A terrifying siege i raging within South Asia. It is most evident in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka which have been continuously racked by civil strife and crises of governance.
India was different. Or so we thought. Under Nehru, India was a model of stable government and institutional development. But with his heirs, Indira and Rajiv, this process began to stall. The tragic assassination of Rajiv and the bloody violence which has gripped India in recent years is only the latest and most dramatic manifestation of this siege as it envelopes India.
This siege is characterised by an unrelenting breakdown of law and order. Rising ethnicity, casteism, sectarianism, regionalism and return to religious fundamentalism threaten to rip apart the secular, democratic, post-colonial state structures bequeathed by the founding fathers of most countries in the region, including India. The crisis of government throughout South Asia in fact suggests an ominous disintegration of the social contract between the rulers and the ruled, the state and society.
The social contract between state and society defines the basis of political association and public authority in modern times. It involves the citizen’s voluntary submission to the authority of the state in return for certain guarantees of life, liberty and the common good. Over time, it is expected to mature into a host of participatory institutions and social policies designed to ensure the welfare of the individual.
In much of S Asia, the state has all but abandoned its citizens. Bouts of martial law, prohibitive defence expenditures, crumbling social infrastructures and the corruption and political opportunism of ruling elites have consciously sabotaged the social contract. Citizens have been forced to retreat into ideologies, subnationalism and faiths in order to fend for themselves. The state is unable or unwilling to provide employment, education, health, housing and transportation. As a consequence, the social psychology of the people is characterised by insecurity, uncertainty and aggression.
In India, the state became unduly ambitious and aggressive over time. Under Mrs Gandhi, it sought to secure India as the fifth largest power in the world. In consequence, beginning with India’s test-explosion of a nuclear device in 1974, there were several developments of far-reaching significance.
First, the Congress Party’s collective leadership was decimated to accommodate Mrs Gandhi’s overriding ambitions. Second, there was a rush to overly centralise the Indian state in order to make it more powerful. Third, the stat was provided with the military hardware with which to flex its muscle in the region and establish its political hegemony.
Inevitably, there were disagreeable repercussions. Dynastic tendencies were strengthened and alternative leaderships thwarted. Second, the federal structure of India was brutally compromised by blatant interference in the affairs of provincial governments, most notably Punjab. Third, India began to meddle with its neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh.There was little left of resources to cope with the grinding problems of mass poverty and unemployment or the rising claims of India’s burgeoning but insecure middle classes.
Under Rajiv, the civil strife in East Punjab, Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and elsewhere, unleashed by his other in the 1980s, was extended to include Kashmir and Tamil Nadu. Secularism was weakened for short term political gains. Neighbouring Sri Lanka and Nepal were also harshly alienated. The Indian military acquired a blue water fleet to patrol the coastline from the Persian Gulf to East Africa, indigenous missile technology was perfected, nuclear reactors were set up and the army was buttressed to nearly 50 divisions.
In 1947, Nehru had referred to the unity and diversity of India as its enduring sources of strength. Under his dynastic successors, the wealth of Indian diversity was foolishly sacrificed at the alter of an illusive unity thrust from above. That is when the social contract began to break down. The costly ambitions of the Indian state and the minimal requirements of the impoverished masses became increasingly incompatible.
Today, India is torn by militant Hinduism, soured by caste prejudices and threatened by violent separatism. The country is rudderless without the anchor of dynasty. Is India capable of throwing up a new leadership which renews the social contract in all its necessary dimensions?
Two decades ago, American scholar Selig Harrison prophetically warned of the dangerous decades which lay ahead for India. Rajiv’s tragic death, even more than that of his mother, is a painful but urgent reminder that India can only survive as a dynamic and modern nation of its leaders consciously attempt to revive the forgotten pledge between the state and its subjects.