How is private behavior of an individual ethically instrumental for his public conduct?

Acts being done in private life and it’s effect on behavior and conduct of public life has long been debated.

Public officials act as a representative of state. Hence, their conduct and nature as state agent often decide the credentials of state. So, public behavior becomes a matter of public debate.

Many Greek philosophers advocated the Unity of Virtues. A/q which a person couldn’t possess one of four cardinal principles viz. Prudence, Temperance, courage and Justice without possessing all of them. Hence, public officials must serve as an example of Good Conduct.

Such actions becomes utmost important when public officials are  supposed to put public interest ahead of their own.

Andrea Leadsom,  candidate for the British PM post against Theresa May, in one of her speech suggested that being mom makes her superior candidate. Because that means she has a very real stake in the future of the country.

However, those who opposes such correlation believe personal life is a private affair and every individual has a right to maintain privacy.

But when private matters affect public affairs, it no longer remains private.

However, unlike ancient world where morality remains the sole criterion for state post, now modern nation-state with diversifying tentacles and interests needs different expertise like economists, scientists. In such case, their passion for subject and integrity towards state is more important.

Hence, we need to very cautiously tread the line. As looking only for morality may cause loss of most bright mind.

A state after all can’t run only by morally upright people but it equally need diligent and proficient people. So, in technical field integrity towards state should be the most important criteria apart from their expertise (only if their personal acts are in accordance with the law of the land).

While overall morality and uprightness can be the sole criteria in public affair office apart from the minimum intelligence required for post.

Demonetization:- Explained

Demonetization is an act through which official currency of a state is deprived of its value as legal tender. It is  replaced by new legitimate currency.

Historically, demonetization of currencies by Government have been enacted in response to hyperinflations. For example, Germany under Weimer Republic in 1923, Boris Yeltsin’s Russia on Jan 1998, or North Korea under erstwhile leader Kim Jong on Nov 2009.

But demonetization in India is unique, it is a move towards structural reform, targeted at reshaping public attitudes towards currency with a view to move towards cashless economy. It holds special significance as India is on the cusp of enrolling GST Bill.

Demonetization is unraveled with following intentions:-

1. Elimination of counterfeit currencies which often used by terrorists and smugglers to fund their activities.
2. De hoarding of cash held by corrupt people, generator of large sum of black economy.

The bold and radical move have been initiated to address the two poignant economic and social menace.

The unaccounted and unexchanged black money would leave government with extra money to finance their infrastructure need as well as cash strived banks.

However, 85% of cash in circulation is in 500 and 1000 notes, which has been delegitimised. Now 15% of cash need to do all the task.

Of total money only 27.6% is held with commercial banks as cash and balance with RBI. Rest are in circulation with people of which 85% is demonetized. Such vast sum of currency and their replacement would take quite time. Some thinkers believe it may take as long as 6 months to get normalized.

In such scenario, poor people and middle ranged businessman are left in complete doldrum.

Distant villages where bank branches are not available and where poor don’t have any bank account are specially hard hit.

In country like India where poverty and illiteracy is such a widespread social menace, transition to cashless economy is quite challenging.

Prof Arun kumar, author of The Black economy in India, believes most of black money is held in real estate, bullion and offshore account. A/q him, only 3% of black money hoarders have cash with them. Hence, for such minuscule people creating havoc for entire nation is not justified. They could have been punished by other means too.

Terrorists and drug peddler that often feed on counterfeit and black money can resort to other means to fund their activities like drugs, arms etc. So, actors involving in origin of counterfeit notes should be traced and punished. As if government can create a type of currency it can also be created by others.

Hence, as GOI is monitoring situation in real time basis. It would act to dispel long queue in banks and ATMs.It should equally need to view such concerns as shown above. Its recent enacting of Benami Property Transaction(Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016 shows firm stand of government against black money.

What is Continental Drift theory? Discuss the prominent evidences in its support.

Alfred Wenger in 1912 came with The Continental Drift theory. In order to explain the current location and physical position of the continents and landmasses.

• It explains that continents move over time.
• It envisages that the entire land masses were once part of a single huge landmass which he called the Pangea.
• His theory explains that such land mass keep drifting away and towards with a speed is called continental drift.

To prove them he gave several evidences and they include :-

1. The zig-saw pattern of continental coast appears to be a broken part and can be fitted in one another.
2. The stone taken from shore share same time and composition.
3. Presence of same fossils(species) on the shore, even small reptiles (mesosaurus on the coast of South Africa and South America) and fishes have been found, which can’t swim Atlantic.
4. The palaeo-climatic evidence , galactic evidence of tropical land, show their singularity of landmass.

                .                         However, Wenger failed to explain the cause and force behind such phenomenon. Now, Plate Tectonic theory is used to explain the phenomenon.

Post-Independence India, based on India after Gandhi (Ramachandra Guha)

Syllabus

• Consolidation of a nation:-Nehrus Foreign policy; India and her neighbours (1947-64); The linguistic reorganisation of states (1935-1947); Reorganisation and regional inequality; Integration of Princely States; Princes in electoral politics ; the question of national language.
• Caste and Ethnicity after 1947; Backward castes and tribes in post-colonial electoral politics; Dalit movement
• Economic development and political change; Land reforms;the politics of planning and rural reconstruction; Ecology and Environmental policy in post-colonial India; Progress of science

Partition, Communal tension and the logic of division

Indian patriots celebrated their independence day on the last sunday of Jan 1930, at Lahore session, which fell on 26th Jan. Thus in reverence India celebrated its final independence from British on 26th Jan, 1950.

Though, when British left the subcontinent, they chose to hand on power on 15Aug, 1947, selected by Mountbatten, as it was 2nd anniversary of the Japanese surrender to the Allied forces

Since 15th Aug was seen as inauspicious by astrologer, so celebration started from 14th Aug only. The three speaker selected to speak at the function were Chaudhary Khaliquz–zaman, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and PanditJawaharlal Nehru.

The ministers and their portfolio of constituent assembly reflect myriad ideological variants and cosmopolitan comstituents as such include not only congressmen but also other people including congress adversaries. These were RK Shanmukham Chetty, a Madras businessman who possessed one of best financial mind in India; BR Ambedkar, a legal scholar and an Untouchable by caste; a Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, leading Bengal politician who belonged to the hindu Mahasabha.

on seeing deep hatred and communal flarings in Noakhali once again after his return to Delhi, Gandhi was deeply hurt and decided to go on fast. On of his aide asked, But how can you fast against Goondas then Gandhi replied: I know I shall be able to tackle Punjab too if I can control Calcutta. But if I falter now, the conflagration may spread and soon. I can see clearly two or three foreign powers will be upon us and thus will end our short-lived dream of independence. But if u die conflagration will be worst then replied Gandhi, At least I wont be there to witness it, I shall have done my duty.

During the time of communal tension following Partition, one faction of society uniting people across caste line was RSS. Gandhi himself was impressed by their discipline and absence of caste feeling but their abhorrence towards non-hindu particularly Muslim was quite unfortunate. However, unlike Gandhi JL Nehru was quite sceptical of RSS. He told Vallabhabhai Patel, a very definite and well organised attempt of certain sikh and Hindu fascists elements to overturn the government, or atleast to break up its character.

Hence, Congress now passed a resolution on the rights of Minorities. The Party had never accepted the two nation theory; forced against its will to accept Partition, it still believed India is a pluralistic and land of many religion.

 While GandhI was acting to protect Muslims, he mate wiTh a group of hostile people who asked why Gandhi not talking about suffering of Hindu and Sikh. On this DG Tendulkar writes, Gandhi was equally concerned about suffering of Minority in Pakistan. He even planned to go to their succour. But with what face could he now gO there, when he could not guarantee full redress to the Muslims in Delhi.

 with attack on Muslim continuing, Gandhi chose to resort to fast rajy began on 13 Jan and was addressed to three different constituencies :-

1. The first were people of India…he believed if Indian don’t believe in two – nation theory then they should show their chosen capital is eternal city.
2. The second constituency was the Government of Pakistan..how long could Indian Hindu would remain silent if Pak fail to protect the Hindu and Sikh of their country.
3. Gandhi fast was finally addressed to the Government of India. He believed Pakistan should be given their share as British India owed two country debt together.

 On the evening of 30 Jan Gandhi was shot dead by a young man at his rally, a Brahmin from Poona named Nathuram Godse.

 why couldn’t the unity of Punjab or of India be saved?

1. The first blames the Congress leadership for underestimating Jinnah and the Muslims.
2. The second blames Jinnah for pursuing his goal of separate country regardless of human consequences.
3. The third holds the British responsible, claiming that they promoted a divide between Hindus and Muslims tO perpetuate their rule.

However, It is believed, all these might have played their part, but at least by the early 1940s Partition was written into the logic of Indian history. Even if the British had not encouraged communal electorate, the onset of modern electoral politics would have encouraged the creation of community vote banks. Muslims were increasingly persuaded to think of themselves as indeed Muslims. As late as 1927 the Muslims League had a mere 1300 members. By 1944 it had more than half a million in Bengal alone (Punjab had 200000). Muslims of all classes flocked to the League. Artisans, workers, professional- all rallied to the call of Islam in Danger fearing of Brahmin Bania Raj.

 Once the principle of Partition had been accepted, it was inevitable that communalism would rage freely. The longer the period before the transfer of Power, the worse thE tension and the greater the threat that violence would spread. Today it was the Punjab, tomorrow Bengal, Hyderabad, or any of the myriad societies in the sub-contintent where Hindu and Muslim lived cheek by jowl. Two hundred thousand (dead) could have become two million, even twenty million.

 Debate over violence during Partition

Some believed that over hasty withdrawal led to more rather than fewer deaths. They even felt that the decision to undo in two months flat an empire built over two centuries was poorly conceived.

In Punjab, there would be complete refusal of the communities to cooperate on any basis at all. It would clearly be futile to announce a Partition of Punjab which no community would accept. As Muslims had hoped for the whole of Punjab, whereas a the sikhs and Hindus wEre fearful that they would lose Lahore.

 While cities were ransacked, riots were the norms of the day, instead of protecting common citizens, Many army units were placed near European settlements instead of being freed for riot control elsewhere.

 Integration of Princely States

The Princely States were so many that there was even disagreement to their number. However, only thing certain is they were more than 500 by number.

On 3 June the British announced both the date of their final withdrawal and the creation of two dominions-but this statement also didn’t make clear the position of states. Not even The Cabinet Mission of 1946 focused on Princely States. Menon was ideally placed to mediate between Mountbatten and

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was given the responsibility. VP Menon was chosen as his secretary.

The first princes to come over Patel’s side was the Maharaja of Bikaner. His deewan was KM Pannikar, a widely respected historian.

The first chiefdom to join the Constituent Assembly, back in February, had been the state of Baroda.

Along with VP Menon, they drafted the Instrument of Accession whereby the states would agreed to transfer control of defence, foreign affairs and communication to the government.

Patel issued a statement appealing to the princes to accede to the Indian Union. The alternative to cooperation in the general interest was anarchy and chaos. Patel appealed to the Princes patriotism, asking for their assistance in raising this sacred land to its proper place among the nation’s of the world.

Mountbatten was constantly pursued by INC and Gandhi to help them in acceding Princely States. Hence in his talk To chamber of princes. Mountbatten decorated himself in full Uniform with an array of orders and decorations calculated to astonish even these practitioners in Princely pomp. He advised states to join either of nation to avoid chaos and Welfare of their citizens. He even indicated that no help could be expected from British.

