India After Gandhi (77 page)

On one front, at least, there was very good news for Mrs Gandhi’s government – the new agricultural strategy had begun paying dividends. In 1967 there was a bad drought, which particularly affected the state of Bihar, but the next year saw a bumper crop of food grains, 95 million tonnes (mt) in all. Much of this increase was accounted for by Punjab and Haryana, whose farmers had planted the new dwarf varieties of wheat developed by Indian scientists from Mexican models. However, the new varieties of rice had also done quite well, as had cotton and groundnuts.

C. Subramaniam’s strategy had been to identify those districts where irrigation was available, and those farming communities most likely to take to the new seeds, and the heavy doses of fertilizers that went with them. The results were sensational. Between 1963 and 1967, before the new methods had been tried, the annual production of wheat in India was between 9and11 mt. Between 1967 and 1970 it ranged from 16 to 20 mt. The corresponding figures for rice were 30–37 mt for the earlier period and 37–42 mt for the latter.
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These figures masked enormous variations by region. There remained large areas where agriculture was rain-fed, and where only one crop could be grown per year. Still, there was a feeling that endemic scarcity was a thing of the past. Modern science was laying the ghost of Malthus. In August 1969 a British journalist who was an old India hand wrote that ‘for the first time in all the years I have been visiting the country, there is a coherence in the economic picture, for the first time an absence of feeling that the economy rested almost wholly on the simple success or failure of the monsoon’.
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The food problem was solved, but India might still fall apart – on account of, as Neville Maxwell and others had claimed, simply being too diverse. In an editorial marking twenty years of India’s existence as a republic, the
New York Times
called it a ‘remarkable achievement’, then went on to say that ‘both Union and democracy are under increasing strain these days, with the future of both in doubt’.
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However, most Indians were by now comfortable with the diversity within. They could see what bound the varied religions, races and regions: namely, a shared political history (from the national movement onwards), a pluralistic constitution and a tradition of regular elections. Nor did they think the challenges of states a threat to national unity. As one commentator wrote – in rebuttal of doomsayers such as Maxwell – ‘a strong centre is not necessarily conducive to democracy . Federalism and rule by regional parties could help sustain democracy in India, in contrast to (say) Indonesia and Ghana, where the efforts of Sukarno and Nkrumah to impose a strong centre had only led to dictatorship.
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Among thinking Indians then, there was little fear that the events of the late sixties would presage the break-up of the country, or the replacement of elected politicians by soldiers in uniform. Army rule was out of the question, but there was yet the prospect of an armed communist movement engulfing large parts of the country. The Green Revolution could turn Red, for agricultural prosperity had also created social polarities. And the location of Naxalbari was significant: a thin strip of India wedged between East Pakistan and Nepal that was not far from China and provided the only access to the states of the north-east. This was an ‘ideal operational field’ for beginning a revolution, to escape into Pakistan or Nepal when one wished, to get arms from China if one wanted. So the worry grew in New Delhi that these pro-Peking Reds would ‘fan out from Naxalbari to link up with their cells in Bengal, till they come right into the heart of Calcutta. Behind them will be the Chinese army menacing the Himalayan border.’
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On the other side, there were some who looked forward to the revolution in the making. These were the Naxalites, of course, but also their Western fellow-travellers. In the winter of 1968/9 the Marxist anthropologist Kathleen Gough – originally American but then teaching in Canada – wrote an article which saw, as ‘the most hopeful way forward for India’, a ‘revolutionary movement that would root itself in the countryside where the bulk of the poor were located. Taking heart
from the progress, here and there, of the Naxalites and their ideology, Gough said that ‘parliamentarianism seems doomed to failure, and the rebel Communists’ path the only hopeful alternative’.
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Gough was not alone in seeing revolutionary communism as India’s main hope, perhaps its only hope. That same winter, a young Swedish couple animated by the spirit of ’68 travelled through the Indian countryside. They covered the land from tip to toe, from the parched fields of eastern Uttar Pradesh to the rich rice paddies of the southern Cauvery delta. They saw a new critical awareness among the oppressed, manifest in ‘growing antagonisms in Indian society’. Caste conflict was turning into class conflict (as Marxist theory said, and hoped, it would). Among the intellectuals, they saw a (to them welcome) scepticism about parliamentary democracy. As one left-wing student leader remarked, ‘We must not let ourselves be fooled by the hocus-pocus of elections every fifth year.’

These changes, predicted the Swedish sociologists, ‘will have widespread consequences for India’s future’. Blood was being spilt (as Marxist theory said it must). ‘The antagonisms are sometimes so violent that they are hard to imagine.’ Fortunately, ‘the new revolutionary movement . . . was growing in India today’. The authors were clear that ‘only when these millions of poor people take their future in their own hands will India’s poverty and oppression be brought to an end’. They left their readers with this hope: ‘Perhaps Naxalbari does stand for the Indian revolution.’
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Gungi gudiya
[dumb doll]

Ram Manohar Lohia on Indira Gandhi, circa 1967

I
N
N
OVEMBER
1969
THE
Delhi weekly
Thought
commented that ‘the Congress seems to have written itself off as a nationally cohesive force’. The once-mighty party was now split into disputatious parts. When the next general election came, said
Thought
, ‘Congressmen will be fighting Congressmen to the obvious advantage of regional or sectarian groups’. Consequently, ‘Mrs Gandhi’s party may not secure more than one-third of the seats in Parliament. The chances of the other group seem to be even slimmer.’
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A year later the prime minister called an election, fourteen months ahead of schedule. Her party – Congress (R) – wanted a popular mandate to implement the progressive reforms it had initiated, now held up by the ‘reactionary’ forces in Parliament. Its manifesto offered a ‘genuine radical programme of economic and social development’, upholding the interests of the small farmer and the landless labourer, and of the small entrepreneur against the big capitalist. It stood for the betterment of the lower castes, and for the protection of the minorities. Particular mention was made of the Urdu language, which ‘shall be given its due place which has been denied to it so far’. It promised a ‘strong and stable government’, and asked for support in the fight against the ‘dark and evil forces of right [wing] reaction’, which were ‘intent upon destroying the very base of our democratic and socialist objectives’.
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The position in which Indira Gandhi found herself in 1971 was in many ways reminiscent of her father’s in 1952. Like Nehru then, Mrs
Gandhi went to the polls having fought a bruising battle with members of her own party. Like him, she offered to the people a fresh, progressive-sounding mandate. And, like him, she was her party’s chief campaigner and spokesperson, the very embodiment of what it said it stood for.

