India After Independence: 1947-2000 (50 page)

India’s conduct of another round of nuclear tests in 11 May 1998 and declaring itself a nuclear weapons state is a complex question that has to be examined in the context of the changing world environment and the position adopted by India since independence on the nuclear issue.

From the days of Nehru, India had maintained a principled and sustained position, arguing for nuclear disarmament and a nuclear-weapons free world. This position was forcefully and actively pursued in recent years by Rajiv Gandhi when he tried to initiate global action towards phased nuclear disarmament. On the other hand, once again pioneered by Nehru, India laid great emphasis on development of science and technology, particularly on keeping abreast with developments in the field of nuclear science. Subsequent governments kept abreast with developments. The first nuclear tests were conducted successfully in October 1974 when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister. The governments of Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao, Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral were in full readiness for exercising the nuclear option and in fact it is said that Narasimha Rao in 1995 was about to give the go-ahead for tests similar
to the 1998 ones but the Americans got to know of it and put enough pressure for Rao to stay his hand. Thus, India till the May 1998 tests, while maintaining her position in favour of nuclear disarmament, had kept herself ready for exercising the nuclear option. This dual position was maintained for several reasons.

First, there existed after the Second World War an extremely iniquitous world order on the nuclear front. The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) was essentially conceived to ensure that four countries, USA, Soviet Union, Britain and France remained the only nuclear weapons-owning countries in the world. China forced its way into this elite club and joined the other four in the clamour to restrict the nuclear monopoly now to the ‘Big Five’. The CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) which the nuclear powers have been pressurizing non-nuclear countries to sign is equally discriminatory as its aim is again to keep other countries going nuclear while refusing
any
commitment on the part of the nuclear powers towards nuclear disarmament, not even within a fifty-year time frame. India’s efforts to get such a commitment included in the CTBT were brushed aside, forcing her to refuse to sign CTBT as she did the NPT. The message was clear. Non-nuclear countries have no voice.

Second, India was surrounded by nuclear weapons. On one side there was China (a country which invaded India in 1962) with a major nuclear armoury of four to five hundred nuclear warheads and a sophisticated long-distance delivery system including ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), and nuclear bases in Tibet. On the other, US nuclear ships cruised the seas around India with a base in Diego Garcia. Also, Kazakhistan, Ukraine and Russia had major nuclear weapons. Moreover, with open Chinese collusion and help, Pakistan (a country that forced India into war thrice and maintained a consistent low intensity hostility almost continuously) had developed not only considerable nuclear capability but also a substantial long-distance missile programme. A surface-to-surface ballistic missile with a range of 1500 kilometers named rather provocatively Ghauri (presumably after the notorious invader into India centuries ago) had been successfully launched before the Indian nuclear tests of May 1998. Soon after the Indian tests, Pakistan conducted its tests and announced the explosion of their bomb which is widely suspected to have been ‘mothered’ by China. The growing China-Pakistan nuclear axis, given their collusion diplomatically and in war against India, was a matter of serious concern.

The iniquitous world nuclear order and the security concern posed by some of its immediate neighbours go a long way in explaining why all regimes in India saw the necessity of it maintaining nuclear preparedness, and why there had been for quite some time considerable support within the country for going ahead and exercising the nuclear option.

It is in this situation that the BJP-led government headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee gave the go-ahead (rather hurriedly, within a few weeks of assuming power) for the nuclear tests that were conducted in May 1998. On 11 May three underground tests, one of them thermonuclear
(showing, it was claimed, a hydrogen bomb capability with a 45 kiloton yield), were conducted in Pokhran, the same site used in 1974. Two days later another two tests were conducted at the same site. These were tests with a lower yield aimed at generating data for computer simulation and the capacity to carry out sub-critical experiments in the future if necessary. There was no talk this time of tests for ‘peaceful purposes’ as Indira Gandhi had maintained earlier. Vajpayee declared, following the tests, that India was now a nuclear weapons state. The indigenously developed Prithvi and Agni surface-to-surface missiles could now carry nuclear warheads.

The country, by and large, with the exception of sections of the left and some small anti-nuclear groups, welcomed the tests and particularly the achievements of the scientific team led by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and R. Chidambaram, the Chief Scientific Adviser and the head of the Department of Atomic Energy. The opposition leader, Congress president Sonia Gandhi praised the achievement of the scientists and engineers, expressed pride in Congress having kept India’s nuclear capability up-todate and reiterated the commitment of Congress to a nuclear weapons-free world and peace with her neighbours.

