Transforming India : social and political dynamics of democracy PDF
Preview Transforming India : social and political dynamics of democracy
TRANSFORMING INDIA TRANSFORMING INDIA Social and Political Dynamics of Democracy Edited by FRANCINE R. FRANKEL ZOYA HASAN RAJEEV BHARGAVA BALVEERARORA OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 3&K 3 ) ■ T ^ l OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110001 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paolo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in India By Oxford University Press, New Delhi © Oxford University Press 2000 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2000 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 0 19 565157 X Typeset in Berkeley by Comprint, New Delhi 110029 Printed in India at Rashtriya Printers, Delhi 110032 Published by Manzar Khan, Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001 . I "I Preface This volume emerged from a conference at India International Centre on ‘Democracy and Transformation: India Fifty Years After Independence’ in November 1997. Our intention was to take stock of the democratic experience in India, conceptual ized as a set of interactions— those between liberal ideas and institutions on the one hand, and hierarchical social structures and heterogeneous cultures on the other. In other words, we wanted to present a dynamic understanding of how democratic forms of governance are able to adapt to unequal and divided societies, and in doing so, also change the cultural expression of rights and obligations, and patterns of social and political power. The academic organizing committee consisting of the four editors worked to identify the participants, including the scholars invited to give papers and act as discussants. We invited Dr E. Sridharan, Academic Director, University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIAS1) to join us for substantive discussions, and requested UP1ASI to take on the responsibilities of coordinating the arrangements for the New Delhi conference. This task was greatly facilitated by the superb cooperation we enjoyed from N.N. Vohra (Director), N.H. Ramachandran (Secretary) and Lalit Joshi (Manager) of India International Centre, and the staff, in overseeing the smooth functioning of the conference, among the first to take place in the state of the art facility and beautiful natural surroundings of the new Annexe building. We feel fortunate that so many outstanding scholars from across disciplines and professions, based in India, the United vi Preface States and Europe enthusiastically responded to the challenge of this enterprise. All of the scholars represented in this volume revised their original papers in response to the discussions at the conference, circulated in the form of proceedings. They also updated their papers, as appropriate, to take account of the outcome of the February-March 1998 elections; the last revised paper, by Balveer Arora, also addresses the implications for democratic governance of the loss of confidence of the BJP-led coalition in April 1999. All of us owe a special debt of gratitude to Victoria Farmer, Assistant Director, Center for the Advanced Study of India until October 1998, and Professor Douglas Verney, Adjunct Professor, South Asia Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania for the meticulous editing of each paper and queries to the authors for revision. Ritu Menon, a professional publisher, provided in valuable assistance in completing the final copy-editing, to tighten the writing and standardize the style for publication ac cording to specifications of Oxford University Press. All of these efforts saved valuable time in bringing out the volume as quickly as possible. Finally, 1 want to express my personal appreciation to David D. Arnold and Dr Terrence George, then Representative, and Program Officer, respectively of The Ford Foundation, New Delhi, for the confidence they displayed in this project by ap proving the grant which made the November 1997 conference possible. Francine R. Frankel Center for the Advanced Study of India May 5, 1999 Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Contents Contributors Introduction/Contextual Democracy: intersections of society, culture and politics in India FRANCINE R. FRANKEL Democratic Vision of a New Republic: India, 1950 RAJ EE V BHARGAVA The Strong State and the Fear of Disorder PAUL R. BRASS \ Democracy and Social Inequality SUDIPTA KAVIRAJ Understanding the Second Democratic Upsurge: trends of Bahujan participation in electoral politics in the 1990s YOGENDRA YADAV Representation and Redistribution: the new lowe1 caste politics of north India ZOYA HASAN Negotiating Differences: federal coalitions and national cohesion BALVEER ARORA Economic Policy and the Development of Capitalism in India: the role of regional capitalists and political parties SANJAYA BARU vii i Contents Economic Policy and Its Political Management in the Current Conjuncture PRABHAT PATNAIK 231 Depicting the Nation: media politics in independent India VICTORIA L. FARMER 254 The India Police: expectations of a democratic polity R.K. RAGHAVAN 288 Judges and Indian Democracy: the lesser evil? RAJEEV DHAVAN 314 Hindu Nationalism and Democracy CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT 353 The Transformation of Hindu Nationalism? Towards a reappraisal AMR1TA BASU 379 India in Search. . . of a New Regime? DOUGLAS V. VERNEY 405 Index 429 Contributors BALVEER ARORA is Professor of Government and Politics at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Earlier, he has been a visiting fellow at the National Political Science Foundation, Paris and the Center for the Ad vanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, USA. He has co-edited Multiple Identities in a Single State: Indian Federalism in Comparative Perspective (1995) and Federalism in India: Ori gins and Development (1992). SANJAYA BARU is Professor at the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations, New Delhi. He has been an associate professor in economics at the University of Hyderabad and also a visiting fellow at the University of East Anglia (UK). He is the author of The Political Economy of Indian Sugar (1990) and the Mid-Year Review of the Indian Economy (1998). He is also a newspaper columnist and a television com mentator. AMRITA BASU is Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College, Massachusetts, USA. She has been a visiting scholar at the South Asian Institute, Co lumbia University, USA. She is the author of Two Faces of Pro test: Contrasting Modes of Women’s Activism in India (1992) and has co-edited Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Po liticized Religion in South Asia (1998). RAJEEV BHARGAVA is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, X Contributors New Delhi. Earlier he has been a senior fellow in Ethics at Harvard University, Cambridge. He is the author of Individualism in Social Science (1992) and a contributor in and editor of Secularism and Its Critics (1998). Recently he has co-edited and contrib uted in Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy (1999). Besides being a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (1998), he has written numerous articles for various well-known journals and edited volumes. PAUL R. BRASS is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. His most recent books are Theft of An Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence (1997); Riots and Pogroms (1996); and The Politics of India since Independence, 2nd ed. (1994). His other books include Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison (1991); Caste, Faction and Party in Indian Poli tics, 2 vols (1983 and 1985); and Language, Religion and Politics in North India (1974). He is currently working on a book on Hindu-Muslim communalism and collective violence in India. RAJEEV DHAVAN was educated at Allahabad, Cambridge and London Universities. A former academic, he taught at Queen’s University (Belfast, Ireland) and at the University of West London, with visiting and other assignments at the Universities of London, Austin, Madison and Delhi. He is an honorary pro fessor of the Indian Law Institute and Director of Public Interest Legal Support and Research Centre (P1LSARC). Author of many books and articles on constitutional law, policy and public af fairs and called to the Bar in India and England, he is now a Senior Counsel practising in the Supreme Court of India. VICTORIA L. FARMER is formerly Assistant Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsyl vania and South Asia Program Associate, The Asia Society. She has taught comparative politics, American foreign policy and international relations at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. The author of numerous articles, she is cur rently completing her Ph.D. dissertation in political science at Penn, entitled “Televising the Nation: Television, Politics and Social Change in India.”
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