Mountbatten’s talk to the chamber of Princes was a tour de force. It ranked the most significant of all his acts in India. It finally persuaded the Princes that the British would no longer protect or patronise them and independence for them was a mirage.

Mountbatten had prefaced his speech with personal letters to the most prominent princes. Afterwards he continued to press them to sign the instrument of Accession.

By 15th August virtually all the states had signed the Instrument of Accession. The Praja Mandal grew active once more. In Mysore a movement was launched for full democratic government in the state. Three thousand people courted arreat. In some states in Kathiawar and Orissa, protesters took possession of government offices, courts and prisons.

Vallabhbhai Patel and The Congress Party cleverly used the threat of popular protest to make the princes fall in line. They had already acceded; now they were being asked to integrate, that is to dissolve their states as independent entities and merge with the Union of India. In exchange they would be allowed to retain their titles and offered an annual allowance in perpetuity. If they desisted from complying, they faced the threat of uncontrolled agitation by subjects whose suppressed emotions had been released  by the advent of Independence.

VP Menon extensively toured India, cajoling the princes. In exchange for their land each ruler was offered a privy purse, its size determined by the revenue earned  by the state. To reassure the princes, Patel sought to include a Constitutional guarantee with regards to the privy purses.

Patel and Menon took more than one leaf out of British book. They plaYed divide and rule , bringing some princes on side early, unsettling the rest. They played on the child like vanities of the Maharajas, allowing them to retain their titles and sometimes giving them new ones. Thus, several Maharajas were appointed as Governor of provinces.

However, only three states gave trouble prior to 15th Aug and three after that. Travancore was the first state to question the right of the Congress to succeed the British as the paramount power. The state was strategically placed at the extreme southern tip of the sub-contintent. It had most highly educated populace in India ,thriving maritime trade and newly discovered monazite reserve used in the production of atomic energy and atomic Bombs.

The Dewan of Travancore was Sir CP Ramaswamy Taiyar, a brilliant and ambitious lawyer who had been in his post for 16 yrs and was believed to be the real ruler.

He held a series of press conference seeking the cooperation of people of Travancore in maintaining its independence. He reminded people of antiquity of their ruling dynasty and of Travancore’s sinking of a Dutch fleet in the year, (this apparently the only naval defeat ever inflicted by an Asian state on European power). It meant to counter the pan Indian nationalism.

Travancore has support of Pakistan as well as England, as they were interested in Monazite site and its advantage against Soviet Union in the cold war front.

On 25 July while on his way to a music concert, the deewan was attacked by a man in uniform. The consequence, were immediate, and The states People organisation turned the heat on and Travancore immediately gave in.

The second state that wavered on the question of accession was Bhopal. It had mostly hindu population and a Muslim ruler. The Nawab was bitter opponent of Congress, and correspondingly closed to Jinnah and Muslim league.

Nawab was good friend of Mountbatten but their loyalties to their ideology and belief tore them apart. Nawab tried to make sense by projecting Congress and their associates as bunch of Communist, threat to everyone. However, with conflict of opinion and constant prodding by Mountbatten forced Nawab to sign the treaty.

Jodhpur was a rather curious case, an old and large state with Hindu king as well as a largely hindu population. Due to his intention to garner a better deal, Maharaja realised since state is a border state of Pakistan. It may get a beter deal with them. Pakistan too on its part offered a better deal to jodhpur.

If Jodhpur had defected to Pakistan it would open possibility for other states to follow suit. So Patel too offered lucrative deal. At the same time, Hindu nobles and village headmen have shown their reservation on joining a Muslim country.

In a meeting Maharaja pulled out his gun in Viceroy Office. But few minutess latter, he cooled off and sign the treaty.

Junagadh too like Bhopal had a dominant Hindu population ruled by a Muslim ruler. The region has vast coastal region. To protect its autonomy, it announced that it would join Pakistan. However, geographically it made little sense and also flowed Jinnah two baton theory due to 82% of Hindu population. Later, Pakistan accepted its request. Historians, believed that Jinnah probably thought to use in counter to KASHMIR problem.

VP Menon went to Junagadh and insisted given the religious affiliation of people, the region belonged to India. However in the mean time, panic started among people on the pretext of joining Pakistan and the widespread revolt within the region took place.

Hence the deewan Sir Shah Nawaz informed Indian Government to take over the administration of Junagadh.  The Indians then organised.  a. Plebiscite. A referendum held on 20th Feb 1948, resulted in the 91percent of electorate voting for accession of India.

Hyderabad

The state of Hyderabad also had a Muslim ruler and a mostly Hindu population, but it was a prize greater by far than Bhopal and Junagadh.

Hyderabad began life as a Mughal vassal state in 1713. Its ruler was conventionally known as the Nizam. Eighty-five percent of its population was Hindu but Muslim dominated the army, police and civil service.

In power in 1946-47, was the seventh Nizam, Mir Usman Ali, who had ascended to the throne as far back as 1911. He was one of the richest man in the world but also one of the most misery. The Nizam, after the British left, all wanted is independence of the state. He employed Sir Walter Moncton, a king counsel and one of the highly regarded lawyer in England.

The Nizam ambition if realised would cut north of India from south. As sardar himself put that an independent Hyderabad constituted a cancer in the belly of India.

 

In the face of between Nizam and the GOI, each side had a proxy of its own. The state Congress demanded that Hyderabad fall into line with rest of India. While the Ittihad was radicalized by its new leaders, Kasim Razvi, a passionate believer in idea of Muslim pride. Under Rizvi the Ittihad promoted a Paramilitary body called Razakara whose members marched up and down the roads of Hyderabad, carrying swords and Guns.

In the country side there was rule uprising led and directed by the Communists. More than 1000 villages were practically freed from Nizam’s rule. On the other hand the Razakara grew more truculent.

By March 1948, the membership of Ittihad had reached a million, with a Tenth of these being trained in arms. Every Razakara had taken a vow in the name of Allah to fight to the last to maintain the supremacy of Muslim power in the Deccan.

 

The Razakara saw Delhi-Hyderabad battle in Hindu-Muslim terms. The Congress, on the other hand, saw it as a clash between democracy and autocracy.

On 21 June 1948, Lord Mountbatten resigned from office of governor general. While tension in the state were growing as was invincible from growing Hindu-Muslim clash in the region and Outside. However, Without Mountbatten, Sardar was more empowered to take decisive action.

On 13 September, a contingent of Indian troops was sent into Hyderabad. In less than four days they had full control of the state. Those killed in fighting included 42 Indian soldiers and two thousand-odd Razakara.

On the night of 17th, Nizam spoke on the radio, his speech and announced a ban on the Razakars and advised his subjects to live in peace and harmony with rest of the people in India. Hyderabad became part of Indian Union and the Nizam was made governor of Hyderabad.

Jammu and Kashmir

 

The state has five main regions. The province of Jammu, abutting Punjab, had low hills and large areas of arable land. Before Partition the Muslims were in a slight majority but with the wave of panic migration that year Jammu came to be dominated by Hindus. In contrast, the valley of Kashmir, which lay to Jammu’s North, had a substantial Muslim majority.

To the valley east lay the high mountains of Ladakh, bordering Tibet, and peopled mostly by Buddhists. Further west lay thE thinly populated tracts of Gilgit and Baluchistan. The people were mostly Muslim, but from the shia and Ismaili branches of Islam, rather than (as was the case in the Valley) from the dominant Sunni tradition.

These disparate territories were brought under a single state only in the nineteenth century. The unifiers were a clan of Dogra Rajputs from Jammu who conquered Ladakh in the 1830s, acquired the vale of Kashmir (hereafter called the Valley) from the British in 1840s and moved into Gilgit by the end of the century.

Its location gave the state a strategic importance quite out of proportion to its population. The importance increased after 15 August 1947, when kashmir came to share border with both the new dominations.

The Maharaja of Kashmir was Hari Singh. Having ascended the throne in September 1925, he spent much of his time at the racecourse in Bombay.

For much of his rule, the maharaja’s bête noire was a Muslim from the Valley named Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah. Born in 1905, graduate with master’s degree in science from AMU. Despite his qualification he was unable to find government job in kashmir, for the state administration was dominated by Hindus. Abdullah began to question why Muslims were singled out for such treatment. Then he became a school teacher and started a reading club and spoke out on behalf of his fellow subjects. He became quite popular and was taken to be the voice of people.

With The independence of the nation becoming reality and the British was preparing to leave. The idea of independence taken strong hold over Maharaja. On 15 August, J&K didn’t acceded to either India or Pakistan. It offered to sign a standstill agreement with both countries which would allow free movement of people and goods across borders. Pakistan signed the agreement but India decided to wait and watch.

On 29 September, Sheikh Abdullah was released from Prison, in his speech at the great Hazrat bal mosque in Srinagar, Abdullah demanded a complete transfer of Power to the people in Kashmir. He emphasised it would not belong to one community. The government will be of Hindus, the Sikhs and the Muslims.

Pakistan naturally expected Kashmir with its Muslim majority, to join it. India thought religious factor was irrelevant since the leading political party , the national Conference, was known to be non-sectarian.

On 22 October, a force of several thousand armed men invaded the state from north. Moat of these raiders were Pathans from now a province of Pakistan.

The principal characteristics of the tribal invasion was the surprise tactics of the tribesman, the absence of the most rudimentary defence by the kashmir state army, and the pillage , loot and rapine of the tribesmen inflicted on Hindus and Muslims alike.

The tribesmen believed they were carrying Jehad, the holy war. However, they didn’t stop even muslims from vandalising and raping their women. Especially in Baramula. It greatly angered the Muslims.

The tribesmen came close to the capital. VP Menon was sent to talk to Maharaja on the possibilities of the accession. Mountbatten put the condition that its act not be helped until the Maharaja signed the treaty of accession.

The various settlements available were as per Nehru

1. There could be a plebiscite for the whole state, to decide which dominion to join.
2. The state could survive as an independent entity, with its defence guaranteed by both India and Pakistan.
3. A third option was of Partition, with Jammu going to India and the rest of the state to Pakistan.
4. A fourth option had Jammu and the Valley staying with India, with Poonch and beyond being ceded to Pakistan.

Four options he outlined in 1947 remain the four options being debated today.

On 1 January 1948 India decided to take the kashmir issue to the United Nation’s. This was done on the advise of Governor general, Lord Mountbatten. Through Jan and Feb the security council held several sittings on Kashmir. Pakistan was represented by superbly gifted orator Sir Zafrullah Khan, was able to present a far better case than India. Khan convinced the delegates that the invasion was a consequence of the tragic riots across northern India in 1946-47. It was a natural reaction of Muslims to the suffering of their fellow. He accused Indian of perpetrating genocide in East Punjab, forcing 6 million Muslims to flee to Pakistan. The kashmir problem was recast as part of unfinished business of Partition. India suffered a significant symbolic defeat when the security council altered the agenda item from the Jammu and Kashmir Question to the India-Pakistan Question.

 

A striking feature of the UN discussion on Kashmir was the partisanship of the British. Some saw it a hangover from pre-independence days, a conversion for support to the Muslim league to support for Pakistan. Other thought it was in compensation for the recent creation of the state of Israel, after which there was a need to placate Muslims world wide. A third theory was that in the ensuing struggle with Soviet Russia, Pakistan would be the more reliable ally. It was also better placed with easy access to British air bases in the Middle east.

In March 1948, Sheikh Abdullah replaced Mehr Chand as the prime Minister of J&K. By the time sheikh was the most important man in the Valley. Hari Singh was still the state’s ceremonial head-now called Sadr-i-riyasat but he had no real power.

