HVK Archives: India is not a coalition
India is not a coalition - Hindustan Times
Sudheendra Kulkarni
()
8 June 1996.
Tile : India is not a coalition
Author : Sudheendra Kulkarni
Publication : Hindustan Times
Date: June 8, 1996.
Every parliamentary poll is a pedagogical exercise for
the people. Election for the Lok Sabha invariably turns
India into a ``countrywide classroom'' in which, despite
all the surrounding sound and fury, both the voters and
vote-seekers go through a learning process. Policies are
debated and personalities scrutinised as much in village
tea-shops as in special election programmes on TV with
millions watching. In explaining the poll outcome, old
these are questioned, new ones propounded and, not infre-
quently, the very first principles of our nationhood are
revisited with questions such as: ``Who are we?'' and''
What keeps India united?''
Among the many explanations which have been offered for
public debate, few appear so persuasive and rational as
the one given by Mr. V.P.Singh. Few, however, are as
flawed and filled with fissiparous potential. Commenting
on the nature of the poll outcome, the former Prim Minis-
ter has stated in TV and press interviews. ``Now the po-
litical reality is gravitating to the ground reality that
India is a coalition, socially, economically and politi-
cally. In this we have to go through the phase of coali-
tion and a learning process of running a coalition. ``The
sheer simplicity of this thesis is alluring, but it none-
theless hides a non-serious intellectualism whose impli-
cations are serious for the unity and integrity of the
nation.
The postulation that ``India is a coalition'' is discon-
certing for two reasons. One, its author is not an arm-
chair academic (although a large number of academics both
in India and abroad would happily subscribe to it) but a
highly influential political leader who is also widely
respected. Secondly, it lends credence to all those po-
litical tendencies which assert that India is just an
artificial conglomeration of castes, communities, re-
gions, races and sub-nationalities.
Many ominous questions arise if India is taken to be a
social and economic coalition and if the verdict of Elec-
tion `96 is credited with having reminded the world that
the reflection of country's divided but loosely held to-
gether social reality. The most elementary question, and
one related to the immediate political context is: If we
as a nation must learn the process of living under a po-
litical coalition, can an important, indeed the fastest
growing component, in Indian polity be left out of the
arrangement? Mr. Singh's instance on constructing a coa-
lition sans the BJP, therefore, supports only one conclu-
sion: that the ``messiah of social justice'' has no com-
punction in treating, in a blatantly undemocratic manner
the party having the largest representation in Parliament
as a political untouchable.
But we need to examine the nature of India's nationhood
independent of the immediacy of current events. Here,
too, the flaw in the Janata Dal leader's thesis becomes
evident when we recognise that the nature of a nation's
self-constitution does not change with transient chases
in its political superstructure. Why should the formula-
tion that coalition is the main definitional feature of
India's nationalism dawn on Mr. Singh only now when the
electorate has, in its current wisdom, necessitated a
coalition government at the Centre? Does it mean that
India was not a coalition when it had voted a single par-
ty, such as the Congress, to power with a stunning major-
ity in the past? Or that India will cease to be a coali-
tion when, at some point in the future, the voters once
again give a massive mandate to a single party? The in-
ference is as inane as it is comical, but it follows nat-
urally from Mr. Singh's ersatz scholarship.
It can of course be argued that the Congress itself was a
broad `coalition', reflecting the social composition of
India, during the long years when it was the predominant
political force in the country. The proponents of this
theory have further argued, not without a degree of ra-
tionality, that the Congress indirectly aided the forma-
tion of new political outfits when it ceased to mirror
the emerging social dynamics in the country. But does
this support the conclusion that India as a nation is but
a coalition? No, it only points to the fact that India at
the threshold of a new century is keenly awaiting a grand
political synthesis- both at the ideological and organi-
sational levels- which will be a democratic reflection of
the country's new social realities in the same way as the
Congress of Nehru and Sardar Patel was in the immediate
aftermath of independence. Such a synthesis will lead the
country out of the unstable era of coalition govern-
ments. Indeed, the real challenge before every political
formation that aspires to govern India - be it the
shrinking Congress, stagnant communists or the resurgent
but near saturation BJP -- is whether it is capable of
self synthesising itself into an umbrella orgnisation
that shelters and empowers all constituents of India's
plural society.
But whether India is governed by one party or by an al-
liance of several parties, and whether the support base
of the dominant party expands or contracts, these changes
in the political sphere have no bearing on the essential
nature of her nationhood. For as long as she has existed,
India has been one nation and never a coalition of heter-
ogeneous constituents. While being one nation, she has at
all times revealed, indeed reveled in, her resplendent
diversity. `Unity in diversity' has always been the orga-
nising principle of India's national life. Those who see
India as a coalition are capable of seeing only her sur-
face diversity and not the underlying, ever present, as-
similative and unifying cultural force.
India's unity is defined and sustained not by geographic,
political not by geographic, political or economics pa-
rameters but, rather, by her spiritual and secular civil-
isation. Just as an individual human being has an identi-
ty giving soul of his own, a nation-- especially an an-
cient and spiritually nourished land like India--too has
a soul of its own. This national soul is indivisible and
integral unto itself, and not a crude patched-up creature
as reflected in the term `coalition'. India was one na-
tion even when, during the darkest periods in her histo-
ry, she was under alien rule or was governed by differ-
ent, warring kingdoms. Her unity is organic and involun-
tary. It is not voluntary, tentative or conditional as is
suggested by Mr. Singh's ``nation-as-coalition'' thesis.
In any social or political coalition, its partners come
together voluntarily on the basis of certain mutually
acceptable conditions. Just as they have the freedom to
decide whether to join a coalition or not, they also have
the innate right to disengage themselves from it. Now,
imagine for a moment that India is a coalition. The very
act of imagining this unimaginable invites many fright-
ful-- and, in the eyes of the champions of this thesis,
legitimate-- possibilities. At the very least, it sup-
ports the demand for separate electorates or proportional
representation in Parliament, State Assemblies and other
elective bodies based on the numerical strength of var-
ious castes and communities.
But this does not exhaust the divisive potential inherent
in Mr. Singh's shocking formulation. For one, it legiti-
mises the `right to self-determination' as advocated for
long by Stalinists and extremists sporting other labels.
Kashmir, thus, has a right to secede and join Pakistan or
remain independent because, isn't it just a partner in a
national coalition? By the same logic, don't the votaries
of Khalistan or a separate Dravid or Naga or Mizo nation
have a right to campaign for disengagement from India? If
one accepts India to be a coalition, can it not also be
deduced that Mr. Singh accords post-facto legitimacy to
Pakistan breaking away as a separate Muslim nation five
decades ago?
No, Mr V.P. Singh, India is not a coalition. India, if
anything, is an eloquent example of the general law of
creation. God created unity in God-created diversity. It
is one thing to seek to re-construct the polity by making
responsive to the legitimate interest of all the diverse
communities that make up this country. But it is quite
another if the very civilisational unity that binds and
blends theses diversities is either negated or -- what is
but the same thing-- glossed over by positing a dangerous
thesis that Kerala and Kashmir are just partners in a
coalition.
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