India After Gandhi (144 page)

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Authors: Ramachandra Guha

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17. M
INDING
THE
M
INORITIES

Austin’s diary entry of 28 May 1968 was published thirty years later in The Hindu, 29 May 1994.
See correspondence between H. S. Suhrawardy, Chaudhary Khaliquzzaman, Jawaharlal Nehru, M. A. Jinnah and M. K. Gandhi, reproduced in A. G. Noorani, ed., The Muslims of India: A Documentary Record (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 40–52. See also Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore: Longmans, Green and Co., 1961).
Jawaharlal Nehru to J. R. D. Tata, 23 October 1947; Tata to Nehru, 4 November 1947, letters in Tata Steel archives, Jamshedpur.
Gardner Murphy, In the Minds of Men: The Study of Human Behavior and Social Tensions in India (New York: Basic Books, 1953), pp. 144–7.
See ‘You Cannot Ride Two Horses’, in For a United India: Speeches of Sardar Patel (1949; reprint New Delhi, Publications Division, 1982), pp. 49–52 (emphasis added).
‘Top Secret’ letter dated 17 July 1948 from HVR Iengar, Home Secretary, to Dr Tara Chand, Education Secretary, in File 6/228/48 ‘Information regarding government servants whose family is still staying in Pakistan’, records of the Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi. The rest of this section is based on this file, a copy of which was kindly passed on to me by Professor Nayanjyot Lahiri of the University of Delhi.
The superintendent was called Pandit Madho Sarup Vats. While we know no more of his biography, ‘Vats’ is a Punjabi Hindu surname, and it is possible that his vendetta was influenced by direct or indirect knowledge of the massacres in the Punjab.
Quoted in Farhana Ibrahim, ‘Defining a Border: Harijan Migrants and the State in Kachchh’, Economic and Political Weekly, 16 April 2005.
Nehru to Patel, 20 February 1950, SPC, vol. 10, p. 5.
E.g. Nehru’s letters to Patel of 6 October and 21 November 1947, SPC, vol. 4, pp. 399–401, 362–4.
Letter of 15 October 1947, LCM, vol. 1, pp. 32–3.
Letter of 2 October 1949, ibid., pp. 478–9.
Letters of 29 September 1953 and 15 June 1954, LCM, vol. 3, pp. 375–6, 570 (emphases added).
Speech in Lok Sabha on Azad’s death, reproduced in Maulana Azad: A Homage (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1958), pp. 30–1.
On Muslim support to the Congress in national and state elections through the 1950s, see Sisir K. Gupta, ‘Moslems in Indian Politics, 1947–1960’, India Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 4, 1962.
Saif Faiz Badruddin Tyabji, The Future of Muslims in India (Bombay: Writers’ Emporium, 1956). Tyabji’s forward-looking agenda makes an interesting contrast with the nostalgia-laden lament of the great Lucknow divine S. Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi. See his Muslims in India, trans. Mohammad Asif Kidwai (Lucknow: Academy of Islamic Research and Publications, 1961). Tyabji himself died shortly after making a speech in the Lok Sabha in 1958; his death, when only just forty, described to me (by the distinguished conservationist Zafar Futehally) as ‘a great tragedy for the Muslims of India’.
See reports in Files 78 and 79, Delhi Police Records, Fifth Instalment, NMML.
Quoted in W. H. Morris-Jones, Parliament in India (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1957), p. 27, fn.
‘Daily Diary’, 19 February 1954, in File 138, Delhi Police Records, Sixth Instalment, NMML.
See Noorani, The Muslims of India, pp. 99–100.
See, for details, Theodore P. Wright, Jr., ‘The Effectiveness of Muslim Representation in India’, in D. E. Smith, ed., South Asian Politics and Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).
W. C. Smith, Islam in Modern History (1957; reprint New York: Mentor Books, 1959), pp. 263–4.
Ibid., pp. 268–74.
J. D. Tyson to his family, 9August 1947, in Mss Eur D341/40, OIOC.
See Farida Abdulla Khan, ‘Other Communities, Other Histories: A Study of Muslim Women and Education in Kashmir’, in Zoya Hasan andRitu Menon, eds, In a Minority: Essays on Muslim Women in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005).
See the essays and evidence in M. K. A. Siddiqui, Muslims in Free India: Their Social Profile and Problems (New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 1998).b
The Current, 5 September 1956.
D. E. Smith, India as a Secular State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), esp. pp. 412–13.
Smith, Islam in Modern History, p. 267.
Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of a Divided Nation: India’s Muslims Since Independence (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 161.
