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Consensus and Conflict in Indian Politics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Several hours before his assassination in 1948, Mahatma Gandhi submitted his proposal for revisions in the party constitution of the Indian National Congress. He suggested that the Congress dissolve, since partisanship appeared to him wrong, and convert itself into a Lok Sevak Sangh, an apolitical people's service association. The Congress did not in the event obey the testament, but no one thought the proposal funny or outrageous. More recently, a General Secretary of the Congress reiterated the non-partisan point of view underlying this proposal when he questioned whether the role of an opposition party was meaningful in India, and when he supported the idea of “a common national programme acceptable to all political parties, on the basis of which the administration of the country could be carried on.” “The Panchayat system in India,” the Secretary said, “was essentially based on this very principle of synthesis rather than antithesis. Economically underdeveloped countries like ours can hardly afford the luxury of opposition only for the sake of opposition.”

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , April 1961 , pp. 385 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1961

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References

1 Rajkumar, N. V., Development of the Congress Constitution, New Delhi, All India Congress Committee, 1949Google Scholar, Appendix III.

2 Narayan, Shriman, A Plea for Ideological Clarity, New Delhi, Indian National Congress, n.d. (probably 1957), pp. 23 and 25.Google Scholar

3 I am indebted to Herbert J. Spiro for his discussion of the adversary process in politics. See his Government by Constitution: The Political Systems of Democracy, New York, 1959. The consensus process in law is also well discussed in Cohn, Bernard S., “Some Notes on Law and Change in North India,” Economic Development and Cultural Change,” VIII, No. 1 (October 1959), pp. 79–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Henry Orenstein, Alan Beals, William McCormack, R. Bachenheimer, and Edward B. and Louise G. Harper all bear witness to an increase in factionalism traceable to processes of modernization in Indian villages. See their articles in Park, Richard and Tinker, Irene, eds., Leadership and Political Institutions in India, Princeton, N.J., 1959.Google Scholar While there is every reason to believe that factionalism is nothing new in Indian villages, there are indications that new factions are emerging and that they are not manageable by the old methods.

4 Retzlaff, Ralph, “A Case Study of Panchayats in a North Indian Village,” Center for South Asia Studies, Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Calif., p. 8 (mimeographed).Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 38

6 Ibid.

7 Panchayat elections in the state of Uttar Pradesh, as elsewhere, are by a show of hands. This procedure undoubtedly increases the chances of coercion by the upper castes, who can mobilize both economic and physical sanctions. The patterns here described are in many ways similar to those in eighteenth-century English rural constituencies, which also showed a preference for uncontested elections and achieved this effect the more readily owing to viva voce voting, which served to increase the influence of the nobility and squirearchy. These processes are described in Lloyd I. Rudolph, “Party in Search of Legitimacy: The Politics of Status and the Politics of Opinion in Eighteenth-Century England and America” (forthcoming).

8 Retzlaff, , op.cit., p. 89.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 80.

10 Ibid., p. 90.

11 For a discussion of traditional legitimization, see Rudolph, Lloyd I. and Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber, “Indian Political Studies and the Scope of Comparative Politics,” Far Eastern Survey, XXVIII, No. 9 (September 1959), pp. 134–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 The dominance of higher landowning castes and their special role in determining the nature of the “consensus” is well documented. See, e.g., M. N. Srinivas' discussion of the numerically and economically superior Okkaligas in “The Social System of a Mysore Village,” and E. Kathleen Gough's discussion of the Tanjore Brahmans in “The Social Structure of a Tanjore Village,” both in Marriott, McKim, ed., “Village India: Studies in the Little Community” (Comparative Studies of Cultures and Civilizations, No. 6), American Anthropology, LVII, No. 3, Part 2, Memoir No. 83, June 1955.Google Scholar These two studies make a useful contrast in that Srinivas' indicates that economic power and numerical strength are as important as ritual superiority in determining dominant caste status with respect to village affairs.

13 See Weiner's, Myron discussion of this issue in “Struggle Against Power: Notes on Indian Political Behavior,” World Politics, VIII, No. 3 (April 1956), pp. 392–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, translated into English prose and published by Pratapa Chandra Ray, Calcutta, 1890, Vol. IX, “Canti Parva,” 1, pp. 12 and 13.

15 Morris Carstairs, G., The Twiceborn: A Study of a Community of High-Caste Hindus, London, 1957, pp. 46 and 47.Google Scholar

16 Gandhi, Mohandas K., Gandhi, an Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Boston, 1957, pp. 133–34.Google Scholar John T. Hitchcock's paper, “Leadership in a North Indian Village: Two Case Studies,” in the Park and Tinker volume, indicates that a traditional and a modern leader in the same village both based their effectiveness to a large extent on impartiality (p. 411). The principal described by Hitchcock evidently lost his influence after Hitchcock's departure owing to a loss of this vital quality. See also Retzlaff, op.cit.

17 Morris-Jones, W. H., Parliament in India, London and New York, p. 34.Google Scholar

18 Report presented to the First Conference of the Praja Socialist Party by N. G. Goray, General Secretary, Allahabad, December 1953. This report is reprinted in “Emergence of India and Pakistan into the Modern World,” in University of Chicago, Introduction to the Civilization of India, Chicago, Syllabus Division, University of Chicago Press, March 1957, p. 208.

19 This is not to suggest that the views of economists and administrators are not rational or objective. Obviously every available means should be used to keep public opinion and government informed of the objective consequences of policies proposed and pursued.

20 Ibid., p. 209.

21 Ibid., p. 210.

22 Factionalism is obviously an ancient feature of many Indian villages, based on caste and kin relationships. But it has been intensified and has found new expressions as a result of forces associated with technological and social change. Oscar Lewis relates the increase partly to the breakdown of jajmani (economic patron-client) relationships and of older kinship units. See his Group Dynamics in a North Indian Village, Delhi, Programme Evaluation Organization, Planning Commission, Government of India Press, 1954, especially pp. 11, 30, and 31. Some new factions are traced to Arya Samaj teachings in the early 1930's (ibid., p. 25). This material is also available in Lewis' Village Lije in Northern India, Urbana, Ill., 1958, ch. 11.