Under the maharaja’s regime, a few Hindus and a fewer Muslims had a very large holdings, with the bulk of the rural population serving as labourers or tenants-at-will. In his first year in power Abdullah transferred 40,000 acres of surplus land to the landless. He also outlawed absentee ownership, increased the tenat’s share from 25% to 75%of the cropland placed a moratorium on debt.

British Journalist Kingsley Martin visited both country to see each other’s perspective on Kashmir

Indians, he found, were utterly convinced of the legality of the state’s accession, and bitter in their condemnation of Pakistan’s help to the raiders. To them the religion of Kashmir was wholly irrelevant. The fact thaT Abdullah was the popular head of an emergency administration was an outstanding proof that India was not ‘Hindustan’ and there are Muslims who had voluntarily chosen to come to India which as Nehru emphasised, should be a democracy in which minorities can live safely and freely.

While Pakistan on the other side, had completely different perspective. Most people he met had friends or relative who had died at the hands of Hindu and Sikh. The disputes with the Pakistanis started with the rebellion in Poonch, which in India had been largely and undeserved forgotten. In karachi and Lahore the people were completely sympathetic to the raiders from the frontier who in their eyes were fighting a holy war against the oppression of Islam.

 Refugees and the undone problem of independence

 

“Refugees are sent all over India. They will scatter communal hatred on a wide scale and will churn up enormous ill-will everywhere. Refugees have to be looked after, but we have to prevent the infection of hatred beyond the necessary minimum which can’t be prevented.”

              C Rajagopalachari, governor of Bengal

The bulk of migrants from west Punjab were farmers, but there were also many who were artisans, traders, labourers. To accommodate them the government built brand-new township. One, Faridabad, in the capital, delhi. Among most active groups here was the Indian Cooperative Union (ICU), an organisation headed by Kamladevi Chattopadhyaya, a socialist and feminist who had been close associated with Mahatma Gandhi.

Sir Jadunath Sarkar compared the migration of East Bengal Hindus to the flight of French Huguenots in the time of Louis XIV. He urged the people of west Bengal to absorb and integrate the migrants, thus to nourish their culture and economy.

In September 1948 an All-Bengal Refugee Council of Action was formed. Marches and demonstrations were organised demanding that the refugees be given fair compensation and citizenship rights. The leaders of the movement aimed to throw ‘regimented bands of refugees on the streets of calcutta and to maintain pressure on the government’.

Unquestionably the main Victims of Partition were women: Hindu, Sikh and Muslim. After Independence the brothels of Delhi and Bombay came to be filled with refugees women, who had been thrown out by their families after what someone else had done to them-against their will.

In the summer of 1947, as the violence in the Punjab spread from village to village, Hindus and Sikhs in the east of the province abducted and kept Muslim women. On the other side of the compliment – if it may be called that – was returned, with young Hindu and Sikh girls seized by Muslim men.

On the Indian side, the operation to recover abducted women was led by Mridula Sarab hai and Rameshwari Nehru. Both came from aristocratic homes and both had sturdily nationalist credentials. Their work was encouraged and aided by Jawaharlal Nehru, who took a deep personal interest in the process.

Communist

In the uncertainty following the Indian takeover of Hyderabad, the communist moved swiftly to assume control of the Telangana region. They were aided by piles of guns left by the retreating Razakars. The communist destroyed the palatial homes of landlord and distributed their land to tillers of the soil. Dividing themselves into several dalams, or group each responsible for a number of villages, the communist asked peasants not to pay land revenue, and enforced law and order themselves.

Their success in Hyderabad had encouraged the communities to think of a countrywide peasants revolution. Telangana they hoped would be the beginning of a Red line.

The new line of the Communist Party of India held that Nehru’s government had joined the Anglo-American alliance in an irreconcilable conflict with the democratic camp led by the Soviet Union. The communist called for a general strike and peasant uprisings across the country.

The military governor, JN Chaudhuri launched a propaganda war against the communists. Telugu pamphlets dropped on the villages announced that the Nizam’s private Crown lands would be distributed to the peasantry. Theatrical companies touring the villages presented the Government case through drama and pantomime. In one play, Chaudhuri was portrayed as a Hindu deity; the communists, as demons.

The propaganda and the repression had its effect. The membership of the party dropped from 89000 in 1948 to mere 20000 two years later. The government’s counter-offensive had exposed the lack of popular empathy it experienced for its unbridled revolutionism. It appears the party had grossly underestimated the hold of the congress over the Indian people.

Even as the communists were losing their influence, a band of extremists was gathering strength on the right. This was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. After the murder of Mahatma Gandhi in January 1948, the RSS was banned by the government. Although not directly involved in the assassination, the organization had been active in the Punjab violence, and had much support among disaffected refugees.

At the helm of the Congress was the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In confronting the radicals of left and right, Nehru faced two major handicaps. First, he was a moderate, and the middle ground is generally not conducive to the kind of stirring rhetoric that compels men to act. Second, he and his colleagues were far older than their political rivals.

MS Golwalkar had written to Patel offering help in battling the common enemy – communist. ‘If we utilise the power of ur government and Cultural strength of our organization’ writes Golwalkar, we will easily get rid of red menace.

Concluding remarks

Like the integration of the princely states, the rehabilitation of refugees was a political problem unprecedented in nature and scope. The migrants into India from Pakistan was like fallen autumn leaves in the wind or bits of stray newspaper flying hither and tither in the blown dust.

The refugees who came into India after Independence numbered close to 8 million. This was greater than population of small European countries such as Austria and Norway. These people were resettled with time, cash, effort and not least, idealism.

The British had left behind a set of functioning institutions: the civil service and the police, the judiciary and the railways, among others. At independence, the government of India invited British members of the ICS to stay on but mostly left for home.

Thus, it came to be that the heroes remembered in these pages were all Indians – whether politicians like Nehru and Patel, bureaucrats like Tarkik Singh and VP Menon, or social worker like Kamala devi Chattopadhyaya and Mridula Sarabhai. So too were the countless others who were unnamed then and continue to unknown now.

In the history of nation – building only the Soviet experiment bears comparison with the Indian. There too, a sense of unity had to be forged between many diverse ethnic groups, religions, linguistics communities and social classes. The scale – geographic as well as demographic – was comparable massive. The raw material the state had to work with was equally unpropitious: a people divided by faith and riven by debt and disease.

India after the second world war was much like the Soviet Union after the first. A nation was being built out of its fragments. In this case, however, the process was unaided by the extermination of class enemies or the creation of gulags.

 Ideas of India – Constitution formation and consolidation of the nation

With 395 articles and 12 schedules the Constitution of India is probably the longest in the world.

There were several members including people of India through their suggestions and critical analysis played important role in its formation. Three prominent congress men were Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Pt Rajinder Prasad. While three prominent non congress member were BR Ambedkar, KM Munshi and Alladi Krishna swami Aiyar.

To these six men one must add a seventh who was not a member of the Assembly at all. This was BN Rau, who served as Constitutional adviser to the government of India. In a long career in the Indian Civil Service Rau had a series of legal appointments. Using his learning and experience, and following a fresh study-tour of western democracies, Rau prepared a series of notes for ambedkar and his team to chew upon. Rau, in turn, was assisted by the chief draughtsman, SN Mukherjee, whose ability to put the most intricate proposals in the simplest and clearest legal form can rarely be equalled.

Moral vision, political skill, legal acumen: these were all brought together in the framing of Indian Constitution. This was a coming together of what Granville Austin has called the national and social revolutions respectively.

The national revolution focused on democracy and liberty – which the experience of colonial rule had denied to all Indians – whereas the social revolution focused on emancipation and equality, which tradition and scripture had withheld from women and low castes.

Some advocated a Gandhian Constitution, based on a revived panchayati raj system of village council, with the village as a basic unit of politics and governance. This was sharply attacked by BR Ambedkar, who held that these village republics have been the ruination of India. Ambedkar was surprised that those who condemn provincialism and communalism should come forward as a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?

The Constitution mandated for a complex system of fiscal federalism. These were borrowed heavily from Government of India Act 1935. The conscience of the Constitution, meanwhile was contained in Parts III and IV, which outlined a series of fundamental rights and directive principles.

On the issue of reservation 

On the demand of separate electorate, Begum Rasul said, it was absolutely meaningless to have reservation on the basis of religion. Separate electorate was a ‘self destructive weapon which separates minority from the majority for all time.’ For the interests of the Muslims in a secular democracy were absolutely identical with those of other citizens.

A vulnerable minority even more numerous than the Muslims were the women of India. But women rejected the idea of reservation for them. Instead they believed, what they need is social justice, Economic justice, and political justice

There would be no reservation for Muslims and women but the Constitution did recommend reservation for untouchables. This was in acknowledgement of the horrific discrimination they had suffered, and also a bow towards Gandhi, who had long held the idea that true freedom, or swaraj, would come only when Hindu society had rid itself of this evil.

However, some members warned against its possible abuse. They believed reservation didn’t lead to real representation. For ‘no caste ever gets any benefit from this reservation.’ It is individual or family (cream of Harijan society)which gets benefits instead of caste, perhaps there might be reservation by class, such that cobblers, fishermen et, as they are one who don’t really get any representation.

BR Ambedkar warned India while handing over draft Constitution. He said:-

We are going to enter a life of contradiction. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril.

 The Biggest Gamble and survival of Indian democracy

We are little men serving great causes, but because the cause is great, something of that greatness falls upon us ~JL Nehru

India means only two things to us – famines and Nehru. ~American journalist, 1951

India had multifold threats after Independence both from within and outside. The pain of partition and the enormous issues in settling migrants were one issue. While the hatred that they brought for ,now a minority in India, Muslim. The growing acceptance of conservative forces like RSS as well as growing clout of Left radicals especially after operation Polo in Hyderabad. Their success in Telangana had emboldened them to launch a nation wide revolution.

The pluralistic tradition of Indian sub-contintent and widespread hunger, disease, illetracy all had made it a egregious situation. Demand on lines of regions, language, culture all had brought the fear alive of India’s disintegration hypothesis near true.Different secessionist movement by region like Nagaland, Kashmir and Punjab in later days had greatly threatened its chance of survival.People had belief all over world that India would Balkanize.

The sudden death of Mahatma Gandhi by a fanatic Hindu Nationalist and further demise of Sardar Vallabhbhai had greatly weakened Nehru. But it was the ingenuity of the PM that he handled situation uprightly and through his integrity, wisdom he played an Important role in making India a nation (state).

In the first national election 1951-52, speeches and posters were used by all parties, but only the communists had access to the airwaves. Not those transmitted by All India Radio, which had banned party propaganda, but of Moscow Radio, which relayed its programmes via station in Tashkent.

The ambassador of US to India, Chester Bowles. He confessed that he was appalled at the prospect of a poll of 200 million eligible voters, most of whom were illiterate villager’s. He feaRed a fiasco, even, thE biggest farce ever dragged in the namE of democracy. But the sight of many parties contesting frEEly, and untouchables and Brahmins standing in the same line persuaded him otherwise. He no longer thought literacy was a test if intelligence, no longer believed that Asian neEdEd a series of Atatürk’s before they would be ready for democracy.

He admired Nehru’s decision not to follow other Asian countries in taking the line of least resistance by developing a dictatorship with centralisation of power and intolerance of dissent and criticism. The prime minister has wisely kept away from such temptations. Yet the main credit according to the Turkish writer goes to the Nation itself.

176,000,000 Indians were left alone with their conscience in the face of polling box.