Taya Zinkin, Challenges in India (New York: Walker and Co., 1966), pp. 147ff.
Mohamed Raza Khan, “What Price Freedom? A Historical Survey of the Political Trends and Conditions Leading to Independence and the Birth of Pakistan and After (Madras: privately published, 1969), pp. 503f.
See the studies collected in M. N. Srinivas, ed., India’s Villages (1955; reprint Bombay: Media Promoters and Publishers, 1985), pp. 28–9, 94, 100 etc.; and in McKim Marriot, ed., Village India: Studies in the Little Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1955), pp. 45, 47, 51, 68, 70–2 etc.
Vijay Prashad, Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 156–63.
Among the autobiographies and memoirs available in English, see especially OmprakashValmiki, Joothan: A Dalit’s Life, trans. Arun Prabha Mukherjee (Kolkata: Samya, 2003); Narendra Jadhav, Outcaste: A Memoir (New Delhi: Viking, 2003); Vasant Moon, Growing up Untouchable in India, trans. Gail Omvedt (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001); Siddharth Dube, Words Like Freedom: The Memoirs of an Impoverished Indian Family, 1947–1997 (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 1998); and the pioneering anthology edited by Arjun Dangle, Poisoned Bread:Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1992).
Harold R. Isaacs, India’s Ex-Untouchables (New York: John Day, 1965), pp. 80–1.
This paragraph is based on three essays by Lelah Dushkin: ‘The Backward Classes. I: Special Treatment Policy’ and ‘The Backward Classes. II: Removal of Disabilities’, Economic Weekly, 28 October and 4 November 1961; and ‘Backward Caste Benefits and Social Class in India, 1920–1970’, Economic and Political Weekly, 7 April 1979. Cf. Marc Galanter, Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984).
Quoted in Owen M. Lynch, The Politics of Untouchability: Social Mobility and Social Change in a City of India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 89.
See Bernard S. Cohn, ‘The Changing Status of a Depressed Caste’, in Marriot, Village India, esp. pp. 70–2.
J. Michael Mahar, ‘Agents of Dharma in a North Indian Village’, in J. M. Mahar, The Untouchables in Contemporary India (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972), p. 29.
Isaacs, India’s Ex-Untouchables, p. 126.
Dube, Words Like Freedom, p. 53.
Lynch, The Politics of Untouchability, chapter 3 and passim.
Nehru to Rajagopalachari, letters of 5 May and 25 June 1952, in Subject File 123, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fifth Instalment, NMML.
Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the State in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 207–8, 252; Devendra Prasad Sharma, Jagjivan Ram: The Man and His Times (New Delhi: Indian Book Co., 1974).
This account of Ambedkar’s last days is based on Vasant Moon, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, trans. Asha Damle (NewDelhi: National Book Trust, 2002), pp. 203–19. The best treatments of Ambedkar’s thought (including his conversion to Buddhism) are Eleanor Zelliot, Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on Ambedkar Movement (Delhi: Manohar, 1992), and Jayashree Gokhale, From Concessions to Confrontation: The Politics of an Indian Untouchable Community (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1993). See also Valerian Rodrigues, ed., B. R. Ambedkar: Essential Writings (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Moon, Growing up Untouchable, pp. 52, 107–11, 127, 160–1 etc.
Cf. Valmiki, Joothan, p. 71f.
Jadhav, Outcaste, p. 231.
Rameshwari Nehru, Gandhi Is My Star (Patna: Pustak Bhandar, 1950), pp. 110ff.
The Current, 8 February 1956.
N. D. Kamble, Atrocities on Scheduled Castes in Post-Independent India (New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1981), pp. 8–46. Kamble’s sources were newspaper accounts in English, Hindi and Marathi. I have simplified and summarized his renditions.
Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey (London: Chatto and Windus, 1927), pp. 116–17.
Speech by H. J. Khandekar, 21 November 1949, in CAD, vol. 11, pp. 736–7.
Aga Khanto Jawaharlal Nehru, 25 January 1951, copy in Subject File 61, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fourth Instalment, NMML.
D. F. Karaka, writing in the Current, 11 November 1959. Karaka then went on to list Nehru’s failures, among them the inability to root out corruption and nepotism, and the foolishness of trusting communist China.

18.
WAR
AND
SUCCESSION

V. K. Narasimhan, Kamaraj: A Study (Bangalore: Myers Indmark, 1967); Duncan B. Forrester, ‘Kamaraj: A Study in Percolation of Style’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, 1970; J. Anthony Lukacs, ‘Meet Kumaraswamy Kamaraj’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 22 May 1966.
