HVK Archives: India is not a coalition
India is not a coalition - Hindustan Times
Sudheendra Kulkarni
()
24 June 1996
Title : India is not a coalition
Author : Sudheendra Kulkarni
Publication : Hindustan Times
Date : June 24, 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
theses are questioned, new ones propounded and, not
infrequently, 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 and press
interviews: "Now the political reality is gravitating to
the ground reality that India is a coalition, socially,
economically and politically. In this we have to go
through the phase of a coalition and a learning process
of running a coalition." The sheer simplicity of this
thesis is alluring, but it nonetheless hides a
non serious intellectualism whose implications are
serious for the unity and integrity of the nation.
The postulation that "India is a coalition" is
disconcerting 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 political tendencies which assert
that India is just an artificial conglomeration of
castes, communities, regions, races and sub-
nationalities.
Many ominous questions arise if India is taken to be a
social and economic coalition and if the verdict of
Election '96 is credited with having reminded the world
that the fractured poll mandate is but a reflection of
country's divided but loosely held together 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
political coalition, can an important, indeed the
fastest growing component, in Indian polity be left out
of the arrangement? Mr Singh's insistence on
constructing a coalition sans the BJP, therefore,
supports only one conclusion: that the "messiah of
social justice" has no compunction in treating, in a
blatantly undemocratic manner, presentation 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 changes
in its political superstructure. Why should the
formulation 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 party, such as the Congress, to power with a
stunning majority in the past? Or that India will cease
to be a coalition when, at some point in the future, the
voters once again give a massive mandate to a single
party? The inference is as inane as it is comical, but it
follows naturally 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
rationality, that the Congress indirectly aided the
formation 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 organisational cratic 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 governments.
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 organisation
that shelters and empowers all constituents of India's
plural society.
But whether India is governed by one party or by an
alliance 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 heterogeneous constituents. While being one
nation, she has at all times revealed, indeed reveled in,
her resplendent diversity. 'Unity in diversity' has
always been the organising principle of India's national
life. Those who see India as a coalition are capable of
seeing only her surface diversity and not the underlying,
ever present, assimilative and unifying cultural force.
India's unity is defined and sustained not by geographic,
political or economic parameters but, rather, by her
spiritual and secular civilisation. Just as an individual
human being has an identity-giving soul of his own,
nation - especially, an ancient and spiritually
nourished land like India - too has a soul of it 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 nation even when,
during the darkest periods in her history, she was under
alien rule or was governed by different, warring
kingdoms. Her unity is organic and involuntary. 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 of 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
frightful - and in the eyes of the champions of this
thesis, legitimate - possibilities. At the very least, it
supports the demand for separate electorates or
proportional representation in Parliament, State
Assemblies and other elective bodies based on the
numerical strength of various castes and communities.
But this does not exhaust the divisive potential inherent
in Mr Singh's shocking formulation. For one, it
legitimizes 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 pohty by making
it responsive to the legitimate interests of all the
diverse communities that make up this country. But it is
quite another if the very civilisational unity that binds
and blends these diversities into a living national
organism is either negated or - what is but the same
thing - glossed over by positing a dangerous thesis that
Kerala and are just partners in a coalition.
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