In this respect, the 1952 election was a script jointly authored by historical forces for so long opposed to one another: British colonialism and Indian nationalism. Between them these forces had given this new nation what could be fairly described as a jump-start to democracy.

 India’s relation with outer world including Neighborhood issues

Nehru is keeping together the governmental machine and the people, and without this nexus India would probably have been deprived of stable government in these crucial times. He has not only ensured co-operation between the two, but most probably has also prevented actual conflicts, cultural, economic and political.

If within the country, Nehru is the indispensable link between the governing middle-classes and the sovereign people, he is no less the bond between India and the world. He served as India’s representative to the great western democracies and their representative to India.

Through his long tenure as PM, Nehru served simultaneously as foreign minister of the government of India. This was natural, for among the congress leadership he alone had a genuinely internationalist perspective. And had always been fascinated by world trends and movements.

Representative of Nehru’s idea is a speech he delivered on ‘Peace and Empire’ at Friends House, Euston, in July 1938. This began by speaking of ‘fascist aggression’ but went on to see fascism as merely another variant of imperialism. In BrItain the tendency was to distinguish between the two. But in Nehru’s mind there was little doubt that those who ‘sought complete freedom for all the subject peoples of the world had to oppose both fascism and imperialism.

Nehru saw Indian independence as part of a wider Asian resurgence. Past centuries might have belonged to Europe but it was now time for non-white and previously subordinated people to come into their own.

A remarkable initiative in this regard was the Asian Relations Conference, held in New Delhi in the last week of March 1947.

• Twenty-eight countries sent representative- these included India’s close neighbours (Afganistan, Burma, Ceylon and Nepal), the still colonized natIons of Southeast Asia (such as Malaya, indonesia, and Vietnam), China and Tibet (the Two sent separate delegations), seven Asian republics of Soviet Union and Korea. The Arab League was also represented and there was a Jewish delegations from Palestine.
• The Conference was held in Purana Qila, a large , somewhat rundown yet still majestic stone structure built by Sher Shah Suri in the sixteenth century.
• The opening and concluding sessions were open to public and attracted huge crowds.
• The official language was English but interpreters were provided for the delegates.
• The inaugural address was by Nehru’s. ‘Rising to a great ovation’, he talked hoe after a long period of quiescence’, Asia had suddenly become important in world affairs. Its countries could no longer be used as pawn by other’s. The old imperialism was fading away, he said. With an almost contemptuous wave of the hand he did something worse than attack them; he pronounced a valediction.’
• This took around two days, after which the meeting broke up into thematic round-table.
• There were separate sections on national movement for freedom , racial problems and inter-Asian migration; Economic development and social services; Cultural problems’ and status of women and women’s movement.
• The conference concluded with a talk by Mahatma Gandhi. He regretted that the conference could not met in the real India of the villages but in the cities that were ‘influenced by the west’. The message of Asia, insisted Gandhi was not to learn through the western spectacle or by imitating atom bomb…I want you to go away with the thought that Asia has to conquer the west through love and truth.

US Policy

Nehru had often been to Europe before Independence. His first trip to United States took place two years after he had assumed office as PM. The US had not loomed large in his political Imagination.

His Glimpses of World History, for example ,devotes far less space to it than to China or Russia. And what he says is not always complimentary. The Capitalism of the American kind had led to slavery, gangsterism and massive extremes of wealth and poverty. Inspire of prominent wealthy people present in New York, still New York was known as Hunger Town.

Addressing Congress, Nehru spoke respectfully of the founders of America, but then counterposed to them a great man from his own country. This was Gandhi, whose message of peace and truth had inspired independent India’s Foreign policy. The Mahatma, however, was too great for the circumscribed borders of any one country, and the message he gave may help us in considering the wider problems of the world. For what the world most lacked, said Nehru, was understanding and appreciation of each other among nations and people’s.

At Columbian University Nehru deplored the desire to marshal the world into two hostile camps. India would align with neither, but pursue an independent approach to each controversial or disputed issue. In his view, the main cause of war was the persistence of racialism and colonialism. Peace and freedom could be secured only if the domination of one country or one race over other was finally brought to an end.

However, US, to a great extent had the popular mistrust of India. The mistrust deepened after 1953, when the Republican found themselves back in power after twenty years out of it. William F Knowland, the Republican leader in Senate , undertook six week world tour. After his Return he told that Nehru did not represent all nations or people of Asia. Neither for republic of korea, nor for free China or Thailand etc. The only country he might speak with some authority is India itself, Indonesia which is also neutralist in outlook and perhaps Burma.

The secretary of state John Foster Dulles too shared such views with Knowland. Dulles and Nehru disliked each other from start. The American claimed that the concept of neutrality is obsolete, immoral and short-sighted . Those who professed it were, in effect, crypto-communists. Nehru, naturally, did not take kindly to these interpretation.

The final blow to relationship took place when it suggested Portugal, a trusted US ally – could keep its Colony of Goa as long as it chose to. However, the wrecking of Indo-US relations was the military Pact he signed wiTh Pakistan in Feb 1954.

UK and India and US

 

Almost from time of independence, the United Kingdom had seen Pakistan as a potential ally in the cold War, a strong bastion against Communism. By contrast, India was seen as being soft on the Soviet. Winston Churchill himself was much impressed by the argument that Pakistan could be made to stand firm on Russia’s eastern flank, much as that reliable western client, Tukrey, stood firm on the west.

The brilliant young Harvard professor Henry Kissinger endorsed this idea – in his view, the defense of Afganistan (from the Soviet) depends on the strength of Pakistan.

American military aid to Pakistan ran to about $80 million a year. The US also encouraged the Pakistanis to join the anti-soviet military block in Asia known as CENTO and SEATO 

 

In the ongoing conflict of the Cold War – as in Korea and Indo-China , India was seen as being too neutral by far.

Nehru’s vigorous canvassing of the recognition of the people’s Republic of China, and his insistence that it be given the permanent seat in the UN Security Council then occupied by Taiwan , was also not taken to kindly by Washington. There were an increasing number of American who felt that Nehru had entered the arena of world politics as a champion challenging American wisdom.

India and the United States did seem to have much in common – the democratic way of life , a commitment to cultural pluralism and a nationalistic origin myth that stressed struggle against the British oppressor. But on the question of international politics they resolutely differed. America thought India soft on Communism; India thought America soft on colonialism.

Nehru had tried hard to avoid taking sides in the cold War. For him non-alignment was not mere  evasion, but it has a positive charge to it. A third block might come to act as a salutary moderating effect on the hubris of the superpowers.

Nehru has already held Asian Relations Conference in 1947. Another such effort, in which Nehru played a prominent role was the Afro-Asian Conference, held in Indonesian city of Bandung in 1955.

Only countries that had independent government were invited to Bandung. Twenty-nine sent delegations, including India and China. Four African nations were represented (others still lay under the colonial yoke); but delegates from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria all came. The meeting discussed methods of Cultural and Economic cooperation, and committed itself firmly to end of colonial rule.

Nehru considered the Bandung Conference ‘a great achievement’ ; it proclaimed the political emergence in the world affairs of over half the world’s population. But it represented no unfriendly challenge or hostility to anyone. As he told the Indian Parliament on his return, historic links between Asia and African countries had been sundered by colonialism; now, as freedom dawned , they could be revived and reaffirmed.

In July of that year Hamal Abdul Nasser nationalized the company that managed the Suez canal. Britain whose strategic interest were treated by the action, reacted by asking for international control over the canal.

In October, the British, in collusion with the French and the Israelis, undertook a military invasion of Egypt. This act of neocolonial aggression drew worldwide condemnation. Finally, under American pressure, the Anglo-French alliance was forced to withdraw.

Close on the heels of the invasion of Egypt, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest. This followed a popular revolt which had overthrown the Soviet client regime in favour of a more representative government. Moscow reacted in brutal fashion to restore the status quo ante. Their action, like that of British in middle East, was viewed as unacceptable infringement of national sovereignty.

India saw the invasions of Egypt and Hungary, as wholly comparable.

Nehru had criticised Anglo-French intervention as soon as it happened. But now, when the United Nations met to discuss a resolution calling upon Soviet Union to withdraw all of its forces from Hungarian territory, India representated by VK Krishna Menon, abstained. This caused great resentment in the western world, and exposed the Indian government to the charge of keeping double standards.

China issue

The two great Civilization have long been linked by ties of trade and culture. The congress and Nehru, had a particular regard for the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek, who had urged the Americans to in turn urge the British to grant the Indians independence.

In 1950, the Kuomintang were overthrown by the communists. To indicate continuity, India retained their serving ambassador to Beijing, who was the historian KM Pannikar.

In October 1950, not long after Mao met Pannikar, China invaded and annexed Tibet. They had long claimed suzerainty over that country, and in the past had often exercised control over it. But there had also been periods when Tibet was genuinely independent, as in the four decades before the communists invasion.

Nehru was placed in an unenviable position. India had close relations with Tibet, economic as well as Cultural. But a newly free and still vulnerable India could scarcely go to war on Tibet’s behalf.

Nehru was critical of the action but thought not overdo criticism of a neighbouring country that was also emerging from the shadows of European domination.

While other leaders urged a stronger line. For instance,Vallabhbhai Patel was convinced that the Chinese had made a dupe out of Pannikar. They had lulled him into a false sense of confidence which led the ambassador to overlook completely the plans for the invasion. But now that the deed was done, it behoved India to be vigilant. Patel wrote to PM saying that China is no longer divided. It is united and strong. Recent and bitter history also tells us that Communism is no shield against imperialism and that the communists are as good as bad imperialist as any other.

Patel urged Nehru to be alive to the new danger from China, and to make India defensively strong. He thought that in view of the rebuff over Tibet, India should no longer advocate China’s case for entery into UN. Finally, he argued that the latest developments should prompt a fresh reconsideration of our relationship with China, Russia, America, Britain and Burma. Patel seemed here to be hinting that India should reconsider its policy of non-alignment in favour of an alliance with the west.

Nehru replied to Patel, it is a pity that Tibet could not be saved . Yet he considers it ‘exceedingly unlikely’ that India would now face an attack from China. He thought that the idea that Communism inevitable means an expansions towards India, is rather naive’. Regardless of the happenings in Tibet, India should still seek some kind of understanding with Beijing, for India and China at peace with each other would make a vast difference to the whole set-up and balance of the world.

India and China shared vast border. On India’s west, the border ran along the Buddhist dominated district of Laddakh in J&K state, which touched Chinese provinces of Tibet and Sinkiang. On the east, the border was defined by the McMohon Line, drawn on the crest of the Himalaya, as a result of a treaty signed by the British and Tibet in 1914. In the middle, the two countries touched each other near the watershed of the river Ganga, which divided Tibet from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (Uttarakhand).

The border in the centre was relatively uncontentious, whereas in the two extremes the situation was more problematic. The Chinese regarded the McMahon line in part as an imperialist imposition. For the moment they let the matter pass, and focused on getting India’s goodwill, necessary at this time as a bridge to the western world. In the summer of 1952 a government delegation led by Mrs Vijayalakshmi Pandit visited Beijing.

In the mean time, The United States began to tilt towards Pakistan, giving New Delhi one more reason to befriend Beijing. In a wide-ranging agreement signed in April 1954, India officially recognized Tibet as being part of China. The joint declaration outlined five principles of peaceful coexistence (Panch sheel), which included mutual non-aggression and mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity.

In public India and China expressed undying unfriendly friendship, but on the ground each was working to protect its strategic interests. India was more concerned with eastern sector; China with the western one.

