A noted characteristic of Indian society is loyalty to local structures rather than centralized authority; it manifests itself in the democratic set-up today
Indian political thinkers and historians — from Amartya Sen to Ramachandra Guha — have celebrated India’s stability as a democracy.
While Sen and Jean Dreze have noted that democracy in India does not satisfy John Rawl’s proposition that deliberation by the citizens on political issues is an essential part of democracy, they still celebrate it. The truly marginalised have no voice in public debates, and media attention is entirely gobbled up by the top 10 to 20 per cent, but that does not seriously make intellectuals doubt democracy.
In this short essay, I am offering the argument that the stability of India’s democracy owes, paradoxically, to the weakness of the Indian state — although what this “weakness” means needs to be elaborated upon.
India was historically marked by weak centralised state
Sociologist Barrington Moore has noted that weak centralised state authority characterized India under various rulers, whether Hindu or Muslim, and the people were also not known to have displayed loyalty towards them; the village or local community, with its basis in jati (caste) affiliations, held sway.
Cultivation was lackadaisical and inefficient over wide areas, partly due to Mughal tax farming, partly because of the peculiar structure of peasant society, organized through the caste system. In providing a framework for all social activity, quite literally from conception to the afterlife, at the local level of the village community, caste made the central government largely superfluous.
Also read: Rising wave of Buddhism in TN: Conversion as a fight against casteism
Although the Mughals were despots and remained in power for centuries, they could not change society because of the same localised power structures. Corruption was rampant in Mughal courts, and Akbar’s well-meaning Karori scheme was, according to WH Moreland, a disaster; it put power into the hands of rapacious officials in the distant provinces, leading to such misery among the populace that even the wives and children of peasants were sold.
But the key aspect was that the writ of the monarch did not run uniformly in his empire and the more distant spaces were under local structures of power and authority.
The difference with China
In China, the local gentry needed the imperial bureaucracy as a mechanism for obtaining the economic surplus out of the peasantry that supported their position locally and nationally.
In India, such an arrangement was unnecessary at the local level since caste regulations took its place. Where he existed, the landowner enjoyed an accepted place in the local scheme of things. He did not need the central government to help him extract his perquisites from the peasantry.
Thus, the character of the two systems meant that peasant opposition would take different forms in each. In China, the main thrust was to replace a “bad” government with a “good” one of the same character; in India, it was much more towards getting rid of government above the village level altogether.
Independent India inherited a weak state
The British, being basically interested in the resources that India could provide, did not tamper with the fundamental structure of society, and independent India naturally inherited a weak state. India has had several strong leaders and governments, but the state itself is traditionally weak.
Also read: Telangana: Why CPI(M) made a Dalit as state secretary at last
The state authority has the power and responsibility to create, enforce, and interpret laws while an elected government (the executive) is responsible for the day-to-day management of the state. An elected government that uses party cadres to distribute benefits puts power into the hands of the cadres and hence weakens the state since party cadres are not state functionaries and are not responsible.
A leader who uses the machinery of the state in a partisan manner against his/her adversaries also weakens the state machinery. A strong elected government does not imply a strong state and, in India, it has usually been the contrary.
The purpose of the state is to implement the laid-down law impartially; its functionaries should ideally even resist an elected government’s unlawful directives. But the average policeman in India, as a state functionary, deems an order lawful if it simply comes from someone superior in the hierarchy.
Importance of jati in our democratic set-up
Since the noted characteristic of Indian society was loyalty to local structures, like caste, rather than centralized authority, and India inherited it in 1947, how does it manifest itself in the democratic set-up of today?
We know that mass voting is heavily caste-driven and block voting is by well-knit communities with political agents functioning as intermediaries. When ministries are constituted, caste representation is important in the choice of ministers. Caste (as jati) is hence usually the primary basis for choosing leaders at the local level.
