Dr Rajkumar Singh
THE state structure, as introduced by the British in India was of high quality. The Indian people, for the first time, found a substantial sector of their economic and social life coming under the governance of a universally and equally operating system of law. The direct consequence of the establishment of a new social economy was the emergence of new social classes and these classes were unknown to the past Indian society. The new social classes emerged in various parts of the country and among the different communities were not even due to geography, trade, industry and social economy of the country. In the British period there were three main ingredients of social structure – the commercial classes, the professional classes and the class of Indian princes. Of the most important was the emergence of the new middle class of India through which the British ruled the subcontinent. It was from this class that the ideas of individualism and constitutional government gained prominance. It was created from the British policy of education and later on political leadership also emerged from this class who made liberty, democracy and socialism as their ultimate goal.
British challenges and spread of communal policy: In the period of national movement the British had to face challenges on two counts – the first movement comprised all separate movements of various social classes pursuing their own interests and aims, such as the industrialists, merchants, workers, kisans, professional classes, students, women and others. The other movement was the joint movement of all or a number of classes, episodic or permanent, against foreign rule. It took the form of the Indian nationalist movement for Home Rule, Dominion Status or Complete Independence. This movement was based on the common interests, namely the removal of political control and every social class had its own conception of the form of state and socio-economic structure after the achievement of power.
At the close of foreign rule in India began the politicisation of communal feelings and it was a consequence of the introduction of representative institutions. The British, while solving the problem of communalism in India, took the lessons from their own country and saw it as the problem of a plural society in which the issues of identification of natural groups were meted out through group representation. Acting on the formula in 1909 they introduced other classes for representation in the Councils : landowners and Muslims. In 1919, Communal and Special Constituencies were created over and above the ‘general’ constituencies.Further in the Act of 1935 and in the negotiations for India Independence, communal representation and the principle of ‘weightage’ were the chief instruments through which the British tried to solve the communal problem. The principle of communal representation remained the chief bone of contention between the leaders of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, ultimately dividing the Indian subcontinent into the two sovereign, independent nations–India and Pakistan. Although the British wisely left their Indian colony peacefully in 1947, the violence that accompanied partition snapped the development of the two states and set stage for four wars between them, the last one in Kargil sector in 1999.
Problems around Independence: At independence, the society of India remained for a long time as it was in pre-independence period. As earlier caste, religion and language continue to be strong factors fostering sub-national identities. Horizontal and vertical cleavages have made it difficult for the civil society to develop the size and cohesion necessary to interact as an equal with the political and economic power of the state. The gap among the groups and classes were widened in subsequent years and spread in spheres of economy, politics and education. The legacy of western education, idea of liberty, equality, democracy and socialism has created a divide in India’s traditional social system which called for a change in the established pattern of behaviour. But the pre-independence set of bureaucrats who were recruited from generations of landlords educated to protect the British Empire were given more powers at all levels in early years of independence. They controlled more resources, distribution, and construction, employment and management. As a result, every five-year plan since 1952 set concrete steps for increasing the well-being of the poor and marginalised, but not a single plan lived up to expectations. In other words, the new laws reinvigorated ancient frictions along the old fault lines of class, gender, caste, religion and region and many were crushed by those combined pressures. It was not a failure of law, but a failure of implementation. For almost twenty years political power in Indian social structure remained limited to the new leadership along with the middle and upper middle classes.
Change of middle class character: From mid-1960s there began a gradual power seepage from urban to rural and within rural from upper castes to OBCs, but the lowest levels have largely stayed where they were. About 90 per cent of the rural population comprised unemployed, small peasants, craftsmen and agricultural labourers. The year 1967 revealed something more basic a combination of social conflict within the traditional caste hierarchy and widespread public discontent with the Congress itself. The Indian politics witnessed by 1971 a clear shift in the social basis of Indian politics. The new situation was warranted by social inequality, aloofness of Indian intelligentsia, internal tension, decline of morality and decency in public life. The political system adopted in free India is parliamentary democracy which has seen several ups and downs in Indian context. In recent decades role of religion has increased in Indian politics, compelling the social system for its reordering. The past experience has shown that the application of democracy in the true sense of the term would be unacceptable to vested interests that had remained dominant in the earlier model of governance and socio-economic development.
— The writer is Professor and Head, P G Department of Political Science, Bihar, India.
