India After Independence: 1947-2000 (49 page)

The strong and violent reaction of the student community in North India
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illustrates this. In a situation where large numbers of students look upon employment in the government sector as a major career option, and one that it is still possible to avail of without using influence or money
as recruitment is done via competitive examinations, the sudden blocking of almost one half of the seats for reservation, seemed patently unfair. This was especially so, as they recognized that many of those who would benefit were economically and socially their equals or even superiors. This was seen as very different from reservation for Scheduled Castes, as the social and economic disability was unambiguous, and a social consensus had been built on the issue since the days of the freedom struggle. Besides, students were not innocent of the political motives that underlay the decision, as these were being loudly debated by the leaders of the National Front itself.

Anti-Mandal protest took the form of attacks on public property, burning of buses, rallies, meetings, discussions in the Press. Students were in the forefront, and were often supported by other sections of society, such as teachers, office workers, and housewives. Towns and cities in North India were the locale and police firing was resorted to in Delhi, Gorakhpur, Varanasi, and Kanpur among other places. From mid-September, desperate that protests were proving futile, a few students attempted self-immolation. Passions ran high, with those for Mandal condemning this as barbaric and farcical and possibly stage-managed, and those against, shocked at the trivialization and lack of understanding of the depth of sentiment on the issue. The prime minister’s appeals to students to desist from violence and self-immolation went unheeded. While for a major part anti-Mandal protest remained free of caste overtones, and in fact its dominant discourse was against caste as an organizing principle, there did develop a very negative tendency, especially in the later stages, and partly in reaction to being characterised as upper-caste motivated, for upper-caste students to coalesce into previously unthinkable ‘forward caste’ associations, and for caste-flavoured abuses to be traded in college hostel corridors and dining halls. What was once a major forum for dissolving of caste identities became for some time the cradle in which they were re-born. The protest ended when the Supreme Court granted a stay on the implementation of the Mandal Report on 1 October 1990.
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Meanwhile, BJP had its own agenda to complete and Mandal probably gave it the push it needed. Seeing the strong popular reaction to Mandal, BJP had started making noises about withdrawing support. On 25 September, L.K. Advani embarked on his 6000 mile-long rath yatra or chariot-ride from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya (to lay the foundation stone for the Ram mandir) which ended on 23 October at Samastipur in Bihar with his arrest and the withdrawal of support by BJP. V. P. Singh could not satisfy the BJP without alienating his own party and his left allies and chose thus to break with the BJP. On 30 October, there was firing on the crowd trying to reach the spot in Ayodhya chosen for the shilanyas of the Ram temple. The rath yatra, Advani’s arrest and the firing at Ayodhya aroused communal passions and the ensuing riots led to many deaths in North India. On 5 November, the Janata Dal split and fifty-eight legislators elected Chandra Shekhar as their leader. On 7 November, the second attempt at running a non-Congress government came to an end after eleven stormy months.

The major issues that emerged in this phase have been largely discussed in the thematic chapters; hence what is offered here is merely a brief survey of basic political changes to maintain the continuity of the narrative.

The short-lived Chandra Shekhar government which took office on 10 November 1990 with the support of Congress had only one role to perform: to hold the baby till Congress decided it wanted to go for elections. A pretext was found and support withdrawn on 5 March 1991. The elections were announced from 19 May and one round of voting was over when tragedy again struck the ill-fated family of Indira Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi, who was rounding off one phase of campaigning with a late night meeting in Sriperumbudur, forty kilometres from Madras, was blown to pieces when a young woman, who came forward to greet him, triggered off a bomb that she had strapped to her waist. Widely believed, and later proven, to be the handiwork of LTTE militants, the killing of the forty-six-year-old Rajiv, who was regaining popularity with his sadbhavana yatras and other attempts to reach out to the people, generated a sympathy wave strong enough to give Congress 232 seats and the status of the single largest party. Narasimha Rao formed what was initially a minority Congress government on 21 June, but which gradually achieved a majority, and lasted a full five-year term. It undertook the most radical economic reform, and in the first year brought down the caste and communal temperature to a great extent and was successful in restoring normalcy to Punjab, and improving the situation in Kashmir and Assam. It failed to save the Babri Masjid from demolition, and prevent the widespread rioting that followed. All this has been discussed thematically elsewhere in this volume. Suffice it to say that Narasimha Rao’s regime, despite its many achievements which are likely to be placed in a more favourable light with a longer historical perspective, tended to lose steam in the last two years, with a slowing down of economic reforms, surfacing of corruption charges and the ‘hawala’ scandal which led to charges, later found to be almost entirely unsustainable, of bribes and foreign exchange violations against many Congress and opposition leaders.

The elections held in 1996 led to Congress winning only 140 seats and BJP increasing its tally to 161 from 120 in 1991. A short-lived BJP government lasted from 16 May to 1 June, but failed to get majority support. This was followed by a United Front government with H.D. Deva Gowda as prime minister supported by Congress and CPM in which CPI joined as a partner and India got her first Communist home minister in Indrajit Gupta. Congress withdrew support on 30 March 1997, failed to form a government, and again supported a United Front government, this time with I.K. Gujral as prime minister. The support was withdrawn again and fresh elections held in February 1998 which led to the formation of BJP-led government with Atal Behari Vajpayee as prime minister, as BJP, though itself getting only 182 seats, managed to secure the support
of secular parties like the TDP, AIADMK and Trinamul Congress. The Congress got only 147 seats. The large number of allies prevented stability, with their competing demands and ultimately Jayalalitha withdrew her AIADMK from the alliance leading to the government losing the vote of confidence in April 1999. Efforts to form an alternative Congress or secular coalition government failed and elections were announced once again. The BJP-led government continued as a caretaker government till the elections were held in September and October 1999. The election results improved the tally of BJP and allies to 296 from 253 though the BJP’s own tally did not change, and the Congress with Sonia Gandhi at its helm was down to 134 with allies. The discrepancy in vote shares was much less, with Congress and allies holding on to 34.7 per cent, an improvement of 3.4 per cent over 1998, as compared to BJP and its allies’ 41.3 per cent, which improved by only 1.2 per cent since 1998. A new government was formed with Vajpayee again at the helm. As always, history has its ironies, for it appears that the millennium will be ushered in by a government led by a party that for years seemed to be more interested in reviving and avenging the past than in heralding the future! The coming millennium, however, with its new horizons, may yet give the indomitable Indian people the future they deserve.

