Vacation Travel India

Demise of Congress

In the meantime, power devolved to P.V. Narasimha Rao, a Congress party stalwart from South India. It was a classic compromise, but Rao’s staying power was underestimated. Rao made the rupee convertible and allowed foreigners to control 51 percent of their joint ventures. Import tariffs were cut and foreigners were allowed to buy and sell shares on India’s 20 stock exchanges. But the old demons would not easily disappear. The fight for independence in Kashmir rumbled on, with stories of appalling atrocities. In 1992 tens of thousands of Hindu zealots used their bare hands to tear down a mosque in Ayodhya.

The political kaleidoscope of India is forever changing, creating unlikely patterns and alliances. Parties with a wide constituency include the Congress (Indira), which still plays on the Nehru legacy; the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Hindu nationalists; the Left Front, a coalition of parties, including the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist); and the Samajwadi Party, representing the low-castes and Muslims. Regional parties include the Sikh activists, Akali Dal; two Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu, the aiadmk and their rivals, DMK; the Telugu Desam Party from Andhra Pradesh; and the Hindu and Maratha extremist Shiv Sena based in Mumbai.

Mumbai was rocked by a dozen bombs in a single day in March 1993. Terrified Muslims fled the city and gangsters appropriated valuable downtown land. The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) triumphed in the next state elections. Bal Thackeray, sinister leader of the Hindu chauvinist Shiv Sena (Shiva’s army), called for state borders to be closed to all non-residents.

Under Rao, Congress lost considerable support. Reports of a cash-crammed suitcase left as a blatant bribe, and profiteering from import scams, surfaced in the newspapers. Economic liberalization measures were criticized for lining the pockets of the rich while doing little to help the poor.

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The rise of the Sangh Parivar

The demise in support for Congress gave the BJP its chance to bid for power. Formed in 1980 out of the Jana Sangh Party, part of the Janata Party coalition that had ousted Indira after the Emergency, the BJP is the political wing of the Sangh Parivar, a collection of right wing Hindu organisations that includes the RSS, the VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) and the youth wings of the Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini. In elections in 1989 it was part of a shortlived coalition government that was replaced by left-leaning coalitions under prime ministers Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral. However, the momentum gained through the 1992 destruction of the Babri Masjid continued to grow, and in 1998 the BJP found itself at the head of a coalition government.

As well as persuing a virulently neo-liberal economic agenda (after ditching its pre-election claim to promote swadeshi, Indian-made goods) the BJP oversaw a communalisation of education and encouraged intolerance towards minority communities.

India, once hailed for its doctrine of nonviolence, continued to flex its muscles in the region. As well as maintaining the largest standing army in the world, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998 authorised five surprise nuclear underground tests at Pokhran in the Rajasthan desert, 24 years after Indira Gandhi first pushed the button. In 1999 he formed a more durable coalition government called the National Democratic Alliance (nda) with the support of regional parties including the TDP (Telugu Desam Party) and Akali Dal.

An election upset

That same year India and Pakistan engaged in a 50-day war in the Kargil Valley in Kashmir that threatened to escalate into a much broader conflict. Pakistani infiltrators were eventually pushed back, though not before more than 1,000 soldiers had been killed. Patriotic fervour, whipped up by politicians, created an ugly mood in the country. Tensions continued to increase between the neighboring countries, reaching their height in 2002 when the two nuclear powers teetered on the brink of all-out war.

However, geopolitics held little interest for the great mass of Indians who still lacked electricity and had to make do with poor sanitation and filthy water. When they were given a chance to make their voices heard in the general election of 2004, the judgment of the 380 million people who voted came as a complete shock to the political class. They decisively rejected the Bjp-led alliance in favour of a Congress-led alliance.

The shock was compounded by the fact that the Congress party’s leader was Sonia Gandhi. The thought of having a 59-year-old Italian-born woman as prime minister. Perhaps, some mused, Sonia Gandhi was consoled by the hope that the family succession might eventually pass to her son Rahul, who in the same election won a seat in his father’s old constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh by more than 100,000 votes.

After the event

As it turned out, the stock market need not have been jittery about the new government. The new Prime minister, along with the new finance minister was anathema to many, and the stock market, fearing that the new government might be less business-friendly, took a tumble. Sonia Gandhi, having listened to her “inner voice”, declined the premiership and appointed instead Manmohan Singh, previously a Congress finance minister, who thus became India’s first Sikh prime minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, have maintained the neo-liberal economics of their predecessors while, admittedly, putting money into social relief programmes.

However, there have been some important changes: school books are being re-examined and re-written to remove any communal bias; a Common Minimum Programme was agreed with the Left Front - comprising the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party - who continue to support the government from the outside; and, perhaps most importantly, India’s relations with Pakistan are the best they have been for many years.

Ongoing peace talks started between Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee in 2003. Since the accession of Congress and its allies to power these have continued apace and a great deal of progress has been made over the divisive, and central, issue of Kashmir. In early 2005 this received a boost with the adoption of “confidence building measures”, including the opening of a bus route between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir. With both countries describing the peace process as “irreversible” there is hope that a final settlement might at last be in sight.

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Nehru dynasty

Jawaharlal Nehru died in 1964, but a dynasty had been born. Two years later his daughter, Indira Gandhi, took over the reins of power and championed Democratic Socialism.

Her authoritarian manner helped to establish her as the undisputed leader of a divided Congress party, as did India’s 1971 victory over East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Her Green Revolution turned tenant farmers into landowners, guaranteeing her an agrarian power base well into the 1980s.