However, the manner in which the BJP government exercised the nuclear option and particularly its handling of the situation after the tests was widely disapproved of. It was suspected that the government hurriedly went in for the tests without adequate preparation with an eye on the political advantage it could reap at home. The suspicion appeared to be justified when BJP resorted to open jingoism, talking of building a temple at Pokhran and making threatening noises regarding neighbouring countries. In fact, one of the most important national dailies in India had to editorially express ‘the strongest possible condemnation’ of an article which appeared in
Panchjanya,
the mouthpiece of RSS (the most important wing of the BJP combine), where ‘an implicit case for an Indian nuclear attack on Pakistan’ was made.
⁹
Having done the tests what India needed was to reassure the world and particularly its neighbours of her peaceful intent through skilful diplomatic moves, but the government did just the opposite. Also, seen as political disasters were the defence minister, George Fernandes’s pronouncement, a week before the tests, naming China as ‘potential threat number one’ and Prime Minister Vajpayee’s letter to President Clinton, which was published in the
New York Times,
defending the blasts by naming China and Pakistan as security threats. By unnecessarily naming specific countries and suggesting that the nuclear capability was being built against them, the wrong message was sent out. China (with whom India’s relations were being improved with sustained hard work by previous Congress and United Front governments) had initially reacted moderately to the tests but now it adopted an almost vicious tone.

The response from the West and Japan was, as expected, negative and the tests were widely condemned. The US went further and immediately announced the imposition of sanctions. Japan, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
the Netherlands and Canada suspended aid to India. The US, however, did not succeed in getting the G-8 countries to take collective action against India. France Russia and Germany continued their normal economic links with India. Britain as the current President of the European Union failed to get the Union to adopt a strong, anti-India stance.

While the long-term fallout of the sanctions and how long they would last was not clear immediately, what was certain was that India’s nuclear tests posed a major challenge to the iniquitous nuclear world order in which the nuclear haves blatantly resorted to double standards. Witness the fuss made by the US about the Indian tests and its insistence that India sign the CTBT when not enough support could be generated within their own country to ratify the CTBT. As the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, put it, ‘You cannot have an exclusive club (whose members) have the nuclear weapons and are refusing to disband it and tell them (India and Pakistan) not to have them.’
¹⁰

After Pokhran, Pakistan carried out its own nuclear tests and there was much sabre-rattling on both sides. In early 1999, when the atmosphere appeared more congenial, Vajpayee initiated the ‘bus diplomacy’ (riding the first bus service between India and Pakistan), aimed at making a major breakthrough in improving relations with Pakistan. However, as later events revealed, from long before the much-hyped bus ride to Lahore, soldiers of the Pakistan Army and Pakistan-backed Mujahideen or religious militants and mercenaries, were busy infiltrating into Indian territory. In fact, by May when the whole crisis blew up it was discovered that Pakistani armed forces had intruded deep across the line of control in Kashmir and had occupied key strategic peaks in the Kargil area. India had to mount a massive and extremely difficult counter-offensive from a disadvantageous military position, which was extremely costly particularly in terms of human lives, in order to evict the intruders. Pictures of body-bags of hundreds of Indian soldiers and officers killed in the Kargil operations began to appear regularly in Indian newspapers in a manner not witnessed before.

The international reaction to the Kargil crisis was, somewhat unexpectedly, almost unanimous in favour of India. Even the US, Britain and China—long time allies of Pakistan—put pressure on Pakistan to withdraw from Indian territory. Pakistan’s claim that it had no regular army men on the Indian side of the border but only provided moral support to militants was not taken seriously by anybody. The US stance can be partly explained by the growing fear of international Islamic terrorism. Troops from the personal bodyguard of the Saudi Islamic fundamentalist, Osama bin Laden, who was suspected to be behind the bomb attacks on US consulates in Africa in 1998 costing several ‘American lives’, were reported to be involved in the Pakistan operations
in Kargil. China’s being soft on India could be related to her finding India as the sole ally (apart from Russia) in questioning growing American hegemonism, witnessed starkly in the Kosovo crisis in early April-May 1999 where, disregarding the United Nations, the US had taken upon itself the role of playing the world’s policeman.

