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Creeping but Uneasy Authoritarianism: India, 1975–6*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

W. H. Morris‐Jones
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Extract

WHEN WESTERNERS FIND INDIANS BAFFLING AND EXASPERATING Indians have an explanation: it is because they bring an ‘either-or’ a proach to people who like to operate in terms of ‘both-and’, they see contraries and inconsistencies where Indians are aware only of complexity and compatibility. Without entering into a discussion of this as a general view, it is tempting to say that it could furnish an explanation of the curiously mixed and paradoxical character of the authoritarian regime which has been emer ing over the past eighteen months from that country's so-called ‘Emergency’. Tempting but less than convincing, for several reasons: the forms of authoritarianism in the world are already amply varied; it remains to be seen how far Mrs Gandhi's mixture is viable; above all, it is a mixture which looks and feels pretty strange to many Indians too.

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1977 , pp. 20 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1977

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Footnotes

*

The article has been developed from a paper, ‘Through “Emergency” to Regime Change’, presented at the UK Political Studies Association annual conference at Nottingham in March 1976.

References

1 A more detailed account of the events leading up to the ‘Emergency’ and in the three months following was given in my ‘Whose Emergency‐India’s or Indira’s?’, World Today, Vol. 31, no. II, November 1975. See also Park, Richard, ‘Political Crisis in India, 1975’, Asian Survey, Vol. XV, No. II, 11 1975 Google Scholar and Palmer, Norman, ‘The Crisis of Democracy in India’, Orbis, Vol. XIX, No. 2, Summer 1975 Google Scholar.

2 This is finely done in Masani, Zareer, Indira Gandhi: a Biography, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975 Google Scholar.

3 These are usefully set out in Kochanak, Stanley A., ‘Mrs Gandhi’s Pyramid: The New Congress’ in Hart, Henry (ed.), Indira Gandhi’s India, Boulder, Colorado, West View Press, 1976, pp. 93—124 Google Scholar.

4 Parliament and the State Assemblies were unruly: where were the Speakers’ powers? In the campaign to dissolve some Assemblies, Members were intimidated: where was the law of criminal intimidation? There were hoarders and black money magnates: was evidence for a few exemplary cases not available by any legal processes of investigation?.

5 My own views were expressed in journal articles (including especially one, ‘Dominance and Dissent’, in this journal, Vol. I, No. 4, September 1966, pp. 451—66) as well as more fully in my Government and Politics of India, London: Hutchinson, rev. ed. 1971. Early thinking along similar lines by Rajni Kothari was published in Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay) and brought together in his Politics in India, Boston: Little Brown, 1970. It was our view that India had, distinctively among new states, developed a well‐articulated and adaptable political system which while ‘expanding’ to incorporate in the citizen body successive layers of the poor and illiterate, retained an ‘openness’ of texture that encouraged competitive party politics, a bargaining federalism, reconciliation of individual and group rights and accountable government. The validity of that view is in my view not falsified by the events of 1975–6.

6 This was the plea of Kothari in ‘End of an Era’, Seminar, New Delhi, January 1976.

7 For much in this paragraph I am indebted to private communications, written and oral.

8 Some degree of conflict between Parliament and courts has been of long standing. For many years the parliamentary feeling was all–party and genuinely autonomous; now a subservient Parliament is simply the screen for executive aggression.

9 The 9th Schedule now contains no less than 188 Acts! This information is from a skillful and sober article by Professor S. V. Kogekar which was useful in composing these paragraphs: ‘Revision of the Constitution’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XI, No. 25, June 19, 1976.

10 See, for example, Noorani, A. G., ‘Transfer of High Court Judges’, Economic and Political Weekly, Bombay, Vol. XI, No. 19. 05 8, 1976 Google Scholar.

11 Overseas Hindustan Times, 26 August 1976. Sober opposition sources (in a private communication) estimate that the numbers arrested during the year under MISA were over 50,000 and those under Defence of India Rules (DIR) over 200,000. The latter are released after varying periods in prison, while perhaps half of the former have been released either unconditionally or on parole. The same source gives a detailed breakdown by age, occupation and political affiliation of the 2,013 MISA detainees still held in the prisons of Maharashtra State out of some 3,500 in this category arrested during the year. This gives credence to their all–India figures. It also points to an evident strategy of releases and fresh arrests which maintains the atmosphere of caution and fear. To this has to be added the likelihood of torture in prison on which there have been detailed allegations.

12 There may be some significance in the alleged ‘twisting’ by the government news agency, ‘Samachar’, of a statement made by Asoka Mehta. It is said that the actual statement was that reconciliation between government and opposition could only be on a footing of equality and not between jailor and jailed, and that therefore the prisoners would have to be released. ‘Samachar’ gave out merely that Mehta wanted a national reconciliation. (Satyavani, Vol. I, No. 4: this is an opposition publication of Friends of India Society International from 155 Junction Road, London N. 19.).

13 Kothari, ‘Restoring the political process’, Seminar, July 1976. This was in the issue which immediately preceded Thapar’s being obliged to cease publication of the journal.

14 I recognize that this is to go against the usage recommended by Crick, Bernard in In Defence of Politics, Penguin, 1964 Google Scholar.

15 Private communication from L. I. and Susanne Rudolph.

16 Admittedly this is derived almost entirely from rumour and gossip which naturally flourish in present conditions.

17 The numbers game has reached unprecedented levels of difficulty. Statements issued by official agencies in respect of fulfilment of the 20–point programme have become frankly incredible; some states (e. g. Himachal Pradesh) invite one to believe that land–distribution has within a year reduced the landless to zero. While one hesitates to praise any publication for fear of prejudicing its future, the Economic and Political Weekly has contrived to be revealing and still stay alive. One example, its ‘Clippings’ page on 26 June 1976, gives this from The Times of India: ‘Despite considerable improvements in industrial relations measured in terms of loss of man–days due to strikes and lock–outs, there has been an increase in the number of lay–offs, retrenchments and closures, especially in textiles, cement, sugar, engineering and jute textiles’. Another from its leading article of 19 June 1976: this explains that the Planning Commission statement about a 31.4 per cent increase in Plan outlay for 1976 marking ‘the highest stepup in development outlays in any one year since the advent of planning in this country’ is misleading since the only way of producing such a high figure was by comparing 1976 Plan expenditure not with 1975 expenditure but with the original provisions for 1976 –a ‘meaningless’ comparison but useful for hiding the fact that on the true comparison the increase would not be ‘anywhere near that figure’.

18 Among his enthusiasms are compulsory sterilization and the forced clearing of the poor squatters’ colonies which so disfigure the big cities’ fringes. Following his disastrous attempt to clear the Turkman gate area of Delhi – by a mixture of force and preferential treatment for family planning enthusiasts which led to riots, police firing and several dead – his policy interventions appear to have been curbed.

19 After this passage was written Mrs Gandhi announced on 30 October 1976 that elections would be further postponed beyond 1977–and this despite the docile passing of all the constitutional amendments by the lower house of Parliament on 2 November. The first of the three options is thus the one preferred – for the present – perhaps because prospects of success at the polls seemed too uncertain and too unimportant. However, the other two options remain open for later, if and when risks seem less and the need for electoral legitimacy greater.