It was a turbulent time. When, in June 1975, the Allahabad High Court found Gandhi guilty of corrupt political practices, she reacted by imposing a State of Emergency that was to last two years. The press was censored, 100,000 political opponents and activists were imprisoned, slums were cleared and enforced sterilizations were carried out. Inevitably, there was a backlash. Her Congress (Indira) party decisively lost the 1977 election, which brought to power the Janata Dal party, led by the octogenarian Morarji Desai. In a political drama unusual even by Indian standards, Gandhi was put briefly behind bars. Against all odds, however, she was back in office in 1980.

Her joy was short-lived, for later that year her son, Sanjay, died in an air crash. Although his ruthlessness had won him scant popularity, Sanjay was being groomed by Gandhi as her heir apparent. On his death she persuaded her second son, Rajiv, a pilot with Indian Airlines, to make his first appearance on the political stage.

Problems in Punjab

Also making headlines in 1980 was Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a charismatic, turbaned militant leader based in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest of Sikh shrines. Surrounded by a group of young, educated and fanatical Sikhs, he demanded greater rights for the Sikh community and separation of the state of Punjab from the rest of India. Indira Gandhi’s tactic of pitting Sikh groups against each other only aggravated the crisis and the Sant’s followers were able to terrorize, rob and murder Hindus unhindered.

By 1984 the threat had reached the capital, and Gandhi sent the army into the Golden Temple, large parts of which were destroyed. Much blood was shed and the Sant was killed. Revenge was not long in coming: on 31 October, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.

A shocked Congress party elected Rajiv Gandhi prime minister. It seemed to some a rash decision, given his inexperience, but the electorate overwhelmingly endorsed Congress’s decision by sweeping Rajiv to power in the subsequent elections. His manifesto was ambitious, promising to revive industry with new technology and management techniques. It was an appealing mix in a year that had seen a shattering accident at Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, when gas leaked from a pesticide plant owned by the US multinational Union Carbide, killing 2,000 local residents and affecting hundreds of thousands of people.

Five years later, amid allegations of political corruption, Congress (I) was defeated catastrophically in the polls. A key issue was the Bofors scandal, in which suspect commissions had been paid by a Swedish arms manufacturer in order to supply guns to the Indian army. Rajiv’s defence minister, V.P. Singh, resigned in 1987 alleging Congress corruption in the affair and formed a new party, the National Front. In the 1989 election he won enough votes to form a minority government, which was toppled in 1990 over caste and religious issues.

Rajiv, believing that he had lost the 1989 election by being too aloof, plunged into a populist campaign, driving in an open Jeep through milling crowds. In Tamil Nadu a woman approached him with a sandalwood garland and detonated the bomb on her belt. Gandhi and 20 others were killed in the blast. Such had been the grip of the Nehru succession over the Congress (I) party that no obvious successor existed. Desperate attempts were made to draft Rajiv’s Italian-born widow, Sonia, as his successor, but she resisted until 1998, when she campaigned to salvage the reputation of the dynastic party and then was chosen to head it.

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Although India is often praised as the world’s largest democracy, most of its institutions are in need of reform. The British-based judicial system, for instance, is gridlocked but often seems to be the only institution able to put any restraints on the wilder excesses of politicians. The country has, however, managed to sustain a working electoral system since 1947, with only a 19-month gap in the mid-1970s when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared emergency rule. This achievement is considerable and some analysts believe elections have helped to keep the poor, heterogeneous country together since achieving Independence from Britain in 1947.

The new republic

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, believed that economic power should rest with the state. He gave India a planned economy, in which the government owned basic industries, such as steel and power generation, and had control over what the private sector produced. Manufacturers were licensed to produce goods in certain quantities, at certain prices, and were issued with raw materials. This, in conjunction with the “India First” policy of self-sufficiency, made considerable headway in improving the economic condition of the country. The Green Revolution also contributed to turning India from a net importer of food to a major exporter. Pessimists warned it was premature to give the vote to the illiterate masses in 1947 and unwise to adopt Britain’s political system, designed for such different circumstances. Nehru, however, was vindicated in arguing that it was precisely what India needed. It would, he thought, keep under control the cultural, ethnic and religious differences that might otherwise tear the country apart. To achieve unity, more than 500 Indian princes had to give up their titles. This tricky diplomatic task was accomplished in 1950 by Nehru’s deputy, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, a communal right-winger trusted by those who lived off inherited wealth.

The decision to base the new state boundaries on regional languages led to problems. Inevitably a multitude of dialects had to be ignored. The ethnic and language divisions of the states were never satisfactorily settled and violent disputes still occasionally flare.

Initially, the communal violence of Partition (the separation of the country into a predominantly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India) was traumatic. Hindus and Muslims clashed bitterly, slaughtering thousands and forcing countless others to flee their homes. Although Nehru tried to separate political and public life, confining religion to the private sphere, the distinction was never fully accepted by large parts of the population, who regarded their spiritual and secular lives as indivisible.

Nehru aimed to transform a feudal society into one of equal opportunity. He placed his faith in Democratic Socialism, a middle way between a capitalistic welfare state and a Soviet-styled centrally controlled economy. Encouraging self-reliance would, he hoped, stimulate free enterprise, but avoid polarizing wealth. Imports were restricted, business excesses were checked by state institutions and key industries were kept under state control.

On the foreign front, India helped to establish the Non-Aligned Movement and advocated in the 1950s that China be given international status. But Nehru’s admiration of China blinded him to its territorial ambitions, which led to war in 1962 over claims on the remote Aksai Chin area. India suffered a disastrous defeat. Nehru determined to build up India’s arms capability, but was opposed by the United States and Great Britain. He turned instead to the Soviet Union.

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