The domestic fallout was complex. At one level, it proved extremely useful for BJP in the elections that followed a few months after the end of the Kargil crisis. However, the crisis raised some fundamental questions for the Indian state. Once it became known that infiltration by Pakistani armed personnel was occurring from as early as the autumn of 1998, the question arose why nothing was done about it for so many months. Could it have been such a total intelligence failure in one of the most sensitive areas on our border or was it more than that? A very senior officer of the Indian Army, Brigadier Surinder Singh, commander of the Kargil-based 121 Brigade, alleged, including in court, with documentary evidence (part of which was published by the major Indian magazine,
Outlook
)
,
that intelligence about intrusion and setting up bases inside Indian territory was available for many months and repeated warnings were given (from as early as August 1998) and these warnings were reached not only to the highest levels within the army but even to the government. This has raised doubts whether the BJP government deliberately allowed the situation to fester so that it could at an electorally opportune time come down with a heavy hand and project a ‘victory’ against the enemy—i.e., use the Indian soldiers’ lives as cannon fodder to gain political advantage. If this were to be proved true, it would certainly mark the lowest depths Indian politics ever reached. In any case, the government has been compelled to institute a high-level inquiry committee to look into the matter.

The other disturbing aspect has been that the BJP’s actions upset the long cherished traditions of keeping the armed forces in India out of politics. Chiefs of the military services were asked by the government to come to meetings of BJP party members. Large cut-outs of senior officers of the armed forces decorated podiums where BJP leaders were to address meetings. Elements from within the BJP combine such as the VHP landed up in the defence headquarters in South Block with thousands of rakhis for soldiers and priests were sent to Kargil to bless the soldiers—moves which could not be seen to be innocent in the context of the multi-religious nature of the Indian armed forces. The Muslim, Sikh and Christian soldiers who gave their lives in Kargil to defend India were excluded. All this, on top of the well-known efforts of the party to woo retired services personnel into active party politics and to even try and influence serving personnel with communal ideology, has caused considerable alarm. Such acts have been sharply criticized in India, as any move which could politicize the armed forces and threaten the secular and democratic traditions nurtured over the past fifty years (particularly within the armed forces) would not be acceptable.

Functioning within the political and economic framework of the Indian union, politics in various states have a great deal in common, but their pattern and achievements vary considerably. Each state has a different constellation of class, caste, social and cultural forces and levels of social and economic development, and which, in turn, influences its politics.

It is, therefore, not accidental that changes in the social bases of politics, whether of caste, class, tribe, status groups, religion, region, or gender, are first reflected at the state level. Patronage networks, extending into small towns and villages, are also initiated and built up at this level. Basic nation-building and human resource development measures, relating to changes in agrarian structure, agricultural and industrial development, health, roads, power, irrigation, are implemented primarily by state administrations. Despite the many centralizing features of Indian polity as it has developed over the years and the Centre’s ability to interfere with and encroach upon the powers of the states, the central government basically relies on the state governments for carrying out its important decisions; the effectiveness of the central developmental programmes also depends on the performance of the states. Even when the same party rules in the Centre and the states, the capacity of the central government to get its plans and policies executed is quite limited. Witness, for example, the varying fate of land reforms in different Congress-ruled states in the fifties. In fact, the difference in the competence of various state governments explains to a large extent the wide divergence in their performance and the rates of social, cultural and human resource development.

Unfortunately, we do not have the space to discuss most of these aspects of state politics or the politics of each one of the states as they have developed since independence. Instead, we have chosen as case studies a few states—Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir—and that too to illustrate some aspect of their politics that makes these states distinct.

We have discussed Punjab separately in chapter 24 as an example of both communal politics and minority communalism ultimately assuming a separatist form.

Constraints of space also prevents us from taking up the case of Bihar where, since the sixties, casteism both of the upper castes—Bhoomihars, Brahmins, Rajputs and Kayasthas—and the backward castes—Yadavas, Kurmis and Koeris—has gradually eroded and seriously damaged the administration, economy, educational system, and culture of the people. This is particularly depressing as the state had a hoary past, militant traditions of the national, peasant and tribal movements and produced in recent times political leaders of the calibre of Sachidanand Sinha, Rajendra Prasad, Mazhar-ul-Haq, Jayaprakash Narayan and Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, and intellectual giants like the economist Gyan Chand, historian R.S. Sharma, political scientist B.B. Mazumdar, historian philosopher and writer Rahul Sankritayan, novelist Phanishwar Nath Renu, and poets Nagarjun and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar.

A study of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) illustrates how a strong separatist regional strain in Indian polity was overcome and coopted.

The DMK emerged in the fifties as a party and a movement which thrived on strong caste, regional, and even secessionist sentiments. It was the heir to two strands of the pre-independence period movements in Tamil Nadu: the non-Brahmin movement, which had led to the formation of the pro-British Justice party in 1920, and the strongly reformist anti-caste, anti-religion Self-Respect Movement led by E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, popularly known as Periyar (Great Sage).