The British had drawn the McMahon Line to protect the prosperous tea estate of province of Assam from the putative raid down Himalaya. There was an Inner Line at the foot of the hills, beyond which no one could venture without a permit. Between this and the border lay some 50,000 square miles of densely forested territory, inhabited by many self-contained and self-administered tribes, each too small to form a separate state, each too remote to be subservient to any existing one. Some of the tribes were Buddhist, and there was also an old Buddhist monastery at Tawang. This paid tribute to Tibetan authorities and was ecclesiastical subjects to Lhasa.

Under the treaty of 1914, the British persuaded the Tibetans to relinquish control over Tawang. For, as one colonial official argued, it was necessary to get this ‘undoubtedly Tibetans territory’ into British India, as otherwise Tibet and Assam will adjoin each other and, if Tibet should again come under Chinese control, it will be a dangerous position for us.

Other tribes living between the inner and Outer lines were beyond Tibetan influences. These like the Buddhist, became by default in Aug 1947, when the new government inherited the borders bequeathed it by the British.

In 1951, a small force accompanied by a political officer visited Tawang, and instructed the Lamas that they need no longer pay tribute to Lhasa. Officials also began to fan out into what was now called the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA). An Indian Frontier Administrative Service (IFAS) was formed, whose recruits were coached to deal with truculent tribes by British born anthropologist Varrier Elwin, who was now an Indian citizens and a confidant of Nehru.

The Chinese for their part focused on expanding their footprint in the western sector. The adjoining Indian territory was Ladakh , Buddhist in its religious colouring. However, it had been an independent state as early as the Tenth century. And for the past 150 years iT had been part of the principality of Kashmir, whose own allegiances were all to the Indian side of border.

Between north-east Ladakh and Sinkiang, on the Chinese side, lay an elevated table-land named Aksai-Chin, absolutely bare for the most part, occasional patches of scant herbage. In the past, Ladaki pastoralists had used Aksai Chin for grazing  and salt collection. By an agreement of 1842, this area was identified as being part of kashmir. This was confirmed by the British, who were worried that the Russians, their adversary in the Great Game, might use the plateau to advance heavy artillery into British India.

That didn’t happen, but after 1950 the Chinese saw in the same flat terrain a route to their troublesome province of Tibet from the Sinkiang town of Yarkand. Peking sent surveyors to scout the land, and in 1956 began building a road across Aksai Chin. By October 1957 the road was ready, equipped to carry 10-ton military trucks with arms and personnel from Yarkand to Lhasa.

Indo-Pak relation in the backdrop of Indus water

 

The two country India and Pakistan has every prospect of brotherly relationship and friendship. Every possible kind of tie exists between them ; the tie of race, the ties of language, of geography, econ and culture. Yet their relation were positioned from start.

After partition, the government of East and West Punjab signed a Standstill Agreement whereby water continued to flow uninterrupted. When this lapsed in April 1948, India stopped the waters of the Ravi and Satluj from flowing west. They claimed that no fresh agreement had been signed, but it was widely believed that the action was revenge for the Pakistan-backed invasion of kashmir. Anyhow, the drying up of their canals created panic among the farmers of West Punjab. Within a month a new agreement was signed, and water supply restored. However, the building of the Bhakra-Nangal dam, on the Indian side of the Sutlej river, prompted fresh protests by Pakistan.

Both sides now sought a more permanent solution to the problem. Pakistan asked for the matter to be referred to international arbitration, which India at first refused. The World Bank stepped in to play the role of peacemaker. Knowing the recalcitrance of both sides, the Bank offered a surgical solution-the waters of three western flowing rivers (Chenab, Jhelum and Indus) would go to Pakistan, the waters of other three Eastern flowing rivers (Satluj, Beas and Ravi) to India. This proposal was tabled in February 1954; it took another six years for the two sides to finally sign it.

With the Indus, as with Kashmir or any other topic under the sub-contintental sun, agreement was made more difficult by domestic politics. An Indian or Pakistani head of government who promoted dialogue was inevitably accused of selling out to the other side. An early example of this was inevitably accused of selling out to the other side.

An early example of this was the trade war of 1949-51, prompted by the devaluation of the Indian rupee. Pakistan stopped the shipment of jute in protest; India retaliated by refusing to supply coal. The conflict was resolved only when, in Feb 1951, Nehru agreed to recognize the par value of the Pakistani rupee. His decision was welcomed by the chambers of commerce, but bitterly opposed by politicians of all stripes. The general consensus in New Delhi was that ‘India had been completely defeated.

Liberation of Goa and French

Indian foreign Policy was opposed to the continuance of colonial rule anywhere. When British left India in 1947, the Portuguese stayed on in Goa and their other possessions in India while the French remained in control of port of Pondicherry as well as the eastern enclave of Chandernagore.

In June 1949, the population of Chandernagore voted by overwhelming majority to merge with India. The election had witnessed a resounding display of patriotism, with posters representing a mother in India dress reaching out to reclaim a child  clad in Western apparel. A year later territory was transferred. But french hung to three slices of south India. In the spring of 1954 the situation became increasingly tense; there was a vigorous pro-merger movement afoot in Pondicherry, and daily demonstrations in front of French consulate in Madras. On 1 November the French finally handed over their territories, which the Indians celebrated with a spectacular display of fireworks.

As the transfer of Pondicherry was being finalized, the Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar spoke on national radio of their Indian colonies as belonging to the Portuguese Nation by injunction of History and force of law. Goa constitutes a Portuguese community in India. He insisted, Goa represents a light of the west in the land of orient. It had to be retained , so that it might continue to be the memorial of Portugal discoveries and a small hearth of the WEst in the east.

A Goa Congress committee had been in operation since well before Independence; its activities included resident Goans as well as exiles in Bombay. They argued that the conditions in Goa were far worse than in British India., Racial prejudice was rife and human rights wholly absent. In 1946 the left-wing Congress politician Ram manohar Lohia visited the territory and exhorted the people to rise against the rulers. A wave of strike and protest  followed.

Apart from Goa, the Portuguese also held several smaller territories up the konkan coast. One was Daman, which had a garrison of 1500 African soldiers from Portuguese East Africa. This abutted that Indian province of Bombay, which after Independence had imposed Prohibition.

For Jawaharlal Nehru, foreign policy of making India’s presence felt in the world. After Independence he Personally supervised the creation of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), transferring to its cadre able officials of the ICS and making fresh election from young.  A lob in the IFS had a Nealy unique combination of idealism and glamour.

Through its leadership, a country without material, men or money – the three means of power’ – was now fast coming to be recognized as the biggest moral power in the civilized world.
Nehru had done for India’s international standing. Non-alignment seemed to them to be a creative application of Gandhian principle in world affairs.

Redrawing the Map

India , a land of many languages, each with its distinct script, grammar, vocabulary and literary traditions. As early as 1917 the party had committed itself to the creation of linguistic provinces in a free India. A separate Andhra circle was formed in that year, a separate Sindh circle the following year. After the Nagpur Congress of 1920 the principle was extended and formalized with the creation of Provincial Congress Committee (PCC) by linguistic zones:- the Orissa PCC, Maharashtra PCC, Karnataka PCC etc. Notably these didn’t follow, and were often at odds with, the Administrative division of British India.

The linguistic reorganization of the Congress was encouraged and supported by Mahatma Gandhi. When Independence finally came Gandhi thought that the states of the new nation should be defined on the basis of language.

Jawaharlal Nehru was also appreciative of the linguistic diversity of India. In his essay of 1937, he envisaged how ancient language is a rich inheritance spoken by million and masses can only grow culturally and educationally through the medium of theiR own language.
however, by 1946 he was having other thoughts.
The country had just been divided on the basis of religion, would not dividing it further on the basis of language merely encourage the break up of the Union?

Why not keep intact the existing administrative units such as Madras, which had within it communities of Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Urdu and konkani speakers, and Bombay, whose people spoke Marathi, Gujarati, Urdu, Sindhi, Gandhi and other tongues?

Would not such multilingual and multicultural states provide an exemplary training in harmonious living?

In any case, should not the new nation unite on the secular ideas of peace , stability and economic development, rather than revive primordial identities of caste and language?

If India lives, all parts of India also live and prosper. If India is enfeebled, all her component elements bgrow week.

Thus according to Nehru, the creation of linguistic provinces, then had to be deferred until such time as India was strong and sure of herself.

Nehru’s reluctance to superimpose division of language on the recent division by religion had the support of both Vallabhbhai Patel and C. Rajagopalachari. The latter insisted that further fissiparous forces had to be checked forthwith. Under Patel directive, the assembly appointed a committee of jurists and civil servants to report on the question. This recognized the force of popular sentiment – the strong appeal that the demand for linguistic sentiments made on many of our countrymen – but concluded that in the prevailing unsettled conditions ‘the first and the last need of India at the present moment is that it should be made a nation. Everything which helps in growth of nationalism has to go forward and everything which throws obstacles in its way has to be rejected.
We have applied this test to linguistic province also, and judged by this test, in our opinion they can’t be supported.

This verdict caused dismay among large section of assembly. For most Congress members who spoke Marathi insisted on a separate Maharashtra state. Party members who claimed Gujarati as a mother tongue likewise wanted a province of their own. Similar were the aspirations of Congress members who spoke Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam or Oriya.

To calm the clamour, a fresh committee was appointed. Both Nehru and Patel served on it; the third member was the party historian and former Congress President, Pattabhi Sitaramayya.

This committee was known as the JVP committee. It argued that language was not only a binding force but also a separating one. Now, when the primary consideration must be the security, unity and economic prosperity of India. Every separative and disruptive tendency should be rigorously discouraged.

According to Robert King, JVP committee report was a cold water therapy. It slowed things for a while but fire soon started again.
In 1948 and 1949 there was a renewal of movement aimed at linguistic autonomy. There was the campaign for Sanyukta (Greater)karnataka, aiming to unite Kannad speakers spread across the states of Madras, Mysore, Bombay and Hyderabad. Complementing this was the struggle for Sanyukta Maharashtra, which sought to bring together Marathi speakers in a single political unit. The Malayalis wanted a state of their own, based on the merger of the princely states of Cochin and Travancore with Malabar. There was also a Maha gujarat movement.

In a class of its own was the struggle for a Sikh state in the Punjab. This brought together claims of language as well as religion. The Sikhs had been perhaps the main sufferers of Partition. They had lost their most productive lands to Pakistan. Now, in what remained of India, they had to share space and influence with the Hindus.

The division by religion didn’t perfectly map division by language. Where all Sikhs had Punjabi as their first language, so did many Hindus. However, the Hindus were prone to view Punjabi as merely a local  dialect of Hindi, whereas the Sikhs insisted it was not just a language in its own right, but also a holy one. The Sikhs wrote and read Punjabi in the Gurumukhi script, whose alphabet they believed to have come from the mouth of Guru.

Since the 1920s the interests of the politically conscious Sikhs had been presented by Akali Dal. This was both a religious body and a political party. It controlled the Sikh shrines, or gurudwara, but also contested elections. The long-time leader of the Akali Dal was a man named Master Tara Singh.

Before 1947 Tara Singh insisted that the Sikh panth was in danger from the Muslims and the Muslim league. After 1947 he said it was in danger from the Hindus and the Congress. His rhetoric became more robust in the run-up to the general election of 1951-52.  He had support among the Sikh peasantry, particularly among the upper-caste jats. Tara Singh’s use of the term independence was deliberately ambiguous. The Jat peasants wanted a Sikh province within India, not a sovereign nation.