In calling an early poll, the prime minister had astutely dissociated the general election from elections to the various state assemblies which in the past had always taken place concurrently. That meant that parochial considerations of caste and ethnicity got mixed up with wider national questions. In 1967 this had proved to be detrimental to the Congress. This time, Mrs Gandhi made sure she would separate the two by calling a general election in which she could place a properly national agenda before the electorate.

The opposition, meanwhile, was seeking to build a united front against the ruling party. Urging it on was C. Rajagopalachari, now past ninety years of age. A common leader could not be agreed upon so, said ‘Rajaji’, the fight had to be conducted ‘on the pattern of guerrilla warfare. Indira’s candidates . . . must be opposed everywhere on the single ground that we oppose the conspiracy to tear up the constitution and to extinguish the people’s liberties and put all power in the hands of the state’.
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The opposition constructed a ‘Grand Alliance’, bringing together Jana Sangh, Swatantra, Congress (O), the socialists, and regional groupings. The idea was to limit the number of multiway contests. A copywriter came up with the slogan ‘Indira Hatao’ (Remove Indira). This prompted the telling rejoinder, offered from the lips of the prime minister herself: ‘
Wo kehte hain Indira Hatao, hum kehte hain Garibi Hatao
’ (They ask for the Removal of Indira, whereas we want an End to Poverty itself).

Whether the work of the prime minister or one of her now forgotten minions, ‘Garibi Hatao’ was an inspired coinage. It allowed Congress (R) to take the moral high ground, representing itself as the party of progress, against an alliance of reaction. Personalizing the election was to backfire badly against the opposition, whose agenda was portrayed as negative in contrast to the forward-looking programme of the ruling party.

Mrs Gandhi worked tirelessly to garner votes for her party. Between the dissolution of Parliament, in the last week of December 1970, and the elections, held ten weeks later, she travelled 36,000 miles in all. She addressed 300 meetings and was heard or seen by an estimated 20 million
people. These figures were recounted, with relish, in a letter written by Mrs Gandhi to an American friend. She clearly enjoyed the experience; as she remarked, ‘it was wonderful to see the light in their [the people’s] eyes’.
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The prime minister’s speeches harped on the contrast, perceived and real, between the party she had left behind and the party she had founded. The ‘old’ Congress was in thrall to ‘conservative elements’ and ‘vested interests’, whereas the ‘new’ Congress was committed to the poor. Did not the nationalization of banks and the abolition of the privy purses show as much? The message struck a resonant chord, for, as one somewhat cynical journalist wrote:

The man lying in a gutter prizes nothing more than the notion pumped into him that he is superior to the sanitary inspector. That the rich had been humbled looked like the assurance that the poor would be honoured. The instant ‘poverty-removal’ slogan was an economic absurdity. Psychologically and politically, for that reason, it was however a decisive asset in a community at war with reason and rationality.
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Her travels within India had made the prime minister far better known than she had been in 1967. In asking for votes, she exploited her ‘charming personality’, her ‘father’s historical role’ and, above all, that stirring slogan ‘Garibi Hatao’. The landless and low castes voted en masse for the Congress (R), as did the Muslims, who had been lukewarm the last time round. The new party’s organizational weakness was remedied by its young volunteers, who went around the countryside amplifying their leader’s words. The massive turnout on election day suggested that ‘the people had been fired with a new hope of redemption’.
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Back in 1952 it had been said that even a lamp-post could win if it ran on the Congress symbol. It turned out that Mrs Gandhi’s victory was even more spectacular than her father’s. Congress (R) won 352 out of 518 seats; the next highest tally was that of the CPM, which won a mere 25. Both victor and vanquished agreed that this was chiefly the work of one person. As the writer Khush want Singh commented, ‘Indira Gandhi has successfully magnified her figure as the one and only leader of national dimensions’. Then he added, ominously: ‘However, if power is voluntarily surrendered by a predominant section of the people to one person and at the same time opposition is reduced to insignificance, the
temptation to ride roughshod over legitimate criticism can become irresistible. The danger of Indira Gandhi being given unbridled power shall always be present.’
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Among the consequences of the 1971 election was a change in the name of the ruling party. The Congress (R) now became known as Congress (I), for ‘Indira’; later, even this was dropped. By the margin of its victory, Indira’s Congress was confirmed as the real Congress, requiring no qualifying suffix.

Her success at the polls emboldened Mrs Gandhi to act decisively against the princes. Throughout 1971, the two sides tried and failed to find a settlement. The princes were willing to forgo their privy purses, but hoped at least to save their titles. But with her massive majority in Parliament, the prime minister had no need to compromise. On 2 December she introduced a bill seeking to amend the constitution and abolish all princely privileges. It was passed in the Lok Sabha by 381 votes to 6, and in the Rajya Sabha by 167 votes to 7. In her own speech, the prime minister invited ‘the princes to join the elite of the modern age, the élite which earns respect by its talent, energy and contribution to human progress, all of which can only be done when we work together as equals without regarding anybody as of special status’.
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