In 1944, Naicker and C.N. Annadurai established Dravida Kazhagam (Federation) or DK which split in 1949 when Annadurai founded the Dravida Munnetra (Progressive) Kazhagam (DMK). But, significantly, in contrast to the Justice party and Naicker, Annadurai had taken up a strongly anti-imperialist, pro-nationalist position before 1947.

Annadurai was a brilliant writer, a skillful orator and an excellent organizer. Along with M. Karunanidhi and M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) and other film personalities—actors, directors and writers—Annadurai used dramas, films, journals, pamphlets and other mass media to reach out to the people and over time succeeded in building up a mass base, especially among the youth with a rural background, and a vibrant political organization.

The DMK was strongly anti-Brahmin, anti-North and anti-Aryan—southern Brahmins and North Indians being seen as Aryans, all other South Indians as Dravidas. It raised the slogan of opposition to the cultural, economic and political domination of the South by the North. Naicker and others had earlier in 1938 organized a movement against the decision of the Congress ministry to introduce Hindi in Madras schools, labelling it to be an aspect of Brahmanical North Indian cultural domination. DMK also decided to oppose what it described as expansion of Hindi

‘imperialism’ in the South. Its main demand, however, was for a homeland for the Dravidas in the form of a separate independent South Indian state—Dravidnadu or Dravidasthan—consisting of Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala.

During the fifties and sixties, however, there were several developments which gradually led to a change in the basic political thrust of DMK. Naicker gave up his opposition to Congress when in 1954, Kamaraj, a non-Brahmin, displaced C. Rajagopalachari as the dominant leader of Congress in Tamil Nadu and became the chief minister. DMK leadership too gradually lessened its hostility to Brahmins and started underplaying its anti-Brahmin rhetoric. It also gradually shifted its emphasis from race to Tamil consciousness, to pride in Tamil language and culture and in being a Tamil. It, however, retained its opposition to Hindi and its emphasis on radical social reforms, especially in terms of the removal of all caste distinctions and the inculcation of a rational and critical approach towards the classical ‘Hindu’ scriptures.

There was also a gradual change in DMK’s secessionist plank as it began to participate in elections and in parliamentary politics, and also because the other southern states refused to support secessionism. DMK did not participate in the 1952 elections, but it tested its electoral appeal by helping nearly 30 MLAs to win. It participated in the 1957 and 1962 elections. That a change was coming became visible when, in the 1962 elections, it entered into an alliance with Swatantra and CPI and did not make a separate Dravidnadu a campaign issue though it was still a part of its manifesto. Later still, during the India-China war, it rallied to the national cause, fully supported the government, and suspended all propaganda for secession.

A further and final change came when, as a result of Nehru’s determination to deal firmly with any secessionist movement, the 16th Constitutional Amendment was passed in 1962 declaring the advocacy of secession a crime and requiring every candidate to parliament or state assembly to swear ‘allegiance to the Constitution’ and to ‘uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India.’ The DMK immediately amended its Constitution and gave up the demand for secession. From secessionism it now shifted to the demands for greater state autonomy, more powers to the states, while limiting the powers of the central government, an end to the domination and unfair treatment of the South by the Hindi-speaking North, and allocation of greater central economic resources for the development of Tamil Nadu. The DMK gradually developed as a state-wide party with appeal in urban as well as rural areas and with a programme of radical economic measures, social change and development of modern Tamil language and culture. It also further softened its anti-Brahmin stance and declared itself to be a party of all Tamils, which would accommodate Tamil Brahmins.

With each election the DMK kept expanding its social base and increasing its electoral strength. In 1962 it had won 50 seats in the state assembly and 7 for the Lok Sabha. Two subsequent events enabled it to
take-off in the 1967 elections. First, as we have seen in chapter 7, fierce anti-Congress sentiments were aroused by the anti-Hindi agitation of early 1965, and DMK was the main beneficiary. Second, DMK fought the 1967 elections in alliance with Swatantra, CPM, PSP, SSP, and Muslim League. Consequently, it captured 138 of the 234 seats in the assembly, with Congress getting only 49. DMK formed the government in the state with Annadurai as chief minister. Congress was never to recover from this defeat. DMK, on the other hand, began to follow the trajectory of a ‘normal’ regional party.

After Annadurai’s death in February 1969, M. Karunanidhi became the chief minister. Later, DMK supported Indira Gandhi in her struggle against the Syndicate. Its support, along with that of CPI, enabled Indira Gandhi to remain in power after having been reduced to a minority in the Lok Sabha. In the 1971 elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assembly, DMK teamed up with the Indira-led Congress (R), which surrendered all claims to assembly seats in return for DMK’s support to it in 9 parliamentary seats which it won. DMK won 183 out of the 234 assembly seats and 23 Lok Sabha seats.