Andhra movement

Telugu was spoken by more people in India than any other language besides Hindi. It had a rich literary history, and was associated with such symbols of Andhra glory as the Vijayanagar Empire. While India was still under British rule, the Andhra Mahasabha had worked hard to cultivate a sense of identity among the Telugu-speaking peoples of Madras Presidency whom, they argued, had been discriminated against by the Tamils.

In 1951 a Congress-politician turned Swami named Sitaram went on hunger strike in support. After five weeks the fast was given up, in response to an appeal by the respected Gandhian leader Vinoba Bhave.
During his campaign tour in the Telugu-speaking districts, Jawaharlal Nehru was met at several places by protesters waving black flags and shouting, ‘we want Andhra’.
Of the 145 seats from the region in the Madras Legislative, the party won a mere 43. The bulk of the other were won by parties supporting the Andhra movement.

The election results encouraged the revival of the Andhra movement. Towards the end of February 1952 Swami Sitaram began a march through the Telugu-speaking districts, drumming up support for the struggle. He said the creation of the state ‘could not wait any longer’. Andhras were ready to pay the price to achieve the same’. The Swami urged all Telugu-speaking members of the Madras Assembly to boycott its proceedings till such time as the state of their dreams had been carved out.

On 19 October 1952 a man named Potti Sriramulu began a fast-unto-death in Madras. He had the blessings of Swami Sitaram, and of thousands of other Telugu-speakers besides.

On 15 December, fifty-eight days into his fast, Poti Sriramulu died. Now all hell broke loose. The news of the passing away of Sriramulu engulfed entire Andhra in Chaos. Government offices were attacked ; trains were halted and defaced. The damage to state property ran into millions of rupee. Several protesters were killed in police firings.
Two days after Sriramulu death, he made a statement saying that a state of Andhra would come into being.

As Nehru had feared , the creation of Andhra led to the intensification of similar demands by other linguistic groups. Somewhat against its will, the government of India appointed a States Reorganization Commission (SRC) to make recommendations in regard to the broad principles which should govern the solution of this linguistic problem.

The members of the State Reorganization Commission were a jurist, S.Fazl Ali, a historian and a civil servant, KM Pannikar and a social worker H.N.Kunzru. Notably, none had any formal ties with Congress. After eighteen months of intensive work, the trio submitted their report in October 1955. The report first carefully outlined the arguments for and against linguistic states. It urged a balanced approach which recognized linguistic homogeneity as an important factor conducive to administrative convenience and efficiency yet not as an exclusive and binding principle, over-riding all other considerations were, of course the unity and security of India as a whole.

With respect to the southern states, it seemed easy enough to redistribute areas according to the major language zones:- Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. Districts and Taluka (sub-district) were reallocated with regard to which linguistic group was in a majority. Four compact states would replace the melange of territories deriving from the British period.

With regard to north India, the SRC likewise sought to divide the huge Hindi-speaking belt into four states:- Bihar , Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. In the east , the existing provinces would stay as they were, with minor adjustments. The commission rejected the demand for tribal states to be carved out of Bihar and Assam.

The SRC did not agree to the creation of a Sikh State. And it refused to allocate Madras city to Andhra. However, its most contentious recommendations was not to permit the creation of united Maharashtra. As a stop, the Commission proposed a separate a separate state of Vidarbha, comprising the Marathi-speaking districts of the interior. But Bombay state would stay as it was , a bilingual province of Gujarati and Marathi speakers. They respected the argument of Sanyukta Maharashtra but they could not lightly brush aside the fears of the other communities.

Analysis of reorganization states on linguistic line

The movement for linguistic states revealed an extraordinary depth of popular feeling. For Kannadigas and for Andhras, for Oriya as for Maharashtra, language proved a more powerful marker of identity than caste and religion.

One sign of this was official patronage of the arts. Thus, great effort, and cash, went into funding books, plays and films written or performed in the official language of states.

Another manifestation was architecture. To build a new capital, or at least a new legislative assembly, became a tool reflect the culture and aura of state. For instance, the architecture were told to represent Orissan culture and workmanship while designing plan for government building.

Initially, the movement for linguistic states generated deep apprehension among nationalist elites. They feared it would lead to the Balkanization of the India, to the creation of many more Pakistan.

In retrospect, however, linguistic reorganization seems rather to have consolidated the unity of India. Though there have been series of conflict between states on the sharing of river waters. However, on the whole the creation states has acted as a largely constructive channel for provincial pride.

Thus, these regional states on linguistic line redefine what it means to be Indian. Potti Sriramulu, a forgotten man today, but had more than minor impact on the history, as well as geography, of his country. If Jawaharlal Nehru was the maker of Modern India, then perhaps Potti Sriramulu should be named its Mercator.

 Economic and Social changes of Modern India

Mahatma Gandhi liked to say that India lives in her villages. At independence, this was overwhelmingly a country of cultivators and labourers. Nearly three-quarters of the workforce was in agriculture, a sector which also contributed close to 60% of India’s gross domestic product. There was a small but growing industrial sector, which accounted for about 12 percent of the workforce, and 25% percent of GDP.

Beyond 1881 and 1941 the population of British India rose from 257 to 389 million. But the per capita availability of food grains declined from an already low level of 200 kilograms per person per year to a mere 150.

After the formation of National Congress in 1885, it has been critical of British exploitation of peasants. For Congress, agrarian reforms would be their top agenda for which three programmes seemed critical…
1) The first was the abolition of land revenue.
2)The second was the massive expansion of irrigation, both to augument productivity and reduce dependency on the monsoon.
3). The third was the reform of the system of land tenure. Particularly in North and east India, the British had encouraged a system of absentee landlordism.

But nationalists also recognized, agrarian reform had to be accompanied by a spurt in Industrial growth. The nation needed more factories to absorb the surplus of underemployed labourers in the countryside.

In colonial times there had existed a sharp divide between factories owned by British firms and those owned by Indians. Jute, for instance, was largely in the hands of the foreigner; cotton textile in the hand of the natives. The Raj was frequently accused of deliberately discouraging Indian enterprise, and of distorting the tariff and trade structure to favour British firms. While some Indian capitalists were studiously apolitical, others had been vigorous supporters of the Congress. They naturally hoped that when freedom came, the biases would be reversed, placing foreign capitalists at a disadvantage.

If India had to industrialised, which model should it follow? To the leaders of the national movement, imperialism and capitalism were both dirty words.

Some nationalists were admirer of the Soviet Union, and of the extraordinary use they have made of modern scientific knowledge in solving problem of poverty and want in such a short time.

Another much admired model was of Japan. Lala Lajpat Rai in his visit to the country during first world war had witnessed and appreciated the marvelled transformation it had undergone, moving from (agrarian) to (industrial) Civilization in a mere fifty years. Japan, he found, had build its factories and banks by schooling its workers and keeping out foreign competition.

In 1938 the Congress set up a National Planning Committee (NPC) , charged with prescribing a policy for Economic development in a soon to be free India. Chaired by Jawaharlal Nehru, the committee had some thirty members in all – these divided almost equally between the worlds of science, industry, and politics. Sub-committee were allocated specific subjects: such as agriculture, industry, power and fuel, finance, social services and even women’s role in planned economy. The NPC outlined national self-sufficiency and the doubling of living standards in ten years as the main goals.

From Japan and Russia the NPC took the lesson that countries that industrialized late had to depend crucially on state intervention. This applied with even more force to India, whose economy had been distorted by two centuries of colonial rule. As one NPC report put it, planned development upheld the principle if service before profit.There were large areas of economy where the private sector could not be trusted , where the aims of planning could be realised only if the matter is handled as a collective Public Enterprise.

In 1944 a group of leading industrialists issued what they called A Plan of Economic Development for India (more commonly known as Bombay Plan). This conceded that the existing economic organisation, based on private enterprises and ownership, has failed to bring about a satisfactory distribution of the national income.But the state was necessary for augmenting production too. Energy, infrastructure and transport were sectors where Indian capitalists themselves felt the need for government monopoly.

Now largely forgotten, the Bombay Plan gives the lie to the claim that Jawaharlal Nehru imposed a model of centralized development on an unwilling capitalist class.

The spirit was all in favour of centralized planning, of the state occupying what was called the commanding height of the economy. Thus the Constitution of India directed the government to ensure that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good; and that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common predicament.

In the summer of 1951 the Planning Commission issued a draft of the first five-year plan. This focused on agriculture, the sector hardest hit by Partition. Besides increasing food production, the other major emphases of the plan were on the development of transport and communications, and the provision of social services. Introducing the proposals in Parliament, Jawaharlal Nehru praised the plan as the first of its kind to bring the whole of India- agricultural, social and economic-into one framework of thinking.

Its outcome was being questioned from both right and left after the first general election. True, food – grain production increased substantially, but output in other sector failed to reach their targets.

Nehru objective to industrialise India, as soon as possible got priority in second five year plan. Its drafting was the handiwork of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, a Cambridge-trained physicist and statistician who was steeped in Sanskrit philosophy and Bengali literature – in sum, an awesome polyglot, the kind of man for whom Nehru was guaranteed to fall.

In Feb 1949, Mahalanobis was appointed honorary statistical adviser to the Union cabinet. The next year he helped establish the National Sample Survey (NSS) and the year following, the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) . These were set up to collect reliable data on changing living standards in India- on wages, employment, consumption and the like. The NSS and the CSO are two reasons why India has a set of official statistics more reliable than those found anywhere else in non-Western world.

In a long paper presented to the Planning Commission in March 1954. Here Mahalanobis outlined eight objective for the second five year plan.

1. The first of these was to attain a rapid growth of the national economy by increasing the scope and importance of the public sector and in this way to advance to a socialist pattern of society.
2. The second, to develop basic heavy industries for the manufacturer of producer goods to strengthen the foundation of economic independence.
3. Other objective included the production of consumer goods by both the factory and household sector, the increasing of agricultural productivity and the provision of better housing, health and education facilities.

The emphasis on capital goods was justified in two principal ways. The first was that it would safeguard this former colony’s economic, and hence political problems of unemployment. Unemployment is chronic because of unavailability of capital goods, argued Mahalanobis. It occurs only when means of production become idle.

This model, an evocation of the old nationalist model of swadeshi, or self-reliance. Once, Gandhian protesters had burnt foreign cloth to encourage the growth of indigenous textiles; now, Nehruvian technocrats would make their own steel and machine tools rather than buy them from outside.

A government resolution of 1956 classified new industries into three categories. Class 1 would be the exclusive responsibility of the state ; these included atomic energy, defence-related industries, aircraft, iron and steel , electricity generation and transmission, heavy electricals, telephones, and chala and other key minerals.

Class II would witness both public and private sector participation; here fell the lesser minerals, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, pulp and paper and road transport.

Class III consisted of all the remaining industries, to be undertaken ordinarily through the initiative and enterprise of the private sector.

In the economic modernization of India, large dams occupied a rather special place. They would on the one hand  emancipate agriculture from the tyranny of the monsoon and on the other hand provide the electric power to run the new industries mandated by the electric power to run the new industries mandated by the five year plans. Jawaharlal Nehru was enchanted by dams, which he called the temples of modern India.

In a push to indistrialize India, a key role had to be played by technology and technologists. Since his days as a Cambridge, Jawaharlal Nehru had been fascinated by modern science. Science isthe spirit of the age and dominating factor of the modern World. Nehru wished that what he called the scientific temper should inform all spheres of human activity, including politics.

Homi Bhabha founded and directed two major scientific institutions. The first was Tata Institute of Fundamental research in Bombay whose work, was mostly based on basic research. The second was Atomic Energy Commission, mandated to build and run India’s nuclear power plants.