Also read: Rekha Gupta's cabinet is a balance in caste equations
Since there needs to be reciprocity in the political relationship between constituency and representative, we may infer that the former expects patronage from those it has elected. Since benefits have to pass down, government recruitments are severely jati-driven and this is not a reference made to the reservation policy.
Reservation is a legitimate decision by the state to compensate a broad category considered underprivileged, but favouring specific groups because they are part of one’s constituency is a corrupt practice akin to nepotism. Nepotism and financial corruption go hand in hand; one does not rule out the other but together they weaken the state.
Financial corruption to raise funds for a political party also weakens the state. If employment is provided as political patronage, the delivery of services by the state becomes unsatisfactory.
Jati identity plays a part ubiquitously, and the success of film stars in politics in South India is also largely related to jati (like Kapu or Kamma in Telugu cinema). In this scenario, supposing that mass voting is entirely ideology-based is naive. What is more likely is that ideology is actually linked to jati — like Yadavs being with the Samajwadi Party in UP.
Bringing different jatis together through programmes to build larger constituencies is a difficult task and a united Hindu constituency is hence only a dream consumed by a credulous middle-class.
The complications of caste loyalties
Caste is an issue widely debated, but usually highlighted only by hierarchy and the exploitation of the low by the high. An equally important phenomenon is the clustering of jati groups through interpersonal dealings and marriage alliances.
We are taught that there are only four castes, but castes as jatis are countless in number, but the fact that there is no unity even between Yadav groups in UP and Bihar (where the caste is powerful) suggests that jati groups are restricted to small territories and loyalty is only within that local community.
Also read: Karnataka govt committed to caste census report: Siddaramaiah
Every village or a section of it is dominated by a jati community and the same clustering has persisted for eons. When we deal with a space as large as India, it can perhaps be imagined as an enormous collection of jati clusters with some affiliations between select jatis in adjacent areas.
But the question that now arises is how these clusters are held together to actually constitute a stable nation.
Starting from the grassroots
From whatever has been said, we may infer that any person in politics hoping to rise through the electoral process has to first make his/her mark at the local level unless he/she has the backing of those already entrenched, usually through family associations.
Once he or she attains some stature, the next step is to knit alliances at higher levels one by one. The important thing is that unless one is able to knit alliances — i.e., also become acceptable within the political hierarchy — one may not rise politically.
We could also suppose that this implies a political network through which the person must rise to become a widely accepted leader. Since being accepted widely is a quality that holds a leader in good stead, one cannot usually afford implacable enmities — unless one has not risen from the ranks but has inherited a position.
As lay citizens, we get the sense of the political space being made up of people violently hostile to one another but the venomous barbs used by the one against the other may not be genuine hostility as much as a way of exciting and mobilizing one’s own constituency.
Also read: Telangana: BJP sees red as Revanth claims Modi not backward class by birth
This inference is speculative but the anger of ordinary people of one political persuasion towards others (even within their families) may not be shared by the leaders they admire; there is perhaps an easy acceptance of each other on the political plane even if their followers fight it out. We must recognize that for all the public posturing against each other’s misdoings, few politicians are actually punished.
How fragmented jati divisions ensure stability
The stability of India’s democracy is the remaining phenomenon to be speculated upon, but for a democracy to be deliberately destabilized, there may need to be powerful vested interests at work.
Pakistan, for instance, is largely feudal, with enormous landholdings and wealth in the hands of a few families. In India, we arguably do not see that kind of wealth in relation to the country’s vastness, and the economically powerful cannot risk falling out with political authority; India is also too large to be governed by military means.
But most importantly, democracy is sometimes destabilized by powerful ethnic groups when they are united under a strong leadership, and that is impossible here. In India, the fragmented nature of jati divisions, where each group is localized within a small territory, means that no single group can ever be strong enough to dominate even a state, let alone the country.
We could hence surmise that the same elements that weaken the state in India actually lend stability to India’s democracy as it stands today.
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal)