In 1972, the DMK split, with MGR forming the All-India Anna DMK (AIADMK). The two-party system now emerged in Tamil Nadu, but operated between the two Dravida parties, with both parties alternating in power in the state since then.

Participation in electoral politics, assumption of office, and greater integration of Tamil Nadu with the national economy led to the DMK being transformed from a secessionist movement into an integral part of India’a democratic and secular political system and a ‘politically mature and pragmatic’ regional, or rather one-state party.

Just like the other mainstream parties, the DMK also split into two main, and later, several small parties. DMK and AIADMK (and their off-shoots) in turn, at one time or the other, allied with Congress, CPI, CPM, Janata and Janata Dal and other all-India parties. In recent elections, the AIADMK in 1998 and the DMK in 1999 joined forces with BJP, the party they had earlier accused of representing the Aryan North and Hindi domination at their worst. The two also gradually diluted their anti-North and anti-Hindi stance. They have given up the idea of Dravidnadu or even of the unification of the four southern states within the Indian union. They have put the goal of the annhilation of the caste system in cold storage with the result that the Scheduled Castes and other down-trodden castes have been turning away from them. In fact, the anti-Brahmin movement has, as a whole, failed to make much of a dent in the Brahmanic caste order and caste domination; its only success has been in driving out Brahmins from Tamil Nadu to the rest of India and the United States, thereby affecting science and technology, intellectual and academic life in Tamil Nadu. Caught in a cleft between the rich and middle peasantry and the rural landless, DMK and AIADMK have also virtually given up their agrarian radicalism. Their social radicalism has in the main taken the form of providing large-scale reservation in education and government services
to backward castes and classes, which has resulted in long-term damage to administration, educational standards and development without removing significantly economic disparities based on caste and class.

Of course, the most important reason for the transformation of the Dravida parties has been the realization that (i) secession was not possible and the Indian state was strong enough to suppress any move towards it, (ii) there was no real contradiction between a regional identity and the overall national identity, (iii) India’s federal and democratic system of government provided both the state and the individual Tamils economic opportunities, and a great deal of political and administrative freedom to develop and undertake social reforms, (iv) the Indian political system and national integration were based on acceptance of cultural pluralism, and (v) the states have complete cultural autonomy, including control over language and other cultural affairs. In short, the Dravida parties and the people of Tamil Nadu have come to realize over time that the concept of ‘unity in diversity’ is quite workable and an integral part of the Indian polity and ethos.

Andhra’s is a case of a single linguistic cultural region being engulfed by political conflict and sub-regional movements based on disparity in development and presumed inequality in economic opportunities.

As we have seen in chapter 8, Andhra was created as a separate state in October 1953 and in November 1956 the Telugu-speaking Telengana area of Nizam’s Hyderabad state was merged with it to create Andhra Pradesh. The hope was that being part of a large unilingual state would cement the Telugu people culturally, politically and economically. Even at that time certain Telengana Congress leaders, as also the States Reorganization Commission, had some reservations about the merger because of Telengana being relatively more underdeveloped, its level of development being nearly half that of the coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh. Telengana’s per capita income was Rs 188 compared to Rs 292 in the coastal districts; the number of hospital beds per lakh of population was 18.6 while it was 55.6 in the coastal districts. The literacy rate in Telengana was 17.3 per cent as against 30.8 in the rest of Andhra Pradesh. Similarly, Telengana had only 9 miles of roads per 100 square miles, the comparative figure being 37 miles for coastal Andhra. Unlike coastal Andhra, Telengana’s sources of irrigation were scanty, consisting mostly of rain-fed tanks and wells.

A powerful movement for a separate state of Telengana developed in 1969 based on the belief that because the politics and administration of the state were dominated by people from the Andhra region (Andhrans), the Andhra government had neglected Telengana, had done very little to remove the regional economic imbalance, and Andhrans were exploiting
the Telengana region. For example, it was believed that in rural electrification the ratio of the Andhra region and Telengana was 4:1 during the Second Plan and 5:1 in the Third Plan. Similarly, in matter of irrigation schemes, the Andhra region was stated to have been favoured at the cost of Telengana. Further, the revenue surpluses being generated in Telengana because of free sale of liquor were supposed to be diverted to Andhra which had prohibition. All these allegations were refuted by the spokespersons of the government but the people of Telengana were not convinced.