Many new engineering schools were also started. These included the flagship Indian institute of Technology (IITs). Nehru and Bhabha were determined to lessen India’s dependence on the west for scientific materials and know-how.

Among many dissenter of 2nd five year plan, Milton Friedman too was one. He wrote out his memorandum setting out his objections to Mahalanobis model. He thought it too mathematical: obsessed by capital-output ratios, rather than by the development of human capital. He deplored the emphasis in Industrial policy on the two extremes- large factories that used too little labour and cottage Industries that used too much. As he saw it, the basic requisite of Economic policy in a developing countries were a steady and moderately expansionary monetary framework, greatly widened opportunities for education and training, improved facilities for transportation and communication to promote the mobility not only of goods but even more important of people, and an environment that gives maximum scope to the initiatives and energy of farmers, businessmen, and traders.

While some other describe it has low fund for education. The Constitutional Imperative for free and compulsory schooling for children upto the age of 14 yrs would not be viable.

Gandhian people argued that small irrigation systems were more efficious than large dam; ; that organic manure was a cheap and sustainable method of argument soil fertility. The forests were should managed from the point of view of water conservation rather than revenue maximization.

On modern technology The Gandhi and had deep reservations about were large dams. They thought them costly and destructive of nature. But, as Indians were soon finding out, dams were destructive of human community as well.

The free market critique; the human capital critique; the ecological critique – these make for fascinating reading today. But at the time these notes of dissent were scattered, and they were politically weak. There was then an overwhelming consensus in favour of a heavy industry- oriented, state-supported model of development.

 Personal law and Hindu Code bill

Secularism was an idea that underlay the very foundations of free India. The Indian National movement refused to define itself in religious terms. Gandhi insisted that the multiple faiths of India can and must co-exist peaceably in a free Nation.

In colonial times, the whole of India had come under a come penal code, drafted in the 1830s by the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. But there was no attempt to replace the personal laws of various sects and religions with a common Civil Code.

Article 44 of the Constitution of India reads, The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a Uniform Civil Code throughout the territory of India.

It provoked sentiments of both Hindu and Muslims. One member of Constituent assembly pointed out that as far as the Musalman are concerned, their laws of Accession, inheritance, marriage and divorce are completely dependent upon their religion. A second felt that the power that the power that has been given to the state to make the civil code uniform is in advance of the time. A third believed that the clause contravened another clause in the Constitution: the freedom to propagate and practice one’s religion.

BR Ambedkar refuted and said, if personal laws are to be saved..in social matter we will come to a Standstill.

In 1948 the Constituent Assembly formed a Select Committee to review the draft of a new Hindu Code. It was chaired by BR Ambedkar, the law minister. The code drafted by the Rau Committee was revised by Ambedkar himself, and then subjected to several close readings of the select committee.

Despite its name , the Hindu Code Bill was to apply to Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains as well as Hindu castes and sects. Introducing the new bill, Ambedkar told the Assembly its main aim was to codify the rules of Hindu Law which are scattered in innumerable decisions of the Hindu Courts and of the Privy Council, and which form a bewildering motley to the common man and give rise to constant litigation.

The codification had a dual purpose : first to elevate the rights and status of Hindu women ; second, to do away with the disparity and divisions of caste.

Notable features were following

1. The awarding, to the widow and daughter, of the same share as the sons in the property of a man dying intestate (which in the past had passed only to his male heirs). Likewise, a Hindu woman’s estate, previously limited, was now made absolute, to be disposed of as she wished.
2. The granting of maintenance to the wife who chose to live separately from the husband if he had a loathsome disease, was cruel to her , took a concubine etc.
3. Abolition of the rules of caste and sub-caste in sanctifying a marriage. All marriages between Hindus would have the same sacramental as well as legal status, regardless of the castes to which the spouses belonged . An inter-state marriage could now be solemnized in accordance with the customs and rites of either party.
4. Allowing either partner to file for and obtain divorce on certain grounds, such as cruelty, infidelity, incurable disease, etc.
5. Making monogamy mandatory.
6. Allowing for the adoption of children belonging  to a different caste.

These changes went very far in the direction of Gender equity. Later feminists argue that such reforms donot go far as agricultural properties from their provisions, for example, or that the advantages conferred on female heirs by the new laws were greater in the case of self acquired property as compared to property that was inherited.

Original Hindu bill was now broken up into several parts. There were separate bills dealing with Hindu marriage and divorce, Hindu minority and guardianship, Hindu succession, and Hindu adaptation and maintenance. These component parts retained the rationale and driving force of the original unified proposal. The main thrust was to make caste irrelevant to Hindus with regard to marriage and adaptation, to outlaw polygamy, to allow divorce and dissolution of marriage on certain specified grounds and to greatly increase a woman’s share of her husband’s and her father’s property.

After a bruising battle extending over nearly ten years, BR Ambedkar Hindu Code Bill was passed into law; not as he had hoped , in one fell swop, but in several installments; the hindu Marriage Act of 1955 and the Hindu Succession , Minority and Guardianship, and Adaptations and Maintenance Act of 1956.

While for Orthodox Hindu, changes were radical. They constituted radical departures from the main body of Hindu law, where the son had a much larger claim on his father’s property as compared to the wife and daughter, where marriage was considered a Sacrament and hence indissoluble, where the man was allowed to take more than one wife , and where marriage was governed strictly by the rules of caste.

 Securing Kashmir

In Feb 1950, the UN Security Council asked both countries to withdraw their armies from the State. India asked for Pakistan to take their troops out first while Pakistan demanded that National Conference government be removed from office.

The Indian Constitution, which came into effect in Jan 1950, treated Kashmir as part of the Indian Union. However, it guaranteed the state a certain autonomy; thus Article 370 specified that the president would consult the state government with regard to subjects other than defence, foreign affairs and communication.

Lionel Fielden, a British Broadcaster, summarized the respective point of view :- In clinging to Kashmir , India wants to weaken partition; in claiming it, Pakistan wants to make Partition safe. On the  issue of Kashmir both sides were absolutely rigid. Thus, to fight to the last ditch for kashmir, is slogan of all Pakistanis; not to give way on it is rapidly becoming the fixed idea in India.

In October 1951 elections were held to the Kashmir Constituent Assembly. All seventy-five seats were won by Abdullah National Conference.

Sheikh Abdullah opening speech in the Constituent Assembly ran for a full ninety minutes. Sheikh discussed one by one, the options before the people of Kashmir.

1. First was to join Pakistan, and that landlord ridden and feudal theocracy.
2. The second was to join India, with whom the state had a kinship of ideals and whose government had never tried to interfere in our internal autonomy. Though certain tendencies have been asserting in India which are bent on converting it into a religious State wherein the interests of Muslims will be jeopardized. On the other hand, the continued accession of Kashmir to India would promote harmony between Hindu and Muslim.
3. Finally, to the alternative of making ourselves an Eastern Switzerland, of keeping aloof from both sides, but having friendly relationship with them. But since it would be a landlocked country, safeguarding its sovereignty would be difficult. Since Kashmir had been once independent country but destroyed by tribal invasion. What was guarantee that a sovereign Kashmir may not be the Victim of similar aggression.

Thus, Sheikh rejected the option of independence as impractical, and the option of joining Pakistan as immoral. They would join India but on its own terms of their own choosing. Among these terms were the retention of the state flag and the designation of the head of government as prime minister.

While Praja Parishad, formed in 1949 to represent the interest of Jammu Hindus, wanted the complete integration of kashmir into India. They had adopted a slogan : Ek Vidhan, Ek Pradhan, Ek Nisham.

Due to continual protest within Kashmir and outside Kashmir by Hindus, brought scepticism in Abdullah mind. The sheikh change of mind coincided with Visit of the veteran British journalist Ian Stephens, who had been editor of calcutta Statesman during the troubles of 1946-7, was known to be a strong supporter of Pakistan. He thought that the kashmir valley with its minority Muslim population, properly belonged to that country.

Once Abdullah had been Nehru’s man in Kashmir. By the summer of 1952, however, it was more that Nehru was Abdullah’s man in India. The sheikh had made it known that, in his view, only the prime minister stood between India and the ultimate victory of Hindu communalism.

In July the sheikh met Nehru in Delhi and also with other ministers. They came out with what is called as the Delhi Agreement, whereby Kashmiri would become full citizens of India in exchange for an autonomy far greater than that enjoyed by other states of Union. Thus the new state flag (devised by the National Conference) would for historical and other reasons be flown alongside the national flag. Delhi could not send in forces to quell internal disturbances without the consent of srinagar. Where with regard to other states residuary powers rested with the centre, in the case of kashmir these would remain with the state. Crucially those from outside the state were prohibited from buying land or property within it. This measure was aimed at forestalling attempts to change the demographic profile of the Valley through large scale immigration.

However, with Praja Pati agitation in Hindu dominated Jammu and the prolonged aggression from leaders of hindu Mahasabha. There was growing conflict between the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley and the Hindu-dominated Jammu region.

The trouble in Kashmir came at an opportune time for Dr Mookerjee and Jana Sangh. Here was a chance to lift the dispirited cadres, to forget the disappointments of the election and reinvent the party on the national stage.

Dr Mookerjee bagan his charge with a series of blistering attacks on the government in Parliament. The sheikh had apparently said that they would treat both the provincial and national flag equally; this said the Jan sangh leader, showed a ‘divided loyalty’ unacceptable in a sovereign country. Even if the Valley wanted a limited accession, Jammu and the Buddhist region of Ladakh must be allowed to integrate fully if they so chose. But a better solution still would be to make the whole state a part of India, without any special concessions.

The popular movement led by Dr Mookerjee planted the seed of independence in sheikh Abdullah’s mind; the outcry folowing his (Mookerjee) death seems only to have nurtured it. By now the government of kashmir was divided within itself, its members as Nehru had observed, liable to pull in different directions and proclaim entirely different policies.

Some leaders like GM Sadiq, were left-wing anti-Americans; they disapproved of the sheikh’s talks with Stevenson. Others like Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, had ambitions of ruling Kashmir themselves.

There was now an open rift within the National Conference between the pro-India and pro-independence groups. It was rumoured that sheikh Abdullaha would declare independence on 21 August- the day of the great Id festival – following which he would seek the protection of the United Nations against Indian aggression. Two weeks before that date Abdullaha dismissed a member of his cabinet. This gave the other in pro-India India faction an excuse to move against him. Led by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, they wrote the sheikh a letter accusing him of encouraging sectarianism and corruption. A copy of the letter was also sent to karan singh. He, in turn, dismissed Abdullah and invited Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad to form a government in his place.

As prime minister, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad adopted a populist style, holding a darbar (court) every Friday, where he heard the grievances of the public . An early move was to raise the prominent price of paddy. Next, he made school education free, sanctioned new engineering and medical colleges and abolished custom barriers between Jammu and Kashmir and the rest of India.

Bakshi did have a certain talent for organization and for feathering his nest. He used his closeness to Delhi to get a steady flow of central funds into his state. These were used to pay for dams, roads, hospitals, tunnels and hotels. Many new buildings rose up in srinagar , including a new Secretariat, a new sports stadium and a new tourists complex. However in the development projects undertaken by Bakshi’s government there was always a percentage for family and friend’s. His regime soon became known as the BBC, or the Bakshi Brothers Corporation.