In recent years, Indian foreign policy has faced a big challenge with the demise of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and the shift to the economic strategy of liberalization and globalization. The two events coincided in the case of India in the year 1991, and the consequences of both were not dissimilar. India had to re-order her relationship with the US and the western world. She needed the capital, the technology and the markets for export and there was, in any case, no Soviet Union to fall back upon. Her success also critically depended upon how quickly and well she could use the new strategy to achieve rapid economic development, because ultimately, in today’s world, it is those with the largest economic clout who carry the greatest political weight in international affairs. In the words of V. P. Dutt:
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‘If one were asked to identify just one most notable trend in the world, one would say that the economic struggle had taken primacy over the political struggle.’

While it is true that the good old days of Indo-Soviet friendship are over, there still exists a tremendous reservoir of goodwill and loyalties in the countries of the erstwhile Soviet Union. Russia may be going through a period of crisis, but she is a great power with a strong sense of her own position and is bound to make a comeback. It is in India’s interest to maintain good relations with it. Other countries of Central Asia who have broken out of the Soviet Union also have tremendous potential as friends and allies. They are rich in natural resources, are strategically placed and
are already being courted by the US and other western powers. Fortunately, they too have old links with India dating back to the Soviet era and the Indian government has been actively building upon them.

India’s stock in the Middle East had been high since she had always supported the Arab struggle for Palestine and did not have any diplomatic relations with Israel. In recent years, while maintaining support for the PLO, India has also opened up ties with Israel. She has also succeeded in maintaining friendly ties with Iran and has refused to fall in line with US policies of total ostracism of Iraq and Iran. As a result, Pakistan’s efforts to use the Organisation of Islamic Unity (or States) against India have not been very successful. By refusing to join in the hysteria against Iraq let loose during the Gulf War by the US, India has also retained her goodwill, built over many years of economic partnership, with Iraq.

Indian diplomacy also has to tread some new paths. Much of the world today is getting organized into new trade or economic blocs, ASEAN, EEC, NAFTA, etc. India has shown insufficient interest and awareness of. this trend. It made little effort to become part of ASEAN at the right time and has only lately become a dialogue partner. SAARC is yet to emerge as a serious economic bloc, though efforts in that direction are being made. The recent move to bring together countries of the Indian Ocean, in which India has played an active part, is a welcome one, especially as it includes South Africa, an old friend with great potential as an economic partner.

India has to learn to look eastwards as well. To Japan, which is the largest donor in the world, with the biggest surpluses of investable capital and with whom we have no history of colonial domination or border wars or economic arm twisting and whose long-term strategic interests to keep China in check dovetail with ours. We need to develop closer economic and political ties with other countries of South-east Asia with whom we have had historically good relations—with Indonesia whom we supported in her struggle against Dutch colonialism, with Vietnam, whom we supported in her struggle against French and American colonialism, with Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia with whom we have old cultural ties, with Singapore which is the power-house of South-east Asia and has shown how modern technology enables a tiny city state to become an economic superpower.

This is also necessary if India is to contribute to the making of a multipolar world and the democratization of international relations, all of which is in her enlightened self-interest. The sure way of preventing the crystallization of a unipolar world is by gently encouraging countries who have achieved economic strength to assert themselves in international affairs. Japan and at least some of the East Asian tigers who have too long been in the habit of silently endorsing US hegemony may well begin to want to express their own view of the world. All breaches in unipolarity and in favour of plurality are in India’s and the world’s interest and must be encouraged, as was done so successfully via the Non-aligned Movement in the days of the fifties Cold War. In this respect the strong support
received for continuation of NAM at its tenth annual summit in Jakarta from member states, despite the many problems it has been facing, was very encouraging. Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia, who has emerged as a strong independent voice in world affairs expressed himself very firmly in favour of NAM, as did Suharto of Indonesia who was in the chair. The summit demanded democratization of the UN, more open multilateral trading systems, greater financial flows to developing countries, and other such measures.

On the flip side is the increasing tendency of the US to interfere in the name of self-determination and human rights, with Kosovo being the recent example. Countries like India and China and even Russia with large ethnically diverse populations are vulnerable to attention of this nature. No wonder that they protested against. US and NATO role in Kosovo. The technologization of war has also made such interference possible as it has reduced the human costs to the aggressors to negligible proportions. Both the Gulf War and Kosovo demonstrated this to the hilt.

India has to suit her foreign policy to this new situation. Keeping intact its goal of retaining independence of action in international affairs, and seeking to find a respectable place for itself in the community of nations, India must constantly evaluate the changing nature of international alignments and find the means to secure its objectives. The world order is in flux, and likely to remain so for some time, and in this fluid situation India should evolve a creative foreign policy.

We take a closer look at two of the most important events in recent years that had international implications: India’s nuclear tests in 1998 and the near-war with Pakistan in 1999.