This account is based on Michael Brecher, Succession in India: A Study in Decision Making (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), chapters 2 and 3. But see also Stanley Kochanek, The Congress Party of India: The Dynamics of One-Party Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968) pp. 88f
Cf. Brecher, Succession, pp. 115–17.
The Guardian, 3 June 1964 (editorial), clipping in Mss Eur F158/1045, OIOC.
Patrick Keatley, ‘A Sparrow’s Strength’, reprinted in The Bedside Guardian 13: A Selection from ‘The Guardian’ 1963–1964 (London: Collins, 1964), pp. 200–3.
J. H. Hutton to Charles Pawsey, 29 May 1964, in Box II, Pawsey Papers, CSAS.
M. Aram, Peace in Nagaland: Eight Year Story, 1964–72 (New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann (India), 1974), pp. 20–38:A.Paul Hare and Herbert H. Blumberg, eds, A Search for Peace and Justice: Reflections of Michael Scott (London: Rex Collings, 1980), chapter 11 ‘Nagaland Peace Mission’.
Narayan to J. J. Singh, dated Kohima, 11 September 1964, J. J. Singh Papers, NMML.
See V. K. Nuh, comp., The Naga Chronicle (New Delhi: Regency Publications, 2002), pp. 274ff.
Dr Bhabha’s speech was quoted in extenso in the Lok Sabha Debates, 27 November 1964.
Lok Sabha Debates, 27 November and 11 December 1964. Both Kachwai and Shastri spoke in Hindi.
See K. S. Ramanathan, The Big Change (Madras: Higginbothams, 1967), chapter 6.
A. S. Raman, ‘A Meeting with C. N. Annadurai’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 26 September 1965.
See Robert D. King, Nehru and the Language Politics of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); Mohan Ram, Hindi Against India: The Meaning of DMK (New Delhi: Rachna Prakashan, 1968).
This account is principally based on news reports in The Hindu, 27 January–15 February 1965. But see also the four-page photo spread on ‘Language Riots in Madras’, in the Illustrated Weekly of India, 28 February 1965.
Eric Stracey, Odd Man in: My Years in the Indian Police (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1981), pp. 209–27.
Cf. Morarji Desai, ‘National Unity through Hindi’, the Current, 30 January 1965.
See Selected Speeches of Lal Bahadur Shastri (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1974), pp. 119–22.
Lok Sabha Debates, 18 February 1965.
Ghosh to Alexander, 3 March 1965, File 60, Horace Alexander Papers, Friends House, Euston.
Sir Morrice James, Pakistan Chronicle (London: Hurst and Co., 1993), pp. 123–6; G. S. Bhargava, After Nehru: India’s New Image (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1966), pp. 260–3, 276, 439–41. The Kutch ceasefire agreement was signed by officials representing the respective foreign ministries – both Muslims, they were, coincidentally, first cousins, one of whom had chosen to be a citizen of India.
Letter of 24 May 1965, in File 60, Horace Alexander Papers, Friends House, Euston.
James, Pakistan Chronicle, pp. 128–31.
See the then Jammu and Kashmir chief secretary’s letters of August 1965 in Nayantara Sahgal and E. N. Mangat Rai, Relationship: Extracts from a Correspondence (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1994), pp. 134–9.
This account of the hostilities is principally based on Brian Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army: Wars and Insurrections (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 68–72, 84–5, 102–6; Air Chief Marshal P. C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer, 1987), pp. 126–34; Lt. Gen. Harbaksh Singh, In the Line of Duty: A Soldier Remembers (New Delhi: Lancer, 2000), pp. 334–53.
Singh, In the Line of Duty, p. 353.
Lal, My Years, p. 134.
See C. P. Srivastava, Lal Bahadur Shastri: A Life of Truth in Politics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 273–5.
Cf. Bhargava, After Nehru, pp. 300–3.
Herbert Feldman, From Crisis to Crisis: Pakistan, 1962–1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 146.
John Frazer, ‘Who Can Win Kashmir?’, Reader’s Digest, January 1966.
As told to me by K. S. Bajpai, who was Indian consul general in Karachi at the time.
Lt. Gen. Jahan Dad Khan, Pakistan Leadership Challenges (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 51.
Quoted in Feldman, From Crisis to Crisis, pp. 139–40.
Quoted in Cloughley, A History, p. 71.
For a detailed analysis, see the untitled note on Kashmir by Prem Nath Bazaz dated 24 October 1965, in Subject File 46, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fourth Instalment, NMML.
Alastair Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846–1990 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 263.
