Commentary/Janardan Thakur

Will India stay together?

Protagonists of a 'strong Centre' are worried about the 'growth of regionalism' and the growing clout of the states. 'Regionalism' is a term mostly used in a pejorative sense, especially by the elite and the glitterati in the metropolitan cities of India, most of whom, I suspect, would have preferred to be born, given the choice, somewhere in the West rather than in this 'area of darkness' called India.

To my mind, what is damned as 'growing regionalism' is only an indication that India is changing, that the mute and silent masses are beginning to work their atrophied muscles, to strive for a place in the sun. Trouble arises when the rising aspirations, which are not intrinstically disruptive of the nation, are crushed,

Consider, for instance, what lay at the root of the troubles in Punjab. After an in-depth study of the Punjab crisis, Paul R Brass, an American political scientist, had this to say on the demand for Khalistan; 'It is preceived by the most important political forces in the Punjab, associated with the Akali Dal, as a slander arising out of the deep prejudices among the Indian political leaders and Hindus generally against the Akalis and the Sikhs as a community.'

But for the high and mighty attitudes of short-sighted, self-seeking leaders at the Centre and of their 'agents' in the states, made worse by their refusal to appreciate the interests and aspirations of a plural society like ours, separatist movements would perhaps never have taken roots.

'The culture of governance,' wrote the late Romesh Thapar, 'particularly at the Centre is marked by its inability to respond to the new stirrings of the people. Arrogant and authoritarian posturings, terribly divisive, parade as democratic. The fall-out is highly inflammable and destructive.'

For decades, all that the central leaders seemed to be concerned about was vote-catching, when the time for it arrived. The only questions they asked were how thus or that initiative would 'strengthen the hands' of the Supreme leader.

'Khalistan' was just a germ in the mind of the quixotic Sikh migrant, Dr Jagjit Singh Chauhan. People had laughed when he put out a half-page advertisement in The New York Times to propagate his dream. It would all have remained the rantings of a handful of adventurists like Chauhan and the 'Potomac Sardar' if Indira Gandhi and her cronies had not got into their conspiratorial acts in Punjab. Perhaps Bhindranwale would still have been preaching in some Taksal if he had not become a tool in the hands of some Congress leaders.

To quote Paul Brass again, 'Giani Zail Singh (who was then Indira Gandhi's home minister) continued to find Bhindranwale a useful ally, now for two purposes: To use as a foil against his factional rival in the Congress, Darbara Singh, and simultaneously to keep the Akali Dal on the defensive. So, when Darbara Singh tried to arrest Bhindrarwale for the murder of Lala Jagat Narain in 1981, Giani Zail Singh protected him.' That Jarnail Singh became a Frankenstein and ultimately the memesis of Indira Gandhi is lesson of history which political leaders would do well to remember.

Many years ago, I had asked an expert on the North-East the reason for the deep sense of alienation in that region. He narrated a true story. In the sixties, a group of Mizo chiefs warned the administration of Mizoram, which was then a hill state of Assam, that a severe famine was coming. The administrators demanded to know what the basis for their prediction was.

It simply had to happen, the Mizo chiefs said. They had a famine every 36 years and it was now almost 36 years since the last one occurred. Nonsense, said the administrators, and turned the tribal chiefs out. They then travelled all the way to Delhi to plead with the prime minister, but returned disappointed; Indira Gandhi had no time for a 'bunch of primitive tribals'. Then came famine, and a trail of misery. Mau lam, the local term for famine, had kept its date with Mizoram, and it was one of the worst it had experienced.

The story was told as an instance of the total lack of rapport between an 'alien bureaucracy' and the people of Mizoram. There were essentially two kinds of officers in the North-Eastern states those who considered it a 'punishment posting' and those who exploited the 'free-for-all' that characterised the administration in these parts.

To make matters worse, the army was usually seen as a 'pillaging force.' Indiscrimate killings, mass rapes of tribal women and minor girls, gun-running, torture and fake encounters, all these were rampant. With Delhi so far, so stand-offish, there was no higher court of appeal.

At times one cannot help being rather ambivalent on the question of secessionism. On the one hand one likes a united India and every time one looks at the country's map one feels so torn because it is not what one had learnt to draw as a school boy; the mutilation makes one feel like crying. But on the other hand, one finds oneself sympathising with the secessionists and the separatists, whether they are in the South or in the North or in the North-East.

Some years ago, when a journalist from Kerala wrote about the possibility of southerners having to apply for visa to come to Delhi, I thought he was making a very germane point.

Because of her deep sense of insecurity, coupled with imperial arrogance, Indira Gandhi brought about fundamental changes in Centre-State relations, which were totally at variance with the federal nature of the Constitution. Instead of responding to the rising aspirations of the states, she went on centralising power, bringing down elected governments, nationalising issues.

'Indira is Indira, India is Indira' was the high point of hubris, before the fall. The secessionist movements, some political scientists rightly believed, were the outcome of a major structural problem in our political system. The problem arose from the 'tensions produced by the centralising drives of the Indian state in a society where the predominant long-term social, economic and political tendencies are towards pluralism, regionalism and decentralisation...'

Caught in vicious circles which were mostly their own creation, the Indian government kept raising the bogey of 'foreign hand.' It was the easiest explanation for the troubles that beset the country. Suddenly in the early Eighties a bunch of fellow-travellers who were always scrambling to get on to the Indira bandwagon came up with the 'balkanization' bogey.

Their timing was brilliant: Punjab in turmoil, Assam on a power-keg, a rash of insurgency in various pockets of the North-East. Some sort of 'documents' on the 'balkanization' could well have been in existence, for the CIA was certainly not above this sort of thing. They had done it in other parts of the world, and they could do it here. But the way the story was built up, without concrete to back it up, indicated that it was no more than a red-herring.

Indira Gandhi's successor was singularly lacking in any understanding of the political complexities, with the result that when accident put him on the throne the problems got even knottier, Kashmir would probably not have gone beyond the pale but for the much-touted Rajiv-Farooq handshake and the totally undemocratic election which followed.

That destroyed whatever little credibility Farooq Abdullah still had with the people of the valley. The famous 'handshake' was in a way a watershed in Kashmir's recent history. The state would perhaps never have turned into a beehive of Pak-trained terrorists if Farooq Abdullah had stood up for the democratic rights of the people of Kashmir.

Like all ideas, secessionism first begins in the minds of people, and it is there that it has to be fought. The unity of India can only be based on a sensitive interpretation of a federal system.