Philip Sprat  was proposing a radically different solution. India, he said , must abandon its claims to the Valley, and allow the sheikh his dream of independence. It should withdraw its armies and write off its loans to the government of Jammu and Kashmir. Let Kashmir go ahead, alone and adventurously, in her explorations of a secular state, he wrote. We shall watch the act of faith with due sympathy but at a safe distance, our honour, our resources and our future free from the enervating entanglements which write a lie in our soul.

Spratt’s solution was tinged with morality, but more so with economy and prudence. Indian policy, he argued was based on a mistaken belief in the one-nation theory and agreed to own the beautiful and strategic valley of Srinagar. This costs of policy, present and future were incalculable . Rather than given Kashmir special privileges and create resentment elsewhere in India, it was best to let the state go. As things stood, however, kashmir was in the grip of two armies glaring at each other in a state of armed neutrality. It may suit a handful of people to see the indefinite continuance of this ghastly situation. But the Indian taxpayer is paying through the nose for the precarious privilege of Kashmir as part of India on the basis of all the giving on India’s side and all the taking on Kashmir’s side.

 Tribal Trouble

The Nagas  were a congeries of tribes living in the eastern Himalaya, along the Burma border. Secure in their mountain fastness, they had been cut off from social and political developments in the rest of India. The British administered them lightly, keeping out plainsmen and not tempering with tribal laws or practices, except one – headhunting. However, American Baptists had been active since the mid-nineteenth century, successfully converting several tribes to Christianity.

At this time the Naga hills formed part of Assam, a province very diverse even by Indian standards, sharing borders with China, Burma and East Pakistan, divided into upland and lowland region and inhabited by hundreds of different communities. In the plains lived Assamese speaking Hindus, connected by culture and faith to the greater Indian heartland. Among the important groups of tribes were the Mizos, the Khas is, the Garos ,and the Jaintias, who take their names to the mountain ranges in which they lived. Also in the regions were two princely states, Tripura and manipur, whose populations were likewise mixed, part Hindu and part tribal.

NAGAS ISSUES

Among the tribes of north-east India the Nagas were perhaps the most autonomous. Their territory lay on the Indo-Burmese border – indeed, there were almost as many Nagas in Burma as in India. Yet the Nagas had been totally outside the fold of the Congress led national movement. There had been no satyagraha here , no civil disobedience movement – infact not one Gandhian leader in a white cap ever visited these hills. Some tribes had fiercely fought the British, but over time the two sides had come to view each other with mutual respect . For their part, the British affected a certain paternalism, wishing to protect their wards from the corrosive corruption of the modern world.

The Naga question really dates to 1946, the year when fate of British India was being decided. In the mean time , some naga people began to worry about their future . In Jan 1946, a group who were educated Christians and spoke expressive english formed Naga National Council, or NCN.

The NCN stood for the unity of all Nagas, and for their self-determination, a term which, here as elsewhere, was open to multiple and sometimes mutually contradictory meanings. The Angami Nagas, with their honourable martial traditions and record of fighting all outsiders, thought it should mean a fully independent state: a government of the Nagas, for the Nagas,by the Nagas. On the other hand, the Aos who were more moderate, thought they could live dignity within India, so long as their land and customs were protected and they had the autonomy to frame and enforce their own laws.

The early meetings of the NNC witnessed a vigorous debate between these two factions which spilled over into the pages of the Naga Nation. 

Meanwhile the moderate wing had begun negotiations with the Congress leadership. In July 1946 the NNC general secretary, T. Sakhrie, wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru, and in reply received an assurance that the Nagas would have full autonomy, but within the Indian Union. They could have their own judicial system, said Nehru, to save them from being swamped by people from other parts of country who might go there to exploit them to their own advantage’. Sakhrie now declared that Nagas would continue their connection with India, but as a distinctive community.

The radicals , however, still stood out for complete independence. In this way they were helped by some British officials, who were loath to have these tribes under Hindu influence. One officer recommended that the tribal areas of the north-east be constituted as Crown Colony.

In June 1947, a delegation of the NNC met the governor of Assam, Sir Akbar Hydari, to discuss the terms by which the Nagas could join India.  The two sides agreed that

1. tribal land would not be alienated to outsiders.
2. The Naga religious practices would not be affected and
3. that the NNC would have a say in the staffing of government offices.

Such agreement has backing of Nehru who told they can have autonomy but not independence.

However, certain groups remained hostile to the idea of independence. The Angami were the forefront opponent. Meanwhile, the British Raj departed from New Delhi and the new Indian state began to consolidate itself. The secretary of the governor of Assam told the Nagas to accept Indian rule as they were too few to successfully rebel against a nation of 300 million.

The prominent Angami to lead the voice of independence was Angami Zapu Phizo, with whose name the Naga cause was to be identified for close to half a century. He was also part of NNC delegation that met Nehru and Gandhi in Delhi in 1947.  Three years later he was elected president of the the NNC and committed the Naga to full independence.

Phizo and his men insisted that there is no single thing that Indian s and the Naga share in common. The moment we see Indians, a gloomy feeling of darkness creeps into our mind.

Six months later Nehru visited the Naga capital, Kohima, in the company of the Burmese prime minister U Nu. When a Naga delegation wished to meet Nehru to present a memorandum, local officials refused to allow them an audience. Word spread of the rebuff so that when the prime minister and his Burmese guest turned up to address a public meeting in their honour they saw their audience walking out as they arrived.

The Kohima walk out , it was said later, hardened Nehru against the Nagas. In truth , Phizo and the NNC had set their minds on independence anyway. They were already collecting arms and organising groups of home guards in their villages.

By  1953 the top NNC leadership had gone underground. Searching for them, the police raided Angami strongholds, further alienating the villagers. Apart from local knowledge and local support, the rebels had one great advantage – the terrain. The forested hills was perfectly suited for guerilla warfare. This gave birth to a prolonged and incessant warfare that continues till date with varying groups.

Recognition of Schedule Tribes

 

The Constituent Assembly recognized the vulnerability of tribals, and spent days debating what to do about it. Ultimately , it decided to designate some 400 communities as Scheduled tribes. These constituted about 7 percent of the population, and had seats reserved for them in the legislature as well as in government departments.

Schedule V of the constitution pertained to the tribes that lived in central India; it allowed for creation of tribal advisory councils and for curbs on money lending and on the sale of tribal land to outsiders.

Schedule VI pertained to the tribes of north -east ; it gestured further in the direction of local autonomy , constituting district and regional councils, protecting local rights in land, forests and waterways and instructing state government to share mining revenues with the local council, a concession not granted anywhere else in India.

Jharkhand state formation

Jaipal Singh, himself a tribal, a member of constituent Assembly very effectively pressed for the cause and redressal of their grievances.

He thought that these provisions would have real teeth only if the tribals could come to forge a separate state within the Union. He called this putative state of Jharkhand ; in his vision it would incorporate his own chotanagpur plateau, then in Bihar, along with contiguous tribal areas located in the provinces of Bengal and Orissa.

Jaipal Singh and his Jharkhand Party offered one prospective path for the tribals: autonomy within the Indian Union, safeguarded by laws protecting their land and customs and by the creation of provinces in regions where the tribals were in a majority. The Naga radicals offered another: an independent, sovereign state carved out of India and quite distinct from it.

Manipur

Manipur, has people from Meiteis, Naga and kuki tribals. In Manipur a struggle was afoot to have that former chiefdom declared a full fledged state of the Indian Union. Back in 1949 a popular movement had forced the Maharaja to convene an assembly elected on the basis of universal adult franchise, (It was first place in India to vote on universal adult franchise). But the assembly was dissolved when Manipur merged with India. The territory was now designat a Part C state, which meant that it had no popularly elected body and was ruled by a chief commissioner responsible directly to Delhi.

Speaking in Parliament , the home Minister said that the time was not ripe for the creation of legislative assembly in Part C states such as Manipur and Tripura. These states, he said , are strategically situated on the borders of India. The people are still politically backward and the administrative machinery of these states is still weak.

 Why India Survive?

• The Indian nation doesn’t privilege a single language or religious faith. Although the majority of its citizens are Hindus, India is not a Hindu nation. It’s constitution doesn’t discriminate between people on the basis of faith.
• From its inception the Indian National Congress sought to keep every species of Indian on board.
• Gandhi political programme was built upon harmony and cooperation between India’s two major religious communities, Hindus and Muslims.
• Although in the end his work and example were unsuccessful in stopping the division of India, the failure made his successor even more determined to construct independent India as a secular republic.
• For Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues, if India was anything at all it was not a Hindu Pakistan.
• Few  nations have had leaders of such acknowledged intelligence and integrity as Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and BR Ambedkar all living and working at the same time.
• Jawaharlal Nehru made it clear to the army top brass that in matters of state , they had to subordinate themselves to the elected politicians.
• As Lieutenant General JS Arora notes, Nehru laid down some very good norms, which ensured that politics in the army has been almost absent.

Indian nationalism has not been based on a shared language, religion, or ethnic identity. Perhaps one should then invoke the presence of a common enemy, namely European colonialism.

Certainly, it was the movement against British rule that first united men and women from different parts of the subcontinent in a common and shared endeavour. However, their (eventually successful) movement for political freedom eschewed violent revolution in favour of non-violent resistance.

Gandhi and company have been widely praised for preferring peaceful protest to armed struggle.

The colonialist were often chastised by the nationalists for promoting democracy at home while denying it in the colonies. When the British finally left, it was expected the Indians would embrace metropolitan traditions such as parliamentary democracy and Cabinet government. More surprising was their endorsement and retention of a quintessential colonial tradition – civil service.

Sardar Patel himself was moved by their services, he put it, the officers had ‘served very ably, very loyally the then government and later the present government. Patel believed that these people are the instrument of national unity. Removing them and I see nothing but a picture of chaos all over the country.

 

Building democracy in a poor society was always going to be hard work. Nurturing secularism in a land recently divided was going to be even harder. The creation of an Islamic state on India’s border was a provocation to those Hindus who themselves wished to merge faith with state.

The pluralism of religion was once cornerstone of the foundation of the Indian republic. A second was the pluralism of language.

Linguistic states have been in existence for fifty years now. In that time they have deepened and consolidated Indian unity. Within each state a common language has provided the basis of administrative unity and efficiency.

The three major secessionist movements in independent India – in Nagaland in the 1950s, in Punjab in the 1980s and in Kashmir in the 1990s – have affirmed religious and territorial distinctiveness, not a linguistic one.

In India, unity and pluralism are inseparable is graphically expressed in the country’s currency notes. On one side is printed a portrait of the father of national,M mahatma Gandhi and on the other side is printed a picture of the House of Parliament. The notes denominations -5,10,50,100 etc. – is printed in words in Hindi and English (the two official languages), but also, in smaller type, in all the other languages of the Union. In this manner, as many as seventeen different scripts are represented. With each language, and each script, comes a distinct culture and regional ethos, here nesting more or less comfortably with the idea of India as a whole.

In 1971 two torn medium – sized states arose out of one large – sized one. The country being divided was Pakistan, because of language. As the founders of Pakistan believed in one state, one religion ,and one language. Thus, Pakistan was created on the basis of religion , but divided on the basis of language.

Calling BJP a fascist?

 

• To call the BJP fascist is to diminish the severity and seriousness of the murderous crimes committed by the original fascist in Italy and Germany.
• Many leaders of the BJP are less than appealing, but to see the party as fascist would be both to overestimate it’s powers and to underestimate the democratic traditions of Indian people.
• Notably, the BJP now vigorously promotes linguistic pluralism. No longer are its leaders from Hindi heartland alone. It has expanded its influences in the southern states.
• And it is obliged to pay lip service to religious pluralism.
• Ideology that the party promotes goes by the name of positive secularism.