Nayantara Sahgal, ‘What India Fights For’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 3 October 1965; Anon., The Fight for Peace (New Delhi: Hardy and Ally(India), 1966), esp. pp. 260ff.
T. V. Kunhi Krishnan, Chavan and theTroubled Decade (Bombay: Somaiya Publications, 1971), pp. 99–115; R. D. Pradhan, Debacle to Revival: Y. B. Chavan as Defence Minister (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1999), pp. 182–7, 207–12, 238–42.
Shastri to Jayaprakash Narayan, 21 July 1965 (in Hindi), in Subject File 28, Brahmanand Papers, NMML.
The speech is reproduced in D. R. Mankekar, Lal Bahadur: APolitical Biography (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1965), appendix 3. Unlike Nehru, Shastri was a practising Hindu. But when asked by an interviewer to speak about his faith, he answered that ‘one should not discuss one’s religion in public’. Interview in the Illustrated Weekly of India, 18 October 1964.
Singh, Portrait of Lal Bahadur Shastri, pp. 87–8.
A valuable discussion of the making of the new strategy is contained in the memoirs of B. Sivaraman – Bitter Sweet: Governance of India in Transition (New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1987). See especially chapter 11, ‘Green Revolution’.
John P. Lewis, India’s Political Economy: Governance and Reform (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), chapter 4; Gilles Boquérat, No Strings Attached? India’s Policies and Foreign Aid, 1947–1966 (Delhi: Manohar, 2003), chapter 15.
Srivastava, Lal Bahadur Shastri, chapter 31.
‘Shastri’s Last Journey’, Life, 21 January 1966.
Letter to Dorothy Norman, 13 March 1965, in D. Norman, ed., Indira Gandhi: Letters to an American Friend, 1950–1984 (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), p. 111.
Vijayalakshmi Pandit toA. C. Nambiar, letters of 31 July 1964 and 26 January 1966, copies in Pupul Jayakar Papers, in the possession of Radhika Herzberger, Mumbai.
Anand Mohan, Indira Gandhi: A Personal and Political Biography (New York: Meredith Press, 1967), pp. 20–37.
Nehru to C. D. Deshmukh, 16 April 1956, in Subject File 67, C. D. Deshmukh Papers, NMML.
‘A Fitful Improvisation’, Thought, 22 January 1966.
Nirmal Nibedon, Mizoram: The Dagger Brigade (New Delhi: Lancer, 1980), esp. pp. 30–51.
Sajal Nag, Contesting Marginality: Ethnicity, Insurgency and Subnationalism in North-East India (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), pp. 217–24, and ‘Tribes, Rats, Famine, State and the Nation’, Economic and Political Weekly, 24 March 2001; see also reports in Thought (New Delhi), 2April 1966 and 7 and 14 October 1967.
Unsigned, undated letter to I. A. Bowman, postmarked 13 March 1966, in Mss Eur F229/62, OIOC.
Jayaprakash Narayan to Marjorie Sykes, 24 February 1966, copy in J. J. Singh Papers, NMML. Narayan, Nagaland Mein Shanti Ka Prayas (The Quest for Peace in Nagaland) (Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh, 1966).
See clippings in Mss Eur F158/239, OIOC.
Guy Wint to I. A. Bowman, 16 September 1966, in Mss Eur F229/24, OIOC.
Nirmal Nibedon, Nagaland: The Night of the Guerillas (New Delhi: Lancer, 1983), pp. 137–45.
Subject File136, D. P. Mishra Papers, Third and Fourth Instalments, NMML; Nandini Sundar, Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar, 1854–1996 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), chapter 7.
Singh, In the Line of Duty, p. 357.
See clippings in Mss Eur F158/295. The creation of the new Punja band Haryana States was approved in March 1966, but the decision finally came into effect only in November, after the borders were delimited. Cf. Hindustan Times, 2 November 1966.
Cf. C. Subramaniam, Hand of Destiny: Memoirs, vol. 2: The Green Revolution (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1995), chapter 11 and passim.
Mrs Gandhi’s US trip is described in K. A. Abbas, Indira Gandhi: Return of the Red Rose (Delhi: Hind Pocket Books, 1966), pp. 147–57.
Chester Bowles, Promises to Keep: My Years in Public Life, 1941–1969 (New Delhi: B. I. Publications, 1972), pp. 525–35. Cf. also Howard B. Schaffer, Chester Bowles: New Dealer in the Cold War (New Delhi: Prentice-Hall India, 1994), pp. 280ff.
Anon., ‘India’s Food Crisis, 1965–67’, in File 7, Box 32, Thomas J. Schonberg Files, Dean Rusk Papers, University of Georgia, Athens.

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