THE 3DS: DEMOCRACY, DIVERSITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT
THE 3Ds: DEMOCRACY, DIVERSITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT
Sugata Bose, MP is a Member of
Parliament elected to the 16th Lok Sabha, India in 2014 from the Jadavpur constituency in Bengal. He is a Member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. He is the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University and served as Founding Director of Harvard’s South Asia Institute. He has contributed to a deeper understanding of the colonial and post-colonial political economy and the inter-regional arenas of travel, trade and imagination across the Indian Ocean, and he has written many books on these topics.
Democracy in India has always been closely intertwined with the creative accommodation of diversity and a resolute commitment to development. The founding fathers of the Republic of India took a leap of faith in introducing the principle of universal adult franchise in a country left impoverished and largely illiterate at the end of colonial rule. The Lok Sabha or the House of the People has been constituted sixteen times since independence through the exercise of this franchise in general elections. Yet the leaders of India’s freedom struggle saw political freedom to be a means towards the larger goal of all-round social and economic development. They also knew that the success of the bold experiment with democracy depended on the ability to craft unity by respecting and thereby transcending India’s myriad diversity. Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous ‘tryst with destiny’ speech at the midnight hour of freedom began with a confession. The pledge of freedom was being redeemed “not wholly or in full measure.” The claim that it was being realized “very substantially” was questionable if one reflected for a moment on the hefty human toll being taken by the tragedy of partition. Nehru made moving references to “the architect” of India’s freedom. “We have often been unworthy followers of his,” he acknowledged, “and have strayed from his message.” Mahatma Gandhi’s silence spoke louder than Nehru’s eloquence. Far away from the celebrations in New Delhi, Gandhi chose to spend Independence Day in a Muslim home in Calcutta. The
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information and broadcasting department of the government of India asked him for a message. The Father of the Nation, never at a loss for words, simply said that “he had run dry.” It was the Mahatma’s moral force that ensured peace prevailed in Calcutta on 15 August 1947. Gandhi published an editorial titled ‘Miracle or Accident’ on 16 August, the first anniversary of the Great Calcutta Killing, in which he narrated how Hindus and Muslims chanted ‘Jai Hind’ (‘Victory to India’) in unison. It was neither miracle, nor accident, but the willingness of human beings to dance to God’s tune. “We have drunk the poison of mutual hatred,” Gandhi wrote, “and so this nectar of fraternization tastes all the sweeter, and the sweetness should never wear out.” The final five and a half months of Gandhi’s life, whose 150th birth anniversary we have started celebrating, constitute a message for the challenges India faces today. While Nehru tended to blame religion for fomenting social and political conflict, Gandhi had a keener insight when he commented: “Irreligion masquerades as religion.” When the first session of the All India Congress Committee convened in post-independence India from 15 to 17 November 1947, Gandhi spoke with absolute clarity about the responsibility of the ruling party and government. “No Muslim in the Indian Union,” he told them, “should feel his life unsafe.” His final fast launched on 12 January 1948, was designed to assert that no one had a right to say India belonged to only the
majority community and “the minority community can only remain there as the underdog.” On 23 January 1948 – just a week before his tragic assassination - Gandhi was “very glad” to take note of Subhas Chandra Bose’s birthday, even though he “generally did not remember such dates” and “the deceased patriot believed in violence”, while he was wedded to non-violence. Subhas, according to the Mahatma, “knew no provincialism nor communal differences” and “had in his brave army men and women drawn from all over India without distinction and evoked affection and loyalty, which very few have been able to evoke.” “In memory of that great patriot”, he called upon his countrymen to “cleanse their hearts of all communal bitterness.” The specter of a great communal divide has often obscured the other key dynamic – the interplay of center and region – that influenced the expedient decision to partition India and the provinces of
“In an era of modern democracy the union government needs to see itself as a government at the centre of a circle of state governments in order to ensure unity in diversity.”