of virtually all non-Congress parties representing all caste groups in the state. Indeed, the first minister he appointed to his cabinet was a Bhumihar Brahmin. The chief minister and most of his cabinet members are themselves dissident, i.e., defecting, Congressmen.

The situation is one of great flux and all we can say at this point is that the traditionalizing of the political system in the state of Bihar has led to a factionalizing process and a fractionalizing of Congress Party leadership, where personal and group interests for power became in themselves the object. The party machinery could not sustain this shifting divisiveness, nor could it govern and manage the program of development. The result has been the defeat of the Party at the polls and its apparent fragmentation. Whether other groups will be able to operate differently in these circumstances cannot be said. There may be a period of instability of coalition governments leading ultimately to President's Rule. Again whether parties like the Jan Sangh, who are increasingly active in Bihar and who are coincidentally supporting the new government, can benefit by the present situation, is also not yet clear. The situation is simply too complex and there are too many intangibles involved to permit conjecture.

Tribal distinction, economic distinction, the distinction between the educated elite and the mass of India's villagers are all factors in Indian politics I have not touched, just as I have not touched on the importance of landholding, moneylending, education, social service, and the personal element, in my consideration of Indian politics. These factors are all important, perhaps in different ways than religion, language and caste, which I have used to make my points in this paper. To repeat, insofar as language, religion and caste reflect the basic, ele-

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mentary traditional beliefs of a conservative, rural society, I maintain that they Indianize politics in the same traditional, conservative terms understood by the peasant population. In this sense the failures of the present parties in government will benefit parties that make traditional social and cultural appeals. The Congress machine has been hurt by its inability to perform in certain development situations, and it has been hurt in some places by exploiting certain traditional features of the society-caste too narrowly and to the disadvantage of the broader party interests. I have suggested that the parties that will benefit are essentially those who exploit other traditional sentiments, language and especially religion, and who are on the communal right.

I also pointed out at the beginning that to the extent that unfulfilled needs led to political instability, frustration, agitation and violence, these traditional, conservative tendencies will be fortified in the cities and in the countryside in the direction of right, authoritarian, nationalistic groups. Such sentiments are very much a part of the Indian experience. The autocratic ruler is the central figure in Indian history, in the Hindu and in the Muslim and Mughal dynasties and in the princely states that ruled much of India to the time of independence in 1947. My colleague Professor H. S. Plunkett, describes political meetings in present-day Rajasthan as they relate to politics and governmental processes. He describes these as secular cultural performances revolving around the concept of the darbar, a term which implies the government of the traditional state, the periodic public gatherings with much pomp and circumstance which symbolized the administration and the court in general, and the person of the ruler in particular. The autocratic conception then is still very much alive. And the British, for all the constitutional reform they introduced, were in the most basic sense authoritarian, and the administrators of their rule in the districts, the district officers, were certainly that. Morris-Jones refers tellingly and appropriately it seems to Nehru, as "King in Parliament". ⁽⁷⁾

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Moves Toward Violence

I detect a feeling of unrest in India that moves often in the direction of violence, which is also part of the Indian tradition, culturally and historically. Danda (force) is as important a concept in India as ahimsa (non-violence). There is the tradition of mass agitation against an alien government, which has now spilled over into aimless attacks on public property, buses, trains, schools, and the police. Nirad Chaudhri would call this the Indian tradition of anarchy, which is probably correct. There is little of a planned nature in the violence that erupts, by and large little ideological motivation involved, though the parties step in to take advantage of situations that arise. Certainly there is no single cause or pattern to what happens. It involves students, peasants, laborers in urban centers, and many others, and has elicited sharp reactions from police and government. In one such riot situation which I observed in 1965 in Patna, a city of 500,000, an increase in student school fees and a difficult food price situation provided the occasion for a mass demonstration, which then escalated into violence, was joined by dissatisfied petty government clerks, and as a mob riot, assumed a life of its own, and burned the railway station, food warehouses, and which then petered out locally, but spread throughout the state. I judge that there is a resentment and dissatisfaction with administrative inefficiencies and corruptions, an impatience with things as they are compared with expectations, a general sense of confusion and frustration. I see in this little ideological motive, as I have indicated, but the extremes of the left and right will not, I suspect, let the opportunities pass. Violence in Indian life and politics and the authoritarian strain and its influences in Indian life are problems which require the scrutiny of the political scientist and the cultural anthropologist. They are serious factors in the tradition we need to know more about.

The recent successes (March, 1968) of the neo-Fascist Shiv Sena in capturing nearly one-third of the Bombay City Council seats and ousting the Congress from power indicate

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the tendencies of these sentiments in hard terms. Taking its name from a seventeenth century Maratha warrior who fought the Muslim Mughals, the party has now become a major force in the important western state of Maharashtra. The party's spokesman is Bal Thackeray, a cartoonist, whose appeal is narrowly economic. In a city where two-thirds of the jobs are held by outsiders, primarily South Indians, he insists that 80 per cent of all jobs must be filled by Maharashtrians. This is a powerful appeal in working class districts where unemployment is high, and Thackeray's anti-unionism and anti-communism have also attracted substantial support from Bombay businessmen. The success of the frankly authoritarian and violent Shiv Sena, while regional in character, suggests a tendency in the political life of the nation which cannot be ignored.

We come back to where we started, the problem of unity and diversity in Indian society, and the encounter of modernity with tradition. We have spoken of many stabilizing factors in Indian society. Mason appropriately adds to this the broad, eclectic, and tolerant aspects of the Hindu cultural tradition, the unifying effect of Hindu values that pervade Indian society: This suggests that in any complex society there are elements of diversity in a broader framework of unity. But while some elements of social division affect politics and the stability of the state, and other elements of tolerance and accommodation common both to the political system and the Hindu tradition have a stabilizing effect, ultimately the political stability of India as a nation will depend on the responsiveness of its political leaders in government, whatever their party, to the problems of nation-building, and specifically to India's most critical problem, the feeding of its growing population.

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Footnotes

1. Mason, Philip, (ed.), India and Ceylon: Unity and Diversity. Oxford (1967), pp. 1-29.[BACK]

2. Ibid, p. 26. [BACK]

3. Ibid, p. 27. [BACK]

4. Ibid, p. 28. [BACK]

5. Morris-Jones, W. H., The Government and Politics of India. London (1964), p. 69. [BACK]

6. Ibid, p. 69. [BACK]

7. Ibid, p. 69. [BACK]

Webber Philip McEldowney
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